John R. Phythyon Jr.'s Blog, page 5

Ringing in a New Year with New Plans

I can’t believe I actually pulled it off.

I published a book a month this year. Most of them were short. The mini-memoirs were about 20,000 words each.

Some of them were collections. Magic & Monsters collected four previously published stories and added a new one. Legend in my own Mind collected the mini-memoirs.

But there was also a fifth Wolf Dasher novel (Twice in a Lifetime), a sequel to The Sword and the Sorcerer (A Contest of Succession), and a new Modern Fairy Tale (Little Red Riding Hoodie).

And they all got my rigorous, multi-draft, fight-with-my-editor process, so I wouldn’t just be turning out turgid crap.

So as 2015 turns to 2016, I’m proud of myself for fulfilling my goal/resolution to publish a book a month.

I’m also exhausted.

In addition to publishing all that fiction and creative non-fiction, I took a job as a retail sales associate and saw a marked increase in my freelance business. The breakneck pace of 2015 has worn me down.

For 2016, I’ve a different plan.

I’m going to focus on marketing and sales. Putting 12 new books on the market was good for my business. I’ve seen sales increase by creating a large, diverse catalog.

But I’ve not seen them increase to a level where I don’t have to spend time selling fertilizer and insect-killer. My monthly sales look gonzo compared to when I started, but I’m not selling a lot on a per-unit basis.

What I have noticed, though, is that offering a book for free and advertising it through the better marketing sites leads to increased page-reads through Kindle Unlimited not just for the title in question but for the whole line.

I’ve got a lot of books spread across four distinct lines. So I plan to offer monthly specials to drive sales.

I also will blog twice a week, post to Facebook page daily, and do the little things to push my brand across the Internet.

And I need to increase my print business. I need to be attending shows and establish my own e-commerce on the website to build that aspect of the business.

Finally, I want to get into audio books. I’m convinced I’m leaving money on the table by not branching into this area.

And all that cuts down on my time to write significantly. I spent 2015 (and the last part of 2014) really focusing on the creative side of my business. I’ve been churning out product for 14 months straight, going back to November of 2014. I need to spend more time on the business side.

Of course, cutting back on the number of books I publish does not mean I won’t be adding more titles. New content still drives sales of the old.

In the first quarter of 2016, I’ll publish the sixth installment of the Wolf Dasher series, The Armageddon Clock. This apocalyptic adventure will bring the current story arc to a close. I’m hoping to have it out in February, but it might be March depending on how things shake out.

June will bring Blood Heir. This vampire tale has the distinction of being the first novel I wrote in my adult life. The first iteration came about when I was in graduate school in the early ’90’s, and it’s gone through several reworkings since then. The book takes place across several centuries and employs nonlinear time as a storytelling technique. Because Byron and the Shelleys appear as historical characters, I aim to have the book out in time for the 200th anniversary of the famous night in Geneva that allegedly spawned the idea for Frankenstein.

Third quarter brings the third installment in The Usurpers Saga, tentatively titled The Kraken Bone. It features Zod the Fearless from The Sword and the Sorcerer as its protagonist in a quest for an ancient artifact that will enable to complete his unfulfilled dreams of becoming King of the Known World.

And for the fourth quarter I’ve planned a serial. Empire’s End finds what’s left of the human race in a far-flung galaxy, where it struggles to be recognized by an imperial government of five other races that finds itself in turmoil with the mysterious death of its emperor. My plan is to release the serial in a 13-episode season, with a new installment each week.

So it’s still an ambitious 2016 I have planned. I may be planning to focus more on marketing, but I have an aggressive strategy to create new books and sell more of the ones that are already out there.

I hope you’ll continue to join me on this amazing authorial journey and that your 2016 brings joy, success, and good health to you.

Happy New Year!

Filed under: e-Publishing Tagged: ePublishing, John Phythyon, Wolf Dasher

A Good STAR WARS Sequel May Be Impossible

Okay, it’s Tuesday. I think it’s okay to talk about what I saw in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. If you haven’t seen it yet and don’t want to be spoiled, stop reading. Otherwise, I think five days is enough time for proper decorum to be satisfied.

Star Wars is a perfect movie. Through care or luck, George Lucas got all the elements of a classic fantasy into one film. A naive boy goes out into the world with a legendary master as mentor. He rescues the beautiful princess from the dark tower, where she is imprisoned by the evil wizard. Along the way, he self-actualizes. Throw in the most amazing special effects that had ever been seen and one of the greatest scores in the history of music, and the whole thing rises to the level of the sublime.

Maybe that’s why after six attempts there still isn’t a good sequel.

Until Revenge of the Sith, every movie in the series was worse than the previous one. Not that “Sith” is that good. It’s just that it’s better than Attack of the Clones.

The Force Awakens falls somewhere around Return of the Jedi. Maybe it’s better than “Jedi” but not as good as The Empire Strikes Back. Maybe it’s not quite as good as “Jedi.” You can decide for yourself.

But the only movie that’s any good in this series is Star Wars.

The Force Awakens is the first film without George Lucas’s involvement, and that’s a good thing. Lucas’s attempts at originality were to consistently destroy established continuity. In “Empire,” Vader becomes Luke’s father. In “Jedi,” Leia becomes Luke’s sister. In The Phantom Menace it becomes possible to kill someone in anger without turning to The Dark Side. And so on.

