R.D. Harless's Blog, page 2

Profiles in Villainy #1 – Black Manta

Who likes bad guys? Everyone, that’s who, bitch. This is R. D. Harless’ Profiles in Villainy.

Black Manta is the foremost master of one of the last great frontiers of crime: underwater felonies (suck it, Goldfinger). Outrun the cops with your feet and wheels, land chumps, Black Manta’s got the ocean on lockdown ( ‘Ain’t No 5-0 in the Abyss’ reads the bumper sticker on his submarine). From a humble beginning of boatjackings and robbing underwater 7-11′s, Black Manta rose to be the leader of a group of loyal henchmen dedicated to perpetrating some of the only things actually illegal in international waters (could have stuck to running gambling ships or floating brothels, but I guess you forego subtlety once you buy a manta-shaped sub). These acts of sabotage and piracy have made him the sworn enemy of Aquaman, mostly because there’s only one superhero in the whole friggin’ ocean and Manta can’t just find a spot to perpetrate somewhere in the thousands of square miles of water that isn’t adjacent to the guy’s home.

After fifteen years of damp, briney conflict with the King of Atlantis (giving him a *sick* swimmer’s body), Manta arrived way late to the Civil Rights party in 1977. As a newly-minted activist, he decided that his goal would be to take over the oceans so that they could be populated by oppressed African-Americans (no word on how the African-American community felt about this — their reaction may have surprised him). Black Manta also removed his mask for the first time ever, showing everyone that he himself was African-American, which shouldn’t have been that shocking considering his name literally starts with ‘Black Man.’ The revelation allowed him to join the racially-descriptive ranks of characters like Black Lightning, the Black Racer, Black Panther, Black Goliath, and Vykin the Black (It was a different time, kids), but, not content solely with that elite status, Black Manta also committed the baller-ass move of murdering Aquaman’s infant son right in front of him (by slow suffocationohdamn!). You can’t buy that kind of (undersea) street cred, but, arguably, it did not win him any points for his (undersea) equality crusade. In true superhero tradition, though, Aquaman was not able to exact lethal vengeance for the crime due to the King of the Seas’ staunch morality and/or Manta’s status as highly-toyetic intellectual property.

Black Manta is still around today but no longer making many waves (puns: the last refuge of the damned). He never topped infanticide (who among us does, really?), but he still harbors an unending grudge for a man who’s most notable ability is talking to fish. One would think that in this age of expanded ocean exploration, Manta could make some money taking a bunch of oil platforms on the east coast hostage or ransoming James Cameron, but he’s a simple man with simple needs: he’s killed a couple of Aquaman’s friends, tried to kill both Aquaman and his wife, and tried to kill his own son. Like I said, the man left subtlety behind a long, long time ago.

Profiles in Villainy #1

Who likes bad guys? Everyone, that’s who, bitch. This is R. D. Harless’ Profiles in Villainy.

Black Manta is the foremost master of one of the last great frontiers of crime: underwater felonies (suck it, Goldfinger). Outrun the cops with your feet and wheels, land chumps, Black Manta’s got the ocean on lockdown ( ‘Ain’t No 5-0 in the Abyss’ reads the bumper sticker on his submarine). From a humble beginning of boatjackings and robbing underwater 7-11′s, Black Manta rose to be the leader of a group of loyal henchmen dedicated to perpetrating some of the only things actually illegal in international waters (could have stuck to running gambling ships or floating brothels, but I guess you forego subtlety once you buy a manta-shaped submarine). These acts of sabotage and piracy have made him the sworn enemy of Aquaman, mostly because there’s only one superhero in the whole friggin’ ocean and Manta can’t just find a spot to perpetrate somewhere in the thousands of square miles of ocean that isn’t adjacent to the guy’s home.

After fifteen years of damp, briney conflict with the King of Atlantis (giving him a *sick* swimmer’s body), Manta arrived way late to the Civil Rights party in 1977. As a newly-minted activist, he decided that his goal would be to take over the oceans so that they could be populated by oppressed African-Americans (no word on how the African-American community felt about this — their reaction may have surprised him). Black Manta also removed his mask for the first time ever, showing everyone that he himself was African-American, which shouldn’t have been that shocking considering his name literally starts with ‘Black Man.’ The revelation allowed him to join the racially-descriptive ranks of characters like Black Lightning, the Black Racer, Black Panther, Black Goliath, and Vykin the Black (It was a different time, kids), but, not content solely with that elite status, Black Manta also committed the baller-ass move of murdering Aquaman’s infant son right in front of him (by slow suffocationohdamn!). You can’t buy that kind of (undersea) street cred, but, arguably, it did not win him any points for his (undersea) equality crusade. In true superhero tradition, though, Aquaman was not able to exact lethal vengeance for the crime due to the King of the Seas’ staunch morality and/or Manta’s status as highly-toyetic intellectual property.

