Jim Hodgson's Blog, page 12

See me at Atlanta Streets Alive, hanging around the Road Wrench Truck!

I’m teaming up with my friend Chris Orosco the bicycle wizard and his mobile bike shop, the Road Wrench, at Atlanta Streets Alive Highland Avenue September 27th.

If you’re not familiar with the Road Wrench shop, it’s basically a food truck but with a bike shop inside instead of a restaurant. Here’s his site: http://www.roadwrenchatl.com/

On September 27th from 2-6PM, Atlanta Bicycle Coalition will put on Atlanta Streets Alive. Here’s the site about the event: http://www.atlantastreetsalive.com/2015-routes/highland-september-27/

As I say, I’m going to be there at the Road Wrench truck, diagnosing problems with your bike (the seat’s too low) and your riding style (get those knees in). I’ll also have Hearts Racing coupons for sale and signing.

What’s a Hearts Racing coupon you ask? It’s this:

Come hang.

Related show



Artist:
Jim Hodgson


Date:
09/27/15


Time:
5:00pm



Venue:
Snyder Cycles Road Wrench Truck



City:
Atlanta


Country:
United States



Admission:
Free



Age restrictions:
All Ages







Notes:
At Atlanta Streets Alive


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“Ten Thousand Gods” is coming

Though Hearts Racing just released two weeks ago, it’s been done for months now, as far as my work on it has been concerned. During that time I’ve been working on my next project, Ten Thousand Gods, or 10K Gods for short.

10K Gods will be released as a serial, which means it will be split up into parts rather than one whole book. But it won’t just be a great honkin’ story that’s been divided up. I am writing it as a series of six episodes that go together to form a whole.

That might seem like a minor distinction, and if it does, please forgive me some aggrandizement of my art. The upshot it it will be nicer to read each episode.

The Premise

I’ve had the idea for this project in my mind for a long time and it feels good to finally be getting it out. Here it is:

The gods and goddesses of scripture return to Earth during an event known as the Parousia, but not just the gods of any one religion; gods of every religion. More than that, though, the Parousia doesn’t limit itself just to religions, but to things people do religiously. There’s a god of football, of soccer, and of bowling. There’s a god of money, and, much to everyone’s surprise, a god of Atheism. Even Jesus walks the Earth.

Phineas Sealby is a deity beat reporter for the Atlanta Record, keeping tabs on the doings of all these ten thousand (or so) gods, who settle into a niche more or less like celebrities.

There’s just one problem: a god is missing. Some call him Lucifer, some call him the Lord of Lies, but he has never surfaced. Events in Phineas’s life send him on a quest through Hell itself to find and obtain an interview from the missing god Satan.

Will Phineas succeed? Will he be chucked into a lake of fire like so much metal slag? We’re going to find out in Ten Thousand Gods.

This project is going to have it all: adventure, romance, dick jokes, and battles with monsters of every description. I can’t wait for you to read it.

Where it Stands

Here’s where I stand with it:

– I’m about 2/3 done with the writing.

– Garrett Marco, excellent editor of Hearts Racing, has agreed to handle editing

– Bear Roberts, my friend and amazing artist out of NC will handle the artwork.

Each episode will end up being around 1/3 the size of Hearts Racing or Dangerous Dan, which means the whole project will be twice as long as I’ve ever written.

I should be done with principal writing by the end of August, at which point it’ll be a matter of getting time in Garrett’s busy schedule to get the thing edited. Hopefully we’ll be releasing episode one around Halloween, but it’s a bit far out to say at this point.

The good news is that we won’t release a single word until the whole thing is done so anyone who chooses to come along on this ride with us will be treated to the full arc of the story.

I can’t wait, and I hope I can convince you all to join me.

Hearts Racing

I met an acquisitions editor who said he’d consider a humorous romance novel. That sounded like an opportunity to me, but I wanted to make sure he was really down for some comedy. I wrote the weirdest pitch I could think of: France overthrows the US, and a pro cyclist falls in love with a CrossFit instructor.

To my surprise, he called my bluff and asked for three chapters. I wrote the craziest three chapters I could think of, and he called my bluff on that one too.

Six months later, here it is all edited and up for sale on Amazon.

Here’s the official blurb:

Riding in a near-future America languishing under the oppressive jackboot of the conquering French, Buck Heart is a professional cyclist on the New Lyon (formally Atlanta) team. Onward for the glory of New France, he charges. Losing is not an option.