Every single one of these “plot twists” cheapens Star Wars further. They ruin the memory of it.

But JJ Abrams goes a different route. Instead of blowing up established continuity with “originality,” he eschews originality altogether and remakes the first three films.

A rebel ,er, resistance fighter puts secret information into a droid and sends it off to a desert planet. The droid is rescued from a salvage pirate by a young person strong with The Force. Said person escapes said desert planet aboard The Millennium Falcon with the aid of a scoundrel. The Dark Side villain has betrayed the ancient master. He murders his father just as Darth Vader murdered Obi-Wan Kenobi. A team of commandos led by Han Solo has to knock out the energy shield just like in “Jedi.”

And for the third time in seven films, X-Wings have to attack and destroy The Death Star.

There isn’t one original plot point in The Force Awakens. It has some nice moments. It’s entertaining for awhile. But it’s the same film we’ve seen before. Three times.

Indeed, most disconcertingly, it apes “Empire’s” meandering plot structure. The movie is more a series of vignettes that are vaguely connected and lead to a climactic battle. But where “Empire” gives us an exploration of the true nature of The Force and the revelation that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father, The Force Awakens gives us little more than two-plus hours of fan service.

I’ve come to believe there is no such thing as a good Star Wars sequel. Maybe it just can’t be done. Maybe the original was too perfect. Maybe so much damage has been done to it by the five bad sequels it spawned, that you’d have to start completely over, which really can’t be done.

But The Empire Strikes Back remains the high-water mark for Star Wars sequels, and I hated that movie. Darth Vader is not Luke Skywalker’s father unless Obi-Wan Kenobi lied. And if he did, then there should be consequences for that.

And there aren’t. Luke just accepts Kenobi’s bullshit explanation, and then “Jedi” triply insults us by resolving the love triangle with Leia being Luke’s sister, turning one of the greatest movie villains of all time into a toothless tragic hero, and conquering a fearsome empire with a gang of primitive Teddy bears.

Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t detest Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I had fun while I watched it. And it is easily better than any of the horrible prequels.

But that doesn’t make it good, and the fans who say it is good because they’re relieved it didn’t suck are fooling themselves.

I am sure I will see the other two movies Disney has planned. I still like Star Wars enough that I will continue to hope for a good sequel — one with an intriguing plot and deep human themes that does not obliterate established continuity or insult my intelligence with heroic Teddy bears or children accidentally blowing up the bad guys and saving the day.

History suggests I’ll continue to wait.

Filed under: Current Events, Inspirations Tagged: Star Wars, The Force Awakens

Winning Makes Believers of Us All

It was time for an attitude adjustment.

Watching sports is supposed to be fun. I’m fairly obsessed with the Cincinnati Bengals, reading the website daily, watching every play of every game even if I have to record the contest and watch it later, and owning lots of team spirit wear. (Indeed, I’m wearing a Bengals t-shirt and hat as I write this.)

But I’d become overly frustrated. The Men in Stripes always seemed to blow it when it really mattered. Last season, the Bengals won five of their last seven games, and I was convinced they would lose every single one of them. Why? They’d blown too many big games, so I was expecting the worst.

I didn’t have any fun last season, when they went 10-5-1 and made the playoffs, despite being so injured they could barely field a team by the end of the year.

So this year, I resolved to find a way to soften my attitude. Somehow, I was going to live with the Bengals whether they won or lost. I wasn’t going to let a loss ruin my Sunday or carry over into my outlook from week to week.

I wasn’t sure how I would do this, but I believe you can choose your attitude, so maybe it was possible not to get worked up over a football game.

Then the Bengals, to whom I had given so much devotion, decided to reward me. They started winning. Not just winning more than they lost. Not just beating the teams they were supposed to like in the past. They beat everyone.

At the midpoint of the 2015 season, the Cincinnati Bengals were undefeated. They were 8-0 for the first time in franchise history.

That certainly made it a lot easier to have a good attitude.

And then the undefeated Bengals drew the struggling 3-5 Houston Texans on Monday Night Football. With a banged up secondary and a punchless running game, the Texans had almost no shot to knock the Bengals off their pedestal.

Better still, a friend had tickets to the game she couldn’t use. She offered them to me. I don’t get to see my boys live very often. This would be only the fifth time in the last 12 years, and only the third in Cincinnati. Getting to see a game during this special season was a real treat.

So of course, they lost. One of the most prolific offenses in the NFL didn’t even score a touchdown. They dropped a bunch of passes, and committed a number of killing penalties. Then, with 40 seconds left and in position to win, their star wide receiver fumbled the game away.

Cincinnati lost 10-6 to a team they should have whipped on national television after I had driven two hours to see it.

Figures.

But the thing is, I wasn’t really that upset. People asked if I had a good time, and I did. I was thankful for the experience. I had great seats, and I was at Monday Night Football with 61,000 other screaming fans. It was awesome!

“Winning makes believers of us all,” said Paul Brown, the team’s founder, who died in 1991 after a Hall-of-Fame career as an innovator, coach, and owner.

The Bengals lost Monday the same way they have other games in the past few years, but losing is a part of football. Almost no one goes undefeated in the NFL.

I didn’t lost my cool. I didn’t have a miserable, angry drive back to Columbus. I wasn’t sulking the next day.

I liked that.  I have to remember it for the next time they lose. I have to remember for the seasons that don’t start 8-0.

