Randy Attwood's Blog, page 17

New Year's Resolutions? Me? Yep. It's Time.

I've never done New Year's resolutions before. I thought them rather silly. Now, however, the time seems right. First a look backward.
I started in the spring of 2011 self-publishing my works of fiction, knowing nothing about how to move forward on cover designs, formatting, pricing, marketing. Here it is the end of 2012 and I have 16 works live on Amazon and other platforms. Just a couple of months ago I completed my seventh paperback POD: five novels and two collections of stories. I've had two signings of these physical books here in Kansas City (both at bars: the famous Kelly's in Westport and the infamous Chez Charlie's in Midtown). They went very well. The books are available at Prospero's new bookstore location near the Uptown Theater. And I have one work that is not self-published, Blow Up the Roses brought out by Curiosity Quills.
The works have found a small, but appreciative audience. They received 32 five-star and 7 four-star reviews on Amazon. These are honest reviews: not purchased, not traded for, not from relatives nor close friends, but from people I don't know from Adam.
But I have found myself spending way too much time on Facebook and other social media and just generally on the internet. I also check my sales and rankings way too often. Time for discipline. Time to pledge to check those numbers twice a month at most.
Time to devote serious blocks of time examining past projects that stalled to see if they have any life in them, seriously pursuing some new ideas, staring into space and pondering, and then, yes, writing. Enter again that lonely place where your only companion is self doubt.

Pretty Cool to Find a Video Trailer You Didn't Know Was Done for One of Your Books

Sometimes the internet just stuns me. Using the search feature in Youtube to go to my channel, I saw a video trailer I didn't know existed for one of my works! Turns out that the Mooresville (Indiana) Public Library produced a video trailer for one of my story collections: "3 Very Quirky Tales." This must be the ebook version because I added several more stories for the paperback edition, which is called "Very Quirky Tales." I must contact them and thank whoever produced this really nicely done little piece for my benefit and also learn more about how libraries chose ebooks and how they distribute them. But what a wonderful surprise it was to stumble across this. Very nice Christmas gift to me. Thank you, @Mooresville Public Library! Here's the link to the video.

Another BookS Signing Friday at KC Midtown Bar, Chez Charlie's, 3809 Broadway

On Friday, December 21, the day the world is supposed to end, I'll have a bookS signing starting at 3 p.m. at my local watering hole, Chez Charlie's, 3809 Broadway, here in Kansas City. I say bookS signing because I'll have seven, and perhaps eight, titles available. I'll be selling them for $10 each. Image shows the seven titles that will be available. The added value is that this Friday date is when the bar is having its holiday party. Free eats! At Charlie's that means meatballs and sausage on white bread and cracked olives on the side. It's usually an eclectic gathering and having my bookS signing then should make it even more so. If you are in the KC area, hope to see you there! The bar is the door at the south end of the building. The next building over to the north is Big Dude's, but don't park in their lot. They tow. Wait a minuted. If it's the end of the world, you won't need a car!

Can't make it? You can always buy my books for either ereader or in paperback, here.

Holiday Blog Hop Offers Free Ebook of the Dystopia "Rabbletown: Life in These United Christian States of Holy America"

I'm new at participating in Blog Hog Giveaways. Please leave a comment to have your name submitted to receive a free download from Smashwords for the ereader platform of your choice. I'll do at least one free download. If I get more than 10 comments from different readers, I'll do two; more than 20 comments, three; and so on. Please leave an email address where I can send the code.
Rabbletown: Life in these United Christian States of Holy America is a dystopia. George Orwell's great 1984 deeply affected me. It was my first introduction to the dystopia genre, although it wasn't called that then. The phrase "future history" was used. In the 1970s, I started to become concerned when Evangelical Christianity entered the political arena. I feared that if fascism ever came to America, it would be through the pulpit. So I wanted to write a 2084 as a cautionary tale. I envisioned a big book: One that followed all the political steps that would lead to 2084. Wrote a few scenes, but nothing ever really clicked.
Then I realized I should just cut to the chase and get to 2084. The building of a huge cathedral is the economic stimulus program for this society. The Pastor President and pastor governors rule with a Bible in each fist and the computer in your hovel. There are enforced pregnancies. I set it in Topeka. Sinners who commit abominations are stoned on Fridays in Fred Phelps Plaza.
A stone mason who works on the cathedral has a son, Bobby, who has an amazing memory for Bible verses, and he provides the redemption this book needed. The story stalled on me for many years until I realized that I needed to let Bobby work his miracles.
One reviewer, a top 500 Amazon reviewer who has published more than 2,000 reviews has called "Rabbletown" the best book she has EVER read. How's that for a compliment. She's become what she calls "a Bobbite." You can see her recommendation here.
Rabbletown is available as an ebook and a paperback on Amazon.

