Nikolas P. Robinson's Blog, page 44
March 10, 2021
Crowdfunding Campaigns I’m Supporting
I thought it might be worthwhile to share links to the current crowdfunding campaigns I’m supporting, because the small handful of you who read my blog posts might also be interested in some of the same things.
Eisenhorn Book One: Xenos by Dan Abnett
When people think of Warhammer 40K, it’s often in terms of large-scale warfare and military maneuvers/strategy. The tabletop game and the video games have often been more focused on those elements of the Warhammer 40K universe, so it makes sense that this is the thing first coming to mind. We all first imagine the indomitable space marine in their hulking power armor wielding a chain weapon or some absurdly massive firearm.
Eisenhorn: Xenos by Dan Abnett provides us with a more intimate, character-driven exploration of the Warhammer 40K universe, and it’s a great thing. Following Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn as he seeks to unravel the convoluted threads of a mystery involving ruling families, rogue traders, alien species, and Chaos Marines is an exciting ride indeed. With dire consequences looming on the horizon if Eisenhorn fails in his mission, we feel the tension all too vividly.
The narration from Toby Longworth for the audiobook edition is amazing as he brings to life the character of Gregor Eisenhorn as well as his compatriots and antagonists. An already captivating narrative is made all the more gripping with the harsh tones and grave articulation of this narrator.
March 9, 2021
Why the Neurodiversity Movement Matters
I was a reasonably young child when I was diagnosed with ADHD. I wasn’t one of those cases where the diagnosis was just being tossed around and applied to kids behaving as kids always have…in my case (as with many others back in the 1980s), it was a legitimate diagnosis. I was prescribed Ritalin at that time, and it did seem to do the trick–when I was in school. By the time I’d been home for a little while, I was twice as difficult to deal with as I’d been before the diagnosis and prescription. Before that, I’d been a handful–no surprise to anyone who knows me as even an acquaintance, even as an adult–after that, I was a holy fucking terror.
It didn’t take long before my mother stopped me taking the Ritalin, because it was ultimately a bit of an issue. If it had been a few years later, they probably could have found some sort of scheduled dosage that might not have produced the same negative side-effects. Whatever the case may be, life goes on.
Years later I was further diagnosed with passive-aggressive personality disorder, not to be mistaken with someone behaving in a passive-aggressive manner. They are two distinctly different things, though there are some commonalities in the manifestation of passive-aggressive personality disorder and an individual being a passive-aggressive asshole–but there’s no sense in going into that here. As with other personality disorders, there is no drug treatment associated with the passive-aggressive disorder–it’s a wiring issue rather than a chemical one.
Passive-aggressive personality disorder frequently goes hand-in-hand with anxiety disorders, major depressive disorder (MDD), suicidal ideation, and substance abuse. You might have guessed it if you figured there’s a reason I mention all of those things in particular.
You win the prize!
There is no prize.
Get used to disappointment.
In addition to these things I’ve already mentioned, there have been strong signs of PTSD related to assorted experiences from my childhood (both as a young child and in my teen years). With all of those factors combined, I like to think I’ve turned out to be a reasonably functional adult and a productive member of society. I definitely have my issues here and there, and I can certainly still be quite difficult to deal with in even small doses (depending on the day)…but, all-in-all I’m keeping it together rather well if I do say so myself–and I do, so don’t argue with me.
I wish there had been something like the neurodiversity movement when I was younger, or that it had been more well-established and well-known at that time. I spent most of my life feeling like there were things wrong with me as if I were broken or damaged in some way–and perhaps I was to some extent. I still frequently refer to myself as being precisely that. I laugh and joke about how I’m broken or damaged, dysfunctional and maladjusted…but there’s that kernel deep inside that curls up into a little fetal shape whenever I do it.
It’s ok, though, I’m a bit of a masochist.
The neurodiversity movement is focused on treating these (mostly high functioning) people as being nothing more than a natural (and sometimes valuable) thread of the overall tapestry of human diversity. It’s refreshing and more than a little bit liberating to be treated as if I fall into a spectrum of what can simply be called a person with a normal human brain–as preconditioned as I might be to consider it anything but normal.
There are a lot of us out here.
Some of us are more high functioning than and some less so, but there’s no cause to pretend that we’re somehow less than other people, regardless of where we fall on that spectrum. It takes some degree of patience to deal with some of us, myself included. Personally, I recognize how challenging I can be on a normal basis and I make concessions for that. I’m not exclusive in doing so. Most of us who fall into the neurodivergent categorization are well aware of these things and we’ve learned to cope (as best we can) and to provide a bit of leeway for others in our lives. This isn’t true for everyone, of course, as there are extreme cases, but a large number of us are just like everyone else, just with a little bit more psychological/emotional/mental baggage in tow.