Because I want to enjoy watching Bengals games. It’s one of my hobbies. It should be fun.

So far this year, it is. I must remember how to keep that going, even if the Bengals don’t.

Filed under: Cincinnati Bengals Tagged: Cincinnati Bengals, NFL

I think, therefore . . .

“I think, therefore I am.”

You’ve probably heard it. It’s fairly famous.

You may or may not know that it’s the foundation for Rene Descartes’s proof for the existence of God. Depends on how much philosophy you studied.

Descartes engaged in what he called a “methodical doubt.” He doubted the existence of anything he could not prove to be real. He arrived at the conclusion that he couldn’t know that anything existed, because his senses could deceive him.

However, he knew he was thinking. Since he knew that to be true, even if everything around him was false, he was definitely real — “I think, therefore I am.”

So why am I bringing up Cartesian Philosophy on a Tuesday?

The fundamental thing that makes us human, that makes us what we are as people, is our ability to think and reason. And yet we are bombarded daily by non-thought. Unthinking philosophy is foisted on us regularly and repeatedly by our friends.

You don’t have to spend much time on Facebook to know this.

God, but I hate the political meme. I get several a day. With the presidential election a year away, I expect that number to steadily increase.

The vast majority of these detestable expressions of political “thought” is that they are created by a hyper-partisan group that snatches a bullet-point or two out of the air and twists it to suit its ideology.

And we forward them. Unthinkingly. Because we agree with their basic ideas.

But the problem is few of them paint a complete or even accurate picture.

There’s a meme going around forwarded by leftists claiming Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan said “Rape is just another method of conception.” It puts quotation marks around the sentence and attributes it to him, giving the clear impression Ryan made that exact statement.

But he didn’t.

What he in fact said was, “The method of conception doesn’t change the definition of life.”

That is a very different statement. One could infer from it that he thinks rape is just another method of conception. But one could also infer what he means is that life begins at conception.

Regardless of Rep. Ryan’s intent, the meme claims he said something he didn’t. By claiming to quote the Republican nominee for Speaker of the House, the meme is lying.

But many of my progressive friends have forwarded it around Facebook anyway.

And it’s sad, because they’re helping disseminate a lie about Rep. Ryan, because they don’t like his politics and they don’t know the meme is inaccurate.

But it would be easy to find out. A quick search at Snopes.com reveals the truth. One can also ask Factcheck.org or Politifact.com. The Internet, which creates and forwards these misleading ignorance-builders, has the tools to unmask them.

And yet, most of don’t use them. We forward them . . . unthinkingly.

That brings me back to Descartes. “I think, therefore I am,” he wrote.

If I don’t think, then what?

Regular readers of this blog or of my fiction are no doubt aware that I lean left in my ideology. That’s one of the reasons I chose a leftist meme for my example. There are as many if not more specimens forwarded by my conservative friends. (And, yes, I not only have friends who lean right, I like them and think they are good people. It’s possible to friends with those of differing views.) But I don’t want to make it seem as though I am saying conservatives are the bad guys here.

We all are.

We have become so caught up in advancing our own agendas, so polarized into thinking the other side is evil, we’ve abdicated thought.

And if what makes us human is our ability to reason, our power to think, what are we when we stop thinking? If I think therefore I am, then am I not if I don’t think? Do I cease to be a person?

Political and ideological claims should be fact-checked. Memes should be corroborated. We should all adopt Descartes’s methodical doubt strategy when viewing politics on the internet. Claims should be doubted unless verifiable, especially when they seem outrageous. If you think to yourself, “I can’t believe he said that!”, maybe it would be best to check and see for sure if he did.

Because those who write memes are trying to get you to believe what they believe. And since what you choose to believe is perhaps the most important decision you can make in your life, you should make certain the person trying to convince you is telling the truth. You should make sure the claims are, in fact, correct.

And if you don’t have time for that, if you haven’t got the 10 minutes or so it takes to run down a rumor or a political claim to see if it is genuine, I get that. Research takes time, and sometimes it’s hard.

But then don’t hit the “share” button on Facebook (or any other social media platform). Don’t forward “information” you haven’t verified.

Doing so does more than make you look ignorant if you’re wrong. It influences others. It robs us all of our humanity, because it encourages us not to think.

And then we might as well be base animals, with nothing special about us at all.

 

Filed under: Current Events Tagged: Descartes, fact check, memes, politics

Inspirations: FRIGHT NIGHT

Returning to my occasional series, “Inspirations,” wherein I examine the literature, film, and pop culture that influenced the writer I became, I take a look at a mostly forgotten vampire flick, Tom Holland’s Fright Night.

What Would You Do?

It’s hard for me to believe this movie is 30 years old. It was released in August of 1985 as I was starting my senior year in high school. I was not looking for a good scary movie to go to. I wasn’t really into horror films, although I had seen a few — notably Jaws, The Howling, and ‘Salem’s Lot. The last of those scared the hell out of me. When Danny Glick comes floating up to his friend’s window, begging to be let in after he’s been turned into a vampire, I practically crawled under the couch. In fact, the memory of that scene was so strong that when I read the novel in college, I slept with my windows locked for a month.

Monsters had always scared me as a kid, so I wasn’t really looking for a good monster movie to take my girlfriend to as school was starting.

But Columbia Pictures invested in a pretty effective ad campaign.

