Modern Art

I consider myself relatively unsophisticated–lot of stuff just blows right past me, some of which is modern art. Guy sticks a vacuum cleaner under a plexiglas case, I get it that the idea of it, and the presentation is, um, art, sorta, but c'mon, if somebody is willing to pony up a couple hundred grand for that? 


Somebody's got a screw loose.


I mean, sure, Picasso painted stuff like this:

But Picasso could also paint like this:

So it wasn't as if he was just slapping oils on a canvas every which way because he didn't know any better.

This next one is also beyond me, but maybe I might could see something in it. Some kind of dynamic symbolism embodying the fractured forces of nature at the beginning of creation ...

Uh huh ...

But this?

A black square. Too bad we can't get a better view of the museum-goers' faces.

Um ... ? What ... ?

Relative

See this size comparison? Give you an idea of how small our little blue marble is ...

Dem Bones

Saw this article on "fracture putty." Essentially, goop made from stem cells and injected into a bone-break, with the idea that such will increase the healing speed dramatically. Works in rats, but large-animal and human testing hasn't happened yet.


I knew this one was coming way back, only I called it "orthostat glue."  


So, I got the iphone, now this ...


Not only is the future already here, it just keeps coming ...

Welcome to the Future, Part XCVII

Got a buddy who, for reasons medically-chronic, has been unable to spend much time at the gym of late. Part of it is physical, part is motivational–hard to stir yourself after a restless night. 


He lives in a complex that has a pretty good gym on the premises, and recently, he decided he need to get back into shape, and could I maybe help out a little?


Sure.


Thing is, he lives the better part of a thousand miles away, so me standing there and yelling "One more rep!" ain't in the cards.


However, through the miracles of iPad and Skype, we can achieve a kind of connection, and I can see him on the machines and offer coaching on exercises as he does them. 


Not that I'm particularly qualified, but you work with what you got.


I realize there are a lot of folks who do this kind of at-a-remove coaching, everything from music lessons, to university classes, to how-to-make-and-bake-a-cake, but this is my first experience in this realm.  


Not exactly Dick Tracy's 2-Way wrist TV, but we are way past that. Day before yesterday, my wife and I watched one of our great-nephews crawling around and taking some tentative steps, courtesy his parent's cell phone.


Welcome to the future. 


Again ...

Coach Perry ...

New Space Opera Series

I believe I mentioned that I had turned in the manuscript for the first of the three-book military space opera series I'm doing for Ace.


Cutter's Wars: The Ramal Extraction.


Apparently it's not so awful they wanted to burn it, salt the ashes, and get their money back, and I am told it is scheduled for publication in January, 2013. As a paperback and an ebook, for those who might be interested in one over the other ...


Meanwhile, I hope to get the next Matador book, Churl, done before I need to swing into the second Cutter's Wars. I'll give it a try ...

Super Bowl Commercials

We watched the game, of course, we always do, a tradition started by one of my football player kung fu students thirty-odd years ago in Louisiana. Jim was a place-kicker at LSU. Went on to become a sportscaster on TV. How can you not watch the Super Bowl?! he asked us. 


So we had a party and did, and that became our yearly football fix.


Go pee while they are playing, be sure to get back for the commercials. Saw the original Mac ad in the early eighties. Saw Janet's hooter. Mean Joe Green for Coke ...


We rooted for the Giants. We liked their helmets better.


This year, they were hit-and-miss, the commercials, but there were several at which I grinned. 


Car commercials mostly ruled. Top of that list, the Chevy truck drivers after the Mayan Calendar apocalypse, with the Ford reference and the Twinkies. The exploding vampires for Audi. The Kia bring-me-a-dream sequence.


And you gotta love The Dog Strikes Back, for VW. I mean, really. Clever. I didn't see it coming and as a Star Wars geek, how could I not laugh?


There were a couple other long-forms, Matthew Broderick's Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and Jerry Seinfeld, also car commercials, Honda and Accura, respectively. Most of the audience won't get most of the references in either, I suspect. 


Much amused at the Great Dane Dorito missing-cat hush-money spot. 


