Religious Fanatic Takes "Steal this Book!" to Heart but it's the Wrong Book.

Apparently an anthology I am in offended the delicate sensibilities of at least one self-appointed soldier for the Lord. At least, that's how the anthology's publisher is interpreting it.

It makes sense, based on how the petty crime took place. You can get the whole story here but here's a pull quote in case your clickin' finger is sore:

"...other books were left alone, as was a tablet and some cash..."

B Cubed Press Bob Brown's response to the thief is pretty entertaining because, ultimately, the fact that fiction can still cause this reaction in people means it still has the power to transform and to make people think. That is worth more to me than any financial reward my story gained.

The funny thing is, the only reason I even know about this is because I happened to be on my Amazon Author page where a newer reader review of the anthology mentioned the theft.  You can read that review here and even though the reader doesn't mention my story (how dare they?) it's a glowingly positive one that might not have happened if some jackass hadn't tried to censor what you're able to read.

My Trump Story.

My short story "The Best Story Every Told, Let Me Tell You" about the supposed divinity of Donald Trump has been pulled from Amazon Kindle and will be exclusively available to read on my Patreon Page next month.

The Dreaded Author Interview Questionnaire.

Every so often, a publisher in whose anthology my work is set to appear gets the idea that introducing the world to the likes of me is a positive thing. It certainly makes sense. Readers like to know who the authors are and how their minds work when it comes to their craft. It also increases the author's web presence and (potentially) places the publisher in the position of having brought the author to the world's attention either before or during a rise to some prominence. At least, that's the optimistic view.

Some authors feel pressured to not come off sounding like morons when they answer theirs. I don't worry about that; my concern is sounding pretentious and full of myself. I'm not a filmmaker, so that particular trait wouldn't be very becoming. In order to counter that, I tend to use humor in my responses except where seriousness gets my point across. The interviewers seem to enjoy it.

It's been a while since I've filled one out, but the time has come again thanks to B Cubed Press, which was already kind enough to create a page for me based on one published work with them. The questions are refreshingly unique and mildly intimidating so let's see what I can accomplish this time!

(Obviously I'll post a link when it's available)

Let's Hear it for Diversity (And paid publishing opportunities)!

Sometimes, when one has been writing long enough and has been fortunate enough to see publication of several pieces, there is the occasional feeling that a completed work is a slam dunk. Such was the case with my short story, "Your Future for a Low, Low Price" which was just accepted for publication in the Colors in Darkness anthology "Deadly Bargain" (pictured below).

My story deals with the provided character who first appears as a non-specified Eastern European handyman/peddler in a well-to-do suburban neighborhood who draws the ire of an immigrant-hating Amurican looking for someone on whom he can take out his lifelong frustrations. But when the peddler offers him the future, his rage gives way to something even worse. As soon as I fiished it, I knew it was likely to get picked up by someone.

I don't have a publication date yet but once I do, I'll post an update.

Latest Review!

As some of you might know, the anthology pictured above featuring my short story, "Ultimate Messiah Smackdown" appears alongside several notable authors. So when I read the latest customer review from a pastor who actually gets what I was aiming for, it meant even more than usual.

Appearing alongside the likes of David Gerrold and Mike Resnick is wonderful enough, but when your story is someone's favorite, that is beyond humbling. Add to that the fact that this particular pastor wants to use my story in one of his sermons and I'm all a'tizzy. Making a difference, one disgusted work of quasi-fiction at a time!

Read the review here.

A Good Place to Find My Work.

If you're boycotting Amazon and don't want to go to my author page, the Internet Speculative Fiction Database is a good albeit not comprehensive place to find and index of quite a bit of my work. I ran across this when Googling a short story title of mine to see whether or not it had been previously published. That's right. I'm such a yuge author that I sometimes forget which stories of mine have been accepted by publishers.

Or maybe I'm just a crappy records keeper. Meh. Six of one, half dozen of the other!

Click here for the link.


And don't forget to order this little trip through funtown!

My Trump Satire is Now Available on Kindle!!!

When I wrote my Trump satire for an anthology looking for Trump satire, I knew I was writing something so specific that is the editors didn't want it, it was unlikely that I would find another group that did. So, I vowed to self-publish the story in that case and here it is for the bargain basement price of 99 cents!

This is the first Kindle publication I've done in about six years. Feel free to leave a review if you do decide to purchase it. As always, all reviews are welcome, whether positive, negative or indifferent. Not that I have the power to remove them anyway!