“What would you do,” the trailer’s narrator asked, “if you accidentally discovered that the house next door was occupied by something that wasn’t human?”

This piqued my curiosity. Just as the ad-writers intended, I wanted to know more.

“No one will believe you — not your mom, not your girlfriend, not even the police.”

At this point it was obvious that the protagonist was a young man my age living in a similar small Midwestern town.

“You’ll do anything to protect yourself,” the narrator said. “But it will do anything to protect its secret.”

Cue montage of monsters, people in danger, and lots of scary imagery with dramatic music under it all.

I was hooked. Despite not being a horror buff, I had to see this film. I didn’t know what it was about, but I totally identified with the teen-aged main character. I had to know what happened to him.

On the first available Friday night, I persuaded my girlfriend to go see it. As the theater darkened, I had no idea what I was in for.

Vampires?

Aside from the cleverly written ad that made me identify with the protagonist, the thing that most hooked me was that the trailer doesn’t explicitly identify the monster next door. The narrator calls the fiend, “something horrifying” and “something unspeakably evil.” But he never identifies the villain as a vampire. He only ever refers to the thing in the house next door as “it.”

So I was surprised to discover this was a vampire movie. That fact alone contributed to my high opinion of the film. Before Anne Rice made vampires sexy, before White Wolf made them tragic heroes, before Stephanie Meyer made them sparkle, vampires were a pretty pedestrian movie monster. Vampire flicks fell into a certain formula that harkened back to Dracula and had gotten largely silly. Stephen King’s deft treatment of them in ‘Salem’s Lot notwithstanding. the vampire had become so overexposed and overdone that 1979’s Love at First Bite, a romantic comedy that starred George Hamilton as Dracula in the Disco ’70’s of New York, was the best film treatment of the undead blood-drinkers I had seen.

Had I known that Fright Night was a movie about vampires, I would have come in with a much less enthusiastic attitude. I’d have expected something bad.

And Fright Night was very good. Holland, who wrote and directed the film, seemed to understand the pop cultural problem with vampires. The structure of his movie embraces it.

Teenager Charlie Brewster (William Ragsdale) loves watching the late-night horror movie program, Fright Night, on the local television station. It’s hosted by washed-up actor Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowell), who mostly plays his own, awful vampire movies from the ’60’s.

But when a real vampire, Jerry Dandridge (Chris Sarandon), moves in next door, Charlie accidentally discovers it. He foolishly doesn’t keep his knowledge a secret. And soon, Dandridge will stop at nothing to silence Charlie.

Holland effectively uses veiled threats and double entendres to ratchet up the tension. Standing next to Charlie’s mother, who doesn’t know her very attractive next-door neighbor is a monster, Dandridge smiles at Charlie and says, “See ya. Soon.”

The special effects are excellent for the time period — and the makeup is extraordinary. Holland is careful to build them so that we don’t see everything right away. He saves his best effects for the film’s climax, putting the terror on a slow crescendo.

Fright Night is well paced, tense, and scary. it brings you to the edge of your seat.

That’s a Laugh

But the genius of the movie is that it is part comedy. Over-the-top performances in the supporting cast create many lighthearted moments that help enhance the horror.

Roddy McDowell was clearly having a ball as the has-been, low-talent Peter Vincent. McDowell plays him like a cringe-worthy community theater actor, who is entirely self-absorbed and somewhat clueless about his own lack of skill.

Charlie seeks out Peter Vincent for help, because Vincent has been billed as “The Great Vampire-Killer” in his movies, and he’s said on his TV show he believes they are real. Desperate, Charlie attempts to enlist his aid.

When he refuses, Charlie determines to kill Dandridge himself. His girlfriend and best friend go to Vincent and pay him to perform a vampire test on Dandridge to prove to Charlie he’s wrong. But in the course of this exercise, Vincent accidentally discovers the vampire is real indeed.

At this point, he transforms into a total coward, not at all the heroic slayer of fiends from beyond he’s played in the movies. This performance is even more charming and amusing than the schmuck actor. Naturally, he has to team up with Charlie in the end.

And then there’s Stephen Geoffreys’s brilliant performance as Charlie’s friend, “Evil” Ed Thompson. Geoffreys steals every scene he’s in as the macabre- and horror-obsessed nerd. As a classic geek, he’s socially inept, but he knows all the vampire lore Charlie needs to do battle with creatures of the night. Like everyone else, he doesn’t believe Charlie, and he insensitively teases him repeatedly.

When Charlie’s girlfriend Amy (Amanda Bearse) smashes a chili burger into Charlie’s face for not listening to her apology, Evil Ed laughs hysterically and says, “Oh, you’re so cool, Brewster! I can’t stand it!”

When he becomes the film’s obligatory sacrificial lamb, he is more frightening as a vampire than his master, Dandridge. Sent to kill the cowardly Peter Vincent, he mocks his prey before turning deadly.

“Now, I used to admire you,” Ed says as he backs Vincent into a corner. “But of course, that was before I found out what a fake you are!”

It’s a memorable performance that stands out among many others.

Additionally, Holland’s film is not just a new take on the vampire movie; it’s a loving homage to the truly cheesy vampire flicks of the past.

“Ah, Mr. Vincent, I’ve seen all your films,” Dandridge says when they first meet. “And I found them . . . very amusing.”

