Josh Hilden's Blog, page 31

We are Live!

The Kickstarter for the Shores of the Dead Trilogy is now live. We have sixty days to raise $1000.00! Please give until it hurts, give some more, and then share this link! Really that's all I can ask for you to give me your pensions.

:P

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/j...

Time to Kick this Pig!

When I was 10 years old my father let me watch a movie. It was Halloween night and everyone was exhausted from trick or treating and gorged on candy. It was about ten at night and I was just about ready to doze off for the evening when my dad and my step brother came in and changed the channel.

“You going to love this,” my father said as he set down on the couch next to me.

As the black and white movie began to play on the small screen I was quickly becoming bored with it when I heard something emanating from the TV.

“They’re coming to get you Barbara!”

Immediately my attention was captured and for the next 2 hours, although it felt simultaneously like 2 minutes and 20 hours, I was a prisoner. I didn’t sleep a wink that night. Every shadow, every sound out in the windy Michigan night, and every creek in the house was one of the living dead coming to get me.

I was terrified.

This was my first exposure to the world of zombies. Since that night I have been both fascinated and obsessed with the genre. I wrote the first of many zombie stories that I would craft across the sweep of my life when I was twelve years old. Now I have the opportunity to bring the best of my creations to life.

I am initiating a Kickstarter to raise the money that is needed to publish the first book of the Shores of the Dead Trilogy. On the morning of August 3, 2012 (my thirty sixth birthday by the way) the project will go live and I will have sixty days to raise $1000.00 so that my company Gorillas with Scissors Press can begin bringing the series to the public. I will be driving all of you crazy daily as I whore myself out in order to raise these funds. There are two main things you will be able to do if you wish to help me.

1. Donate money, every little bit helps me reach that $100.00 goal.

2. Share the project with everyone that you can and encourage them to do the same.

If you help do these thing not only will you be helping me get my foot into the publishing industry, you will also be helping that little boy who watched an old movie with his dad on Halloween and was forever changed.

Knocking back the Professional Jungle with just a Machete and a Dream ... and finding the Monkey House

It has been an extremely busy two weeks for me professionally. And by professionally I mean my writing and not the fucking day job that keeps sucking out a little more of my soul every day. There have been a lot of things going on behind the scenes and now I want to share them.

First, and probably most importantly, I have started my own publishing company. Gorillas with Scissors Press (www.gwspress.com) will be publishing independent fiction, role playing games, and comic books. The logo for the company (see above) was designed by the very talented Joseph Scott Lawn who knocked it right the fuck out of the park. Eventually I also want to publish nonfiction and poetry but baby steps first, once I have those down we can fucking run!

The first project coming from the Monkey House is my novel. I have decided to self publish after a year of trying to get an agent because I have decided that I would rather be the one calling the shots in the end. Call me a control freak if you want but that’s how the Josh rolls these days. I have renamed the book from The Risen Dead: Life During the Zombie Apocalypse to The Shores of the Dead. It has also gone from one giant brick of a novel (175,000 words) to a trilogy. I plan on doing a collected edition if the first three sell reasonably well that will include some of the cut material and appendices (SM Stirling did awesome appendices in Draka novels and that is the inspiration). I am currently waiting for Kickstarter to finish reviewing my project application so that I can begin whoring myself out to all of you to raise the capital to publish the books. I have already contracted the phenomenal Mike Mumah to do the covers of the books. The novels are currently with a third party editor because Boils and Ghouls you do not want to read my shit if it hasn’t been edited by someone else.

No writer should be his or her own FINAL editor, anyone who tells you that they can be are suspect in my book.

Project number two is my comic book. A couple of months ago I was musing online about how I would like to write a comic book called Bunny, Bunni, & Bobby the story of two strippers and a talking rabbit traveling across Canada in an avocado colored RV trying to stop an alien invasion. Well I have been toying with it since then but I have decided that I really want to do it so I have lined up potential artists and am working on a treatment and synopsis for the series. So yeah … that’s gonna happen!

So it really has been a busy time, add to all of that the continuing series of therapy journal entries on my personal blog and yeah time has been slipping by. I am excited and terrified but this is the most exciting time I have experienced in a very long time.