BookS Signing at Kelly's Westport Inn 3 p.m., Sunday, Dec. 9

I can't think of a cooler place to have a books signing that Kelly's Wesport Inn here in Kansas City. And yes a bookS signing because I'll have not one book available but six works of fiction: four novels and two collections of shorter works. 3 p.m., Sunday, Dec. 9. I'll be selling them for $10 each, or get the entire six-pack for $50. Can't imagine anyone out there doesn't know where Kelly's is, but here's the address: 500 Westport Road, 64111. You can find all my works here.

Real Readers Giving Real Reactions

Here's the best thing about this whole self-publishing business: Over the internet, promoting your work, you encounter real readers you don't know from Adam who have real reactions. Thought I'd list a couple here.
I don't remember how Katy Sozaeva found my work. But find my work early she did and even devoted a weekend to reading it and reviewing it on her blog. She's become an ambassador. (In the interest of full disclosure, I use her editing and proofreading services to do the final polish on my works before I put them into print. I learned the painful way what a poor editor and proof reader I am of my own works. But all the reviews Katy wrote were before I ever hired her.)
Rabbletown resonated with her and she has called it THE (caps here justified) BEST BOOK SHE HAS EVER READ. She provided audio and I put together this Youtube video.
Preston McConkie I met through eFiction, a wonderful effort to create eMagazines for this internet age. It reminds me of the sort of magazine I understand HP Lovecraft wrote for, and without pay. You find kindred souls who write kindred stories and you share. Preston and I, despite our canyon gaps in politics, are kindred souls. Imagine that! Much of my work has resonated with him. Here's a look at Preston. You want to disagree with this guy? You can follow him on Facebook.
Here's what he's had to say about some of my work.
The Strange Case of James Kirkland Pilley
"...Attwood manages to out-Lovecraft the original Lovecraft."
That is high praise, indeed. Link to the entire review can be found at the bottom of this post.
When Preston sent me this note after reading Crazy About You , it bowled me over:
"Having finished Crazy About You , I realized you are a prodigy, and that you may soon join my top ten favorite writers, a group including Mark Twain, Neal A. Stephenson and Robert Heinlein. You've got it, bro. Have you shopped Crazy around? If so, it boggles the mind that it hasn't been accepted by a major publisher."
Would that Preston worked for a major publisher.
Publicly, on Facebook, Preston wrote this:
"To my literary friends: The best value I can recommend in books today is "Crazy About You" by Randy Attwood. It's $4.99 for the Kindle at Amazon, also available through Smashwords and, I think, Nook (for you losers who have a Nook). I honestly can't think of a better novel in its size--full novel, but not a very long one--and price range, and NOTHING better from the self-published world. It's a coming-of-age tale about a young man living on the grounds of a state asylum and driven by motives both admirable and animal. I couldn't set it down, and that's perhaps the second book in two years I could say that of. Attwood has ascended into a tiny group of living authors whose prose I consistently love."
Recently, Preston called Tell Us Everything, the opening tale in 3 Very Quirky Tales here as an ebook and in Very Quirky Tales here as a paperback, "One of the greatest SF shorts ever written."
Okay, and now one funny phony endorsement. This one for Blow Up the Roses.