Far and away the winner? Clint Eastwood's Half Time in America, for Chrysler. Yeah, it was a button-pusher and string-puller, but it was Clint Fucking Eastwood, wasn't it ... ?

Chuck the Knife

More progress. Left to do, the handle will be shortened a bit, and a slight indentation added, in line with the edge; the blade and guard are to be etched to bring out the damascus pattern; and the wood polished and shined up. Looking great, isn't it?


And we aren't even talking about the leather, of which Chuck is also passing expert in making ...

All Things Must Pass

When I got my iPad 2, I found there was a local maker of bamboo cases for such things, Grove. There was a waiting list, but because I got on it early, I got a discount on the case. Still wasn't cheap, but I really liked it. 


Here's the original posting with images.


It really was a spiffy-looking accessory. Anytime I took the iPad out in public wearing it, I got nice comments and questions. Folding leather screen-cover, magnetic switch to turn the iPad on and off, I was happy with it. 


There was, however, a major flaw, about which I found out last night. I had the iPad on the table next to my chair and when I reached for my water glass, I knocked the flatscreen onto the floor.


It landed on the top edge. The bamboo shattered as if it was so much glass.


Beyond repair, as I quickly realized once I got the glue and toothpicks out. Not enough surface area to make a strong enough bond to hold.


So, it's a beautiful case, and it gave its life to protect the iPad, but buyers should beware. Once upon a  time, I recommended it. Not, alas, any more ...


Ah, well, live and learn.


I'll be getting another case, not sure what yet. Maybe a leather one, make it look like a book. Or maybe a shell, they make those in rubber or carbon fiber or plastic that allow the use of Apple's Smart Cover, which is a nice screen protector. Open the cover, the thing comes on; close it, it goes off. Saves wear and tear on the mechanical switch. 


They also make cases that are almost bulletproof, including one that offers enough anti-slide-off-a-table protection that they test  it by putting it on the roof of a Porsche and driving down the road at sixty. There's one they dropped from a high-flying balloon that protected the contents. Had a camera going as it fell. 


I don't think I need something quite that heavy-duty, but I will have to get something. This is the first time I've dropped it since I got it in June, but a new case every eight months would get kind of spendy. 

Asylum Run by the Inmates

Probably you've heard about the deaths at a soccer game in Port Said, Egypt a few days back: Seventy-four people were killed during the riot. The Egyptians are blaming the army for it.


Really?


If you look at the graphic, you'll see some pretty interesting numbers, staring in the 1960s and moving our way. More than a thousand people have been killed in soccer stadium disasters, most of these stampedes or crushes. 


In a stampede, you fall down and the herd stomps you to death like a bug; in a crush, you get pressed against a locked gate or door and squashed like a bug. Plus there are some who are killed by falling debris, such as an overloaded wall, and the odd person now and then who gets battered to death by somebody flailing away to keep from getting squashed or stomped. Assorted heart attacks and strokes, probably, too.


Sunday afternoon at the morgue with George ...


You'll note these incidents are worldwide, save for a couple of conspicuous exceptions: Nobody in North America, nor Australia. Not that many people in the U.S. jam into stadiums for soccer, and, of course, it's too cold in Canada to riot, plus the Canadians are too polite. The Aussies are as looney tunes as the rest of the world when it comes to sports, but maybe they've just been lucky.


What I get from this? Soccer fans are fuckin' crazy. I mean, wouldn't you just, you know, stay in your damned seat until the place cleared out? Lot easier to step around a few bodies after the mob finishes the slaughter, you think?


Better yet, don't go there in the first place. Watch it on TV. and listen to that crazy announcer go: "Scooooooorrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeee!" Which is the most exciting thing about watching soccer anyhow. Drying paint or grass growing are surely more interesting to anybody who isn't born and raised watching the sport. Camera is a thousand yards away to include all the players, who look like manic ants darting hither and yon ...

News From the EBook Front

Just under a month ago, I uploaded the rest of the Matador novels to Amazon.com. While Dan Moran's Fat Sam store is still my market of choice–the links on the right mostly go there–Amazon.com has a bigger pool of readers.


(I can't wait for Amazon.com India to come online, supposedly later this year. More English readers there than in the U.S.)