When Charlie and Vincent break into Dandridge’s lair for the film’s final battle, Vincent says, “So far, everything’s been just like it is in the movies. We just have to keep hoping.”

Moreover, the film has a comical, postmodern sensibility. It’s filled with pop cultural references designed to bring the ancient vampire legend into the contemporary world.

When Dandridge slips into Charlie’s bedroom to kill him, he whistles “Strangers in the Night.” When Peter Vincent refuses to help Charlie kill the vampire, he says, “Sorry, Charlie” — a deliberate invocation of the famous Starkist Tuna ads of the ’70’s and ’80’s. When Charlie tells the police detective that Jerry Dandridge is a vampire, the cop responds, “Yeah, and I’m Dirty Harry.”

It is a knowing script that gives you a wink and nudges you in the ribs as it scares the hell out of you.

Charmed

This perfect mix of humor and horror totally won me over. I became completely entranced with vampires from that point forward. Over the next several years,  I would read ‘Salem’s Lot, Dracula, and Interview with the Vampire. I would play and run multiple campaigns of White Wolf Game Studio’s iconic role-playing game, Vampire: The Masquerade. I went to see The Lost Boys and Bram Stoker’s Dracula in theaters.

And I would write a vampire novel. In the early ’90’s I made my first serious attempt to become an author by writing a novel about a vampire who hated being what he was and desperately trying to undo the curse. I solicited agents, trying to push this take on the classic trope, which was something of a new approach at the time. It’s been done to death since, by people who actually got published.

I’ve rewritten that novel several times, trying to get it right, and I plan to do so again in 2016, targeting it for a June release.

I’m a little saddened that vampires have become so ubiquitous again. They sparkle and have mostly lost connection to their previous legend as nightstalking bloodsuckers, who can only be repelled with a cross. I enjoyed the first few seasons of HBO’s True Blood, but too many of the vampires were good guys or at worst, misunderstood monsters. While that makes for compelling television, it isn’t really what I want from my vampires.

Indeed, the vampire seems to have become more of a trope for erotica than horror. And while overwhelming sexual charisma has been a part of the legend as far back as Stoker’s famous novel, they should be more than Christian Grey with fangs.

But Fright Night stays with me. The disappointing 1988 sequel doesn’t ruin my memories. Nor does the 2011 remake, which, while being a very solid vampire flick, has none of the charm and style of the original.

Fright Night taught me to love monsters, to love vampires. It showed me how to take something old and make it fresh without completely changing it. It showed me that balancing terror and comedy is an effective way to create tension.

It is an excellent film, and as it turns 30, I wish for it to be remembered. Rent it or stream it. Put yourself back in 1985, when Michael J. Fox was zooming to the past in a nuclear-powered Delorean, when James Bond was still fighting the Soviets, and when vampires were not sexy bad boys who sparkled in the daylight.

Instead, they were fiends. And if you accidentally discovered one was living next door to you, you were in serious danger of becoming the next victim. Jerry Dandridge himself put it best in a phoned threat to Charlie midway through the film:

“I just destroyed your car, Charlie. But that’s nothing compared to what I’m going to do to you . . . tomorrow night.”

Welcome to Fright Night.

Filed under: Inspirations Tagged: Fright Night, inspirations, John Phythyon, vampires

“Gridiron Glory” Available; “Secret Identity” Free

OMG, I’ve been insanely busy. I’ve taken on directing a play in addition to my various occupations, and all my blogging time has vanished in a puff of stress. I’m going to try to fix that this week.

First off, my latest mini-memoir is officially for sale. “Gridiron Glory: My True-Life Adventure with the Dallas Cowboys” tells the story of how the NFL came to my backyard and how I directed America’s Team to Super Bowl XIII in 1978 . . . at the age of 10. It’s another comical look back at a kid who saw no reason not to attempt every insane scheme that came into his overly imaginative brain.

“Gridiron Glory” is the last in this series of memoirs that focuses on my pre-adolescent childhood. I’m plotting a second series about my adventures in junior high and high school for some time in the future.

In the interim, to celebrate releasing the last installment in this series, I’ve made the first one, “Secret Identity: My True-Life Adventure as a Superhero,” free this week. Eight-year-olds dream of becoming superheroes, but I actually donned the mask and cape and snuck out of the house at night to fight crime.

You can get both books at Amazon.com (along with the other entries in the series). Click on the links below. (And there’ll be more, non-promotional content soon. I promise!)

Click here to purchase “Gridiron Glory” for only 99 cents.

Click here to download “Secret Identity” for free.

Filed under: e-Publishing, Memoir Tagged: Gridiron Glory, John Phythyon, memoirs, Secret Identity

“Animal House” Available

I’m pleased to announce the publication of my seventh(!) mini-memoir, “Animal House: My True-Life Adventure with Pets.”

As the subtitle implies, this one is all about the three dogs and one cat that delighted my brother and I (and tortured my parents). Imagine having two boys with overactive imaginations and an overdeveloped sibling rivalry and then owning a dog those two boys chased all over the neighborhood. Or a dog who had to flee the police. Or a cat that was really a demon escaped from Hell in disguise? If you enjoyed Marley & Me, you’ll find something you like in “Animal House.”

I feel sorry for my parents, and you will too after reading this one. Hopefully, you’ll also laugh a lot.

“Animal House: My True-Life Adventure with Pets” is only 99 cents. If you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited, you can get it free. Click the link below to get it.