Hail Mary Pitch for Kickstarter Project

Seems appropriate to talk about the history of The Saltness of Time , the novella I want to turn into a print book using a letterpress and funded through Kickstarter. That campaign ends Dec. 3 and I'm nowhere near my goal. Very much appreciate those who have donated. If the goal isn't reached, Kickstarter will refund your donation. I even received $100 donation from this person: Алексей Ухловский.  Anyone translate that for me?
But if you're interested in reading this work, even without donating, no problem. The Saltness of Time , is available as an ebook and it is also included in the paperback collection of stories, One More Victim . I consider them literary works and worry: does that label turn off many readers? Does it you?
 Here's the back story on Saltnesss. In my 20s (in Lawrence, KS, and in Florence, Italy, and in Oiso, Japan) I was writing. Trying to write. Probably the Hemingway Nick stories influenced me. But I had a vision of creating a series of linked stories featuring myself in high school and my best friend I called Fred. Some Fred stories worked out (those are in the One More Victim collection, too). Some stories you learn to give up on; some you go back to. The Saltness of Time was one that kept pulling me back. But it wasn't until my 40s that I reentered it in a serious and productive way.
***An aside here: young writers, be patient; let things fester inside you. Don't think you've failed before you have. Don't think you've succeeded before you have. Many stories are like wine: they need time in the cask. Don't get drunk too soon on them; don't give up on them either. Or, don't listen to me at all. Seems plenty of young writers are doing much better than am I in this epublishing business. Maybe the best route is to ignore geezers like me.***
Writing the novel Crazy About You , I discovered a technique that seemed to work for me. It was in first person, but allowed a kind of leaping forward for the character so he could look back upon himself. Just because you are in first person doesn't mean you have to stay in the present.
An example from Crazy :
At the drive-in, Gwendolyn and I both had chocolate malts with our cheeseburgers. Was beef better then? Was milk sweeter? Why is it that a chocolate malt and a cheeseburger is never as good as it was in high school? As we get older do our tastes become jaded, too, the way our ideals do?
The main character in The Saltness of Time is relating his story to a captive group of listeners in the present. But he's talking about the past.
That made Saltnesscomplicated to write. The reader learns the story through the narrator who is one of the listeners, but 90 percent of the story is listening to what the main character says. And then the story teller tells a story that was told to him, so there is a story within a story. This technique created interesting tensions. It also provided the listening narrator in the present with opportunities to comment on the speaker of the tale.
Maybe this taste will clarify the above mush:
He was a little spooky. But I figured he was harmless. And there were myself and Ted to protect the girls, snuggling against us as we sat on the divan. We both had our arms around our respective women, sharing the commingled warmth of our young bodies in front of the fire, the only source of heat in the hotel. Sleeping arrangements had yet to be worked out. We had taken two rooms and, by looking at Ted, I could tell he was sharing the same hope I had: that we would take our girlfriends to our own beds, as we each certainly had done in the past, but neither of us knowing if the sisters would acknowledge that fact to each other through the act of allowing it to occur again in the presence of the other. The alternative was unappealing: sharing the narrow, double bed with Ted.The stranger sat in an overstuffed chair near the fire, getting up as needed to feed it new logs."I haven't told many people this story. Perhaps you'd rather not hear it. I know how hard it is for young people to listen about what rocked the hearts and flamed the passions of old people when they were young. It seems so long ago it's hard to believe lives back then were blood and bone real. And what happened to me that night reached back into the last century. I mean, Gabrielle was born in the 1880s. No, wait, might as well get it right. She was eighty-nine when we ran across her and that was in 1963, so she would have been born in..." He stopped briefly to calculate in his head and Stephie, the little math whiz, spoke up with the answer, "1874."
This approach, too, gifted to me the best ending sentence I've written for any of my works. (Shame on any of you who get The Saltness of Time and skip to the ending!)
The phrase "saltness of time" comes from Shakespeare ("Some smack of age in you, some relish of the saltness of time," Henry IV, part II). I was thinking more of the salt beds of the dried-up, inland sea below the rich soil of the Kansas prairie. And, of course, the salt beds, too, within each of us that we develop with time.
But back to the whole Kickstarter business. Don't you think this would be a wonderful read in a print book from a letterpress book, hardbound by an old fashioned bindery? Hope you do. $100 donation would get you that book.

