Michael Offutt's Blog, page 144

A Magical Monday Night

The Consumer electronics show starts tomorrow morning here in Las Vegas. I'm really excited. So today, my friend James, my friend Tomeka, and myself (all of us here in town for the convention) decided to have some fun and see the Mirage dolphin habitat along with some white tigers. Here's one shot that I took on a particularly frisky looking white tiger at the Siegfried and Roy habitat (where I saw a rather majestic looking lion straight out of the lion king, and a few leopards). I'd post the video of the dolphins that I took, but it's upside down and don't have the time to figure out how to turn it right side up. But the shots are incredible...only a few feet from them through glass. And then Monday night we went to see David Copperfield at the Hollywood Theater in the MGM Grand hotel and casino. I've been a fan of Mr. Copperfield for many years. Seeing him live is absolutely incredible. He made entire audience members disappear and teleport to other areas of the theater. He made a car appear out of thin air, levitated some random guy in the audience, and then did this really touching tribute to his father and grandfather who thought he could never make it in show business. He asked someone, "what do you collect?" After hearing her answer, he said that he collects words. Things that he finds worldly or inspiring. And then he made someone pick a word at random from a display of 100 words and then that one word printed on all of our show bracelets throughout the audience. That was a neat trick. This is my glass from the pina colada that I ordered. It's a collectible glass so I get to take it home with me and put it in the cabinet where I keep other things that remind me of trips that I've taken. We had really good seats to the magic show, just one row of folks before the stage.
Click to Embiggen to read the wordsAt one point, he did this kind of random chain thing with the audience and told us that he'd just been to the future, and he had a poster that he wanted to show us to prove it. He picked on one person to come up to the stage and write down a dead celebrity's name (then he turned the poster around). But you can see that the poster of Elvis isn't just an ordinary poster, but one comprised of words (some of which spell the exact audience members and what happened randomly to arrive at the point of the big reveal). It was really awesome.
And here's a picture of my friend Tomeka on the left, me in the middle, and James on the right.

Today, I'm scheduled to appear on Cherie Reich's blog at some point. Thank you so much for following and commenting on my book tour. Tomorrow I will post a bunch of pictures that I take from CES (my day begins at 7 a.m.) And then at night we are seeing "The Jersey Boys" at Le Theatre des Arts in the Paris Hotel and Casino.

Have a great Tuesday.

Passing Time Cover Reveal with author Ellie Garratt

This cover rocks!Book Blurb
Nine short tales that just may give you nightmares.
A man lives to regret "Passing Time."A father will do anything to save his son in "Expiration Date."An author finds out her worst nightmare is back in "The Devil’s Song."A woman gets more than the claim fee when she takes out vampire insurance in "Luna Black."In "Dining in Hell," the Death Valley Diner becomes the wrong place to stop.A serial killer wants to add another file to his collection in "The Vegas Screamer."In "Eating Mr. Bone," an undertaker could meet an unfortunate end.A con man meets his first ghost in "Land of the Free."And will truth finally be set free in "The Letter?"  Ellie you are so pretty! Best author photo ever!Publication date: 11th February 2013

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: 
A life-long addiction to reading science fiction and horror, meant writing was the logical outlet for Ellie Garratt’s passions. She is a reader, writer, blogger, Trekkie, and would happily die to be an extra in The Walking Dead. Her short stories have been published in anthologies and online. Passing Time is her first eBook collection and contains nine previously published stories. Her science fiction collection Taking Time will be published later in the year.

Author Links
Website
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Please visit Ellie’s blog on Friday 11thof January, when she will be interviewing Passing Time’s cover designer, Ida Jansson.

HOUSEKEEPING: I'm at Elise Fallson's blog today. You can find it HERE.

Four ways to totally satisfy your Walking Dead withdrawal

So we are a little over a month away before AMC's epic "The Walking Dead" starts up again, hopefully with a high body count and much samurai sword wielding goin' down in the zombie apocalypse. We can blame the Nielsen sweeps for such lulls put upon us by the holidays, but the fact is, if you're like me, blame only goes so far. So what can we do in the meantime?
1) My first suggestion is to read The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor.

