I am going to be a published author

Late last week, Pat reminded me about this project called 48 Hour Longshot Magazine (they got sued by the TV show, don’t ask). The concept is simple: create a magazine from start to finish in 48 hours. Post a theme, all content is due 24 hours later, and then 24 hours after that, a print on demand magazine is posted for sale.

This time around, the theme was Comeback.

Here’s what they said about it.

Interpret it how you want. After all, comebacks are morally neutral. Disgraced politicians, the Taliban, and Whooping Cough have all come back. But beautiful babies have too, their little kumquat hearts restarting just in time.

You can come back from anything, even death.  This is a hilobrow concept. Sports teams stage comebacks. Skirts stage comebacks. Ideas stage comebacks. Even Lassie. Lassie always comes back home again. It is all theater, in a way, with very specific requirements. The preconditions are forever the same: you have to lose before you can win; it has to vanish before it can return; you must have faith.

Maybe some comebacks don’t seem so serious to you. What is significant about a basketball team coming back from 16 points down in the fourth quarter to win? It reminds us to hope. What is meaingful about the fashionability of the length of a skirt? It’s in the mechanics. Inch by inch, we get to witness change. It may seem like you’re analyzing hem lines, but they are just a stripped down and convenient model for how the world happens.

And there’s another definition, too. (Your mama probably knows it.) Maybe one time, someone said something to you that was real mean, and as you stood there, stinging, the most perfect retort rose into your brain and flew out of your mouth. It landed flush, and your opponent was staggered. You walked away proud, even though you don’t like violence. There are those comebacks, too.

About the only thing that unites all these things is that the best comeback is the least statistically probable. Comebacks are a reminder that weird stuff happens in the world! Norms are made to be deviated from.

So what did I do with that?

The nerdiest fucking thing possible. I wrote about game design and video games. Specifically about fungibility. A term that refers to how easy it is in a game to jump from last place to first, or fall from first to last. A metric of flexibility, sort of. I started writing Friday night, conked out around 1 or 2, woke up and finished the bit, shipping it off to Longshot at around 11am local time.

At about 11:10 local time I decided what I’d written was probably just a nerd game theory wankery and went on with my weekend.

But, low and behold, about 28 hours later, guess who’s name crawled up on the list of accepted submissions.

What? No. Mine, you assholes.

And here I am on page 24 of Longshot Magazine, #1.

I’m curious to see what they’ve done with my bit, because it looks like they’ve copy edited it down by about 300 words. And that’s probably a good thing.

So, yeah. There you go. My first published work.

If you want to buy it (which all of you should, the project looks awesome, I’m probably the low point of the whole thing), you can find it here.

I know a lot of you are printheads. This is the sort of project you should be looking at. Using new media to make relevant and interesting old media.

Me Right Now

The sky is so blue outside. And for the first time in as long as I can remember, it isn’t skin searingly hot.

We are the Reason Scott Pilgrim Failed

22 of us, in custom-made action hero t-shirts, went to see The Expendables this weekend.

I’m sorry, moving going audience, we’re the reason you can’t have nice things.

FastFiction – The Green Docket

Title: The Green Docket
Word: Juice

Submitted by Shane.

With this, I wanted to play with structural things. Dialog, bizarre formatting, etc. And I’ve been pushing hard on a bunch of new things that I needed a break from. FastFictions are perfect for that.

200 words about coming to terms with what you’ve done:

“This’ll never work, you know. Some one will catch on. It’s gotten to big, there are too many people involved. Secrets like this don’t keep.”

Here we go again.

“Oh will you shut up? You worry like a fucking fourteen year old girl. Boo-hoo, will he ever call me? Boo-hoo, will people find out what we’re doing? Of course they will! And so long as we hold our shit together – you hold your shit together – we’ll be fine, be protected, when it all comes out.”

I’m almost to my breaking point.

“We promised them free energy! Green energy! And we lied through our teeth, smiling like snake oil salesmen when we took their money.”

He never had the backbone for what we’re doing.

“So long as we keep giving them the juice, they aren’t going to give a damn where it comes from. And you know it. People are greedy. Greedy and selfish. Otherwise there wouldn’t be a Walmart in every town in America. ”

Was too much of a hero.

“I just wanted to change the world. Make it better.”

Too much of a dreamer.

“Hey. You did.”

Need to remember to make it look like an accident.

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Potluck Pizzas

The Great and Secret Thing 2.0 is now live.

Been wondering what’s going on with my other site, The Great and Secret Thing?

We’ve been busy rebuilding it from the ground up to make it easier for the user to find content on, and then vote on what they like best. In a few weeks we’ll be rolling out new user tools for anyone what wants to contribute to the site.

