AUTHOR'S NOTES
AH, THOSE GOOD OLD 70's TOYS!
The Alien Movie Viewer requires no batteries. That's how they get the kid to look into the viewfinder while his mouth hangs open. The hatchling facehugger is nesting inside the hollow movie cartridge. What will the Alien franchise think of next?
AUTHOR'S NOTE
I do most of my writing in my head. Come to think of it, I do most of my thinking in my head.
I STARTED XENOMAN WHEN I WAS 27ish...
and finished it when I was 47ish. I wrote about 300-500 pages of plot and notes regarding the black box, Intellegella, and various characters, and put it down because I couldn't get at the plot. After going through a bunch of life, I realized that if I didn't finish Xenoman, it would always bother me, especially if someone else wrote roughly the same novel as well as I could. On top of that, what I wrote previously wasn't working. I ended up using about 5% of the old stuff and gutted the rest.
XENOMAN IS A CONFUSING NOVEL
Its a mash of Groundhog Day/Nietzsche's eternal recurrence, manipulated by an alien race. The last page of the novel is the first page of the novel. What the disappearing wrist tattoos indicate is that Xeno and Trianne are stuck in a virtual time-slice loop, that may alter slightly the next time around. Hope that helps any fans floating around out there...
AND SO...
I wrote the speed notes to clarify what the hell I was talking about... and I'm working on a trilogy (wackology) that travels through virtual realities to explain what was skimmed over or left open-ended in Xenoman. I sort of did that on purpose when I realized there may be more to this story than I had anticipated. Fiddling with a design for a graphic novel, calendar, something visual... For now, I'm sort of stuck in my own Graf Zeppelin.
XENOMAN & THE SPEED NOTES ARE FREE...
on Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view....
TAKING MY OWN ADVICE
There are things I don't like about Xenoman, and things that don't work as well as I had thought they would based on others' feedback. For my next novel, I look forward to omitting those mistakes and creating brand new ones. If I had to read Xenoman for a lit class, I'd probably just read the speed notes. That's what I did with several authors in college, and still do. So in a round about way, cheating myself was its own reward.
THE BEST ADVICE...
is old, short, boring, true, discounted on Amazon, or free at the library. Don't pay six thousand dollars to walk on coals.
WRITE THE "WHAT'S" YOU KNOW
It gets you closer to the conversation and action that matters. What you know is just and then this happens, and then this happens, and then this happens... If two people are married for five years and then split up after five years (the what) in one paragraph, the next question out of everyone's mouth is how it happened (the series of what's) and then why (the reasons for the what's) it happened.
COLUMBO AND SHAKESPEARE ARE THE SAME THING
We know what's going to happen. The reason we watch is because we want to know HOW it's going to happen. Use long battle sequences and distant planet Olive Garden romance passages as an excuse to pay off your subplots. Inquiring minds want to know. That's why I read the National Enquirer.
OMIT "DON'T GET ME WRONG" FROM YOUR VOCABULARY...
or any written correspondence. I think it's a millennial thing. When you say "don't get me wrong," what your really saying is that you don't think people should take you seriously. If you don't want people to take you seriously, how do you want to be taken?
OMIT "I JUST DO THIS FOR FUN" FROM YOUR VOCABULARY (even if you do)
When you say you do something for fun, it's like apologizing in advance. Hence, you deflate any unknown variable that may have served to your advantage had you said nothing. By saying nothing, you lose nothing if nothing works out, or you get to say "I meant to do that all along," which, if you reverse engineer what you did, may actually be true.
KNOWING THE RULES BEFORE YOU BREAK THEM...
is just another rule. The question is what do you want to do once breaking the rules gets old, stale, and your rebellion is just another rebellion?
A REAL LIFE TROPE I'M TIRED OF
Scientists in the news are always puzzled. I need to meet a scientist who isn't.
AND I STILL LISTEN TO DISCO!
Too bad there's no more clubs like Studio 54 to go with it.