The Story of Josh Part Twenty Two … I am a (Writer Installment #5) “I write my own adventures”

OK so when I went to the meeting point to meet with the raspy voiced therapist there was a note that said that he had a movie premiere to get to and that I should call a number written below. The phone was answered by a pleasant sounding man with a cultured New England accent. He told me that he could see me at my leisure so I said that as soon as possible would be best. Now I am here.

He is a pleasant bald man in his mid to late thirties and his every word fills me with ease. He sort of reminds me of the dude that played Captain Picard on Star trek the Next Generation.


I started writing role playing material when I was in about the fifth grade. I had quickly become tired of the prewritten adventure modules that were available to me, not because they weren’t generally good but because I lacked the funds to buy many of them. Also my publisher of choice, Palladium Books, was not in the habit of publishing isolated adventures the way TSR and some of the others did. So what I did was start making my own maps and writing my own adventures.

This is nothing extraordinary any game master worth his salt does the same thing to this very day.

But as the years went by my preparatory writing changed from that of a game master that wanted to craft a good game for his players to that of a writer crafting a world. I had, and still do have, binders and folders filled with what amounts to rough sourcebooks for my various games. When I was in high school I took to spending most of my free time in that very pursuit.

Writing RPG material is a different animal than business writing (which I went to school for) or fictional prose (which I seem to have a knack for). It is a combination of both with a touch of technical writing thrown in for good measure. I do not claim to be a great RPG writer but I like to think that I am a serviceable worker in that arena. I had better be considering I have been published more than a few times.

The RPG industry is a funny one. There are a few titans still around, Wizards of the Coast being the big dog, but most publishers regardless of their success are small operations. Even the big boys that are not WotC, Paizo and Fantasy Flight tending to lead that pack, are still small operations. But they all have one thing in common that has kept them going as the industry has been rocked by changes.

They are run and staffed almost entirely by fans.

I know more than a few of the small press owners and the freelance writers that work for them and I have to say that they are some of the hardest working most dedicated people I have ever known. I had the honor to work with Jason Marker (www.amalgamatedfiction.com) briefly when we were both moving through the mill at Palladium Books and I have to say that if I needed to pick one RPG writer to sky rocket in the next few years it would be him. He puts his fucking shoulder the rock and pushes as hard as he can, and what he produces is pure fucking gold.

That is not ass kissing because Jason really is an amazing writer. And I am not being sickly self deprecating. I happen to think I am a pretty good writer, if I didn’t I would not be plowing forward with my own plans. But to me RPG writing is something that I do for fun, the passion I had for it was almost wholly destroyed, but fiction writing is my heart and soul. After my family there is nothing I enjoy more. But I will always have at least an arm in the RPG field and the one hope I have is that I will be able to work with Jason Marker again.


Alright I am done, the bald guy keeps staring at me and I just realized that he is sitting in a wheel chair. I was going to say more but some dude in red sunglasses just came in and told “The Professor” that he was needed downstairs.

The Undiscovered Country … Here There Be Dragons

I know that you have all heard this before but I am scared.

I am making a giant leap into a realm that seems like a foreign country to me. I am about to become a bona fide publisher people and I am feeling a nearly sexual level of excitement and a fun house full of zombie clowns level of terror. I had never considered doing something like this before, and I probably never would of if it had not been for two people that became very important to me when I had lost all confidence in childhood heroes.

Kevin Smith is the man I have most admired for a long time. Whether you like his work or not, and to be honest I could give a flying fuck if you like his work or not or whether you think I am an idiot for holding him on a pedestal, he is very successful at what he does. Kevin’s story is fascinating and if you have not read his book Tough Shit I suggest that you do, it is an inspirational read.

Kevin has inspired me not because he makes movies or that he writes comic books but because the man always does what he wants to do and not what others want him to do. Everyone makes compromises when they are trying to create something but I think Kevin compromises much less than others in this world. Instead of continuing to work for others Kevin has decided to do things himself and has been building a multimedia fiefdom that is the envy of the Geek World. Kevin has convinced me it is possible to succeed big on your own if you are willing to work at it. Of course Kevin did have some name recognition and a grub stake to finance his ventures, he wasn’t starting from the bottom.

Most of you have heard of Mr. Smith but I am not sure how many of you outside of the world of Roleplaying Games know the name Eloy Lasanta.