I didn't expect to blow the bestsellers on Kindle out of the water, nor did I. First batch of these books are twenty-five years old, and most of them long out-of-print. They did sell enough copies to make me smile and shake my head. My best month at Amazon.com.


At this stage, it's all free money.


What I found most interesting was something I had heard from other writers who have ventured into ebookery: The titles I already had up got a bump in sales. Again, not major, no new, custom-made concert-class guitars in my future from the profits, but noticeable. A title that had been selling eight or ten copies a month jumped to twelve or fifteen. Even a couple titles that were moribund trickled up to three or four copies each.


Allowing for the new readers that people got for Christmas, that's still a snowball-effect I find intriguing.


Here's the deal. It sounds like a "Well, duh!" but attend:


The more books you have available, the more sales you are apt to make. I'd heard this from writers who have a backlist a mile long, and it seems to be true in my case.


I can understand why. If you have one book up, it's hard to get it noticed. If people find and buy it, and even if they love it, then they are done–there's nothing else of yours to read. If you have five books up, then if they like one, they will probably at least preview the others. 


If you have twenty books up, there's is a built-in momentum factor. Find a writer you like, enjoy one of her books, chances are you will check out her other work. Get into a series, if you are like me, you want to read them all. What happened the character before and after this one? 


The rising reader floats all boats ...

Magic Bullet

So somebody has come up with a prototype  laser-guided.50 caliber round. In theory, you load up your M2 and a shot that might be ten yards off at half a mile, you can get within eight inches of a target.


See the story here.


Three things pop immediately into mind. First, a good sniper can already do that with several platforms, and the thousand or two thousand yard shot has been done more than a couple of times. This new round in development is not for them, but for the relatively-untrained shooter.


Seems like it would be better to, you know, train the soldiers to hit what they are aiming at, but maybe that's not the case.


The second thing involves this quote:


"Jones said there are still some engineering problems to be sorted out that will make the bullet more practical — for example, it will have to be tough enough to be dropped off the back of a truck and still work."


Really? How about, it has to be tough enough to be fired from a fifty caliber machinegun and withstand a big explosion and acceleration from zero to three or four thousand feet/second in less than a heartbeat?


Plus how much are these rounds gonna cost? Surplus .50 cal runs what? Three or four bucks apiece? If they cost thirty bucks a round and you have some yahoo from Open Sewage Ditch, Idaho, hosing the neighborhood with 'em, how is that going to work in the new, slimmed down military budget, hmmm ... ?

Distracted

You know how when you are doing something you do routinely, and you idle your brain and switch on the autopilot? 


Most of the time, no problem, but now and then, some glitch will mess you up. 


I was loading the car for this week's trip to the jam session. Since this is done in the garage, and the space is tight, it involves opening the driver's door, edging the guitar case past the steering wheel and sliding it bout first onto the passenger's side floor. Toss the song book onto the seat, button it up, and go.


It's a small car, and tricky to hold onto the end of the case and get it in the right position. Only weighs like eighteen pounds, but you have to do it with some care.


As I wiggled the guitar into place, my keys in hand, I accidentally hit the remote for my wife's car, turning off her car's alarm. Well, crap. So I got the case in, reset the alarm, buttoned it up and backed out the garage.


That tiny bit of business? It intruded just enough so I missed something. 


Tooled along about half a block and I realized I had left my song book, which is a fat, loose-leaf notebook, sitting on the roof of the car. Wouldn't have been a problem, save for how I realized it.


That would be the loud clunk! that caused me to look at the rearview mirror, and see the book bouncing off the car's fender, down to the road, and the pages fluttering hither and yon onto the street.


I said a bad word. An expletive. Of the anglo-saxon variety.


Said several bad words, actually. Equally bad and expletively.


Braked, pulled over, put the flashers on, and went to fetch the book and loose pages. 


Fortunately, it was not raining, neither was it windy, and not much traffic, so I was able to retrieve the loose papers, but higgledy-piggledy and in no particular order, which made trying to find songs at the subsequent session kind of like a treasure hunt, sans map. Wound up cheating  over the shoulder of another player.


It's always something ...