Click here for the feel-good experience of a lifetime! It's the best feel-good experience. You've never seen a better one, I can tell you. Everybody loves it. It's tremendous!

It's Not Always About Getting Published

I recently queried an editor who is compiling an anthology of alternative theology stories. Without getting too deeply into what that means, suffice to say I had a feeling my previously published story about the White Republican Jesus confronting the actual historical Jesus while mindless Americans cheered him on might be what they were looking for. Unfortunately, I sent the query after the submission acceptance period had closed. Here is the thread, starting with my letter (His are in quotes):

I was wondering if you are accepting reprints for this anthology? I have one in which Evangelical Jesus and Actual Jesus have a war words in the street. it was originally published in a for-charity anthology I edited.

-Christopher Nadeau

"We have closed it, but I have a practice of reading late submissions and if they knock my socks off I say screw it if schedule allows and include them.  I have the joy of writing the checks and so I get to make those decisions.  Send it and I’ll read it."

Thanks! Whether you say yes or no to this one, you just made the list of my top five favorite editors with that reply!

Story attached.

"I like this very much.  I’ll know in the next thirty days if I’ve got any room, I have two other stories in the same space.  If room opens up, depending on what drops out, I’ll let you know. 

That isn’t an acceptance or rejection, but it is definitely worthy of the anthology, if room presents itself."

I told him I understood and thanked him; sometimes just knowing that someone would print your story if they were able can be satisfying in its own right.

Excerpt from the Trump Story.

The following is an excerpt from my short story in progress, "The Greatest Story Ever Told, let me Tell You" which is an increasingly not-as-satirical as I'd originally thought tale of Donald Trump for an anthology that will probably decide it's too on the nose. Feel free to give me any feedback that doesn't involve insulting me for daring to parody your great leader:

"You wanna know how I became the Almighty? Simple: I’m a winner. Show me somebody

without an ego and I’ll show you a big, fat loser. Like that Chinese guy, what’s his name? Buddha. What a loser. He’s not a god, he’s not a superhero. He’s nothing, this guy. Pathetic. And fat. What? Skinny? We talking about the same guy? Well, whatever. He’s nothing, this chump. Less than nothing.

    But God, now there’s a real man. I first sat down with Him after my VP arranged a meeting and we had a wonderful meeting. He liked me and we had a very productive meeting. I’ve made more deals than just about anybody in the world and I can tell you the deals we worked out were the best every made by anybody ever, But He was old and it was time for a new approach. I mean, he had his time. It was a wonderful time, a really, really good time. He’s a smart guy. The best. Just not as smart as me. We can laugh but it’s true.

    So my predecessor, He was down in the dumps because of the losers and haters in the world. My VP thought we could cheer Him by showing Him how we were doing His work on Earth. You know, changing the abortion laws, military marches, regulations that favor bankers so they can safeguard our money. My list of accomplishments is too long to go over in one place. It’s the longest list! I’m not saying it’s longer than the Almighty’s, but I couldn’t help noticing how small his hands were."

"The Handmaid's Tale"- The Struggle was Real!

When I was much younger, my mother was my source for literature. She was my internet, albeit a far more learned and well-read source than most of the ones I encounter virtually. She introduced me to science fiction, Stephen King and Ray Bradbury. And even when my own tastes formed and I started branching away from what I considered her safer, more by-the-numbers interests, I never stopped respecting her opinions, as they were informed and well-expressed. I have, in fact, tried to live my life in a similar fashion.

So when I finally decided to give Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" a chance, I found myself struggling with that respect in the worst sort of post-mortem way.

"What the hell, Mom?" I said to her memory. "Were you drunk?"

Realizing that was a horrible thing to ask a diabetic even if she's no longer among the living, I retracted that question and instead said, "Dude, seriously?" because nothing thrilled my mother more than being addressed as "Dude."

In fact, she loved it so much she appeared in my family room seconds after I said it.

"What's your problem?" she said.

"Nice to see you, too." I held up the copy of "The Handmaid's Tale" I'd borrowed from work and shook it in her direction. "But since you asked, this is my problem. Excuse my Swahili, but what the hell were you thinking?"

"You didn't care for it, I presume?" My mother's eyebrows were always thin and fine, yet somehow they became darker and bushier when she raised them in disdain.

"You presume correctly, Doctor Nadeau. You talked this book up throughout my teen years, made me think it was an untouchable, brilliant masterpiece of social commentary, and--"

"And?"

"And I'd like to know if you were still in the process of getting your meds adjusted at the time."