Click here to download “Animal House” from Amazon.com.

Filed under: e-Publishing, Memoir Tagged: Animal House, Cats, dogs, memoirs, pets

Sticking with It: Acupuncture Takes Me to The Twilight Zone

I’m afraid of needles.

I hate having my blood drawn. I hate getting immunized. When I was briefly in the hospital last fall, getting an IV was worse than the intense pain that made me think I might have appendicitis.

I’ll suffer these things. I stay current on my vaccines, and let the doctor steal my blood to check my lipids.

But I don’t like it.

So getting acupuncture was pretty near the top of my No Way in Hell That Will Ever Happen list.

And yet . . .

I didn’t seek acupuncture out. I would never have walked into a specialist’s office and said, “Can you stick a bunch of needles in me so my pain will stop?”

I put acupuncture in the same group of “medical” practices as chiropractic, reflexology, and aromatherapy — horseshit science sold to the desperate and foolish.

But I was having trouble with my rotator cuff and elbow. It was getting hard to lift my arm or deal with anything heavy. I went to see a doctor, and he referred me to physical therapy. All this was as expected.

Then the licensed physical therapist at a major university healthcare institution decided acupuncture would be part of my treatment.

I tried not to panic. I tried to find my way out of The Twilight Zone. But Rod Serling started his narration.

“Meet John Phythyon — an ordinary writer, who is about to take an extraordinary trip through pain and fear. A trip that will take him to the strangest corners of . . . The Twilight Zone.”

As I lay face-down on the table, begging for a presidential address to interrupt tonight’s regularly scheduled program, I reflected that I could get up and walk out. I could refuse to let him do what he intended.

But pain breeds a certain kind of desperation. You start thinking, “What if it works?” “What if I’m wrong that this is BS?” “This guy is a licensed physical therapist, not a New-Ager or foreign mystic. He knows something about real science.”

And it was covered by my insurance so . . .

I’d heard over and over that acupuncture doesn’t actually hurt. It seems like it would because all those needles are going into you, but they don’t actually cause pain.

That’s not true. It did hurt. A lot.

But not in the way I expected.

There was a small sting every time he put one in, but that was no big deal. What was a big deal was what happened afterward. The needle hits what he called a trigger point — the source of the tension in the muscle. Each time that happened, a deep, aching pain spread across the part of my shoulder he was working on.

I endure pain, particularly muscle pain, pretty well, but every time he hit a trigger point, I groaned in anguish. This was agony unlike I’d ever experienced. It was totally different from any other pain I’d ever felt in my life, and I didn’t know how to process it.

After he’d stuck me enough times that I thought death might be preferable to healing, he started manipulating my arm to see how it was.

And it didn’t hurt. He did things with my arm and shoulder I hadn’t been able to do for months. And nothing caused any pain.

He had me sit up and move it around. Aside from the aches caused by the acupuncture, it didn’t hurt. At all.

A week later, I was back for a second appointment. I was still struggling with my motion. The improvements he’d made after one session quickly faded. He inflicted his sadism on me again.

And this time, I actually got better. After a third session (the most intensely painful yet), I had greater range of motion in my shoulder than I’d had since March.

He’s done more than stick me with needles. There is massage and exercises to strengthen the muscles and icing.

But acupuncture has been a key component of my recovery. I find myself looking forward to going. I look forward to him sticking me with needles. In fact, he didn’t think I needed acupuncture at my last session and skipped it, which disappointed me!

What sorcery is this?

I don’t know how to explain it. I am beginning to wonder who I am anymore. I’ve become lost in The Twilight Zone.

But I’ve submitted to acupuncture. Not only did it help, I think I actually like it. Perhaps I am a masochist.

Regardless, despite having made significant progress, I have more physical therapy. I’m not fully healed on the shoulder, and we haven’t addressed the elbow yet.

Hopefully, he’ll stick me with needles to fix that too.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: acupuncture, physical therapy, The Twilight Zone

After long journey, THE SECRET THIEF finally available

After a long delay, my new novella, The Secret Thief: A Modern Fairy Tale, is finally getting its turn.

The story of a 10-year-old boy, who is haunted by a monster that can reach into his mind and steal his secrets has been through a lot of iterations since I first conceived it in late 2003/early 2004. It’s also had a number of delays in making it to the public, none of which were its fault.

I first wrote the story right after finishing Little Girl Lost (which would ultimately become Little Red Riding Hoodie: A Modern Fairy Tale) in 2003. Everything I’d read at the time said you should write your next book while you’re trying to get the current one published. So as I wrote query letters, attended writers conferences, and generally worked my butt off to try to find an agent for LGL, I wrote a story about a 10-year-old named Billy Johnson, who had been tricked into telling a few secrets to the new girl in school, only to discover later that she is a monster who feeds on secrets. Once she has her hooks into him, she can forcibly take the information she desires.

That initial draft was only 10,000 words. When I couldn’t find any takers for Little Girl Lost, “The Secret Thief” got abandoned. I didn’t feel I could publish a short story, and I started working on a new novel.

About five years later, I’d written a play, and I was thinking about ways to get my stage work produced. It occurred to me that “The Secret Thief” might make an excellent show for young actors, and I set to adapting the short story to the stage. I had to make some plot changes, since some of the events in the short story were too mature for young audiences/actors, but I put together a pretty decent one-act play and offered it to the youth education director at the community theater I was working at then.