Left shoulder injuries force him to seek the training expertise of CrossFit instructor Faith Racing; his career and his life are crashing over the handlebars.

Instructor Faith has her own troubles. Concerns include her brother’s incarceration for stealing wine and a forced wedding to the soon-to-be mayor of New Lyon. Kindness is not her fiancé’s forte, but Faith must go through with the marriage to stay her brother’s execution.

In secret, though, Buck and Faith work with cyclists from Miami, as well as their mysterious benefactor from Mexico, as they compete against Buck’s former team and their own growing desires for one another in order to save Faith’s brother and Buck’s career.

New France may stand; New France may fall. Get on the team and hear their cry: “Vamonos!”

This is my first published novel and I’m very pleased with it. I hope you like it.

Get it here on Amazon, and please leave a review!

Hearts Racing Cover Art is Here

I’m pleased to announce that the world’s only cycling/CrossFit romance novel is not only complete, but has a cover art image. It was a challenging process. I’m lucky in that Cheryl, who handles cover art for the book’s publisher, is very patient and capable. I appreciate her help a lot.

Also complete is the book’s front matter/blurb. Here’s the text of the blurb:

Riding in a near-future America languishing under the oppressive jackboot of the conquering French, Buck Heart is a professional cyclist on the New Lyon (formally Atlanta) team. Onward for the glory of New France, he charges. Losing is not an option.

Left shoulder injuries force him to seek the training expertise of CrossFit instructor Faith Racing; his career and his life are crashing over the handlebars.

Instructor Faith has her own troubles. Concerns include her brother’s incarceration for stealing wine and a forced wedding to the soon-to-be mayor of New Lyon. Kindness is not her fiancé’s forte, but Faith must go through with the marriage to stay her brother’s execution.

In secret, though, Buck and Faith work with cyclists from Miami, as well as their mysterious benefactor from Mexico, as they compete against Buck’s former team and their own growing desires for one another in order to save Faith’s brother and Buck’s career.

New France may stand; New France may fall. Get on the team and hear their cry: “Vamonos!”

I should have information on pre sales soon, and I’ll be pushing hard to get as many of those as I can, so get ready to get romantic.

Who will win the internet?

There’s an interesting struggle currently between the users of the internet and the providers of it. The faceless populace wants to remain not only anonymous but empowered to say whatever it wants, even if what it wants to say is offensive. The higher ups want there to be some limits on how nasty, and how anonymous, a person can be.

After all, it could be troublesome to sell ad space to a major corporation if that ad space might be next to a drawing of a smiling penis with a smaller penis sprouting from its butt.

Is anyone anonymous?

It seems to me that online anonymity is a joke anyway. The very first thing that happens when you run afoul of the internet horde is that they figure out who you are, where you work, and how best to frighten you. That means death threats for you and your kids, not to mention your face plastered over swastikas, porn, or even swastika porn.

I recommend anyone interested in this topic read Jon Ronson’s “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed.”

As I write this, Reddit’s CEO Ellen Pao is getting this treatment for banning a subsection (/r/fatpeoplehate) which was dedicated to shaming overweight people. The subsection is gone, but dozens, possibly hundreds, have sprung up in its place.

Xenophobic Slurs

I ran afoul a while back of a group of Atlanta people who wanted to save a radio station that wasn’t in any danger of going away. As punishment for posting some jokes about the situation, members of that movement flooded my inbox, facebook, and web site with every homophobic slur they could think of, which wasn’t that many.

For all that talk about my homosexuality, not one asked me out for dinner or drinks. Some dedication.

But that’s where we’re at with public discourse right now. There is no reasoning with anyone. For all the internet’s bemoaning of Fox News pundits shouting down anyone they disagree with, it’s exactly what the internet will do if it decides you’re wrong.

Things cannot go on as they are. It shouldn’t be okay to publicly shame anyone. But it also shouldn’t be okay to, for instance, throttle Netflix traffic to hold them hostage for more money.

So, as usual with humans, everyone’s kind of rightish wrong. And there are no clicks for the reasonable.

Wired Picking on “Absurd Self-Published E-Books”

There aren’t enough people who use editors. As a result, there are a lot of unedited wild texts out there. These stories roam the landscape like mutated household pets who have been fused simultaneously with deep-seated emotional problems and power tools. Even if you want to love them, they’ll probably do something awful to you as thanks.

But is it really okay to get your clicks by shitting on those mutants? I would have thought Wired would be above such, but I would have been wrong. Jason Kehe has a blog on Wired in which he invites us to get our jollies by laughing at some authors.