For some additional reading on the Neurodiversity Movement, I’m including the following link:
March 8, 2021
My Work & How You Can Support Me
This is where you can locate an increasing assortment of links to my presently available material as well as new material as it becomes available.
Don’t be a stranger!
Innocence Ends, released in August of 2020, is a story of friendship and how far that friendship can be tested.
Six lifelong friends meet together in an isolated mountain town in Northern Idaho to commemorate the fifth anniversary of a close friend’s suicide.
A week of hiking, spending time in nature, and bittersweet reunion soon takes a sinister turn as the friends find themselves fighting for their lives and struggling to survive. A seemingly tranquil community bombarded by late spring storms becomes a trap filled with monsters and threats everywhere they turn.
Terrifying secrets are revealed and the survivors are left to wonder what will be left of the world outside if they can find a way to come through the gauntlet alive.
Unspoken was the first novel I released, back in late 2011, though it was not the first I’d written. There was some small amount of experimentation taking place in the writing of this story, focusing on a protagonist that wasn’t particularly likable or relatable to most people…but hoping to elicit some sympathy for him by the time we reach our conclusion. In that, I do believe I succeeded.
Unspoken is a short, but well-paced and compelling exploration of the themes of unrequited love and the insanity that accompanies it in the midst of a world sliding into madness. A story of love, regret, and the end of the world expressed with a poetic voice and postmodern sensibilities; it could be described as being a combination between George A. Romero’s The Crazies and an amalgam of The Notebook and Love In the Time of Cholera.
The story follows Nathan, recently employed as an overnight orderly in a state mental hospital. He has found himself lucky enough to develop a friendship with Leyna, another of the overnight staff, but that friendship quickly becomes something far more intense for Nathan, a fact he chooses to keep to himself.
Suffering through the turmoil of his unspoken desire for Leyna and inured to the environment of a mental hospital and the madness that has afflicted him in his personal life, Nathan neglects to notice the signs that become more and more prevalent in the world around him, signs indicating that something terrible is taking place. As the world descends into madness, Nathan and Leyna remain at the institution, hoping that isolation might protect them from the world collapsing around them, but in the end there may be no escaping some tragedies.
Horror author David Moody described Unspoken as, “…a brave and thought-provoking piece of work filled with palpable emotions and plausible situations.”
Errata: Collected Short Fiction and Poetry was released in 2016, collecting in one volume eight short stories I’d written and released digitally as well as a collection of poetry that had been released as A Wreck In Progress a short while before Unspoken was published.
There is no connecting thread between the included stories, spanning genres from gritty crime drama to bizarro extreme horror. Topics run the gamut from the final scenes of a slasher narrative to the terrifying isolation of interstellar space. There is something for everyone, from fans of horror to those who enjoy hard science fiction.
Most recently, a short story of mine, “The Worms,” was included in the Bloodsaints anthology through Terror Tract Publishing. All of the included two dozen authors donated a tale of horror for what we considered to be a good cause. All proceeds from sales of the anthology going to UNICEF for COVID-19 relief.
You Will Be Consumed is an upcoming bizarro, extreme horror novella to be released through Madness Heart Press. It’s meant to introduce readers to the world of The Hungering Void, a connected sequence of novels, novellas, and short stories showcasing my fictional portrayal of our world going to hell in a very real sense. This novella serves as the first glimpse for many into the nature of gods and demons in what will be a larger fictional environment.
Other work published through Madness Heart Press can be found at the following link:
Anoka by Shane Hawk
Shane Hawk’s Anoka is a short but potent collection of short stories that range in length from flash fiction like “Soilborne” and “Orange” to longer pieces like “Wounded.” Touching on a range of topics from the alcoholism endemic within reservation communities–as those familiar with indigenous culture will already be aware of–to the epidemic of missing girls and women from tribal communities…and mingling those real-life concerns with supernatural and sometimes downright surreal narrative elements.
This fictionalized version of Anoka, MN would make for a truly horrifying place to live, the implication being that horror lurks not far beneath the surface of everything there.
“Wounded” and “Imitate” are perhaps my two favorite stories in this collection, and there are some similarities between the two. The stories in question focus on protagonists who are trying to make amends for the choices they’ve made earlier in their lives only to have terrifying circumstances arise. There’s a sort of morality play involved, reminding you–as the reader– that no amount of trying to make your life better will necessarily relieve you from the guilt of your past or the influences of your earlier decisions and mistakes. It’s a harsh reality, but it is reality just the same.