Black Manta is still around today but no longer making many waves (puns: the last refuge of the damned). He never topped infanticide (who among us does, really?), but he still harbors an unending grudge for a man who’s most notable ability is talking to fish. One would think that in this age of expanded ocean exploration, Manta could make some money taking a bunch of oil platforms on the east coast hostage or ransoming James Cameron, but he’s a simple man with simple needs: he’s killed a couple of Aquaman’s friends, tried to kill both Aquaman and his wife, and tried to kill his own son. Like I said, the man left subtlety behind a long, long time ago.

Merry Christmas, Jive Turkeys

Bloody Copper, Roaring Lead is officially down to clown, guys. Hardboiled fiction has been an enormous influence on me, and this is my love letter to both it and one of my other big loves, the western. It’s the tropes and archetypes of the two biggest pulp genres of their day clashing against one another in a murder mystery: a cynical P.I., a powerful rancher, merciless thugs, the high desert, wry wit, and vicious cowboys all set during Prohibition. I made it especially for you guys for Christmas so don’t be douche about it. Get this s-word on your Kindles or be b-words.

Holiday Hugs and Kisses,

R. D.

It. Is. Coming.

I Have Slain in Battle the Beast That is My Imagination

Soooo, the hardboiled thing is done. That’s right, finished. I could keep going back to it, polishing it, never satisfied (i.e., the George Lucas treatment), but it’s ready to send out to publishers. It feels effin’ great (or ‘just the tops’ in my current vernacular). It also means that Donnie is back up to bat (also up to bat: re-learning how to swear. You buncha bitch-ass shitheads).

Unfortunately for you guys (motherfuckers), I don’t like to tease plot details, characters, or story points (so suck it, assholes). But I’ve said before the last two chapters of the first book really tell you everything you need to know about the direction the sequel is going. Like They Tell Me I’m The Bad Guy, there are going to be psychological underpinnings to it the same way Polarization/Pendulum Effect was a sort of runner through the first one (spoiler: the theme was not f-words and nicotine). Also, Donnie’s still not going to be a damn Mary Sue (trope alert, dickhead). He’s been given the power to make fuck-ups on a grand scale so of course that’s exactly what he’s going to end up doing because he’s Donnie and Donnie fucking knows best despite all evidence, right? (biiiiitch)

So hang in there, fans. Shit is going to get way more real and way more unreal before this thing’s through (*middle finger*).

Hugs and Kisses,

R. D.

Obligatory Check-In

Okay, so some of you are like, “Hey, R.D., you’re a cool guy, you’re with it, I kinda think about you while I lie in bed at night, but what’s the deal with the sequel to They Tell Me I’m The Bad Guy, bro?” To those people, I say, “Calm the fuck down and go over that third thing you said again, but real slow.” Then I say, “I’m still working on this hardboiled mystery thing. How about you climb down out of my ass, guy?”

All of this is to say that, yes, I’m *still* working on the hardboiled novel thing. I’ve got about 6 chapters of edits and rewrites left, but grabbing time has been a challenge and the ghost of Raymond Chandler is over in the corner wryly mocking everything I put on the page (and it turns out that phone number in Ghostbusters doesn’t even work, either). I’m of a mind that if I’m going to put my name on something forever, it damn well better be something that I worked my ass off making, thus, the still working on it part (Pro tip: it also makes negative reviews far more damaging to my soul).

I will throw out a bone and say that as far as TTMITBG2 goes, the last two chapters of the first book lay a lot of foundation for what Donnie will be dealing with in the second. DeltaBlue will be returning. A few other characters in those pages are down as maybe’s but haven’t yet committed. And there will, of course, be new blood to put Don through his paces (his horrible, horrible paces). And to put your mind at ease, I’m staying acutely aware of the symptoms of sequelitis. Pitfalls are everywhere, but I pledge to avoid them. That said, get ready to meet the wisecracking, precocious kid Donnie will be saddled with for the entire book and his hilarious catchphrase, “No way, Don-nay.” Also, there will be no more swearing. It didn’t test well. So be sure to pick up They Tell Me I’m The Bad Guy II: The Winter of Broken Crows when it comes out.

Hugs and Kisses,

R. D.

You Have Money. I Want a Vig. I Don’t Know If I’m Using That Term Correctly.

Something has come to my attention that’s a cause for alarm (for me and now, transitively, for you). I suddenly realized I wrote a book without crowd-funding it first. I can only plead negligence for this oversight. I honestly knew about Kickstarter before publishing They Tell Me I’m The Bad Guy, but I wantonly ignored it and, by extension, denied all you the opportunity to fund something that a stranger wanted to make money off of (my heart is black like the other end of a white hole). I can only offer my most profusest apologies for ignoring all of you and your sweet, sweet disposable income.