I have told the story in the past about how I was ready to say fuck it to writing after the ride I enjoyed at Palladium Books. I have also told the story of how an out of the blue email, on MySpace for fucks sake, from a publisher I had never heard of changed the future of my career. I have done two projects with Third Eye Games to date and there are currently things brewing in the Freelancer Pipe. It has been an amazing experience and it’s because of Eloy.

In the gaming industry Eloy and Third Eye are Indy as fuck! He is the entire show and he juggles so many balls that I have heard the Clowns Union has an open hit out on his head. Eloy is the man that has shown me that a regular guy can do it without any help from a big publisher. Eloy Lasanta has built up his little company from a one title startup into one of the most well respected small press publishers working today. Because I have seen the path that he has blazed on his own I can see the outline of the route I need to follow on my own journey.

These days Eloy is the man I most want to be like.

So here is the big news that I have been talking about for a few days here and there on the internet. I am founding my own publishing company (the name of which will announced after I do a few things) and the first projects that I will be putting out will be my Shores of the Dead Trilogy I will be putting up a Kickstarter in a few days after I do a few things behind the scenes and I will be whoring the fuck out of it online. After the novels I will also be publishing a variety of fiction and gaming books by myself and hopefully others.

So that’s it, I am moving in my own direction and I will not be beholden to anyone else again … we will see how that works out.

The Story of Josh Part Nineteen … I am a Writer (Installment #4): I can write anything better than you!

The Story of Josh Part Nineteen … I am a Writer (Installment #4): I can write anything better than you!


OK, the only way I was allowed to come back to this chilly shit smelling chamber was if I let the shadowy raspy voiced man blind fold me. I’m not sure but before he bound my eyes he sort of came into the half light of the alley I was meeting him in and I swear to god the fucker was wearing a cape and cowl … but that had to be my imagination.

Oh well he’s kind of mean mugging me from the corner he is standing in so I guess I better get started.

This is, as always, a therapy session and my new strange doctor is in.


I can tell the exact moment when I realized that I was a better writer than someone who had already been punished.

OK, maybe not the exact moment but at least within spitting distance of the moment.

My maternal grandma always gave me books on my birthdays and on Christmas’s. While my cousins and siblings would usually get a ten dollar bill of a gift certificate to Meijer or Target I would get a brand new paperback book. And grandma would always tailor her purchases to what my current interests. When I was first deep into Sci-Fi she would give books by Bradbury, Clarke, and Asimov (Grandma bought me my first copy of Foundation which kind of changed my life btw). When I turned toward horror it was all Dead Koontz, and in my sophomore year of High School I was enthralled with Techno-Thrillers.

Grandma had bought me several Tom Clancy books during that phase which I loved but for my birthday she got me something new. I opened my brick shaped present and was greeted by the sight of a book that I had never heard of by an author I had never heard of. I will not use the real names of either the book or the author, let’s say the book was called Poisoned Water and the author was Bill Bright. I was not perturbed by this as my grandma usually had a good nose for picking out things that I would like.

This was grandma’s one stumble in all of the years that she was my literary hook-up.

The book was just bad. I don’t mean bad in an ironic Mystery Science Theater 3000 way, it was just bad. The story was languid the characters were wooden and shallow, the action was … well there was no action and the environment and setting were like something out of a 1950’s TV Western. At best one dimensional and wooden.

I really want to like the piece of dreck since grandma had shelled out her hard earned clams for it. But I couldn’t, the best that I can say is that I managed to drag my way through it and finish it … then I threw it away.

That is the only time that I ever trashed a novel.

I knew that I could write better than that. Fuck I knew that most of the little assholes in my creative writing class could write better than that. That stupid mother fucker Mr. Gibson (not his real name) the only teacher that I ever went nose to nose with could write better than that.

This was again in my sophomore year of High School. I was attending Wayne Memorial High for what I did not realize would be my last year. No … switching schools every two years and never really being able to make friends for most of my life didn’t fuck me up at all.

(There is the pity party and warped view of history for this session)

Mr. Gibson was the only creative writing teacher at Wayne Memorial and as soon as I was able I signed up for the class. It took less than half of a class to me to realize that he and I were never going to compatible. He was I decided after to listening to his overly soft and melodically rolling tales that he was a sixties collage kid who had been too much of a pussy to go to Vietnam and too much of a rod in the ass to become a hippy.