She crossed her arms and sighed. "You know damn well I never took anything except Insulin and pain meds later on in life."

Nodding, I said, "Which brings us to the real issue, then. I mean, I know we disagreed on matters of taste when I got older. You kind've settled into a comfort zone, most likely due to your health issues and all."

She shrugged. "Probably a safe assessment. I always said you should have gone into psycho-analysis."

"One shrink in the family was enough. But my point is, setting aside the clearly intriguing concept, this is one of the dullest books I've read in years."

"All right." She uncrossed her arms and took a seat across from me. "Why?"

I sat as well. "For starters, the writing is bland and self-conscious."

"How much of it did you actually read?"

"I got through the first two chapters."

A heavy sigh. "Christopher,is it possible you'd like it more if you stuck with it?"

"Yes. It's also possible I could learn to like electrocution if I keep my feet dunked in water."

At this point, her image shimmered as if someone had flicked the lights off and on. I asked her if she was okay and she smiled. "What else didn't you like about it?"

I went into greater detail then. I told her how even though it accomplished the requisite task of establishing its universe early on, it never felt genuine. It felt, in fact, like a preachy commentary piee with a thinly disguised parable as its artful dodge. I concluded with the fact that the entire concept is wrapped in a cozy cocoon of white middle class feminism that presumes only gender divides stand between people and freedom.

"Okay, fair enough," she said. "But are you sure it's the book you're upset about or is it the fact that you're disappointed in my praise of it?"

I dropped the book onto the floor and stomped on it twice. "The book."

She grinned, telling me I hadn't lost my flair for the dramatic. "It's okay that you didn't care for it. If I taught you nothing else, I hope it was to develop your own tastes and be able to defend them. You've done that. So, why am I here?"

"Isn't it obvious? It's been years since I've had the opportunity to berate you. I've missed it."

She smiled that smile I can only recall in spontaneous memories or maybe sometimes find in an old photograph and said, "I miss you, too."

I watched her shimmer again, this time fading a bit. Our time was nearly up, then. "I love you, Mom."

"I love you, too, sweetie."

"Book still sucked, though."

And as she faded, I'm not entirely sure, but I think she flipped me off~

Quote of the Week.

(Cocaine) Makes you think you're smarter than everyone else. Makes you talk too much. Makes you think you're incredibly attractive even when you're fat and old. Makes you think you're on top of the world even when everything is falling apart.

Does that make you think of anyone?

-Tad Williams

  

Quote of the Week

"CHELSEA CLINTON has degrees from Stanford, Oxford, Columbia and NYU AND she lived in the White House for 8 years AND is the daughter of the former U.S. President, and U.S. Senator and Secretary of State... Ivanka is a really good shopper ..."

-From a comment on a Yahoo! article

Literary Ignorance at its Finest.

Quote of (next?) Week

"Why would a higher ed institution invite a commencement speaker who is an undereducated religious fanatic, and who's family's wealth was made in a pyramid marketing scheme?"

                                                                            -Dean Goddard, Facebook Commenter

How To Spot Fascism Before It’s Too Late

Artist Maia Kobabe has created a thought-provoking piece here.

A Brief Study in Hypocrisy

To borrow from another president whose disgraces have been eclipsed by the current POTUS, let me be perfectly clear: I do not advocate even the mention of assassinating a President of the United States or, for that matter, a foreign head of state. The founders of this country, intensely flawed though they were, possessed enough wisdom to establish a system of checks and balances, up to and including the ability to legally remove a sitting president or, at the very least, vote his or her ass out in four years.

So, the witless attempt at political commentary by Snoop gets no free pass from me. However, the meme below is 100% correct in its assessment of the hypocrisy from the Right regarding celebrities (or whatever the hell Ted Nugent is these days) openly advocating for the killing of a President of these here United States:

 Philosophical consistency is going the way of political satire.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"I am not a nice man. You want something heartwarming...buy a puppy."

-Greg Palast, Kickass Investigative Journalist and Thorn in the Side of the Koch Bros.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“You don’t tell anybody to shut up!You work for us!”

-A Constituent in Frost, Texas in response to Rep. Joe Barton (R)

Issac Marion's Fake Trump Tweet & The Death of Political Satire

Years ago during the opening credits of one of the Halloween specials "The Simpsons" does every year, one of the many gravestones with funny messages on them featured political satire as the dearly departed. As usual, the alien time travelers who write for that show foresaw the future in hilarious and frightening ways.

