Gerald Everett Jones's Blog: Gerald Everett Jones - Author, page 55

Will The Singularity Make Humans More Machine-like?

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Photo Courtesy of Wiki Creative Commons
We are on the verge of the exciting era when human intelligence and machines will converge in The Singularity.  This union will combine our biological components with non-biological devices as technology makes our intelligence trillions of times faster and stronger.  Do you think humans will become more machine-like with less human emotions, or will machines become more human-like with more emotions?  Or is there a common ground?
Gerald Everett Jones
La Puerta Productions
www.lapuerta.tv

Having Fun at the Fair

Monika Vogl and Gerald (Flo Selfman took the photo)
Spent a temperate, sunny day on Saturday working for Independent Writers of Southern California (IWOSC) at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Shown here person-ing the booth with Monika Vogl. Also on my shifts were Layne Wong, author of Shanghai Love, Susan E. Briggs, author of I Can See Heaven, and IWOSC's irrepressible president, the super-publicist Flo Selfman .

Thanks particularly for your smiles and wise words  to Louise Marler, Norm Ellstran, Robin Quinn, Ester Shifren, Pam Leven, Ruth Frechman, Lee Gale Gruen, and LA Opera's Shannita Williams.

We talked about the male-centered comic genre boychik lit. And it's not the first time I've thought there could be more female fans than men. It probably has something to do delighting in Rollo's cluelessness as he fails continually upward, inheriting more undeserved trouble at each new level.


Gerald Everett Jones
La Puerta Productions
www.lapuerta.tv

See You at the Book Fair Saturday Booth 131

You can greet the Boychik and discuss the writing life, the angst (yours or mine), and the plight of male-centered comic fiction. (Or just get directions to the nearest portable potty.)

"What is Boychik Lit?" do I hear you say? Hint: Free MP3 audio clips, third bullet down, right column of this hugely popular blog. If I didn't like to type so much, or were I not feeling so perverse just now, I would just put a link here.

Independent Writers of Southern California (IWOSC) www.iwosc.org Booth 131. Gerald Everett Jones appearing / hosting / partnering / chin wagging on Saturday, April 20 from Noon - 2pm and from 4 - 6pm.

USC Campus, south of downtown Los Angeles. Festival official site click here.




Gerald Everett Jones
La Puerta Productions
www.lapuerta.tv

Reading "Farnsworth's Revenge" Nov 4 in Venice

I'll be reading from Farnworth's Revenge: Rollo's End, the third book in the Rollo Hemphill series of comic misadventures. The event on Sunday, November 4 at 2pm is hosted by the Women's National Book Association at Mystic Journey Bookstore, 1319 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice, CA 90291 (phone 310 399-7070). This Reads Its Own event runs until 4pm and will include several WNBA member authors reading their material.

The story so far...


In the first two books, My Inflatable Friend and Rubber Babes, Rollo has masterminded a plot with a life-sized rubber doll made in the image of a famous soap star, Monica LaMonica. Rollo’s former boss, old crusty Hugo Farnsworth, has developed a passionate fascination for the doll. He is currently entertaining “her” as his sole guest aboard his private yacht Shameless Palms, currently anchored at St. Tropez. Meanwhile, Rollo has also fled to France to avoid being arrested for a money-laundering scam he didn’t do. As the book opens, Farnsworth secretly summons Rollo and pleads for his help because the doll has mysteriously disappeared from the boat.
Audio Clip from Farnsworth's Revenge (MP3)


Gerald Everett Jones
La Puerta Productions
www.lapuerta.tv

Just Released on Kindle Select

Six short stories and an essay on this not-so-serious topic."Chemistry" expands on the self-evident premise that you can't tell teenagers anything. The narrator of "Not Quite After Lisette is a forty-something high-tech executive whose wife is divorcing him. "Johnny Halo and Rock, the Tyro Shock Jock" is the first of three episodes from the Rollo Hemphill series of comic novels. In this installment, he falls upward into a job as a shock-jock deejay. "In the Valley of the Happy People" is from the second book, Rubber Babes, and "Spin Cycle" is a chapter from the third book, Farnsworth's Revenge: Rollo's End. "In the Gallery of American Art" is a story about a woman who wakes up on her birthday thinking her life is perfect. And of course it's not. It is excerpted from the novel Bonfire of the Vanderbilts, a work in progress. The afterward essay "Boychik Lit" is a think piece on male-centered comic fiction.

It's available from Kindle Select for $2.99. Always free to Amazon Prime members.

Gerald Everett Jones
La Puerta Productions
www.lapuerta.tv

FREE from Kindle Select until May 14

Six short stories and an essay on this not-so-serious topic."Chemistry" expands on the self-evident premise that you can't tell teenagers anything. The narrator of "Not Quite After Lisette is a forty-something high-tech executive whose wife is divorcing him. "Johnny Halo and Rock, the Tyro Shock Jock" is the first of three episodes from the Rollo Hemphill series of comic novels. In this installment, he falls upward into a job as a shock-jock deejay. "In the Valley of the Happy People" is from the second book, Rubber Babes, and "Spin Cycle" is a chapter from the third book, Farnsworth's Revenge: Rollo's End. "In the Gallery of American Art" is a story about a woman who wakes up on her birthday thinking her life is perfect. And of course it's not. It is excerpted from the novel Bonfire of the Vanderbilts, a work in progress. The afterward essay "Boychik Lit" is a think piece on male-centered comic fiction.