Seriously. This novel had me on the edge of my seat for two nights as I consumed page after page following the first days of the outbreak. The Governor (known as Philip) and his brother (plus a couple of friends and his daughter Penny) are just like everyone else: caught unawares when the world "mysteriously shifts" and the dead rise up to eat the living.

This book is dripping with gore. My favorite scene is when this small group commandeers a luxurious Cadillac Escalade and try to make their way into downtown Atlanta where there's supposedly, a government refugee camp where they can get supplies, help, medical attention, military protection, and perhaps an explanation as to what the hell is going on.

As a little background, in the early days of the outbreak, power is still available in many areas. There are still television broadcasts going on along with updated news programs. But as the hours march on, more television stations drop off the air, and broadcasters turn to previously recorded shows. The way the author writes it, it's eerie in a very normal way. So really, there's no reason for our group to know that Atlanta has been overrun. Just that it seems suspicious that the television stations are all so quiet.

Well this Cadillac Escalade is essentially a rolling tank. And Phillip gets caught downtown watching zombies come out of skyscrapers like clowns coming out of a clown car. There's literally thousands of them, and they get cut off on all sides. So he slams his Escalade into four wheel drive, revs it up to sixty miles an hour, and just cuts a swath through the walking dead, blowing them up, running them down, and creating so much "zombie grease" under the tires and carriage that it hydroplanes through a building and gets wrapped around a concrete pillar. And behind them, the zombies are roaring, relentless, and hungry.
2) You should watch all of the episodes of High School of the Dead on Hulu. You don't have to have a Hulu Plus membership. It's totally free. You just have to sign in using Facebook to show that you're old enough to be watching anime with such "adult/gory" content.

High School of the Dead is exactly how I would picture The Walking Dead in Japan. Only here we have young adults being eaten alive. The outbreak starts simple enough at a school with a zombie being mistaken by the principle as a trouble maker trying to break into the school's secure grounds. When confronted, the principle gets bit and quickly spreads the contagion. So the faculty ends up eating young adults. A particularly chilling part of the anime is when the voice of someone in the office is shouting "Stop! It hurts! It hurts! Stop!" and then screams when the mic goes dead. After that, there's a stampede as kids try to get out of the high school. A pair of girls (vowing to protect each other) gets separated, and the one stands over the other horrified, watching her friend get torn to pieces by zombies. It's great! And yes, for guys out there who like to see Japanese school girls in their school uniforms, there's lots of that going on.

3) Watch 13-year-old Nick Mastrangelo's animated video of The Walking Dead's Daryl Dixon in action. It involves machine guns, a magic crossbow, and even robots. You should watch this and then ask yourself what you were capable of doing with a computer in the 8th-grade.
4) Watch the new "Evil Dead" trailer which is being billed as the scariest movie of 2013. This trailer is Not Suitable for Work. It is for mature audiences and features gore, swearing, and a disturbing scene where a woman cuts her tongue in half. But for the "Evil Dead" purists out there, it should be quite satisfying. It looks less campy than the Bruce Campbell/Sam Raimi version, and the Necronomicon looks pretty convincing. In case you don't know, the Necronomicon is an H.P. Lovecraft prop used in most of his Cthulhu mythos stories. It's not something you'd ever want to read from. In the least it rouses the dead, and that's never a good thing.Housekeeping:
Next week I shall be attending the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. I decided that I am going to take a laptop so I will strive to blog about C.E.S. And yes, I am going to grab as much free stuff as I can possibly get. I'm going to point out to every vendor that I work for the State of Utah and we do demonstrations for people all of the time SO HOOK ME UP homey! :) Mostly I will be going to the Silvers Summit and taking a look at Smart Home Technologies and basically anything that "differently-abled" people could use to make their lives more independent. That's my career (using assistive technology to provide independence and a more meaningful life to those who could use some help). I install cameras and environmental controls that are voice-operated, I install voice-operated computers in people's homes, and strive to stay on the cutting edge of technology.
Anyway, I hope my laptop doesn't get stolen in the airport. I think I've taken every precaution.
If you have time today, please visit Laura Eno's blog as it's a stop on my book tour. You can find her HERE.
Additionally, on Saturday I will be at the Indie Book Blog. I think Oculus is getting a review. You'll find that blog HERE. Oh well, I guess that's the chance we authors take, right?
FREE MONEY>>>Also, the $50.00 Amazon Gift Card promotion is still going on. Go HERE for the daily tweet which has been updated. The gift card giveaway ends this Monday.
Have a great weekend. Monday, I shall be doing a cover reveal for Ellie Garratt's new book.