At the time, political satire was still viable, despite needing occasional trips to the doctor. However, the dominance of social media, something that should have been a force for increased knowledge and understanding of parody and satire, has actually aided in the swiftly encroaching loss of this most vital component of a supposedly free society. Instead, we're now moving towards an era where all attempts at irony become fodder for an increasingly easily offended population. And political affiliation is becoming meaningless, as the so-called "snowflake" mentality is just as prevalent among those on the Right as it is on the Left.

Recently, horror author Issac Marion who wrote the surprisingly engaging zombie romance satire "Warm Bodies" dared to post a humorous dialogue between himself and *urp* President Trump. I have also used the fake Trump Tweet app a few times. To my delight, nobody could tell if they were real or not in most cases. I never created a series of them like Marion because I knew some imbecile would screenshot it and, at some point, somebody would think they were real. It never occurred to me that a new breed of imbecile would find offense in the satire itself, but that's exactly what happened to him.

In a stunning display of contextual ignorance, angry people who thought the exchange was real and jumped to Marion's defense went on the offensive, reading him the riot act for daring to indulge a fiction writing exercise designed to make a point about a subject he finds repugnant. I'd mention the irony of the invective coming from members of the Left Wing, but since irony is a rapidly diminishing resource, I don't want to waste any of it by mentioning something so obvious.

Marion  breaks down his perceived "offenses" in list form, each point more ludicrous and asinine than the last. The most telling is Point #2, wherein he addresses an accusation of spreading the now ubiquitous and soon-to-be-meaningless concept of fake news. In his analysis, Marion writes:

I am a fiction writer. I wrote a fictional dialogue and posted it on my personal Twitter account, without any surrounding context to suggest that this was a real occurrence rather than just another bit of nonsense theater squirting out of my brain. If anyone thought it really mattered, a quick click to my profile—or Trump’s—would have revealed the truth. But no one bothered to do that because IT DIDN'T MATTER.

That's right, it didn't. People are so primed for and even seduced by the very notion of outrage now that fact-checking is regarded as quaint and wasteful. Not to toot my own horn, but my first instinct was to question the veracity of the reposting. It seemed too good to be true. Trump had finally crossed the line from journalism antagonist to displaying a woeful ignorance of the fiction writing process. And he'd chosen a lesser known writer to attack! Within moments, I'd discovered the truth and guess what? I was okay with it!

Granted, I'm a fiction writer as well and, while my renown is significantly lower even than Marion's self-described low number of followers, I am at least acquainted with the creative process. I don't expect everyone else to be, elitist as that may sound to those who aren't, but satire and parody are protected by the First Amendment! That means it's something all thinking Americans and indeed humans should know about.  There is no excuse for being so wrapped up in one's personal cause that harmless and entertaining humor becomes viewed as worthy of ridicule and scorn.

We are now entering a very dangerous era and it all started when the drawings of schoolchildren containing vaguely violent imagery became calls to the police and mandatory psychiatric sessions. Think of all the people of previous generations--people like me--whose writing and drawing could have ruined their lives in such a free thought hostile environment. Now the same preposterous censorship of the darker aspects of our minds are being scrutinized in authors by over-sensitive adults with too much time on their hands. These same people actually feel the need to write "sarcasm" after their barely sarcastic comments and insist that others do the same to avoid potential offense.

Isaac Marion created a satirical piece, mostly for his own amusement. Leave him the hell alone and get over yourselves.

An Intelligent Response to the Moronic White Supremacist Call to Boycott Star Wars Rogue One

The history of science fiction, as a genre, has always held within it a firm and total denouncement of xenophobia and bigotry, and a boundless optimism for a pluralistic universe of possibilities.

Whether it is the extreme pluralism presented in the Star Wars universe, or the quasi-utopia of the Federation in Star Trek, or the much more blatant and outright denouncement of ultra-nationalism and fascism presented in Babylon 5, nearly every major science fiction narrative presents a denouncement against hate and those who use hate and fear as a means for accumulating power. None of this even begins to mention the history of Doctor Who as a political platform, or the works of Heinlein or Frank Herbert.

I've not yet seen Rogue One, but given the history of political undertones present in hints throughout the original trilogy, and placed front-and-center in the prequels, I wouldn't be surprised if this narrative continues here.

If those who exploit ignorance, hate and fear to justify and perpetuate their greed happen find themselves being called out in this film, or in any other, perhaps they should take a good long hard look in the mirror and ask themselves why.

- Scott Mulder