She quite liked it. We talked several times about her producing it with the theater’s Advanced Company of older child actors. But for a variety of reasons, we never made it past talking about it.

The Secret Thief lay dormant for several more years.

Then, in 2012, I published “Sleeping Beauty: A Modern Fairy Tale.” It was early in my indie publishing career, and I used the story as a vehicle by which to experiment with various promotional methods of getting my name out there.

“Sleeping Beauty” was easily my most successful publishing venture of the time, and I realized I might be onto something. I had originally intended for “Sleeping Beauty” to be a one-shot short. But since it was doing well, I decided to create an entire line of Modern Fairy Tales.

My initial plan was to adapt Beauty & the Beast to modern times as a short story along the same lines as “Sleeping Beauty,” and then I would clean up “The Secret Thief” and publish them all in one volume entitled, The Secret Thief and Other Modern Fairy Tales.

But when I was writing B&B, something happened. It grew from short story to novella. It took much longer to write as a result, and I published it in October of 2013. I still figured I could collect everything into one volume, but I’d have to see when I got around to polishing “The Secret Thief” in 2014.

Billy’s story was on my 2014 publishing schedule for September. But then Amazon announced the Kindle Unlimited program. The most important part of the subscription service from an authorial point of view, was that you got paid after a reader made it through only 10% of the book. That made shorter books lucrative.

I had already planned on writing a serialized memoir about my childhood in the 1970’s, and with KU now a thing, it made sense to go ahead with the memoirs right away.

So I switched plans and wrote the first first two mini-memoirs, “Secret Identity” and “Naughty & Nice,” publishing them in October and November of 2014, while pushing “The Secret Thief” back to February of 2015.

And then Amazon announced the Kindle Scout program. You could submit a publish-ready manuscript, and they’d put it up for crowd-sourcing to see if it was popular enough for them to publish it under their own imprint.

So I pulled Little Girl Lost out of the drawer, rewrote it, and submitted it to KS as Little Red Riding Hoodie. I ran an excellent campaign, but they decided LRRH wasn’t for them. I didn’t want to lose the momentum I’d built with the KS campaign, so I published LRRH in February of 2015.

Which pushed “The Secret Thief” all the way back to August of this year.

But it’s finally here. I’ve expanded it and developed it further, taking elements from the initial short story and the stage adaptation, and making still other changes. It’s a 20,000-word novella now, and I’m pretty pleased with it. I’ll probably revisit that stage adaptation at some point in the future.

For the time being, The Secret Thief: A Modern Fairy Tale is finally getting its shot. It’s a creepy story about children having to fight a monster essentially on their own. The beast is insidious, worming her way into Billy’s life and taking over without him realizing what she’s doing until it’s too late. There are lessons about courage and friendship and the power of secrets. I hope it resonates.

It’s been a very long journey for a story I conceived innocently back in 2003. Here’s hoping it’s been worth the wait.

Click here to purchase The Secret Thief: A Modern Fairy Tale from Amazon.com.

Filed under: e-Publishing, The Secret Thief Tagged: John Phythyon, modern fairy tales, The Secret Thief, writing

Re-Viewing James Bond: LIVE AND LET DIE

I’ve fallen behind on my James Bond columns. Summer has been a lot crazier than expected. Travel and publishing a couple books has cut into my blogging time.

I’m back at it again this week with Roger Moore’s first adventure as Bond, 1973’s Live and Let Die. As always, I’ll look at the film’s plot and feel and examine where it fits in the Bond mythos and how well it stands up today. As a result, this post contains spoilers. You’ve been warned.

The Plot

The film opens with a series of murders. Three British agents — one at the U.N., one in New Orleans, and one in the fictional Caribbean nation of San Monique — are killed, prompting M to put 007 on the case.

Both MI6 and the CIA suspect there is a link between Harlem gangster, Mr. Big, and San Monique’s dictator, Dr. Kananga. Bond flies to New York to join longtime ally, Felix Leiter, in investigating Kananga to root out the connection.

007 has barely got his feet on the ground in New York when it quickly becomes apparent he is in over his head. Mr. Big controls a vast network of hoods, and they are onto Bond immediately, assassinating his driver and nearly killing him in the process.

Bond pursues the killer into black Harlem, where he stands out like — as one character puts it — a cue ball. 007 is quickly captured by Mr. Big, who orders him killed. Bond only escapes when he is rescued by a black CIA agent, who had been shadowing him.

But before Mr. Big orders his execution, Bond meets Solitaire — a beautiful, young Tarot reader. Giving Bond a reading before his demise, the cards reveal that she and Bond will become lovers.

We quickly discover that Solitaire is working for Kananga, as are several of Mr. Big’s principal thugs. Both Kananga and Solitaire believe she has precognitive powers that allow her to interpret the Tarot cards and tell Kananga what he needs to do.

With New York proving to be a dead end, Bond flies to San Monique to investigate the murder there. He teams up with bumbling CIA agent Rosie Carver. But she’s actually working for Kananga, and her mission is to lead 007 into a trap. He figures it out quickly, and Rosie is assassinated by Kananga’s people before she can divulge any useful information.

Bond sneaks into Kananga’s palatial home, where he finds Solitaire. He seduces her by having her perform a reading to prove the one in New York is correct. Unknown to Solitaire, all the cards are “The Lovers,” so Bond will get what he wants.

