R.J. Smith's Blog: THE MADHOUSE, page 4
May 31, 2018
May 18, 2018
Monsters In The Woods
Friends, Fans and everyone on the world-wide web. After more than five years recuperating from all my surgeries, my new novel, Monsters in the Woods will be released in Hardcover, Paperback and E-book. Right now, exclusively on Amazon for the next 90-days, you can pre-order your e-copy for just $3.99. On June 19th, the paperback and hardcover will be available at Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Amazon and hundreds of other retailers.
Monsters tells of creatures who stalk the darknesss and snatch the flesh from the living. This is an unrelenting and ferocious tale of a reptilian race of beings attempting to annihilate humanity. A chilling novel for fans of adult Contemporary Horror, Y.A. SCI-FY, Fantasy or General Fiction, this EPIC story is Harry Potter meets Swamp Thing, yet is an entirely original and facinating tale. It’s for those with enormous imaginations of a wonderful frightfest! That being said, this tale also has roots in reality. It sprouts from real reports of green and scaly creatures documented throughout humanity’s historical records.
Not long ago, I happened across a Hopi Legend that warned of reptilian beings said to be living in a series of tunnels and caves hundreds of feet under the Nevada and
Arizona deserts. Many argue it’s the stuff of science fiction. But, when I first heard of the lizard people and their existence during my annual pilgrimage to the UFO Congress’ Annual Symposium in the state of Arizona, I had to wonder… could there really be something to this tale? With at least 200 billion galaxies in space (and possibly even more), we’re very likely talking about a Universe filled with trillions of planets in billions of universes! Couldn’t there be melevolent alien life out there somewhere?
And, If so, why is it so fundamentally insane to suppose they’ve come to Earth to live among Earthlings? Maybe they’re planning to wipe us out. A true story reported In 1955 Indiana tells of an encounter with something residents called The Green Clawed Beast. The story went… that two friends were swimming in the Ohio River and unexpectantly came upon a creature that pulled one of the girls underwater. With her friend Miss Darwin Johnson looking on, she struggled back to the surface kicking and thrashing for dear life. Claiming to have escaped a reptilian’s green hairy claw, sure enough… when back on land, everyone noticed a jade-colored hand-print on her leg that couldn’t be washed off for days, but the story didn’t end there. Within days, both girls were visited by peculiar looking men dressed in black suits who ordered them to renounce any and all knowledge of the incident!
Monsters in the Woods is a novel about… what if? It follows a group of parentless young boys from a Children’s Home who come into contact with creatures who appear through a wormhole in the woods behind their institution. With Humanity on the edge of extinction, there is only one special and reincarnated boy alive on Earth who can save the Universe from being destroyed by the beasts. With world governments under attack and most of the world’s major cities falling to the monsters, the President of the United States must work with all of humanity to stave off the beings until prophesy is revealed.
April 4, 2018
March 31, 2018
JUST CHECKING IN ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Good monring everyone! Been a long time since I’ve checked in here on Social Media. I’ve been distracted TRYING to work on Beach Bodies, Book #2 FBI Serial Killer Task Force and my biography, Destiny, adapted from my script by the same name. I am doing better, still have some lumbar pain, but thank God all 10 surgeries and titanium implants in my right shoulder, cervical and lumbar spines have been successful. Over the last three months, I’ve been walking more but still see a psychiatrist to deal with what I’m told is PTSD in the form of horrible nightmares every night where I see myself falling off my bicycle and dying. . Anyway, I live by the saying, A person has to always pick themselves up off the ground and keep moving through life, right? That’s what I’m doing. So, to my friends and fans on Instagram, Facebook, Stage 32, LinkedIn, Tumblr and Google Plus, I’ll be coming back every so often to talk to you guys. LOVE LOVE. — in Belleair Beach, Florida.
March 18, 2018
Monsters In The Woods
Greetings From The Sunshine State
Hey guys, just a short message this month touting my new upcoming ADULT and YOUNG ADULT novel. Yet, I suppose, Monsters In The Woods isn’t exactly a new project, 
right? It’s been a long time coming at just under four-years because of circumstances out of my control. As most of you may recall, a few years back I spent a week wandering the familiar home for children. You see, when orphaned by my mother Harriet “Tish” Smith in 1973, I grew up on the streets of Times Square until New York Child Services snatched me up from a street-corner and ferried me off to what was then called The McQuade Foundation for Boys. I ran away numerous times looking for my birth-mother,. Thankfully, a houseparent, the late Clifford Webb, finally got me to stop looking. “She is long gone” he said hugging me tight, “we’re your family now.” Finally calming down, and dealing with my circumstances, I spent a few years at McQuade from there from the ages of 12 to 15. When I visited the old McQuade Foundation Campus, I knew it had been bought and run by an organization dubbed Saint Christopher’s Inc. Growing up in the small Hudson Valley village of New Windsor, New York, life was certainly much different. Roller Rinks and Drive In Theater’s were the shit at the time and my friends and I spent a lot of time at both. Remember, the modern cellphone, iPhone and others were not invented yet. The personal computer or MacBook wouldn’t be imagined by Founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak until they created Apple Computer on April 1, 1976, the 200th anniversary our country’s independence from the British in 1776.