The book Mr. Kehe picked to pick on.

He writes:

Is it fair to judge e-books by their terrible covers, or does genius lurk beneath? For the foreseeable future, I’ll regularly be downloading and reviewing a selection of the most eye-catching disasters. Will we find the next Wool, or just the next 50 Shades of Grey? ONLY TIME WILL TELL.

On the one hand, if you publish a book by any means, you are inviting people to read and interpret your work however they see fit to do so. Mr. Kehe’s within his rights, but this feels a little like a NYC mayor visiting a small town’s council meeting and mocking them for their population.

Would Rolling Stone publish a column in which they select garage musicians’ first albums and pick them apart song by song? I don’t think so. Rolling Stone has had its troubles, certainly, but surely defecating on new artists is beneath them.

Granted, some of these books need work. But we all need work. Writing, like any art form, improves when we’re inclusive. Trading easy jokes for pageviews is disappointing, and I would have thought the magazine “where tomorrow is realized,” might be a little more sensitive to that.

JordanCon Wrap Up

Conventions are a lot of fun. I get to meet readers. I get to talk about my work. Best of all, I get to meet other writers and share jokes about typefaces that would cause any reasonable human’s heart to seize as a desperate bid to end the boredom.

Such was the fun I had this weekend at JordanCon, a conference dedicated to Robert Jordan and his Wheel of Time series. The series, incidentally, was presciently named by Jordan, given that its completion transcended any previous notion of time. Not even Boston’s Big Dig took as long to complete.

Fun fact: Just like the Wheel of Time, Boston contracted author Brandon Sanderson to wrap it up.

Another fun fact: The conference hotel’s staff are not strong French speakers, but might be “Dumb & Dumber” fans which is often better.

The hotel’s staff are not strong French speakers.

Length aside, the Wheel of Time describes a captivating world, and I was pleased to see people cosplaying as characters from it. On Friday I joined fellow authors Anthony Taylor and Blue Cole in reading a couple of submissions from attendees. I offered critiques that I hope those writers found helpful. Their writing was already pretty good, though, I must say.

On Saturday I joined Jeremy Hicks at the author tables and attempted to sell my books by telling people not to read them. I’ve been experimenting with reverse psychology. Results inconclusive, but I did get a weird look from Mr. Hicks for free.

The effects of my sales technique are clearly visible here.

Sunday began with a kaffeeklatsch, again with Messrs. Taylor and Hicks, during which I brought up Hard of Hearing Vader and demanded that everyone watch it at once. They agreed with the proviso that I stop shouting about it.

If you haven’t seen Hard of Hearing Vader, you should. It’s by Jon Friedman and it’s the best. SERIOUSLY, IT’S AMAZING. Oops. Shouting again.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3lScCvnkEQ

 

“God, that was amazing,” you’re thinking. “I wonder if there’s a twitter account of that.” Yep: @DeafVader. And creator Jon Friedman has one too: @friedmanjon.

Sunday and the conference wrapped up with a panel with Saladin Ahmed who has been nominated for a Hugo award. I believe that nomination required some sort of hand-to-hand combat or a bike race on BMX bikes. Maybe both. I’m not clear on how it works, exactly, but he’s a nice guy and he makes good books.

Thanks so much to Jordancon for having me. I hope they’ll have me back next year!

I’ll be at JordanCon This Weekend April 17-19

I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be appearing at Jordancon this weekend, April 17-19! As a formerly ardent reader of the Wheel of Time series, I hope there are some cool costumes. I mean, don’t cut your arm off or anything, but, you know.

Here’s some Jordancon info:

JordanCon is a fantasy literature convention founded in honor of the late author, Robert Jordan. Jordan was the author of the best-selling The Wheel of Time series. JordanCon features eight tracks of simultaneous programming, a Dealers’ Hall, gaming, an Art Show featuring original art by a variety of artists, and charity events benefiting the Mayo Clinic and other charities.

My Schedule

Come see me doing things at these times! UPDATE: It appears these times are still in flux with JordanCon schedulers. Watch Twitter for updates.

Friday April 17th


8:30PM
Writer’s Workshop
Anthony taylor, Blue Cole and I will help develop 1000 word pieces submitted by conference attendees.


Saturday April 18th


11:30AM
Turning Feedback into Useful Critique
Diana M. Pho, Saladin Ahmed, Anthony Taylor, and I will do paneling on how to deal with feedback (hysterical temper tantrums).