After they have sex, Solitaire is terrified, because now that she is not a virgin, she’s lost her powers. She fears Kananga will kill her. Bond agrees to take her with him.

She shows him what Kananga has been hiding on San Monique — enormous poppy fields, enabling him to make and distribute heroin through his U.S. connection, Mr. Big.

Bond and Solitaire escape to New Orleans, but they’re quickly captured by Mr. Big’s people. There, Bond discovers Kananga and Mr. Big are actually the same person. Kananga intends to control all ends of the heroin distribution pipeline, and he’s going to give tons of heroin away free to crash the market and drive out competition. He’ll then monopolize demand as the only supplier.

Kananga also discovers Bond and Solitaire have been intimate. He sentences them both to death — Bond to be devoured at an alligator farm on the Louisiana Bayou, and Solitaire in a voodoo ritual on San Monique.

Bond barely escapes the farm before becoming lunch to a hundred crocs and gators. He then leads Kananga’s men on an epic boat chase through the Bayou before finally reuniting with Leiter. The two then arrange for him to rescue Solitaire, where he also kills Kananga and destroys his operation.

The Feel

Live and Let Die is very different than its predecessors. Released in 1973, it has much more of a Blaxpoitation feel than an international spy thriller. Mr. Big’s gang of criminals use a lot of Blaxpoitation archetypes, and Yaphet Kotto deliberately sounds like a caricature of a villain from a Shaft movie when he is playing Mr. Big — a sharp contrast to the erudite dictator he plays as Kananga.

Additionally, the dress of the black characters is very much in the style of stereotypical black villains of the times. Mr. Big in particular, wears giant hats and fur coats and numerous rings and chains. He fits the image of the 1970’s pimp, and Leiter refers to the car used in the assassination of Bond’s driver as a “pimpmobile.”

As the film’s principal white guy, Bond, while capable in a fight or a chase, is completely out of his depth in this world. He can’t blend in, and he looks foolish a lot of the time, because he is acting as though he were in Europe fighting Blofeld.

All this actually works to make Kananga/Mr. Big a formidable Bond villain. 007 can’t infiltrate his network like he does with S.P.E.C.T.R.E. Everywhere he goes, Kananga knows exactly where he is and what he is doing.

This is also Roger Moore’s first picture, and it’s obvious from the get-go his Bond is different. Connery was cold; Lazenby was glib. Moore keeps aspects of those takes — he’s quick with a one-liner, and he had no compunction about killing Rosie after they’ve had sex if she doesn’t cooperate.

But his 007 is charming. Handsome, debonair, and witty, Moore’s Bond is lighter than Connery’s, more serious than Lazenby’s. We feel the animal less with him, and despite Moore’s interest and training in martial arts, he’s less two-fisted than Lazenby.

This too works against the backdrop of an overmatched Bond. Connery’s disdain and Lazenby’s fire might have made Bond seem like a racist facing down a black mafia. Instead, Moore sees them only as villains he must defeat.

Unfortunately, Moore does retain some of the misogyny prevalent in the Connery films. He’s completely dismissive of Rosie Carver, treating her as being worthy of no better than a sex object. To be sure, Rosie is incompetent (or at least she appears to be), but rather than wondering why Leiter would assign him someone so incapable, he puts it down to her being a young woman.

Likewise, he is disrespectful of Solitaire’s faith. He recognizes she is young and naive, and he manipulates that to get to Kananga. He tricks her into sleeping with him by stacking her Tarot deck and doesn’t seem bothered by the fact that she believes she’s ruined herself for Kananga. He also intends to use her as bait to draw Kananga to him, a plan that works better than he intended when they are captured as soon as they land in New Orleans.

Women’s lib was in full swing in the mid-’70’s, but James Bond was not onboard.

Where It Fits

Despite it being different from the other films in the series, Live and Let Die is a solid entry in the Bond chronicles. Kananga’s plot is lower key than a lot of 007’s nemeses, but it’s no less worthy of Bond’s attention.

And Kananga is a deadly opponent, easily worthy of Ernst Stavro Blofeld. His vast network makes it impossible for Bond to escape. He has a delightful gallery of privileged henchmen — Whisper, the soft-spoken big man; Tee Hee, the always-laughing killer with a steel arm; Baron Samedi, the voodoo witchdoctor.

The supporting cast makes this a very entertaining Bond caper, and Moore’s charming, wisecracking take on 007 is fun to watch.

One can’t mention Live and Let Die without giving a nod to Paul and Linda McCartney’s iconic theme song. It’s the first rock piece to grace a Bond film, and its signature chord progression permeates John Barry’s score. It’s easy to understand why “Live and Let Die” is one of the most popular Bond themes of all time.

If the movie has a flaw beyond its misogyny, it’s that we don’t get to see Yaphet Kotto enough. He’s terrific as Kananga, an avuncular but ruthless villain, who truly appreciates Bond as an adversary. The two have some fine exchanges, and it’s a pity the script didn’t give them a few more opportunities.

Overall, Live and Let Die is a good Bond flick. It’s by no means among the best films in the series, but unlike some of the other movies in this era, it hasn’t aged badly, and it’s fun to watch from start to finish.

Filed under: James Bond Tagged: 007, James Bond, Live and Let Die, Roger Moore