I’m looking forward to seeing more from Shane Hawk down the line.
March 5, 2021
Dreams, and the Places They Take Us
Have all of you dreamt of specific locations, or a singular location, so many times that you occasionally recall that place in your waking life as somewhere you momentarily believe you can return to? As if it’s somewhere you’ve actually been before?
You only finally stop thinking that way once you’ve reminded yourself that the location exists only in your dreams, though you feel like you’ve been there so many times before.
There are two locations like this for me, both of them situated in outdoor environments that bear a strong resemblance to regions of the Black Hills…or at least they feel like they’re situated somewhere in the hills.
One is a large cave system on private land that I’m able to enter by maneuvering my way along a cliff-side that others apparently don’t know about. It doesn’t keep me from trespassing, but it keeps me from being caught while doing so, as it provides me with an otherwise unknown entrance via a large grotto coming off the cliff wall. Descending from this hidden grotto is a sort of primitive staircase, something that could have been carved into the stone by an earlier culture. I’ve never followed the stairs down any further than the fissure that leads me into the cave system, but the stairs descend much deeper into darkness. The interior of the cavern is so familiar to me as to feel like I’ve been there dozens of times. In my dreams, I’ve taken other people there to experience the place in addition to making numerous trips on my own. The smells and taste of the air are so vividly recalled, as is the way sound reverberates from the walls. The chill of the water in a slow-moving underground stream that pools in a certain location where I’ve always had to strip down to traverse is as real to me as any memory.
Another location is similarly to be found along a cliff wall, this one rising up from an otherwise normal hiking trail that leads off into a narrow, mountain valley. By scrabbling along what would only be liberally described as a path up the early part of the cliffside, one can reach a small tunnel that pushes through to a sheltered cliffside on the opposite edge of what is actually a thin dagger of rock rather than a solid stretch of mountain like what is to be found in either direction to the side. From this sheltered cliff, one can see a whole different valley spreading out, far below. I’ve spent countless hours sitting there, enjoying the view, or so my memory tricks me into believing.
What’s particularly funny to me is that I rarely recall my dreams at all. And yet, when I find myself thinking of either of these two locations, sudden recollections of numerous visits come to mind from dreams I don’t even remember having.
That’s all, just a little bit of absent musing for the day.
What sort of locations do your dreams paint so vividly that you recall them in waking life as real places?
March 3, 2021
Run by Jeremy Bates
Jeremy Bates’s Run is a fast-paced, intense story with an underlying message of how we as a society have dropped the ball concerning mental health for our former military personnel.
Our protagonist, Charlotte, is a prime example of Murphy’s Law being in full effect. Her parents were murdered when she was a child and then her high school sweetheart returns from a series of traumatic deployments overseas (one of which terminating in multiple lives lost by those beside him) with psychosis that pushes at the very edge of worst-case scenario PTSD. During a camping trip that was intended to help Luke find his balance, he lashes out and severely assaults two of Charlotte’s friends before attempting to harm her as well.
We flash forward from there to a year later with Charlotte attempting to move on with her life, dating a new guy, and focusing on finishing school…and then Luke reappears after being released from prison.
Everything takes on a staccato quality from there, as Luke becomes increasingly paranoid and violent, his instability culminating in an act of violence befitting only those we consider terrorists.
It’s a short read/listen and it’s well worth taking the time to do so.
The audiobook is narrated by Jenna Green, someone I consider a friend, an individual I’ve known for a great many years–since we worked together once upon a time at a local television affiliate. The quality of her narration is superb, and I’m not saying that because I’m biased. I feel entirely confident that I have recommended her to other writers who are looking for a woman to narrate their audiobooks in the future.
March 2, 2021
Bella’s Boys by Thomas R. Clark
Thomas R. Clark has crafted an interesting tale with Bella’s Boys. It’s a little bit American Psycho, a larger bit of cosmic horror, and a lot of splatterpunk erotica.
The reason I mention the novel from Bret Easton Ellis isn’t only because of the fixation on music and the almost overwhelming attention to detail associated with said music throughout the novella–but that does have something to do with it–it’s because this novella captures something of the 1990s dive bar, metalhead scene in the same way American Psycho satirized the white-collar, predatory capitalist world of the 1980s. At the same time, Bella’s Boys certainly depicts graphic acts of sex and violence (often simultaneously) with the same unrelenting and unfiltered lack of concern so many readers enjoyed from Ellis’s novel.