Successful Failure

I dunno if I told you this story before, but if I did, it's been a while, and it came up during a discussion about ebooks, so I thought I'd offer it.


Some years ago, when I was blowin' and goin' and doing a lot of writing in major franchise universes, I got a call from a guy who worked for a game company. The company was a pioneer in online first-person shooter interactives, and doing really well with it. They were about to roll out another incarnation of the game, and would I be interested in doing a book tie-in?


I wasn't against the idea in general, but not particularly interested in that moment. I had a couple of high-profile, well-paying projects going, a couple of my own books stacked up behind those, and I allowed as much to the caller. But he was a fan, and he wondered if he and another game guy could come by, buy me lunch, and pitch me.


Okay, free lunch, why not?


So they came and pitched the idea. Action-adventure, military space opera, I could go in pretty much any direction I wanted. It would be fun, they said. Right up my alley.


Working for folks who don't have any real experience in book-land can be problematic. Having somebody look over your shoulder while you write is a pain in the posterior. You expect that in TV or movie stuff, it's part of the game, but in bookery, I want to be left alone to do the job. 


We'll leave you alone, we promise.


Tempting; still, I was busy and really not that interested, so I rattled off a figure so high that I expected that would end the discussion. 


They swallowed when they heard the number. We'll, uh, get back to  you.


I grinned inwardly. Yeah, that's what I figured. So I went on my merry way, and thanks for lunch.


Few days later I got a call. Okay, let's do it!


Whoa! Really?


I talked to my agent, who got the parameters of the deal, and, well, I, um, reassessed my thinking.


Let me rephrase that: It was an offer I couldn't refuse. Not only was I looking at a nice six-figure advance, they were willing to ship a copy of the book with every game, which, if it was anything near the first version, would run to a million units. Be a lot of potential readers. And maybe more books like it down the line ...


But, wait–!


Once the book was published, my royalty on that would be 50%. Fifty percent? Where ten is normal for original stuff, and 1-2% is what you get on most tie-ins? Fifty percent?


They didn't know any better, we weren't going to tell them, and let's face it, greed laid her velvet claws onto me. Visions of sugar plums danced in my head.


Hear me rationalize: Hey, I'm gonna write stuff like this anyhow, and why not get well-paid for it? I mean, we've already determined what you are, Steve, now we're just haggling over the price ...


So. I came up with a storyline, filled it with martial arts, intrigue, lotta running and gunning, gave it a catchy title, and pitched it. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad, I thought.


Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.


First thing that happened is the head honcho of the game company wanted to lay his hands on it, and he started offering helpful suggestions that indicated the man had never actually read a book: Ooh, wouldn't it be cool if we did this?


Actually, no, it would exceedingly stupid if we did this. But I said that politely.


Then the size and scope of the project was reassessed, altered, and the monster advance had to be shrunk. It was still a nice high five-figure advance, and the royalties would be the same.


It could still work. 


We kicked the springboard back and forth a couple times, came up with one that was acceptable


Should have heard the rumble then, but avarice had stoppered my ears. I decided to go for  it. Yeah, yeah, there was some risk, but it could really pay off. I mean, I buy lottery tickets now and then, so maybe ...


I started writing. A few weeks into it, a bigger game company cruised in, flashed sharkish teeth and gobbled up my employer. Bought 'em, lock-stock-and-barrel, then fired everybody, save the one book guy, who was so far down the line they didn't notice him. 


But we were still okay.


I turned the ms in, got paid, and lo! a third game company came in, bought out the second, and the new owner looked around and ... shelved the entire project. 


The book guy tried, he hustled his ass off, but IWDJ -- It Was Dead, Jim. 


Did I mention that I was wrong about this project?


This kind of thing happens in Hollywood all the time. I know writers who have made good livings for years writing or rewriting scripts, none of which ever made it to the screen. But that rarely happens in the book world with a finished, not-too-badly-written genre book for which you have been paid. Only time it's ever happened to me.


What this all means is that I had written–I thought–a pretty good space opera novel that nobody was ever going to see. Got paid well for it, but even though I am much the hack, money isn't everything. As a writer, you want to see your stuff out there.