He didn’t teach, I can honestly say he was the only teacher I ever had who didn’t teach. He was so fucking absent minded that he could never remember when he had said that assignments were due. The only students he ever paid any attention to were the females and I’m saying he wanted to fuck them but he was always finding an excuse to stand to close and lay a hand that was just this side of inappropriate on them.

There were some really good writers in that class for a High School group. Look I know it sounds arrogant but when we did peer reviews of works I always seemed to do really well, I don’t think I was the best writer in the class but I believe I was in the top three. When we worked in writing groups and Mr. Gibson stuck to checking out which one of the budding sex-pots and waitresses had neglected to wear a bra that day I really enjoyed the class. It was fun to get honest feedback from people that just wanted to give feedback and not just tear people down, which was what Mr. Gibson always seemed to want to do.

We were told we could write a short story about anything we wanted for a project one week. I wrote a story about two former lovers that met up in the ruins of post apocalyptic New York City. In this story a plague had killed most people (still in a huge Stand phase) but some people who had been given a experimental vaccine before the fall had become immortal after they had seemingly died. These Immortals ruled over the few human survivors that had been immune to the sickness.

This was the one story that Mr. Gibson liked of mine. He took it home and let his son read it. The kid apparently liked comics and was familiar with the same storyline from X-Force that had inspired the immortals in my story. He came at me and accused me of plagiarism. I asked him how it was plagiarism since I was using a plot device and had not stolen any storylines.

We went back and forth and he told me if I submitted it for a final grade it would get an F.

I should have showed some balls and went to the principal about it. But I did not I did what I always did for most of my life. I pussied out and turned in another story that I had been writing. What I did turn in was a decent story and I was just as proud of it but the first story (Love in the Ruins) was also something I was proud of and it should have been graded on its own merits.

Mr. Gibson was then and probably is now a fucking asshole.


OK, we are done today. The new therapist says that I shouldn’t have been such a pussy and I should have just punched the fucker. I find it odd that a therapist would have advocated such violence … but the idea also kind makes me hard.

But I digress, he’s bringing out the blindfold and it’s time to breathe some fresh air.

What a Difference a Year (or so) Makes

When I finished the last writer edit of “Shores of the Dead” (formerly known as The Risen Dead: Life During the Zombie Apocalypse) I figured that that would be the last full read I would be doing of the book. Considering I gave it three full edits and one final pass before I finished I was OK with that. I will admit it, I like my book and enjoyed reading it and anyone who wants to publish something that they don’t like has questionable motives in my opinion. But as much as I like my own work there comes a point where I am sick and tired of reading th same thing over and over … and over … and over …

When I decided that I was going to do this shit myself the one thing that I was dreading was not the money I am going to have to put out to do it. It was knowing that I was going to have to reread the book about three times to split it into a trilogy. So it was with a dread filled heart that I opened that file yesterday and began the severing of the novel into three sections. I needed to do this before I began the read through, but of course I read parts as I did this hatchet job.

Do you know what I learned?

I still really love this book.

There were several pieces I have already identified as needing changes but as a whole I am now looking forward rereading and beginning the new rounds of grunt work. But it is still grunt work and no matter how much I might enjoy it I know it is going to take me some serious time.

Ugh.

Doing a Tolkien on this Bitch!

I have received a few messages over the last few weeks as to the status of my novel.

Haven’t you seen it rocketing up the New York Times Best Seller List?

No?

Damn you Twilight!!!

That’s not fair, funny but definitely not fair. I finished the last edit, or so I thought, about a year ago. I spent the days in 2011 when my personal life was not either imploding or rebuilding trying to obtain a literary agent. During that time frame I sent out sixty agent queries and received fifty two rejections with the remainder never answered. I wanted more than anything else to do it the “Right Way” I wanted to find an agent, then and editor, and then publish my book to the accolades and riches that I felt were my due.

Burt here is the hard bit of reality. I never received a single request to actually see even a sample of any of my work.

At first I was a little, let’s be honest I was fucking pissed, about this. But then I started doing some real research about the status of the publishing industry and realized that the number of “I am so sorry but I currently have too many clients, good luck” responses I received should have made me feel pretty damn good. I think a lot of the responses were because I took the time to actually hand write and mail my queries, but regardless when I look at the effort in the new perspective I feel pretty good. I would still love to be published by a press (big or medium) but I think that in a few more years that is only going to be a realm where authors who have established themselves elsewhere.