The afterward, providing a glimpse into the author’s life and the real-life snowstorm that inspired the blizzard taking place within the novella, was a nice touch. It’s fun and entertaining to see just how much of the story was pulled from a piece of Clark’s own life. I would certainly hope none of the people trapped in the house they were trapped in during the real blizzard ended up being converted into conscious bits of fecal matter…but maybe the truth is stranger than fiction?
The short story, Prey for Change, attached to the end is a tantalizing glimpse of a world that melds Viking society, werewolf mythology, and something reminiscent of the army of the dead from Game of Thrones. I would read more of that story, for sure.
Since I listened to the audiobook edition of Bella’s Boys, a comment on the narration is in order. It’s almost unfortunate that the sole weakness with this edition of the book is the quality of Allyson Wentworth’s narration. This isn’t to say the narrator does a bad job of it, but there was a certain flatness to elements that seemed like they merited a bit more passion or at least spirited delivery. From what I can see, she has only narrated a couple of books thus far, and it could be due to this being the beginning of her career as an audiobook narrator. Please don’t let my personal opinion on the narration dissuade you from checking out the book in whatever format most appeals to you. I sincerely doubt even my favorite audiobook narrators were at the apex of their craft when they started.
February 28, 2021
True Crime by Samantha Kolesnik
Samantha Kolesnik’s True Crime is a gritty deep dive into an abusive household and the horrible consequences of that abuse. It’s all the more awful for the plausibility of it.
Suzy’s only escape from the horrific emotional, physical, and sexual abuse from her mother–and boyfriend(s)–is reading True Crime magazines that she’s fixated on. Her only allies in the cruel childhood she’s experienced are her older brother, the emotionally detached Lim, and the unseen girl, Alice, held captive in the basement by Suzy’s mother, speaking to Suzy only through the heat registers. Little does she know that she and her older brother, Lim, are soon to create their own story befitting her favorite magazine…as she smashes an ashtray into her monstrous mother’s head…and that is only the beginning.
As Suzy evades justice and Lim winds up in prison for the murders no one imagines Suzy could have been involved with, we find ourselves wondering if she can be rehabilitated with a second chance and a clean slate.
The animal freakshow scene was deeply upsetting and made me want to attack the spectators as well, and the later scene where Suzy discovers the dogs made me sad too. Acts of cruelty and violence against animals do more to get under my skin than the same sort of violence perpetrated against people. It seems that Suzy and I have that in common.
Jennifer Pickens expertly narrates the audiobook edition of the story, capturing the equal measures of naivete and cruelty of Suzy’s first-person narrative.
I grew up in an abusive household in a rural region. This story hits close to home for anyone with that sort of background. While it was my father, rather than my mother, who levied the abuse, it doesn’t change much. That the abuse from my father was physical rather than sexual isn’t much of a difference. The sexual abuse, instead, came from a slightly older girl who lived next door and who saw a six or seven year old boy as a suitable way to learn about the differences between boys and girls. I wanted to include a little warning, in case anyone is triggered by these sorts of things.
February 26, 2021
God’s Eye: Awakening by Aleron Kong
God’s Eye: Awakening is what you might expect from Aleron Kong, but with higher stakes and with zero fucks given, much like our nascent god, Zero Fell. Until volumes seven and eight of The Land, we didn’t really see much by way of consequences for the protagonist or his closest allies. This is clearly not going to be the case with the Labyrinth World novels. As much as Zero Fell begins his journey on Telos with generous sponsors and an appearance of a potentially–charmed–new life, that illusion is thoroughly shattered by the end of this first volume in the series.
Where the story of The Land is firmly rooted in a basis of standard RPG fare, God’s Eye establishes just as much of a basis in RTS as in RPG gaming. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out as future volumes are released and Zero more firmly establishes himself as a god in this new world.
Aleron Kong infuses this story with the same irreverent wit, pop-culture homage, and character-building you’ll be familiar with if you’ve enjoyed his previous work…but with a lot more violence and with a faster pace than the slow build-up to a major conflict we experienced with The Land.
This book manages to be darker, coming off the heels of the eighth book of The Land (which was substantially darker than the earlier installments, though that darkness really started taking root near the latter half of volume seven)…so that should serve as a warning for anyone who’s just looking for a fun read with light-hearted fantasy excitement.
The audiobook is competently narrated by Luke Daniels and I look forward to hearing more narration from him as this series progresses.
