The rest, which are my gay erotica books, are $0.99 each. There's Sci-Fi/Horror, Murder Mystery, Vampire, Suspense, and Revenge.
My main goal was to get the free ones read since they had fallen off in sales, and it not only worked but pumped up sales of my other books. Is this a kind of marketing ploy?
I haven't been able to focus on anything, yet. Not book or movie. No research into launching APoS once it's done. Didn't even send out agent queries. Just floated between Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Took a nap. Watched cat and dog videos. Avoidance stuff.
On the shallow side of this, my favorite books were by Russian authors -- Tolstoy, Chekov, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky -- and I can no longer appreciate them as much. This invasion has shown me Russia has always been a vicious, bloody, imperialistic force in the region, thanks to history being discussed by Ukrainian historians and scholars. I knew about the famine caused by Stalin, in the 20s and 30s, and how Ukraine fought the Nazis...and I knew about the war in Lithuania against the Bolsheviks just after WW1 thanks to Werner Schölndorff's Coup de Grâce, but that's about it.
Now I'm steeped in the horrors of Russia's subjugation of her neighbors, all to the glory of her own arrogant image, and I cannot view anything creative from there without that baggage.
Just gonna post what I've done with Missing, so far. I have 5 more frames worked out, but still need to be inked in. After I scan them in I clean them up so they're crisp and neat.
It seems one a week is fitting to my current frame of mind. I'm not Tom of Finland or even Etienne, but it relaxes me. Gets my mind of my inner chaos. I doubt I'll make it into a coloring book...still, you never know.
Derry is 349 pages long; 136,210 words. Covering Brendan's life from when his father is murdered to when he is forced to leave Derry, 6 years later. It's all told from his POV and I tried my best to keep true to that while still slipping in some details about events of the time. I took some poetic license, here and there, but overall I think it works.
Next is Houston, where Brendan tries to settle in but keeps finding he doesn't really belong. Then comes his Return to Derry, during the hunger strikes of 1981, when he has to reconnect with his family and friends on a low-key level but winds up being betrayed to the authorities and arrested for interrogation.
My brain is foggy, right now. I'm more that a little lost. No idea when I'll get back onto the story. I may spend a week or two learning something about advertising and selling the book myself. I honestly don't know. I think right now I'll just watch a movie.
My lack of success with an agent has me thinking I need to publish this book, myself. I'm tempted to do it in a hardcover with dust jacket and look into how best to publicize it. Maybe get a publicist or service to do that; I don't know, yet. Part of me wants to wait till next year to do anything, but I've been at it for so long I just want it done and gone. I don't hate the book but I am ready to move on.
So next comes Houston, which is at about the same level of completion as Derry was when I started heavy on it, then after that is Return, which is about 75% done. I'd like to have it all completed this year, but we'll see how that works out. It took me so damned long with Derry...
My right shoulder and neck are killing me, right now, thanks to me sitting at this desk and using a mouse at arm's length for days on end. Icy Hot and Tylenol work to minimize it, and I've got a setting on my shower head for pulsation, so it should be okay. Looking forward to it all.
Not much done, today. I got lost in Twitter, Instagram and Facebook pushing my progressive agenda -- holding that orange POS, #45, accountable for his crimes; defending Ukraine against the Russian bots out to help destroy her; cheered on others who are fighting back against the right wing nut jobs; just the usual stuff that really doesn't mean much.
I did watch The Big Heat (1953) for the first time in decades...and was really disappointed. It was directed by Fritz Lang, who made Metropolis and M in Germany then Fury in the US, but it was nowhere near as intense as any of those movies...except in spots.
It's about a cop investigating corruption in his city and how he runs up against crooks who own most of the city council. His wife is killed in a bomb meant for him and he goes off the rails to find the killers. It's got Gloria Graham as a gangster's moll and Lee Marvin as the gangster. This is the one with the infamous coffee scene.
I used to think that was on the overblown side. No one I knew let their coffee get that hot. But then McDonald's served coffee so hot it gave a woman 3rd degree burns through three layers of clothing. That shut me up.
What startled me about the film is that it didn't feel well-thought-out. It was lazy in its storytelling and direction, almost perfunctory. The camera set-ups plain and simple, nothing interesting to add to the tension. Glenn Ford was the cop and he seemed unable to understand who his character was. I honestly think he was miscast (maybe Dana Andrews would have been better), but Lang didn't do much to help him. Didn't do much to put his signature on the piece.
It got me to thinking about a movie made 2 years later, by William Wyler -- The Desperate Hours. About a family held hostage by some prison escapees and how the cops are slowly closing in on them, putting the family in greater danger. Frederick March and Humphrey Bogart were in that, so some pretty heavy-hitters. That film was non-stop tension and polished beyond belief. Didn't feel cheap or half-assed, at all.
It's almost sad to see Fritz Lang just going through the motions.
Not up for a blog, tonight, so here's a review of a truly trashy movie I saw when I was 15 years old, in Hawaii. Perfect location.
I'm really a crappy writer, and this book is proving it to me. I work and rework and re-rework the sentences I write in order just to get them to make sense and be in the order they should be, and still find they aren't quite right, yet. It's as if I'm peeling an onion layer by layer but never getting to the center of it. I just slop crap together and think it's fine...till I look at it later and think, How the fuck could I have written that?
And the ideas I jammed in to give the story detail and interest? They's silly. Affectatious. For example, I had it where Brendan's father never told his kids the stories he tells in pubs to cadge drinks from the patrons. His bar mates come to his wake and wax eloquently about his stories being so amazing and true, and when Brendan tells them Da never told them, they say he's being silly. The whole concept is silly.
Instead, changing it to his father telling the stories to the kids when he's drunk and close to incoherent, and use an example about harpies living in the Cliffs of Moher and how it came about. Bouncing back and forth in the tale so it's hard to follow. Makes a lot more sense, that way.
In Book Three, when Brendan's twenty-five, he hears a taped recording of his father telling that same story before he'd had his second drink...and it is beautifully told. Almost like poetry, his voice melodious and sure, and it builds anger in his that the man would share his best voice with his friends and those who'd support his alcoholism but not with his family.
Took me six fucking years to figure out how much better that would be.
On top of this, the battery needs replacing because it will not hold a charge for more than half an hour. I hadn't cared because I was working from home and had it plugged in. But if the primary portal is dead and the second one is being used for power, I have no way to download anything onto a drive unless I unplug the power and do it quick, quick, quick.
Which I did, today. Saved everything I could, even stuff I had already saved. Just to be safe. I suppose I could pull out my old MacBook and see if it will work with the WiFi. I really liked it, but it's 15 years old. so has limitations.
Looks like I'll be buying that MacMini, after all, since I do 99% of everything on my laptop at home. Pisses me off, but what can you do?
I hate technology.
