Wednesday, December 30, 2009

WHO DO I BLAME???

Why didn't anyone ever tell me about Joe Lansdale? I'm reading "Lost Echoes" and it is the most refreshingly offensive thing I've read in weeks!

Somebody's responsible for this minor oversight and, rest assured, when I found out who you are, heads will roll! And if Lansdale writes the story, there will be several references to drinking, female genitalia and cuddly serial killers...

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Another Interview.

Turnarount being fair play and all that, this time I get to sit in the hot seat and wiggle my hot crossed buns around as John Fitch V asks me questions and I attempt to answer them.

http://johnfitchv.livejournal.com/

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

INTERVIEW WITH JOHN FITCH V

John Fitch V is a self-published author of five novels. His latest, "Turning Back the Clock," could best be described as a sports fan's time travel story. In real life, his name is Sean Sweeney and he is a sports writer, which lends even more authenticity to his latest book.

The following is an interview I conducted with him via Facebook:


ME: Have you always written fiction?

JFV: No, I haven't. I started my writing career back in 1993 as a freelance sports writer while still in high school. I branched out into fiction in 2003, and it's been all downhill from here.
from there

ME: Was fiction something you always wanted to do?

JFV: I'm still writing sports; that's the so-called "real job." And yeah, I've always wanted to write fiction. I've always been a storyteller, someone who has wanted to inform, always wanted to entertain. Fiction-writing -- and, on the same level, sportswriting -- is a way to do all of those things at the same time.

ME:Speaking of sports writing, this novel "Turn Back the Clock" incorporates both of your disciplines, is this the first time that's happened

JFV:For me, definitely. I've always been a sports historian, so this was just another way of doing something I love. I actually learned things I didn't know while I was doing my research for it, too.
The novel begins with the events surrounding October 17, 2003: Game Seven of the American League Championship Series. My protagonist is watching the game, and after the game, his drunken thoughts lead him to the idea of building a time machine...Greg determines that if the Black Sox Scandal -- the throwing of the 1919 World Series by the White Sox -- didn't happen, that trade would be able to go through, and the "Yankee Dynasty" would be severely weakened.

ME:Anything involving a drunken protaganist is automatically a move in the right direction. Is that typical of your "heroes?"

JFV:Most of my heroes are stone-cold sober. The only reason why I had Greg intoxicated is because that is how I was on that night. The prologue to TBTC -- and essentially the entire book -- is a personal tale.

ME:Those are often our best work. I wrote Dreamers at Infinity's Core in six weeks and the characters are similar to me. Are these characters you plan to use again?

JFV:Oh no, this is a one-off tale. When I was originally plotting TBTC, I had a whole list of things that they could change with the time machine: The 1972 Olympic basketball final, the 1986 World Series, Celtics draftee Len Bias' death in 1986. But as the novel evolved and took shape, the story as it is came about, without need of the other things.

ME:Are all five of your novels self-published?

JFV: Yes, they are. I went with Lulu.com for the first four and even went with them again with a compilation of the first three novels, my Obloeron Trilogy. I went with Amazon.com's CreateSpace entity for TBTC, and I am in the process of re-releasing the others through CS for the sake of continuity.

ME:How are sales?

JFV: Unfortunately, without the backing of a big publishing house, sales are low. I'm hoping that will pick up. As for TBTC, I've sold a few copies and I'm hoping more come in as the holiday season approaches.

ME: What projects do you have in mind for the near future?

JFV:, I have the Obloeron prequels that will be coming out over the course of the next 16 months; I have a standalone sci-fi/space opera/Star Warsy novel that I will release in April. I'm currently working on a young adult zombie novel that is based in Tombstone, Arizona.
This spring, I'm going to start a novel that features a female protagonist; I haven't brainstormed that out, but I have ideas in my head about it.
I'm currently working on a young adult zombie novel that is based in Tombstone, Arizona.
This spring, I'm going to start a novel that features a female protagonist; I haven't brainstormed that out, but I have ideas in my head about it.


ME:You have quite a bit in the works.

JFV: , I have my next year planned out, and I plan on being VERY busy



You can learn more about this author by visiting his website:
http://www.johnfitchv.com/

Sunday, October 11, 2009

ONE LAME SEMINAR or, WHY I MISS THE NINETIES...

My public library is currently featuring an astronomical exhibit. I attended the opening night ceremony a few weeks ago which showcased middle school kids playing science fiction themed orchestral pieces and a self-described “history teller” doing a presentation on Galileo. While there, I glanced through the brochure and saw an upcoming seminar entitled, “Are UFO’s real?”