Here’s part of what I said about the new design:

The redesign itself was done by Laurel Amatangelo, and coded by me off of the WP-NewsMag theme. The last design of the site was about old libraries, hidden tomes, and secrets. This one is about a dusty, traveled letter, read, reread and passed through many hands. We’re still The Great and Secret Thing, but we’re no longer gnostic in our secrets. Now it is all about sharing each of our secret talents with the world.

Hope you all like the new site, I know I do.

Oh, and go vote for some stuff.

DAMAGE, Limited

You have men like Richards, Stark and Pym, but you haven’t cured AIDS and no one is living on Mars. That is more villainous than anything I can think of.

Working on a comic idea that centers around a reformed child genius super villain trying to make the world a better place by actively applying the talents of super villains in a way that will get them to personally invest in the betterment of mankind. Think THUNDERBOLTS, but instead of them using their powers for combat, they use their power for civic improvement. The Living Laser powers the entire eastern seaboard. Graviton closes the mouth of an oil spill. Doctor Goodwrench saves the American auto industry. Things like this, the useful application of super human power. All of it juxtaposed against a military-industrial complex that fears him, super heroes that don’t trust him, and personal skeletons that refuse to keep themselves in the closet.

Sort of an Ex Machina for the 616 Marvel Universe.

MAGICTOWN Mondays

Trying something new here. I didn’t have time to get a chapter out this week, but instead of filling the space with something completely unrelated, I’m putting up a short character-centric fiction piece. Hopefully, the first in what will ultimately be a series, each focusing on a different character in the book.

In my life before this, I was the stuff of nightmares. Skulking in shadows and sewers, draining the life from innocent people. It was the only thing that made the feeling go away. It didn’t kill them, though. Oh, no, it did something worse.

Walkers are worse than death. Death only kills once. Walkers keep killing.

It is up at The Great and Secret Thing.

MAGICTOWN Mondays

New week, new blinking out of crusted eyes and slapping blindly for that damned alarm, new countdown to the weekend. And with all of that comes a new MAGICTOWN.

“Noooooooo!” The high pitched wail stops David and Mary in their tracks. A crash of metal against concrete follows immediately after. A small child, in a green jumper dress sprints out from the open garage bay, barreling down the street, oblivious to the pair in her way.

Over at The Great and Secret Thing, my lovelies.

Storyteller

There’s this half ass pretender’s spectacle called writing, that I sometimes participate in. What I do in it is akin to a hawker trying to convince you his work is more than adequate, spectacular even, than real skill at the craft. It is a song and dance game, that I lie to most everyone most every day about.

But you can’t scam a scammer. And there is always a point of reckoning. A book that makes you throw it across the room because the bits and bobs of it are better than anything you could ever hope to put down. The ebb and flow of it, the tide of drama at the very heart of the thing is something that you could never hope to grasp in your hands, let along the feeble matter of your brain.

And this is where I stand. I seek to assure that by sheer volume of production, I am something to be worth counting, but I am not. One would almost assuredly guess that there is jealousy in the genesis of these statements, but there is not. For how could one be jealous of the thing that inspires you to aspire to such chicanery.

The truth is, I am not a writer. They are made of the stuff that I am not. They are smarter and defter and ephemeral beyond what I am. They traffic in the stuff of dreams, and I am not a party to their convocations.

Yet…I am. I feel small and insignificant in their wake, but not silenced or stilled. I have still much to tell, buy maybe not say well.

I may never be a writer. But I will always be a storyteller.

MAGICTOWN Mondays

2 weeks in a row. Still rusty, but producing again is good.

Up at The Great and Secret Thing.

“I know. But that’s why you have to.” He holds her hand and brings her along side of him. David looks her in the eyes for a moment before speaking. “You need to know the value of a thing if you’re going to take it away from some one. Or rather, in this case, three some ones.”

The Pineapple Primary

A few years ago I started writing something called THE PINEAPPLE PRIMARY. It was going to be a one and done graphic novella about the most violent election in United States history. There was an artist lined up, my research was done, and I was making great progress. I sent the first 18 pages off to the artist and wrapped up the rest of the book in a week.

It was about this time the artist disappeared into some kind of alternate dimension I’m going to call “New York Theatre”. I think I’ve mentioned my trouble keeping artists. They mainly get eaten by wild boars and I have to shelve whatever project I was working on. *cough* *cough*

But, I guess the stars weren’t right because a dying hard drive took the first complete draft along with it. The sad part is I didn’t even realize it for close to 6 months because I didn’t think about the project. Then, for whatever reason, I went looking for it and realized that it was literally the only thing I didn’t have backed up. Luckily, I had the first 18 pages I’d sent out, plus my script notes for the whole thing, which were essentially all of the words, but without the paneling. I shrugged, left it there and figured that if I ever needed it, I could come back and rewrite it.