If I had it to do over again, would I? Probably. Money isn't everything, but on balance, I came out ahead. 


This is, I think, why the appeal of ebookery is so strong. You can get it out there. Yes, maybe fourteen people will buy copies in the next nine months, and you won't get to go into the local book store and point at it and brag about it. But at least there's a chance it will be read. Somebody skimming down the page on Amazon.com might come across it, say "Hmm." and download it.


Something to be said for that. 

Star Wars Bookery

No, I'm not about to do another one, and the one about which I'm talking, Shadow Games, was by Maya Bohnhoff and Michael Reaves. The title, which wasn't the working one–that was Holostar–was apparently decided upon by fans, and the book hit the racks a couple months ago.


There is a lot of stuff in it that a couple of my fans have asked about, the teras kasi martial art, Black Sun, the character of Dash Rendar, yadda, yadda. Did I have a hand in the book?


Well. A little bit yes, and mostly, no.


First, the book was entirely written by Bohnhoff and Reaves. I have, from time to time as a friend and collaborator, contributed the odd scene or chapter to some of Michael's books, but nary a graph did I put in for this one. They wrote it, not me.


On the other hand, five years or so ago, Reaves and I talked about doing another Star Wars novel together (we've done three) and I came up with the basic premise of a story set in the entertainment industry. A rock star who is beset with danger and, hires some bodyguards, and who turns out to be not quite as innocent as first thought. 


We batted the idea back and forth, changed the rock/holo star from a guy to a girl, cut, added, blended, and came up with characters and plots and settings and all, and pitched it to Del Rey. We thought it was unique for their universe. We could do a  backstage tour of Star Wars celebrity and have a fine romp, elements of mystery, like that. Madonna. Or these days, Lady Gaga ...


Del Rey was not enthusiastic. They wanted changes, they wanted us to include canon-characters, and a few other things that would have made it into a much different book. 


Reaves and I thought about it and decided we didn't want to do it that way.


So we thanked them, but decided we'd rather not. No harm, no foul, see you around.


Fast forward a couple of years. Del Rey dropped us a note: The idea had percolated and they had gotten more interested in it. What say?


Reaves and I talked. I didn't see that anything had changed, they still wanted us to do stuff I didn't want to do, so I told Reaves that. Well, he said, if I wasn't interested, would it be okay if he did it on his own? Or with Maya, with whom he had done other projects?


Sure, go ahead, with my blessing. Everybody who knows anything knows that the idea is not the big deal, the execution is. Have at it.


So he did.


(Meanwhile, I got a call from our SW's editor. Since I wasn't interested in doing a Star Wars novel, was I maybe interested in doing an Indiana Jones novel? Having never gotten to play in that area, but having done four SW's novels, I was interested in trying something new. So I did.)


Thus my input on Shadow Games was minimal. What I came up with, and later what Michael and I passed back and forth, is not exactly what he and Maya wound up doing, though the basic notion is the same. I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but is there a scene where somebody gets an offer they can't refuse? They wake up with Jar-Jar Binks' head in their bed? 


Or did that get cut ...?)

Gig II

So, second gig with the Closet Musicians: Background music at a quilt show in a local Methodist church. 


Only cost us two cans of food to get in. 


Rock and Roll!


I'm sure I saw Paul Allen in the crowd, waiting for a chance to demand that we sell him our guitars for his Rock Museum in Seattle ...


Played for an hour, took a break, did another forty-five minutes, and realized we didn't really have enough material, once we took out the songs that weren't entirely appropriate for church. Couldn't do "Little Egypt," or "Johnny Wadd is Dead," now, could we?


Had one of our regular's granddaughters sit in with us. She's five.


Screwed up a couple, got a few harmonies all right. Our best number, there was no applause. Probably stunned that we pulled one off ...


Um. Anyway, we all decamped to Buster's Barbecue afterward and ate spicy critter flesh and baked beans and all like that, and had a fine old time.


Look for us on Public Access Cable Channel 11 or 22. CDs will be available ...

Hmmm

A Writing Tip

Couple posts ago, I put up a piece about an old bodybuilder. In an effort to make the comments about his (purported) drug use to achieve his physique funny, I used some hyperbolic references. How well that worked is up for debate, but I thought they were focused where I wanted them to be. 