So where does that leave me?

Folks I am announcing it right now, I am publishing this motherfucker myself! And not only that, I have taken the novel that damn near equals the uncut length of The Stand in size and am breaking it into a trilogy. And to cap it all, I am changing the name. Please allow me to introduce …

“Shores of the Dead”
(Part1, Part 2, and Part 3)
Subtitles to be determined

I believe I will be announcing a Kickstarter at the end of the summer to raise the capital I will need to do this myself. Not a big one just the money needed to handle the fees to get it off the ground, not my time and effort.

Alright my Henchmen and Henchwomen that is all fo today, as you can tell by the website redesign I am working on some stuff behind the scenes that I can’t wait to announce, but let’s put that on hold until I have something concrete to tell you.


Josh

No Internet and No AC Make Josh Go Something Something …

The massive winds and thunderstorms hit the valley around four this afternoon and the power has been out at the day job (at night) since about 4:30 this afternoon. This means that I spent the three fourths of my work day bumbling around in unacceptable conditions trying to get the minimum of my duties finished.

Hehehehehe … I said doody.

Add to this the irritating reality that the main elevator at work has been effectively out of commission for most of the week and the heat was at 103 degrees out there today and you can see why I am in a bit of a mood. To put it in the cruder vernacular I am serious fucking angry. The buildings have been getting hotter and hotter as very few of the air conditioning units on this giant campus are slaved to the antiquated generator that we are nowhere near certain has enough fuel to keep vital systems on for the night.

Plus there are the flashbacks …

Back in the early fall of 2008 hurricane Ike slammed into the Gulf Coast and then cut a swath through the south pointed straight at southern Ohio. When the winds hit, and boy I Want to specify the winds because there was no fucking rain at all, we were not ready. They hit us with near hurricane force and shredded the Miami Valley leaving the majority of the population without power … some like my mother in law for almost a month. Thankfully At our house we were just shy of two weeks without the precious electricity.

When the lights went out back in 2008 I went into survivalist mode, I headed to the store and spent almost two hundred dollars on provisions and batteries. I fought the crown of angry old men and fat women carting their kids screaming through a store that was at maybe three time the normal capacity.

The days that followed were spent at communal dinners at my mother in laws, who had gas heat for cooking and showers, as we cooked the foods that were defrosting in our freezers. There were good times and there were bad times during that period, it did not help that it was right in the middle of my post Palladium Books depression, but you know what it wasn’t?

It wasn’t me stuck at the day job, surrounded by the nearly living dead, with a temperature of 103 degrees with no fucking air conditioning!!!

I am here … with almost no support personnel, which is the way I usually like it. But now I am trying to remember which residents have weapons that I could utilize if the power stays off … I mean you need to protect the women and the fire. I am considering who is still hale and hearty enough here to join me in a Road Warrior like mission to claim food, fuel, and mates from the surrounding population. I will turn the hilltop community into my own little nation …

JOSHTOPIA WILL BE BORN TONIGHT!

Or I am just going to finish out this very long and boring shift and then go home and get stinking drunk … yeah maybe that.

I Needed Some Inspiration Today ...

"Meantime, there are these twenty-odd (and some, I should warn you, are very odd) tales, each contains something I believed for awhile, and I know that some of these things-the finger poking out of the drain, the man eating toads, the hungry teeth-are a little frightening, but I think we will be alright if we go together. First, repeat the catechism after me:

I believe a dime can derail a freight train.

I believe there are alligators in the New York City sewer system, not to mention rats as big as Shetland ponies.

I believe you can tear off someone’s shadow with a steel tent peg.

I believe there really is a Santa Claus, and all those red suited guys you see at Christmas time really are his helpers.

I believe there is an unseen world all around us.

I believe that tennis balls are full of poison gas, and if you cut one in two and breathe what comes out, it'll kill you.

Most of all, I do believe in spooks, I do believe in spooks, I do believe in spooks.

Okay? Ready? Fine. Here's my hand. I know the way. All you have to do is hold on tight....and believe."




STEPHEN KING
BANGOR MAINE
NOVEMBER 6, 1992
FROM: NIGHTMARES & DREAMSCAPES