Matt Maxwell's Blog: Highway 62 on Goodreads, page 32

A TASTE OF ASPHALT for free

A TASTE OF ASPHALT available at the Kindle store

 

For the next few days, A TASTE OF ASPHALT will cost you precisely nothing, as opposed to the .99 it usually costs. Two short stories, a preview of the dark fantasy DUSTBEARER, a handful of essays and extended previews of RAGNAROK SUMMER and the upcoming BLUE HIGHWAY. 200+ pages.

If you’re reading this now, you’re using a device that can use the Kindle client.

A TASTE OF ASPHALT at the Amazon store

The apocalypse will be unexpectedly boring?

Taken from “Crunch Time”, which you can buy for only .99, alongside 200 more pages of reading (including an extended preview of the upcoming science fiction novel BLUE HIGHWAY). Get it right here.

“I pointed out the window, even though the parking lot was largely empty now, but for some scattered trash and newspapers. No eaters or fraternity pranksters or cops or anyone. Newspapers. Who the hell reads newspapers anymore? They looked as if they’d been put there by the set dresser for THE OMEGA MAN and it he thought it was still 1973.

At least we weren’t in Los Angeles. You couldn’t have paid me to be there today. The riots, at least they said they were riots, were going full bore.

Full bore as in boring. We’d been hearing that the world had been coming to an end for how many years now? Acid rain, peak oil, infertility crisis, overpopulation, global warming then global dimming. LA had been in slow-motion apocalypse since we decided that we all couldn’t get along. Just that now the rioters were occasionally eating some unlucky clod who couldn’t get out of the way, that reports told of them being shot point blank and getting back up and someone had used the word ‘zombie,’ proving that they could be ignored. Zombies were so last year.”

Granted, zombies were last year when I wrote this in 2011.

So .99 gets you “Crunch Time”, “Blink” (a horror story about a thing from another place that can’t decide to be when its dragged here by mistake), previews of “A Mere Death” (fantasy from the volume DUSTBEARER), six chapters of RAGNAROK SUMMER (fantasy novel which follows the Norse gods 100 years after their victory at Ragnarok), a selection of essay from my nonfiction books, and finally a long preview of BLUE HIGHWAY, featuring a United States torn apart by several wars for secession, The Great Big Zero and muscle cars running on hydrogen instead of high-octane.

Give it a try, won’t you?

From another side

So there was this time that DC Comics put out a wondrous single issue of THE DOOM PATROL, which was written by Grant Morrison at the time. And it featured art by Richard Case (the usual artist on the book for the bulk of Morrison’s run), Jamie Hewlett (who went on to design The Gorillaz among other things), Brendan McCarthy (the maddest of the mad), Rian Hughes (designer extraordinaire whose draughtsmanship we don’t see often enough these days), Brian Bolland (who qualifies as THE Brian Bolland), Duncan Fregredo (best known for HELLBOY now, but famed well bef0re that), Steve Yeowell (now best known for ZENITH) and Shaky Kane (illustrator of BULLETPROOF COFFIN, one of the greatest comics of the last couple years.)

Looking at it now, it’s unbelievable. And it’s a wonderfully strange comic, of the kind that there simply aren’t enough of these days. It’s like it fell from a parallel universe just to show us how things are on the other side.

A Taste of Asphalt

A TASTE OF ASPHALT – available today.

A TASTE OF ASPHALT hits today.

Snag it here.

Okay, you want to know what my writing’s about. But you don’t want to spend a lot because everyone’s got projects to support and Kickstarters to back. So I’m going to make it easy. Here’s what ninety-nine cents gets you.

Two short stories: “Crunch Time”, featuring zombies, a slow-motion-apocalypse and office supplies, and “Blink”, featuring a horror that can’t decide what it is. And there’s a bonus excerpt from the recent “A Mere Death” as seen in DUSTBEARER.

Multi-chapter excerpt from RAGNAROK SUMMER, namely the first six.

Essays from THE COLLECTED FULL BLEED and HIGHWAY 62 REVISITED, covering comics, music, film and horror.

Finally, a multi-chapter preview of the upcoming science fiction novel BLUE HIGHWAY.

So yeah, rifle through the couch or shake some coin loose from the swear jar. Ninety-nine cents gets you more than two hundred pages of fantasy, science fiction, horror and popcult.

You know what to do.

A TASTE OF ASPHALT – available today

A TASTE OF ASPHALT – available today.

Snag it here.

Okay, you want to know what my writing’s about. But you don’t want to spend a lot because everyone’s got projects to support and Kickstarters to back. So I’m going to make it easy. Here’s what ninety-nine cents gets you.

Two short stories: “Crunch Time”, featuring zombies, a slow-motion-apocalypse and office supplies, and “Blink”, featuring a horror that can’t decide what it is. And there’s a bonus excerpt from the recent “A Mere Death” as seen in DUSTBEARER.

Multi-chapter excerpt from RAGNAROK SUMMER, namely the first six.

Essays from THE COLLECTED FULL BLEED and HIGHWAY 62 REVISITED, covering comics, music, film and horror.

Finally, a multi-chapter preview of the upcoming science fiction novel BLUE HIGHWAY.

So yeah, rifle through the couch or shake some coin loose from the swear jar. Ninety-nine cents gets you more than two hundred pages of fantasy, science fiction, horror and popcult.