Thank you Pacific Rim for giving us rockets on the elbow

Every time that I watch the "Pacific Rim" trailer, I get shivers. I wanted to blog about this in December, but I had too many things going on. But now that things are clearing up a bit, if you haven't watched this trailer, you should do so now.

Specifically (if you don't have time or if you've seen it already but didn't do a frame by frame analysis) advance to 1:52 in the video. You see the gargantuan Jaeger robot pull back its arm to punch a kaiju monster in the face and there are ROCKETS on its elbow to propel its fist forward with even more force to knock its lights out! Boo Yah! That's what I'm talkin' about! How frickin' cool is that to punch a big monster in the face with rockets on your elbow to give you added thrust? Guillermo del Toro, you are a genius!Thank you, thank you "Pacific Rim" for giving us rockets on the elbow to punch kaiju monster in da face. Read my other post on the most exciting movie of 2013, Pacific Rim, HERE.

And on the business side of things, the Oculus book tour continues over at Laura Eno's blog found HERE.

If you have the time, please read my promo and say hi to Laura :)

FREE MONEY>>>Also, the $50.00 Amazon Gift Card promotion is still going on. Go HERE for the daily tweet which has been updated. The gift card giveaway ends this Monday.

Have a great Thursday.

My first post for a new year

The Insecure Writer's Support Group was created by Alex J. Cavanaugh.

Recently, I won a 25-page critique from writer and blogger Shelley Batt. You can find her blog HERE.

I decided to send off 25-pages of my third book in the sci-fi series that I'm writing. It's the sequel to Oculus and is called Caledfwlch. You can read the first chapter of Caledfwlch at this LINK. I decided to post it AFTER I got the critique back from Shelley. Why didn't I post it before? Well, I've been feeling very insecure.

See, I'm not young anymore. I'm 41 and I visit tons of blogs where everyone is writing things, writers are celebrating their agents, and people are doing the happy dance about huge publishing contracts. So it really doesn't take much for me to think I just suck, or that I'm a failure. I'm 41 and I write some stories that a few people have read and seem to like. But it pales in comparison to the Harper Teen titans of YA who have legions of fans posting 20000+ reviews, book deals, movie deals, a gorgeous husband, three blond kids (all YA writers "seem" to be Aryan), and where every post seems to ooze magic hearts, unicorns, and happiness. And they don't even have a weight problem either. In all the pictures they put up, they're all skinny and drinking hot cocoa and boarding airplanes headed for B.E.A. or getting pics with their hubs from Disneyland.

Then I look at their age: 23. And I think...holy sh*t.

My reaction isn't jealousy. It's despair that I've tried all my life to accomplish something notable but just come up short. I made it to Disneyland to see the fireworks when I was 38. Yeah...parents never took me: dad always said he couldn't afford it. So yeah...that pretty much sums up my life. A dude that finally got it together enough that he could take himself to Disneyland by the time he was 38. Loser, right? I know I know...there are homeless people in every city and people in Ethiopia that got it worse off than me, but yeah...aside from those people, I'm not exactly the cream of the crop. Far from it actually.