Sunday April 19th


11:30AM
Kaffeklatsch
Anthony Taylor and I will hang out, drink coffee, and perform feats of strength. Enormous coffee intake may be considered one of said feats.


1:00PM
From Cutout to Person
Discussion on how to flesh out those flat characters without just making them a jumble of quirks with Blue Cole, Anthony Taylor and myself


2:30PM
Local Author Spotlight
Getting local with myself, James R. Tuck, A. R. Cook, and Blue Cole.

I’ll also sign books in accordance with my usual signing policy: any book, any name, with or without your consent/knowledge.

Come on by and check it out if you’re in town. Here’s registration information: http://www.jordancon.org/category/blog-tags/registration-faq

Related show



Artist:
Jim Hodgson


Date:
04/17/15 - 04/19/15



Venue:
Jordancon at Perimeter Hilton



City:
Atlanta , GA


Country:
United States





Register.



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Buy “Dangerous Dan” at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center

The fine folks at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center have been exceedingly kind to me, and I’m proud to announce that they asked for a couple of copies of Dangerous Dan which are, as you can see in the photo above, displayed prominently next to a notepad reading “Important Bullshit.”

Yes! A notepad. A notepad which may or may not have been arranged artfully by Pratfall Tramps exhibition curator Rachel Reese.

…except that I know it was her because she claimed it.

Important bullshit indeed!

Stop by the ACAC and grab yourself a copy of the greatest humorous science fiction novel ever to be arranged exactly as mine is arranged on that very same shelf for the period of time it was so arranged.

MidSouthCon 33 Wrap Up

Memphis reminds me a lot of my home town of Montgomery, AL. Both are relatively flat, have a river running through down town, and possess that big-small-town feel. Be kind to whomever you meet. You’ll see them again shortly. With luck, they’ll bring fried chicken.

I had the pleasure of being a temporary Memphian — or as I have proposed they re-brand themselves, “Mempheasant” — this weekend for MidSouthCon 33. I started the weekend by sitting in on the Nation of Jake radio show, during which Jake discovered and exploited my complete ignorance of Mr. Mom plot details, damn his eyes.

Once at the convention, I spoke at a panel on time travel, worm holes, and other such fantastical astrophysical whatnots. The panel seemed to agree that we like portals better than wormholes since the latter’s tidal forces are likely to spaghettify you as you approach. What’s the point of traveling somewhere if you’re a one-atom-wide string when you get there? Even worse than air travel.

I met fellow writer Michael D’Ambrosio (Fracturedtime.com) and convention toastmaster Frank Tuttle (franktuttle.com) on that panel, and both turned out to be good friends to have. I learned a lot about being a good panelist and con attendee from those two.

Here I am, paneling alongside Mr. Tuttle, Ben Herr, and S.H. Roddey on the Humor in Writing panel.

Photo: Sean Grigsby

On Saturday, I had a slot to hawk my books on Pro Row, and the great fortune to be sat next to Kim Smith. After a few minutes chatting to Kim, very kind convention attendee appeared and offered to buy a copy of Dangerous Dan, even though I had no signage, credit card machine, or even change for a $20. Luckily, Kim had the latter and saved the sale. Thank you, Kim!

That evening I traveled into Memphis to walk around Beale Street a bit. I got to see W.C. Handey’s house, then ate some of Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken. Since I was alone and the restaurant was busy, I just sat outside on a big plastic pipe to eat my chicken, which was okay since I had a cold beer too.

A gentleman asked me what I, my chicken, and my cold beer were doing on the pipe and I explained that I was traveling. Where from? Atlanta. He nodded, satisfied. I must have been unwittingly fulfilling some peculiar habit of fried chicken gobbling Atlantans.

On Sunday, I spoke at a few more panels, concluding with a Dark & Stormy, which is an improv game in which a story is made up using written audience suggestions. I thought my standup comedy experience would serve me well. I ended up resorting to puns, which elicited many groans. The crowd turned on me when I refused to read one of the later jokes, which was revolting and without merit. “Read it!” they yelled. I read it. Silence.

I warned you guys.

I was sad to leave on Sunday, but missing Sweetie and home too. Unfortunately for me, a rain cloud parked itself over my car and followed me for hundreds of miles, pelting me with rain as it went. I took screenshots to prove it.

All in all, it was a great weekend, and I learned a lot. I hope they’ll have me back next year.

Next stop: JordanCon in April!