Well, that moment of need came around about two weeks ago. I was talking to an artist friend of mine, asked him if he wanted to draw something, he said sure, and I said I’ll send you a script on Tuesday. The girlfriend went with some friends down to NOLA, and I went to work (re)finishing THE PINEAPPLE PRIMARY.

At this point, the script is in what I’m referring to as a “production draft” state. I haven’t gone through with a fine toothed comb and picked out all the typos and confused grammatical bits. I haven’t even gone through and checked my pages to see which is a facing page and which isn’t. The bottom line is that I’ve got something that is good enough for the artist to start working from, but not the finished product.

Here’s where you come in, Internet. A common intermediary step in writing is the workshop. I give something to you, you tell me what you thought of it. The more feedback I get, the better I can edit.

And there’s absolutely no one I trust more than the fervid, raving mass that is the Internet superconsciousness. Which really says a lot about me, doesn’t it?

So, here is the production draft of THE PINEAPPLE PRIMARY, in .rtf form.

Read it, and let me know what you think. You can post your thoughts in the comments, or you can email me at brainreleasevalve [at] gmail [dot] com.

Thanks in advance to anyone who reads it.

The Delta Silt Juried Graphic Anthology

Don’t get hung up on the name. I came up with it in two seconds. But, do get hung up on the idea behind it.

I’ve always been of the opinion that the interesting bits in the Midsouth are buried under the same kind of mud that you’d find in a lake. Things fall to the bottom, and the moving water brings in silt. Stop moving, even for just a little bit, and you’ll get covered up, buried in muck. But, all you have to do to find something interesting is drag your fingers through the mud. I think there are dozens of creative people out there that just need a hand to come along and pull them out of the mud to produce something great.

Which is where the idea for a juried anthology comes in. Originally, juried shows were designed to give no-bodies the chance to compete along artistic greats. Was your stuff better? Then you were going to win, regardless of what your name or prestige was. Now imagine this for comics. A free to enter, categorically organized contest. Winner takes all (well, all the bragging rights), and you print the best of the show as a POD book, maybe even fund it with a Jumpstarter project.

To top the whole thing off, if your recoup costs, donate any profits to something like the Comic Book Legal Defense fund, or the charity that helps people in the comic industry get health insurance (the name escapes me at the moment, and Google is being stingy).

Dropping this idea here as a reminder to myself to bring it up to some friend of mine who might be able to make this happen.

MAGICTOWN Mondays

You have no idea how good it feels to be back in the saddle.

David turns around to look at Mary. Her eyes are on the far shore of the river – the Magictown docks. She’d changed out of her overalls and tank top, and washed up a bit before they left. Now she wore a leather vest, matching boots, a loose linen blouse and a pair of patched jeans. With the grime gone, and in the first light of morning, David can see bits of the girl he once loved.

…..

The boat banks hard, and the engine cuts out, David has to work to keep from falling out of the boat all together. Before he’s even fully settled, she’s on him. Her hand stops barely an inch from his face. The heat rolls off of it, evaporating the water in David’s eyes, forcing him to blink repeatedly. She curls her outstretched fingers toward his face and he can feel his skin tighten, tanning like leather from the heat.

Oh, lover’s spat. New chapters will be on The Great and Secret Thing, like always. Ok, not always, but now that I’m done moving and have finally settled back in, they should be regular again.

FastFiction – Nature’s Only Son

Title: Nature’s Only Son
Word: Embrace

Submission by Laurel.

200 words about squaring things before the end:

Alphonse smelled worse in death than he did in life. Which made the stink coming off of his corpse the stuff of pungent legends.

In hindsight, Dale knew that should’ve thought about his companion’s lack of personal hygiene before he shot the man in the head. But the moment between them was heated and there wasn’t a whole lot of time to think. Coughing, he straightened up a bit. There was the taste of blood at the back of his tongue.

“Lookit all them stars, Alphonse. Sure are pretty.” Dale lingered for a moment longer before he brought his eyes down to Alphonse’s body. He had trouble focusing.

“Now look, I know things were said that neither you or I can take back. Can’t take them back, nor the bullets that came after them. You shot me, I shot you. Let’s leave it at that. End of story. When we get to where ever we’re goin’, up above, or more likely, down below, you and I embrace and call it evens. No sense draggin’ this crap into the hereafter, is there?