I've always wanted to write. I've got stories clogging up my hard drive, I post free things on websites just to find readers, and I wrote short stories when I was a teenager. At 23, I still didn't know who I was as a person (that took quite a while to sort out), and there are girls who (at 23) have $500,000 dollars in their bank accounts. For reals? For writing YA dystopians. Seriously. And don't even mention the thousands of graduates from prestigious Ivy League schools and places like Stanford and Berkely. Yeah...just don't go there.

At first, I didn't want to send pages to Shelley for a critique. But I was like...what the hell...if she hates it then it doesn't matter. This is the response I got:

Michael,

Wow, you are truly a gifted writer. I started reading your pages and didn't want to stop. I was a bit worried about reading them, at first, because of the speculative fiction aspect. I didn't really know what that meant and wondered if I could actually be able to help you. After reading your pages, I realized you really didn't need my help and wow, I loved it and I really want to read it from the beginning of the series.  

I did make a few comments here and there but I kept getting sucked into your story and really forgot to comment. So where there's gaps realize it's awesome. Thank you for letting me read your pages and also for helping me with my critique giveaway. You've been very kind, and I appreciate it. 

Thanks,
Shelley

The letter totally made my day. I was like "Zomgah, I'm a real writer!" And of course, the first thing that pops into my mind AFTER I realize someone loved my pages was this:

Am I going to get a rejection letter from Harper Voyager? Am I? Am I? What will I do if I don't get one? For those that don't know, Harper Voyager is part of the Big Five with authors like George R.R. Martin in their stable.

A little background==> Back in October, Harper Voyager who's a huge publisher of fantasy fiction put out an open call for manuscripts in the fantasy genre from authors that are "unagented." And yes, I had one that was completely done sitting on the hard drive. Query typed, synopsis already edited, etc. I just never had even bothered to send it out. It's complete at 87,000 words (and it's PG-13 guys--yeah I wrote an epic fantasy that mommies can read, and it has a man/woman romance in it [and the Defense of Marriage Act people rejoice everywhere while eating their Chick Fil-A sandwiches]). So when I read this and read that the open period was only for 14-days...I emailed my entry off on the first day. Not too eager right?

And I've been waiting and doin' my writer thang and my blogger thang...

Because I mostly fail at everything, I just expect Harper Voyager to reject my manuscript here in January (when they say they'll notify all 4500 people that entered). I plan on doing the cover art myself and then publishing it under Patrick's Planet 99 publishing imprint that he created. But after reading Shelley's critique...I'm wondering...what if they don't reject me? Is it possible that I'm a real writer? Is it possible someone at Harper Voyager's slush pile might actually like my first 1000 words? And what if they do? What if they say "We'll sign Mike...give him a call?"

This thing called "hope" that all of us writers go through is truly terrible. I think I'd just be better off accepting that nothing good ever happens to me.

If you have time, please go read my interview at Kay Dee Royal. She's part of my book tour and you can find the post HERE .

And please don't forget to comment on THIS POST HERE. I'm giving away a $50.00 Amazon Gift Card. I'll draw a winner when I get back from CES in mid-January.

Also as an update to my trip to the Consumer Electronics Show, I've decided not to take my laptop, because I don't want to risk it getting stolen. So I won't be blogging next week, but I'll be tweeting. I do have a cover reveal "scheduled" in blogger for Monday, but sometimes that thing doesn't work right.

Oculus book tour and a $50 Amazon gift card

My book tour begins next week, and it's a long one. My only reason for reaching out to Roxanne to schedule my book tour is to increase my online footprint, and I think this will do exactly that.

I shall return to regular postings on this blog on Monday, January 7th, 2013 with a cover reveal of Ellie Garratt's new book Passing Time. In the meantime have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I will be commenting and visiting your blogs--just this one will be kinda quiet. On January 8th, I shall be blogging from Las Vegas and attending the International 2013 Consumer Electronics Show (and yes I'll still be doing my book tour--that's how long it is).
All for you oh members of Club Awesome!From now until January 7th, I would like to dangle this $50 gift card in front of you as a kind of prize for doing something very simple for me (and I promise it will only take about a minute of your time a day).