Back then, our country was suffering through The 1973 oil crisis that began in October 1973 when the members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries proclaimed an oil embargo. It was targeted at nations at countries supporting Israel during the Yom Kippur War. The initial nations targeted were Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States and later extended to Portugal, Rhodesia and South Africa. By the end of the embargo in March 1974, the price of oil had risen from US$3 per barrel to nearly $12 globally; US prices were significantly higher. The embargo caused an oil crisis that left our countrymen standing in mile long lines for rationed oil.
I remember all that. So, I wanted to imagine a novel that took place at The McQuade Foundation for Boys. With a simple idea of creatures from outer space invading the Earth and devouring humanity, I outlined in my head a pretty twisted manuscript with Reptilian extraterrestrials, Grey aliens and Giants fighting for control of our planet. The story would be epic, in the vein of Harry Potter but absolutely nothing like it. Below is a FREE PDF copy of the manuscript, this is an exclusive for my fans. Enjoy!
Added by the author: March 18th, 2018
March 11, 2018
THE DISCOVERY OF SELF
It’s been some time since I’ve sat here in my study and written anything of value. One thing I’ve learned over the last five years while dealing with the reprecussions of my bicycle accident on June 10th 2013 is that you can die at any moment. I once thought I was indestructable, like most kids. The problem with me is it took thirty-years to realize the way I was living would only lead back to the streets, prison or a graveyard.
In my work in progress… the shocking tell-all biography, DESTINY, I’ve had to face down some pretty ugly facts about my life prior to 2008. Back then I was nothing but a common criminal with four prison sentences under his belt, I was not just heading nowhere fast… I was there. Rock bottom… a 42 year old nothing. I’m not sure what woke me, perhaps it was the last incarceration, the people I’ve met, the experiences I’ve suffered thorugh. Some of you know, at the age of 8 my mother abandoned me and I grew up on the streets of Times Square and Miami, became addicted to street drugs at a very early age and well… growing up on the streets, one doesn’t learn the right way to live. It’s a mentality of US against THEM… and by them, it’s anyone who didn’t live on the streets, grow up in boys homes, SUFFER THROUGH foster care or have the scent of the streets woven into their very fabric. I regret most of my past decisons throuhout life, the drugs, crime, penetentiary… it was a road that led me to nowhere fast. I could and have laid the blame of my screwy life at my birth-mother’s feet. But the fact remains, at some point we all have to grow a pair of balls and change our circumstances.
I know that better than most. I lived the life, saw the consequences and was almost sent away for LIFE under California’s Three-Strike Law. Now, I’m a case study why three-strikes legislation doesn’t work. People do change and sometimes it’s not on the second, third or tenth attempt. Had a California attorney by the name of Denise Lee not fought for me, I would be a 52-year old man waitng to die at San Quentin State Prison. But she believed in humanity’s ability to change… and she saved my life.
The rest is history, you all know my story, how I broke into the business in 2000 with my bio screenplay, DESTINY, the competitions that led to three agents representing my work. Then, the Emmy swag; the book awards and the breakout Amazon bestselliing novel, The Santa Claus Killer. It all happened so fast it was like a dream.
You’re all going to love the biography, it’s sad, happy and frightful. But it’s all real; it’s all the truth. Reading like a Mario Puzo thriller, something happens in every chapter. Just like life, each day brings new adventures… though I hope yours were better than mine. I’ve long ago made peace with my past, it doesn’t matter anymore, I’ve done the time, learned from my mistakes and moved on with an amazing career as a novelist. Sure, there have been challenges, the biking accident, ten surgeries to fix what was damaged and the spiraling of my writing career because of all the injuries, which prevented me from tours and appearances. I could be an angry, depressed despot. Instead, I choose to live my life, because, as the kids say today, YOLO… You Only Live Once.
One of my favorite authors, William Cuthbert Faulkner (September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was regarded as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Faulkner once wrote “the past is never dead. It’s not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity. Haunted by wrong turns and roads not taken, we pursue images perceived as new but whose providence dates to the dim dramas of childhood, which are themselves but ripples of consequence echoing down the generations. The quotidian demands of life distract from this resonance of images and events, but some of us feel it always.”
He also said: “Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.” I live my life by this instruction.
How about that? Just wanted to share the above with you all. My history is no secret, I’ve always been open about my faults in interviews and conversations. Here is my message: No matter what you face in life, no matter how hard you work or play, always remember that today will become yesterday and the past is only a reflection of who you were. A lot of people try to use my criminal record against me, my upbringing, both in my personal and professional life, they try to degrade my honor, ridicule my circumstances and skirt their own responsibilities. But it doesn’t bother me, I’m not that person they talk about anymore. I changed on my own clock, when I was ready, when I was sick-and-tired of being sick and tired. So, I say, never hide who you are, where you’ve been or what you went through. It all adds up to the whole of who you are today. For better or worse, you have to live with yourself in the dead of night.
February 25, 2018
HYSTERICAL POV ON GUNS
Share with an American friend and let comedy destroy stupidity.
Posted by Democratic Socialists on Monday, October 2, 2017
February 18, 2018
YEAR OF THE FILM FESTIVALS
I HAVE BEEN invited to three film festivals this year. Perhaps the best FLORIDA film fests are The Sunscreen Film Festival in Saint Petersburgh & The Gasparillo Film Festival in Tampa, Florida. I have been a regular at Sunscreen for multiple years, but this will be my first Meet & Greet at Gasparillo. Maybe fans can come out and say hello.
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