So, with that in mind, I’m announcing a retroactive Kickstarter campaign for They Tell Me I’m The Bad Guy. Now you can genuinely feel like money you spend is worth something and won’t just turn to shit and garbage like it does when you buy food and clothing. All funds raised will go toward defraying the costs of the book’s production, costs that include but are not limited to: setting up this website, buying advertisement on Goodreads, tendon stress in fingers caused by frequent typing, incurred wear and tear on my imagination, $.53/minute compensation for time spent staring at the wall trying to come up with plot points and words I wanted to use that were on the tip of my tongue, incurred wear and tear on my computer’s Backspace key, defrayment of monies spent on brown liquor consumption to combat writer’s block, mileage reimbursement for all the times I was thinking about dialog and plotting instead of safely driving a one-ton metal battering ram through traffic, and a nickel for every time my wife tuned out of the conversation because I was talking about writing because I want to show her how many damned nickels that is.

For your pledge to this campaign, I will, of course, offer rewards. For $150 (minimum pledge amount), I will fondly recall whenever asked that you were the inspiration for the character of Donnie, and that up to one of your friends or loved ones were the inspiration for Will. For the next level pledge ($18,000), I will help you fill out the paperwork necessary to legally change your name to one of the characters in the book, thereby effectively giving you a character named after you. For a gold level pledge ($100K in fat stacks), there are no rules. Anything goes. Anything. Goes. Wink. Wink. (Gimp mask)

Thank you in advance to all those who will pledge their support. I’m currently deep in the edits of what will be my second book and have already begun plotting the sequel to Donnie’s story. I hope you’ll be generous in your donations for the original and remember to keep donating when the sequel is completed. Because if you ever want to read it, my demands are $250,000 in unmarked bills and a chartered airplane to South America (Kickstarter page for that will be up soon).

Hugs and Kisses,

R. D.

Sitrep

Obligatory check-in post. Not a lot going on, really, but my not putting much on this site since December makes me look lazy and neglectful, and I am not at least one of those things. Mostly, my slacking off (I said ‘slacking’) is due to being too busy with writing words that will go into a storybook instead of words that will be housed in server bunkers or clouds or human battery farms or however they’re storing Internet data these days.

As for what I’m working on (because I know you’re so invested in it), I’ve put a June deadline on finishing it. It’s a book, which, point of interest, has nothing at all to do with the one that probably brought you to this site. You know, the one that you surrendered actual money earned at that job you hate so that you could read and might have even enjoyed. Yeah, it’s got nothing to do with that one (’cause striking while the iron’s hot is how you get third degree burns, kids). Instead, I’m currently wading twenty-two chapters deep in what will probably be twenty-eight or twenty-nine chapters of a hard boiled Prohibition-era detective story (yeah, I’ve posted about this before, but there’s no harm in repeating it–there is, however, shame. Lots of dirty, whore-like shame). There’s no sci-fi to this story in any way (so I guess fuck you, readers who likes that), but there’s more to premise and a higherness to the concept than just standard hard boiled boilerplate stuff (boilerplates – also hot).

Anyway, when that’s finished up, I’m going to see about getting it printed on Mother Earth-offending paper and sold in Mom & Pop store-killing retail chains; something I didn’t do with They Tell Me I’m The Bad Guy because I thought it might be something of a hard sell (and some Amazon reviewers agree). But once this hard boiled thing is all squared away, I’ll be working on the next installment of Donnie Guillory’s life, which I also expect to be the last. Yes, I know trilogies are what all the cool kids are doing these days, but I’m a firm believer in telling only as much story as you’ve legitimately got. If you keep pushing things too hard (that’s what she said) to where the good ideas are drying up and getting hard and harder to come by (that’s what she said), you’re just going to end up disappointing everybody and making a mess (. . . she said that, too). So when the TTMITBG sequel is done, I think I’ll have said all I have to say with Donnie (13% of that being the f-word). I’ve got other stories I want to get to before I die; not gonna spend all my time with him. That guy’s an asshole.

Hugs and Kisses,

R. D.

Give It Away, Give It Away, Give It Away Now

Okay, so after one day, They Tell Me I’m The Bad Guy is at #15 on the free Kindle Sci-Fi list and rising. That’s not bad. In fact, I think it’s pretty damn great myself. The fucking Krampus, however, is calling my house and breathing heavy while he puts a slow knife to a whetstone. That goes on for a good five minutes, then he gets bored and yells “Fuck you! That’s my name!” then hangs up. (it’s an old phone, too, so it’s really loud when he slams it back on the cradle). So to appease this psycho bitch demon, They Tell Me I’m The Bad Guy will be offered free on Amazon for another day. Do not thank me. Just download the thing. Gotta go, the phone’s ringing again.

Do not bone me here, People,

R. D.

In the Spirit of Christmas, a Deed of Penance to Stay the Krampus

Tomorrow, December 5th, bask in the magnanimousnesses of secular gift-giving and download They Tell Me I’m The Bad Guy (aka The Fuck and Cigarette Memoires) for free at your local Kindle dealer. Or also here. Spread the word to people you love and people you hate, for the Krampus will surely skin you in your sleep and wear you like a quivering (-insert your name here-) suit while he dances around your living room with his thing tucked, Buffalo Bill-style, if you don’t. That’s not a threat. That’s a Yuletide promise. So download it quick; the Krampus is already taping his thing back in preparation.

Hugs and Kisses,

R. D.