RULES TO ENTER DRAWING FOR GIFT CARD:
Each day of my book tour up until January 7th, I will update/edit this posting with a "TWEET OF THE DAY." This "Tweet" will appear below the embedded twitter graphic. All you have to do is copy and paste that tweet into twitter and hit send. Then comment here and say "tweet sent." Only one comment per day please on this post!  Also if you are super lazy, you can just retweet me when I tweet the book tour stop of the day. But be sure to comment here so it counts as an entry by saying "I retweeted you."

IF YOU DON'T HAVE TWITTER but would like participating in the drawing, then visit the blog on which I'm appearing and comment once and then comment here that you visited. The twitter option is much simpler though because you don't even have to go read what I wrote. Only one comment per day please on this post!

On January 7th, I will do a random.org of all the comments here. Obviously the more comments you have, the better chance you have that you will be the one chosen by random.org to win the $50 Amazon gift card.

Anyone in the world may enter as often as they want including book tour hosts.

And that's it.

Easy Peasy.
COOL GRAPHIC BELOW WHICHTWEET WILL BE POSTED TWEET FOR DECEMBER 17th:  forthcoming

BLOG I AM AT:  forthcoming

Thank you for all the support.

If you want to see who I've scheduled, please check the Oculus Book Tour tab above. I will update this post to let people know where I'm at that day, and a link to send you there if you wish to read it.

At each step of my book tour, I'll be giving away stuff. There's a free bookmark, signed paperback books, and electronic books to be had. So feel free to enter those if you want. Have a great holiday.

A Christmas week with Michael Whelan day four

2010: A Space Odyssey courtesy of Michael Whelan. Click to EMBIGGENBy today's standards, this cover for Arthur C. Clarke's iconic 2010: A Space Odyssey is nothing special because we have PhotoShop. But in 1982 when Michael painted it, it was the thing that really made me notice the power of an acrylics air brush. I still think it's beautiful.

Michael did 10 separate proofs for the publisher before selecting this one. The spaceship Discovery is positioned to kind of seem like a baby's rattle. It's more of the symbolism that Whelan always includes in his paintings. And of course, showing the baby against the backdrop of our solar system's largest planet, Jupiter, is a hint that Jupiter will become the origin of life for its own solar system when the monolith causes the gas giant to experience nuclear fusion and ignite.

FACT: Michael doesn't like using an airbrush. But he does do a lot of painting on masonite. I asked Stephen Hayes about masonite and he gave me the rundown on it which was QUITE extensive.

Well folks, that's my last post in this mini-series. I hope I got you to be a fan of Michael Whelan and will check out his website to see his other works. Not so much because you could ever get him to do your books or anything like that. But because he's gotten old, and I want you to feel sad one day when he dies. I want you to know INSTANTLY that someone great has left the human race.

Oh and his signature is on this painting. It's embedded in the details of the Discovery spaceship. I searched forever to find it.

Tomorrow is my last post for the year. My book tour for Oculus starts on Monday, so I'll be posting on other blogs. I have a giveaway announcement tomorrow for a $50 Amazon gift card to encourage you to support me on my book tour (and it's super easy). Just one tweet a day and a comment on tomorrow's post to let me know you tweeted. Sounds great, right? You don't even need to visit my book tour posts (yeah you heard that right)! That's like one minute of your time per day.

More details to come tomorrow. Have a great Thursday.

A Christmas week with Michael Whelan Day Three

"Z-World" courtesy of Michael Whelan. CLICK TO EMBIGGENIn yesterday's post, I spoke of how Roger Zelazny died never realizing his dream of having a Whelan cover. Well he got his wish posthumously. This is the art piece that Michael got commissioned and finished for Zelazny and it has elements of all his stories (you can see Amber in the distance!). To save money, the publishing companies will have Michael do one painting and divide it up into several books. That's what they did with H.P. Lovecraft, paying Michael for only two huge paintings which I'm sure cost them probably several hundred thousand dollars a few decades ago.  I remember hearing at the time that DAW books blew all of their cover budget and could barely afford the two paintings for all six books. Even back then, Michael was a big deal, and he promised DAW that he'd make some incredible pieces of art that they could then divide up to accomplish their goal.