Blow Up the Roses 99 Cents Until Sunday

Curiosity Quills, the publisher of my dangerous suspense/thriller Blow Up the Roses that's been called brilliantly disturbing, is doing their Black Friday thing putting their ebooks at 99 cents until Thursday.

Check out this endorsement for Blow Up The Roses!

Here is a list of CQ books that are on sale.

DC Small Press Releases Blow Up the Roses with label Dangerous Suspense/Thriller

A small press in D.C. has published this novel, what they call a "dangerous suspense/thriller." Blow Up the Roses is indeed that. Publisher Eugene Teplitsky at CQ described the book as "disturbingly brilliant."  Doing an interview about the novel, Sharon Bayliss at the publishing house asked me to send to her some of my favorite lines from the book. I was stumped. And it was strange. In any other story I could have found easily sentences I considered lyrical or interesting or funny. But the writing style for Roses has a different feel, almost as if I didn't want to get too close to what was going on. I was keeping it at arms length. I don't outline or plan out books. A scene comes to my mind, a character, a quote and I create those scenes and characters and see what they do. When I realized what one of them was doing I almost abandoned the book. But characters, once created, have a way of demanding they live out their lives. So many secrets to be revealed by the characters in this book. Why did the husband of the protagonist, Mrs. Keene, just abandon her and disappear? What is her renter in the other half of the duplex doing in his basement? Why does neighbor Mr. Califano have a recurring nightmare that he is in a rose garden and it is blowing up all around him?

The language of flowers can be terribly blunt.
Blow Up the Roses

Taoism, Anti-Vietnam War Protests, Student Union Burning, Lawrence and A Lot More

In Then and Now: The Harmony of the Instantaneous All I try to deal with Taoism. As the protagonist says in that work: The great thing about trying to explain the Tao is that you can't fail because you can't succeed. I've just realized that I have other stories that have Tao lessons embedded in them and didn't realize it at the time. Oddly enough, they revolve around two sports: golf (Downswing) and snooker (Blue Kansas Sky). Each story is available as an ebook; both are included in a paperback collection of stories, One More Victim.
But this is more of a promo post for Then and Now because it just became available as a paperback. At dinner with friends the other night I was asked what Lawrence, KS and the University of Kansas were like in that turbulent spring of 1970 when I was there: the burning of the Student Union, the curfews, the National Guard patrolling streets, the shooting of a student just outside of where is now the KU Alumni Association.
The questioner noted that his daughter, currently a student at KU and interested in creative writing, was thinking about attempting a novel about that time.
"Tell her I've already done it," I told him and laughed.
That's what Then and Nowis all about. It's a fictional rearrangement, but a lot of it isn't fiction either. I started working on it in my 20s, gave up, went back, gave up. Then I found a method that clicked for me. Hope it clicks for other people. I summarize it this way:
Stan Nelson is mired in nostalgia for the 1960s and the woman he lost then. He figures his only way out is to write about why he is so frozen. He creates in words the times and characters of the Then. He locates those characters in the Now so they can comment on the veracity of his words about Then – except for the Chinese woman who first introduced him to the Tao. And it turns out understanding the Tao of building a tea hut in the Now just may be his release from the Then.
It has, I think, a pretty sweet romance story embedded in it and since 1970 is now 42 years ago I've taken to place it in the "Historical Romance" genre. I don't really know into what genre it fits. You tell me.
One side note. During the writing, I remembered an incident from the time that was buried in the Lawrence Journal World at about page 6 or 8 in the police reports. A propane gas delivery truck driver was checking his vehicle before pulling out from his house for his day's deliveries when he noticed a packaged wedged between the truck's dual back tires. The police found it to be a sack of dynamite sticks. Speculation was that had he driven off, the weight of the truck pressing the wheels together would have ignited the truck and ignited the fully load truck and flattened a one-mile radius. You know how memory is. Had I really remembered that or was it urban myth? I spent time at the microfilm reader and found the story. So that little event, so underreported at the time, has a role in Then and Now.