I’m gonna take your silence as a polite acceptance of my offer, Alphonse.”

Overhead, the stars continued to wheel.

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I’m out the rest of the week.

So here’s a pretty picture I took, and I’ll see you all on Monday.

055/365

Don’t fuck or kill anything you wouldn’t admit to, my lovelies.

Why You Should Follow Me On Twitter

The hollow pock, pock, pock of impossibly large penises being slammed into distended, leathery vaginas. This is the sound of modern porn. about 1 hour ago

-Me

FastFiction: Rampaging Rodents of Fear

Have I ever told you that the story of the Pied Piper scares the crap out of me? It does. It’s a combination of things that does it. Children being used as collateral for their parent’s busted deals, a force that controls people, and the fact that you never know what the hell happens to the kids.

Oh, and then there’s that nagging little bit of fact to the story. The Hamelin town record begins with the line “10 years after the children left.”

Title: Rampaging Rodents of Fear
Word: Innocence

Submission by Rikki.

200 words about a return of a sinister force:

In the deepest parts of the Hollow Under the Hill, his were the only footfalls. The halls were empty without his children. They’d been sent up and out into the world of Men, starting the cycle over again.

Settling down at his sewing table, he watched the fire in the great stone hearth cast dancing shadows around the chamber. The shadows reminded of how the children had danced all those years ago. Danced behind as he’d played, danced out of the small hamlet, danced down into the Hollow Under the Hill, never ceasing, even when the hill closed shut behind him.

Each child bought him a year of life as it had danced away its innocence.Their feet changing from things used to walk to things used to scurry. The final one of that last batch only succumbing to his magic a few weeks ago.

He turned his attention back to his sewing. Fashions had changed since he’d last walked the world. And it would not do for him to not look his best.

After all, it had been such a very, very long time since he’d played his pipes for the children. And oh how Hamelin town had grown.

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Love like a Book

I once told my girlfriend that my love for her was perfect like a book.

She scrunched up her face in a way that said without words that I’d better explain fast or expect to be kicked off the couch.

So, I’m going to explain why a book is perfect.

A book is a vessel for ideas. It holds onto those ideas so that we might transfer them into us. But because a book is perfect, you can transfer those ideas an unlimited number of times. There is no limit, no half-life, no draining battery. So long as you can see the marks on the pages, the book can give over its held treasure. A treasure that holds the greatest power in the world – the power to change a mind.

A book is unpretentious in its shape and form, but not without craft and presentation. The choice of paper and font accentuate the sensation and mood. The art on the cover catches your eye and gives you a first impression. But, as the old adage goes, you can’t judge a book by its cover. And soon enough, all of the dressings and finery are smeared away and become inconsequential to the ideas held within.

A book also changes with you. It comes to you as an unremarkable copy. But then something amazing happens: it slowly becomes yours. The pages absorb the smell of orange spice from packet of tea in your bag or the smell of clove cigarettes from the porch of your favorite coffee shop. The pages yellow from being left out in the sun from that time you fell asleep in the park. The very act of reading that book, of turning the pages and pressing the oils from your hand onto those virgin pages, makes it unique to you. It is these changes that endear it to you, and makes something that was mass produced into something to be treasured.

A book is perfect because it is simple, and in its simplicity it holds beauty and power and ideas.

My love for her is like a book.

FastFiction – Her Green Necklace

Continuing with this whole “writing outside of what I’m comfortable with” thing, I did this one sexier than I’ve written anything before.

This time, it’s all about the senses.

Title: Her Green Necklace
Word: Fragility

200 words about the true pleasures in life:

The air had a taste that night. Even here in The Bund, where street vendors were forbidden, it proudly trespassed. The city’s flavors – British, French, Indian, Nipponese, Russian, Jewish and Chinese – conspired with the humid nighttime air to spread across all of Shanghai.

He relished in it, and in the plunging neckline of his companion’s silk evening gown.

“It’s jade.”

She gestured to the string of small green pearl-like stones that wrapped around her slender neck and slipped down, stopping just short of the rise of her breasts.

“I must confess, that was not what was holding my attention.”

She laughed and pulled him closer to her. “I know,” she whispered in his ear. Her breath was far sweeter than the savory that hung in the air.

Slowing as they passed the North China Daily News Building. The sound of working presses was audible from the street. A banner, proclaiming WAR, shouted out from the window.

“Don’t.”

She pulled at his sleeve.

“The fragility of the world is inescapable. Worrying just makes you bitter. All that should worry you is how my dress looks on your floor.”

Now he pulled at her.

“Keep the necklace on.”

And she did.

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