I have no idea what Michael charges now, but it's probably ten years of my current salary. If St. Martins can afford to pay Amanda Hocking $2 million to write some mermaid books, then to get someone like Whelan to do a cover is probably going to cost equally as much if not more. My guess is probably a couple million, minimum, per painting. Especially since he can just shrug and say, "I don't need you...I have as much money as I'll ever need to take care of my family and send my kids to school, etc." That's what I meant yesterday by the phrase "F U Money." It's a term I coined with my friend James to describe a turning point in a person's career where you choose your own destiny and could care less about outside forces (like the need to eat and have a place to sleep).

Consequently, I heard that these covers on the six books when arranged in order on the shelf, create the entire image that you see using the spines. That would be a cool effect. Be sure to embiggen and check out the details on all the pillars. That's why I chose this particular piece as a favorite. It showcases Michael's obsession with detail. Nothing is too small to be overlooked.

FACT: The only contemporary that Michael has been compared to is the artist H.R. Giger and vice-versa. They are completely different artists, but equally as great. I prefer Whelan to Giger myself. Giger scares me.

A Christmas Week with Michael Whelan Day Two

"The Astrophysicist" courtesy of Michael Whelan
CLICK TO EMBIGGEN FOR DETAILOne of the things I love about Michael Whelan is that he uses his family in many of his portraits. This is his son staring at the night sky in a parking lot (he now majors in physics at a distinguished university). Everything in Michael's paintings have symbolism. The two balls are exactly ten paces apart which refers to something Neil deGrasse Tyson said about how far apart the Earth is to the moon. Michael's lifelong dream was to see a human land on Mars.

FACTOID: Michael's signature is in every single painting. He disguises it like a "Where's Waldo" painting. Sometimes it's a coin on the ground, sometimes a shadow, but it's always there and never in the same place. It can even be the design on a scabbard (for a fantasy painting) or the detail on a shoe.

Yesterday in the comments, Cindy Borgne said, "I wonder how much he charges for a book cover. I need one." I have to chuckle. Roger Zelazny on his deathbed said his one wish was to have a Whelan cover. That's how prized this guy is by people who understand the industry of publishing. Consequently, Blizzard paid a fortune to have Whelan do a picture of Deathwing the Dragon for the launch of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm that reached some 14 million regular subscribers. Also Whelan is officially retired and has been for years. He only takes on personal projects that appeal to him (he has "F you money" at this point), and he only does covers for books that he has personally read. So factor that in...an artist who reads your entire book cover to cover before they begin to paint so that the feeling and symbolism are perfect.

It makes me wonder if Brandon Sanderson (who has had two Whelan covers at this point) even knows (or is humbled) by the fact that someone so great has painted his last two Robert Jordan books.

A Christmas week with Michael Whelan day one

"The Island" courtesy of Michael Whelan. This is all acrylics, no photoshop.I've followed Michael Whelan for 30 years, and the man never ceases to amaze me. This week I'm going to post four of my favorite paintings he has done. This is one I think I might purchase (a print of) once I buy a house. I'd get it framed and display it proudly.

FACT: The amount of Hugos Michael Whelan has won could fill two shopping carts.

The man is bar none, in my opinion, the greatest living artist of our time. His vision captures my imagination.

If you are not too busy, please stop by and say hello to Shelly who is a book blogger located HERE. She gave me a great review of my book, and I appreciate that. To hold a banana in front of you, if Shelly took the time to read my book, she sure as hell will probably read yours, dear author (and she posts the reviews everywhere). I know I know...you're saying, "But Mike, reviewers are already beating down my doors to read my books so why the hell would I want to befriend a book blogger?" I just think it may be worth your time, so please comment there :)