Steven R. Boyett's Blog, page 3

Reviewer Reviews Reviews

The Amazon reviews for Fata Morgana have been fantastic — at this writing, a whopping 74% of them have given five stars, and 15% have given four, for an unbelievable 89% combined four- and five-star reviews:

Apparently this proved too unbelievable for reviewer Bolivar S., who wrote: “Too many of these reviews sound like they were written by a copywriter. Four stars for getting to comment, won’t be purchasing the book.”

I’m very aware of the practice of paying for fake Amazon reviews, especially among indie & self pub authors. They’re usually pretty easy to spot (short, generic, lacking details specific to the book), which is all the more reason I am flattered by the Bolivar S’s implication that these reviews are so good they must be fake.

Leaving aside the brain-hurtingly recursive fact that Bolivar S is giving four stars to a book he hasn’t read while suggesting that we shouldn’t trust its high-level reviews, I can only make things even more meta by saying that this has now become my all-time favorite Amazon review of Fata Morgana! ★★★★★

Burning Man 2017

The thing I like best about Burning Man is simply the fact that it exists.

I had some fantastic experiences on the Play this year. I worked as a Greeter one day. I saw some truly amazing art and met some fascinating people.  I also Tetrised most of our camp into a shipping container after the event. (It’s this weird ability I have. I even optimize dishes for the dishwasher. A bit OCD, but useful.)

That said, I’m going to have to do a lot of thinking about going back. I’m not sure what Burning Man has for me anymore, and especially vice versa.

There’s video below the gallery.

[See image gallery at www.steveboy.com]

 

The articulated bird installation, with passing art car:

The LED Tree. This was simply beautiful:

This was a mirrored, planed skull about 12 feet high. I could have watched it for an hour:

Back to Burbank – Dark Delicacies Signing

Ken & I will be signing at the terrific Dark Delicacies bookstore on one of my favorite stretches of Burbank (Portos bakery! It’s A Wrap clothing!) tomorrow, June 18, at 4:00 PM. If your dad’s a WWII buff, Fata Morgana is a great present for him.

Visit a great little bookstore, get yourself an unbelievable cafe con leche & media noche sandwich from Porto’s down the street, and enjoy a summer day in one of the nicest stretches of the Valley!

 

San Diego Saturday – Mysterious Galaxy Signing

Huge thanks to everyone who came out for the reading & signing at the Burbank Public Library last night! The time flew by. Many thanks to the terrific folks at the Burbank library, who got the word out and ran a terrific evening.

My old friend from Back in the Day, Dave Schow, showed up and took pix! I’ll have some up soon.

Tomorrow Ken & I will be in San Diego, signing at the wonderful Mysterious Galaxy bookstore at 2:00 PM. Come say hi!

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Happy Bloomsday!

James Joyce

The events of Joyce’s epic and wonderful Ulysses all take place in Dublin on June 16, 1904 — Bloomsday, named for one of the protagonists, Leopold Bloom.

Raise a pint to James Joyce, and celebrate the man who gave us the mythic in the mundane, the epic in the ordinary, and the eidetic re-creation of the world in the printed word.

I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I wouldnt answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas 2 glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

Hello, Burbank!

Ken & I will be reading, interviewing, & signing at the Burbank Library Buena Vista Branch tomorrow night at 7:00 PM. Burbank is my old stomping grounds, and I can’t wait to be there.

If you’re in Los Angeles, stop by!

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SF in SF

Yr. Humble Narrator, moderator Cliff Winnig, Ken Mitchroney

Ken and I read & spoke at the long-running SF in SF (Science Fiction in San Francisco) series last Sunday evening, and had one helluva time. It’s a terrific venue to read at, and the audience is always attentive, intelligence, responsive, and just plain fun to perform for.

Mingling crowd and awesome devices at the American Bookbinders Museum

Usual moderator Terri Bisson had a last-minute engagement, and I was delighted that my friend Cliff Winnig took up the mic. Though I dunno how delighted Cliff was, as the Q&A consisted of of very long, convolute, though sometimes funny answers to maybe three question before we ran out of time. We’ll try to be the soul of brevity next, I swear.

Don’t make Jude Feldman take all these books back to Borderlands!

There’s video of the readings but I won’t have time to format it before I’m off to Los Angeles tomorrow for more signings & readings with Ken in Burbank and San Diego.

Ken keeps trying to copy off me.

Big moby thanks to everyone who came out to SF in SF, and to organizer Rina Weissman for inviting us!

“In the event of a water landing, your seat cushion may be used as a flotation device.”

Release Day!

Fata Morgana is officially released today!

This last weekend Ken & I read & signed at Borderlands Bookstore and at SF in SF. I recorded the readings & will post as soon as I can. Right now I’m scrambling to get a Podrunner mix out and get ready to go down to Los Angeles for our series of SoCal signings.

Meantime, here’s some pix from the Borderlands event last Saturday. Our heartfelt thanks to Alan Beatts, Jude Feldman, and the truly wonderful crew at Borderlands Books & Cafe for a great launch.

Ken has done a ton of signings — he used to draw Ninja Turtles, fer cryin’ in the sink — but this is his first book signing, and he was like a puppy. After our reading and Q&A, we started signing books. I was writing my name when  I heard Ken beside me say, “Hey — this is the first book we’ve signed for someone!” (Hello, Uffe in Switzerland, who was awesome enough to special-order our novel!)

We stopped and gave each other a huge hug.

David Gerrold, Dr. Seuss, and I

ComicMix just won a legal battle against the Dr. Seuss estate over the right to conduct a Kickstarter campaign trying to raise upwards of $20,000 for an illustrated book written by David Gerrold called Oh the Places You’ll Boldly Go! that mashes up Seuss and Star Trek.

Here’s my problem with this.

I rented a room from David Gerrold when I moved to LA (David was instrumental in getting me there from Florida, for which I am eternally grateful). In 1996 I published a collection of ST:TNG parodies called Treks Not Taken. It contained a mashup of Trek & Seuss called “Oh, The Treks You’ll Take!” with illustrations by Ken Mitchroney.

I gave David a copy when it was published in its small-press edition (it was later picked up by Harper Collins).

So when I read that David — who has already published a Trek pitch of mine as a Star Wolf novel (The Middle of Nowhere) without my express permission — is somehow being lauded as a creative artist emerging victorious after being put down by the Man, I can only shake my head in wonder.

As The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance bemoans, “When the legend becomes fact — print the legend.”

Reading at SF in SF Tomorrow!

Ken and I will be reading at the wonderful SF in SF series tomorrow, June 11, at 6:30!

SF in SF (“Science fiction in San Francisco — a perfect fit!”) has been hosting monthly readings for fantasy & science fiction writers for quite some time now. I’ve read there several times before (there’s video & audio on my Media page), and it’s one of my favorite venues.

I’m especially excited because my friend & co-author Ken will be there as well, and this will be our first official reading together. Among his ridiculous set of talents, Ken is a professional voice actor, and I think his reading is gonna rock.

We’ll also be interviewed by the wonderful Terry Bisson.

Hope to see you there!

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