Fate Accompli

Did quite a bit this month. Feeling kinda proud of myself. In november 2008, I wrote a 62,000 word novel and created a cd’s worth of material while simultaneously quitting smoking mid-month. That was pretty productive.

In January 2001, I wrote two short stories in an afternoon and saw them both get published. That was good too.

One day in the mid-70s, I sat down with a couple of pencils and a pile of notebook paper and wrote a novel. About the same wordage as the above. That was the single most productive day of my creative life.

I had a month kinda like that. I wrote a 46k novel (Betrothed to Yog-Sothoth), finished a thirteen-year-old manuscript (Fear and Loathing in Innsmouth) with 15k words, thereby qualifying for a Nanowrimo win, wrote another 10k’s worth of two short stories, and topped that off by composing, performing, and producing a baker’s dozen of new songs, which I’ve just now finished posting to Reverbnation.

I’ll post them onsite soon. The jukebox is taking shape too.

So…I’ll enjoy the feeling while it lasts, and try not to break my arm in the process.

“before Crazytown” has sold more copies than I expected, though not very many in real terms. Fear and Loathing in Innsmouth should surpass it. I’m probably going to offer that as a print book also, though maybe not right away. Crazytown is champing at the bit too.

Surf the wave, me.

 

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In the Air

I’m still working on the jukebox utility for my website proper, but I have a lot of new music and I thought I’d share the Reverbnation url so you can hear some of it. Unfortunately this version of wordpress doesn’t have the ability to share the html5 widget. Currently, “moderan” is #14 in the rock genre in Tucson. I broke into the top 20 two months ago and haven’t left it yet. Weird. I had a couple of songs with a lot of pageviews–Blood Will Have Its Season, inspired by and named after the Joseph Pulver, Sr. book, and Nostalgia, which I did a Facebook test-promotion on. For five bucks (one day’s promo)  I got 941 impressions, 44 clickthroughs, 18 listens, and two positive email comments. Joe Pulver shared the tune on his timeline, and a lot of his fans went to the page afterward.

The newest track is called Don’t Let Me Down. It isn’t a Beatles or Bad Co. cover, but an original quasiballad. Some of my best guitar-wielding and some mighty sax-sounds (which were originally guitar).

I’ve also published an ebook at Smashwords this week. I’m finding Smashwords to be tricky to satisfy as far as format, but 3/4 of the people that click the teaser are buying it, and that’s damn good. Go ahead, check it out. You know you wanna…before Crazytown. It includes the original versions of some of the stories from Crazytown.

Fear and Loathing In Innsmouth will be next. I’m doing the cover myself, and a complete rewrite, saving maybe ten k from the original. I’ve abandoned plans to do a full webcomic for now, but that’s never dead. Just dormant.

Sorry to both of my fans about not posting for a year or so. I’ll be good, I promise.

 

Medfirst Dive

Yeah, that’s what I’m doing every morning. The surgery went well, and the incisions are healing, but there’s still three deep cuts in my abdomen and they hurt like a bitch. So I get up and render myself virtually insensate right away, and will for the foreseeable future.

That actually led to a spark of creativity yesterday. I played my Madden game for a while, then got to thinking about what else I could do. I had most of the pieces of a song that had been destined for something called the Summer Solstice Challenge at writingforums.com, before it became apparent that my hernia surgery would have to become a greater priority than it had been.

Didn’t get the thing done in time for the contest. It had been set up for vocals and stuff, but I’ll not be able to do those for quite some time, and so I fashioned a lead part out of out-takes from earlier versions, made a new melody figure, and reassembled the thing.

Dawn of Steel 

is the name of the piece. It’s just over ten minutes long, a shred/symphony of sorts. Lots of detail, downloadable only from this location.

Enjoy.

I’ve also begun the first of the stories for another Crazytown collection.