Let’s examine that question for a moment, shall we? The very phrasing of it is idiotic because it pre-supposes that there is no such thing as an unidentified object flying through the air. In other words, if you see something flying and don’t know what it is and nobody is aware of it being there it’s not real. Good to know. Call me crazy, but I might have called it “Are Flying Saucers Real?” since that’s what the average person thinks UFO means.

Still, the one-hour presentation was being run by a man who had been connected to the government-sponsored investigations into claims of saucer sightings in the 1970’s and 1980’s, so my interest was certainly piqued. On top of those credentials, he also worked at the local planetarium, a place I’ve been trying without success to locate for the better part of a decade. I figured at most it would be an interesting way to spend an hour on a Saturday afternoon.

I was wrong.

I was also about fifteen minutes late because I was watching the excellent film, “Frost vs. Nixon” and didn’t want to pause it and lose the flow. By the time I made it into the auditorium, the presenter was already deeply into his presentation…about the planets. Frowning, I sat near the back and took note of the tiny audience. There were lots of kids in the room, all of them fidgeting and making weird noises. To my right sat an intense black man with a handful of borrowed “Lost” DVD’s. On the other side sat another man providing his rapt attention and a second representative from the planetarium who interjected once in a while.

Within minutes, the presenter had displayed the planets of the solar system, and peppered the photos with obviously fake “UFO” pictures which he then pointed out were fake. His sad attempts at humor involved showing a planet or series of stars, then a fake flying saucer and cracking a half-assed one-liner meant to sound as if he’d spotted an alien spacecraft in the middle of the presentation to the sound of nervous chuckling.

I realize the presence of children automatically dumbs down the subject matter these days since the current crop of parents believes kids must be talked down to instead of made to understand adult concepts, so I wasn’t expecting greatness. I was, however, expecting a so-called man of science to be a little less condescending toward the subject of the possibility that at least a small percentage of unexplained sightings could possibly be alien spacecraft.

Instead, it became increasingly apparent that he was there to pimp the planetarium. (I can’t believe I even wrote that phrase but I really hope it catches on with the pop culture.) Even part of the presentation involved him showing us a Goggle satellite photo of the place from the sky and repeatedly showing everyone how to get there by car. What this had to with whether or not UFO’s are real is anyone’s guess.

Even more annoying than the presenter’s tendencies towards stupid humor to deemphasize the subject matter was his lack of willingness to discuss it when people asked him questions! I can’t imagine being asked to talk about writing and then brushing off a question related to why I prefer present tense narrative, yet that is the equivalent of what he did.

I was not at all surprised to hear about his connection to SETI, the rabidly anti-UFO organization that believes searching for repeating frequencies in the vastness of space is the way we’re going to locate new life and new civilizations.

The intense and very well-spoke gentleman to my right asked him about Planet X, which is the theorized tenth plant located on the other side of our sun according to some alternative researchers such as David Icke. The presenter brushed that off with vague references to the sun’s behavior as definitive proof of no tenth planet, although he admitted that the asteroid field between Mars and Jupiter might have been a planet at once time. When the man asked him why aliens would want this planet in particular, he replied with a stunningly bland, “I don’t know. We don’t know.” That became his mantra for the rest of the time.

The man left a few moments later. Ironically, a lady sitting up front decided to piggyback off his point and continue the discussion about why aliens would want to come here. The other planetarium employee said our water content alone would be reason enough. He should have run the damned thing!

The presenter somehow worked everything back to the size and scale of the universe; all fascinating stuff but not at all what was described in the pamphlet. I left in a disappointed daze, reflecting on how much better this type of thing would have been in the Nineties. As far as I was concerned, this guy had a twofold agenda: Pimp the planetarium, and gloss over the concept of UFO’s as alien piloted spacecraft with stupid jokes and lots of “I don’t know” level commentary. He accomplished both missions.

I, on the other hand, simply wasted an hour of my day.


At least it was free~

Sunday, August 16, 2009

SFRevu Review

SFRevu Review

Posted using ShareThis


Click the link above to see my novel "Dreamers at Infinity's Core" awaiting review.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

LITERARY QUOTE OF THE MONTH:

“It is as throughout all Alaska that big wild good life teeming along the road that is north to the future.”
-Sara Palin,
Former Governor of Alaska

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Challenge Accepted!