You know what to do.

INTO DARKNESS

Okay, here’s the ground rules.

1) Spoilers for STAR TREK: INTO DARKNESS. Stop reading if this is an issue.

2) I didn’t like it and am not likely to change my mind if you get in my face about it.

Right. Either you’re still reading or you’re not.

 

So, INTO DARKNESS. Not a very good movie. Not even a very entertaining one. Plenty of spectacle to look at, though. But you know, that’s not always enough.

I guess that I’m never going to like any of the rebooted TREK movies. I’ll live and so will you.

My biggest problem with them (aside from the producers deciding that Kirk really needed to be an ass not not just bold) was the reliance on the whole “Well, this TREK universe is really connected to the original TREK universe because it’s a pocket dimension and see here’s ‘real’ Spock telling you so. That’s cowardly writing right there. I suppose they might have felt obligated to do so, but then it’s all about a character acting as the puppet-string-pulling deus ex machina telling Spock that he has to get with Kirk no matter how much of an asshole he is because that’s how it’s supposed to be.

I could have overlooked it if they’d just let it rest in the first movie and never brought it back again. I could have been persuaded, maybe, that this was a spin-off that was ready to stand on its own two legs. They were a little nervous in the first movie and had to bring the hardcore into the fold. I get that.

But then they doubled-down on it in the second movie. After everyone’s gotten their asses kicked, what does Spock mk 2 do? He calls up Spock mk 1 (the real Nimoy, not McCoy) and uses his lifeline call to see if he’s making the right decision. What the actual fuck? Yep, they did it. They had to remind us that, hey, see, this is the real TREK universe still.

Ugh. If it was a book, I’d have thrown it, but as it was, I was still in the movie theatre having paid for my ticket (and that of the rest of the family).

Then the movie continues and like the remake of WRATH OF KHAN that it really was, the reactor core needed to be rebooted but was leaking radiation and the twist! Kirk, not Spock was going to fix things. Besides, Spock had nearly hung everyone out to dry at the beginning of the movie when he was stuck in the volcano, so having him be the Dude In Peril a second time would just be funny, right?

And Kirk dies.

And miraculously, because he’s made a habit of injecting dead tribbles with the blood stolen from space terrorists, Doctor McCoy figures out that, hey, I’ll just put Cumberkhan’s blood into Kirk and he’ll perk up from his state of “just mostly dead.” Because there was a good reason for him to do that. Just stick some blood in a tribble. It just happened. Miracle blood resurrection.

Then the movie continues, right? Spock chases Khan down through the streets of San Francisco and catches him so the miracle blood can be extracted and Kirk can be saved. Because we need a Kirk in TREK3.

Well, I figured out something that might have actually made the story work.

What if, McCoy doesn’t know about the blood? What if Khan, finally cornered by Spock, realizes that his Miracle Blood is the bargaining chip that gets him out of jail? “Hey, pity about Kirk, but I’ve got the sauce that can get him up and chasing co-eds again. All you have to do is let me go once  the deed is done.”

Now it becomes a dilemma. A choice. Spock actually has to do something rational instead of the rrrrargh KHAN KILL KIRK MUST KILL KHAN thing.

But no. Not gonna happen.

I won’t even get into the myriad of other ways that the movie could have been improved. If you liked it, great, you liked it. There was plenty of stuff to look at, but when the story that’s being serviced is hollow, it’s a little harder for me to get into it.

RAGNAROK SUMMER free up at the Kindle store.

Line art by Alex Sheikman, design by me.

Hey folks. Just a head’s up that my first novel, RAGNAROK SUMMER is up for free over at the Kindle store. That’s a full novel for nothing. Maybe you’d like to read it and review it.

It’s pretty crazy. Thor’s gone feral, reverting to a Hell’s Angel/hessian state. Loki’s been turned into the surly court jester. Odin needs to be changed regularly but is still nominally in charge. Then things come unglued. Motorcycle road trip through the nine worlds. Jotun arm wrestling. Loki delivers satisfaction and both of them wind up in Hell to sleep off the epic drunk.

If any of this sounds even marginally appealing, then go check it out. Free until midnight Tuesday morning.

http://www.amazon.com/Ragnarok-Summer-ebook/dp/B00540A9DY

RAGNAROK SUMMER for free.

Hey folks. Just a head’s up that my first novel, RAGNAROK SUMMER is up for free over at the Kindle store. That’s a full novel for nothing. Maybe you’d like to read it and review it.

It’s pretty crazy. Thor’s gone feral, reverting to a Hell’s Angel/hessian state. Loki’s been turned into the surly court jester. Odin needs to be changed regularly but is still nominally in charge. Then things come unglued. Motorcycle road trip through the nine worlds. Jotun arm wrestling. Loki delivers satisfaction and both of them wind up in Hell to sleep off the epic drunk.

If any of this sounds even marginally appealing, then go check it out. Free until midnight Tuesday morning.

RAGNAROK SUMMER at the Kindle store.

Limitations

I'm only bummed that GR doesn't let me log all the cool old quarter comics that I've been reading before bedtime instead of anything resembling something good for me.

DUSTBEARER for free

Missed this earlier, but DUSTBEARER is free under the KDP Select program (which means nothing for you as the reader, other than it's free). So why don't you gamble a stamp and give it a shot?

DUSTBEARER at Amazon, free until Tuesday.