It's available from Kindle Select for $0.00 promotional price until May 14, $2.99 thereafter. Always free to Amazon Prime members.

Gerald Everett Jones
La Puerta Productions
www.lapuerta.tv

New for Kindle: The Death of Hypatia and the End of Fate

A brief historical essay that offers some new insights based on historical inferences and cultural context.You might not expect a practitioner of male-centered comic fiction to be writing serious nonfiction about a famous female, much less an ancient one about whom almost nothing is known. This brief essay presents conclusions from research I did for my play Hypatia of Alexandria, which was a finalist in the Long Beach Playhouse New Works Competition. At this time, it's exclusively available from Amazon in Kindle format, free to Prime subscribers and otherwise $9.99, which may seem pricey but not if you are as fascinated by the topic as I have been.

Here's the catalog description: In this historical essay, freelance writer Gerald Everett Jones correlates the few details known about the death of the last Greek-speaking philosopher with the religious and political revolution that overtook her. Jones explains how, centuries earlier, Egyptian priest Manetho and Greek mystic Timotheus created the cult of Sarapis at the behest of pharaoh Ptolemy Soter. Hypatia's identification with this religion got her killed and her works suppressed, but the philosophy today's scholars call Hellenic Neoplatonism was rediscovered in the Renaissance and then again in the New Age.

Gerald Everett Jones
La Puerta Productions
www.lapuerta.tv

Book Review: The Tattooed Rabbi by Marvin Wolf

Walter Mosely. Michael Connelly. Add Marvin J. Wolf to that short list of masterful detective fiction writers. Here's hoping that his series of Rabbi Ben Maimon books is long and long-lived. This one is set in Los Angeles, where Wolf has been a crime fiction (and nonfiction) author for most of his life. He knows police procedural, forensic science, computer science, and Jewish theology -- all of which inform the book with delicious detail.

The little congregation of Beth Joseph in Burbank has more than a little problem. It seems someone anonymously deposited a couple of million bucks in one of their bank accounts. Is it a gift from God or a ploy by a scammer? They call on Rabbi Ben to sort things out oh-so discreetly, inviting him to journey from his home in Boston to pose as a visiting scholar. He's not fibbing, mind you, in that he is a Talmudic scholar and does happen to be visiting, but with full access to the shul's financial records and in close personal contact with its quirky board of directors, including some very influential megabucks ganser machers who have more secrets than closets in their palatial mansions.

Of course, the problem turns out to be not only the unexpected loot but also a whole nest of related and unrelated complications, and more than one grisly murder.

Wolf knows the form cold as a day-old corpse and gives us a thoroughly entertaining read straight through.

Only, dark as some aspects of this story are, I can't really characterize it as noir. After all, Rabbi Ben is watched over and cared for by the Master of the Universe, even though it will take all of this humble Jew's learning, wits, and martial arts chops to extricate himself and the temple faithful from this unholy mess.

[Cross-posted at Goodreads.com]


Gerald Everett Jones
La Puerta Productions
www.lapuerta.tv

The Tattooed Rabbi by Marvin Wolf

I keep mentioning it so here's the purchase link:

Gerald Everett Jones
La Puerta Productions
www.lapuerta.tv

It Was Nevertheless a Colorful Event

Authors Dan Pirasak, Roberta Edgar (IWOSC Veep), and Gerald Everett Jones at the Independent Writers of Southern California (IWOSC) booth, Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, April 21, 2012. Photo by Marvin Wolf.Marv Wolf, author of The Tattooed Rabbi and President Emeritus of IWOSC, decided on a retro B&W treatment when he stopped by the booth to take this happy snap. The event was a delight, as ever, and it's truly encouraging that so many Angelenos not only read but also made the effort to make the trip to USC instead of the beach.

During my two shifts in the IWOSC booth on Saturday, I chatted with a lot of folks, including Lance, who goes by only his first name. Lance at first glance looked like a homeless person who had wandered over accidentally from somewhere east of Figueroa. His clothes had a decidedly used look, and he was incredibly soft-spoken. So much so that I had to ask him to repeat several things he said. Come to find out, Lance is not an aspiring author but a fully published one. He gifted me a copy of his book Confessions of a College Football Rules Violator, which he said was about "sex, drugs, and rock n' roll." My kinda guy, and he autographed it. The book is a not-so-whimsical memoir about big-time cheating at a big-money NCAA campus. It's written in confessional, diary style. And it's a revelation. Find the purchase link below, and thanks, Lance, for seeing through my suspicious gaze and reminding me that the democratization of media is fully under way.

Gerald Everett Jones
La Puerta Productions
www.lapuerta.tv