My colleague and friend Nora Cook Smith posted a challenge to writers on her blog
(noracooksmith.blogspot.com) to do the following:


I went to the dictionary and picked ten words at random. You should be able to tell this just by looking at the list. Here's the challenge. Try writing a one-paragraph short story involving at least 5 of the words on the list. You can pluralize, change tense, etc. as long as the root word remains. Feel free to post

*Morph
Senile
Deport
Thermomotor
*Forage
*Stimulant
Conventional
Apocryphal
*Waiting
*Overwork

OK, here goes and don't say I didn't warn ya:

I grew tired of waiting for the creature to answer my questions and stormed down the basement stairs. As I threw open the cellar door and peered inside, my eyes adjusting to the darkness, I wondered not for the first time if I'd started to overwork the wretched goddam thing. After all, I'd been the one to convince it not to forage for sustenance anymore and to come stay with me so that I could provide its "food." Its glowing yellow eyes stared back at me from the thick darkness of the cellar without blinking, a direct result of the stimulant effect of what it needed to consume for its surival. With a light sigh, I yanked on the string above my head, bathing the cellar in sudden light which caused the creature to instantly morph into something far more acceptable to the human eye...

Well, that was a fun five-minute exercise. Feel free to copy the instructions and try your hand at it!

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

***BOOK SIGNING***

I will be singing copies of "Dreamers at Infinity's Core" at the following venue:


Saturday, July 11, 2009
Time:
10:00am - 7:00pm
Location:
City Sports Center In the heart of Greektown
Street:
3401 E. Lafayette

Detroit, MI.

So, if you live locally come on by. I am not the only "attraction" to be found at this thing. In fact, we might have to temporarily rename this particular section of Detroit "geektown" considering the amount of unadulterated fanboy-dom that is expected to show up!

Hope to see you there!

Sunday, July 5, 2009

GETTIN' BY WITH A LIL' HELP FROM MY FB FRIENDS...

For those who may not know or even care, I’ve begun working on a new novel with the working title of “The List.” It may turn out to be the first interactive novel I’ve ever written.

What do I mean by “interactive?” Are tiny underpants gnomes providing me with plot points and ideas for character development? Well, yes but that’s not the only thing I mean.

Thanks to social networking sites, seeking input has never been easier or more immediate. Whereas before I might have to wait up to two weeks for my next writers workshop to float some ideas around or ask for input on where a particular chapter should go next, now all I have to do it post a “mood” and people respond to it.

For example, the other day I found myself writing a scene where the protagonist decides to help out his friend’s sister by having a word with the loan shark who’s been strong-arming her. The question that came to mind as I was writing this was: How violent should I make this? The tone of the novel is rather dark and there are a few moments of gruesome violence but would this scene pull the reader out of the dark fantasy element?

I posted my question on Facebook and within minutes the responses started pouring in. Some felt there should be a methodical torture scene because those are more dramatic; others felt it should be a quick kill, which I kind of liked as well. Nobody seemed to favor a shoot-out scene, which would surely cause extreme rage in my friend Al. It helps to have a mixture of writers, editors and good old-fashioned readers in a Facebook Friends list because what results is a variety of mostly useful opinions.

Ironically, as I started writing the scene, it took on a life of its own and started moving into a slightly comedic direction. Still, the different viewpoints bounced around inside me noggin and I realized there were some elements of the advice I’d received that would work really well. After all, what’s more jarring than an amusing moment suddenly turning deadly serious? And since my protagonist is a little more powerful than your average human being, would he not have a different method for dealing with scum?

Thanks to a group of people listed as “friends” on a website I joined, only some of whom I know or have met personally, my head was cleared enough to write what was proving to be a difficult part of as novel that has been coming along alarmingly easily.


I have a feeling my acknowledgements page is going to be interesting this time~

Sunday, June 14, 2009

what he MIGHT have said

New Scientist Magazine is currently running a contest seeking submissions from people interested in re-writing moon landing history. The only requirement is that the author of the quote or quotes come up with something memorable for Neil Armstrong's famous speech from the lunar surface in place of his "One small step for man" quote.

I heard about this contest from a Facebook friend who posted his own submission there. I thought I'd do the same here, since I literally just sent mine off.

Neil Armstrong quotes (What he might have said):

“That’s one small step for man, one giant…Oh, Zsa Zsa says “’hi.’”

“Hello from the moon…that boom mike was there when we landed!”

“All those billions to find out this place isn’t made of edible cheese!”

“Hey, Joe! Up here even a lard-ass like you would be weightless!”

“I don’t want to alarm anyone but there are Republicans here.”

“Okay, let’s start unloading the nukes and aiming them for the Soviet…Is this thing on???”

“I never wanted to be an astronaut, I was more interested in floral design but my father was so very, very cruel…anyway, there it is, a big lifeless rock. Check, please!”

“I came up with a song about the Dark Side of the moon I’m gonna write when I get back to Earth. Nobody better steal my idea!”


“Looks like we finally found that storage area for hippy agitators!”

If you're interested, you can send your own submissions to:
feedback@newscientist.com

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