Let's take one of those and parse it, to show why I think it worked. Let us go back to the genesis of the idea: "He took enough drugs to grow from very small to very large!"


Nothing there. Too general. Doesn't convey much of anything. 


"He took enough drugs to turn a dwarf into a giant!" Better, but still too bland.


"He took enough drugs to turn a dwarf into an NBA center!" Getting closer, but still not there.


"He took enough drugs to turn a Munchkin into Shaquille O'Neal!" Almost, but not quite. I want to add in what kind of drugs. And I want to make the image wider, so I multiply the entities: 

I said,  (He took) "Enough Human Growth Hormone to make the entire Munchkin cast of The Wizard of Oz into Shaquille O'Neal."

If you know the tropes, the dwarf Munchkins from WoZ morphing into a plus-seven-foot-three-hundred-and-fifty pound NBA basketball player via HGH is pretty specific. 

You get a sharper image the more specific you are ... but only up to a point. If you over do it, if you go past the audience's knowledge, you lose them. If I said, "He took enough HGH to turn Charlie Becker into Shaquille O'Neal!" probably most people won't know that Becker played the Mayor Munchkin in the Wizard of Oz. 

Too far. 

So, the trick is to narrow your image down so it is sharp enough to resonate with readers at the most visceral level you can manage. If you have to explain it, you probably went too far.

  

Genetics

Apparently my family didn't pass along either the shopping or furniture-moving gene to the male side of the line. 


I buy things, but don't spend a lot of time dawdling about when I do it. This one? Or that one? That one. Ring it up.


Furniture at my mother's house? In all in the same places it was put fifty years ago when they moved in. Probably how it would be at my house, were it up to me. 


Of course, it isn't up to me, is it?


My wife inherited both genes. She loves to shop, and every so often, furniture must be moved. In the latter category, yesterday was the start off another episode of musical chairs. And tables. And bookcases, and the wardrobe armoire ...


It's cheaper than moving to another house, which is the first choice when this comes upon my wife. And after forty-five years, I've gotten used to it ...

Modern Magic

So, offhand, how old would you say this guy is? Now, you know it's a trick question because I asked it, but even so, you will almost certainly underguess it, if the poster of the picture on Facebook can be trusted: Go ahead, take a stab.


Ninety-one.


Are you kidding me? My first reaction was pure disbelief, and frankly, I'd want to see a notarized birth certificate and a passport before I bet money on it, but look at the picture of Sly Stallone, below, at my age, sixty-four. That's verifiable, so the guy above could easily be in his sixties or seventies, and that's incredible even so. 


So, you ask, how do you achieve this level of muscularity? First, you need the genetics. Then the diet and exercise. Probably some plastic surgery and maybe Botox. And finally, drugs. Lots and lots of drugs. Enough anabolic steroids to turn a castrati boys choir into a room full of Incredible Hulks. Enough Human Growth Hormone to make the entire Munchkin cast of The Wizard of Oz into Shaquille O'Neal. And probably an assortment of pain-killers and diuretics sufficient to stone the entire crowd at the Super Bowl stadium.


But still. If you are looking for an excuse to be out of shape, age alone isn't it ...

Heartshot

Years ago, my buddy Mike Byers, former military pilot; expert artist in glass and constructions various; guitarist, and writer; produced a magazine-killer story, "Heartshot."


Those of you unfamiliar with the MK term, this is a story you sell to a magazine that then goes belly-up before it can publish the piece. Naturally, you blame the story, as well you should, and piss on all you writers who killed my markets thus ...


Mike's story, about a unicorn hunter, and written, I recall, to offset the warm-fuzziness that was rampant–sorry had to do it–in the fantasy field at the time in regard to such creatures as unicorns and winged kitties and like that, went on to kill a couple more magazines before he retired it.(My worst killed two 'zines for sure, and maybe a third; I bow to no master.)


Well, it seems that somebody he knows who has the wherewithal to do it wants to make a short film of it. Might kill the moviemaker's business, too–and I'm sure Byers has warned him; still, that's way cool. 


And you gotta love the logo ...