Blog
Accidentally Free!
For one day (I think), The Orchid Eater in its new Kindle edition is free. This was partly inadvertent, but you may be the benefactor of my incompetence.
Meanwhile, I might as well do one-day freebies on the other two, in subsequent days. Just to make the accident look deliberate.
Abbas Kiarostami – RIP
A good place to start is “Where Is The Friend’s Home?” followed by the other two films in this elliptical trilogy.
Alternatives to Independence
On Independence Day, here’s a link to my alt-history story concerning The War Thereof: “His Powder’d Wig, His Crown of Thornes.” That’s all I got.
Three Out of Five Ain’t Bad
I have put up three of my five original novels in Kindle editions: Dad’s Nuke, Kalifornia, and The Orchid Eater. Clicking those titles will take you to Amazon. The front page of this website also links to the titles.
So far I am only working on Kindle editions. Once I’ve gotten through this process for all my books, I may move on to other formats.
New editions of Neon Lotus and The 37th Mandala are in the works and should be ready later this summer. Most of the work has simply been in the process of cleaning up OCR output of varying quality, which is tedious. On the other hand, it was tons of fun to come up with new covers for these reissues, collaborating with mad scientist/filmmaker Nicolas Huck (of Huckworks). I believe I will have to do a short story collection just so I have an excuse to do another cover!
As usual, if you decide to give these a shot and you’re reading along when you suddenly stumble over a typo (or even a word I plainly don’t know how to spell), I would love to hear about it so that I can fix my mistake. The ability to issue updated, corrected versions is one of the most attractive things about digital publishing. If you are so inclined, please drop me a line.
And if you do buy a copy–let alone read it–thank you!
The Compleat Mr. Pet: Iguanas
The Compleat Mr. Pet: Snakes
In early 1996, I was desperately looking for something to do. I had always wanted to take a shot at an ongoing comic. I had no idea, practically, how to proceed. I got as far as the concept of a petshop called Mr. Pet and run by its eponymous owner. It had to be simple enough that I could draw it. I still think the basic set-up, following the daily lives of all the pets in the shop, and Mr. Pet himself, would have generated good gags for years. I drew a few, posted here, and right around then I got my big break in the game industry. I still think about Mr. Pet from time to time, and today I was happy to discover the few old strips I sat down and finished on May 17, 1996.
Fossils from the Filing Cabinet
I am slowly gathering and organizing my papers to donate to a special collection. Over the years, sporadically, I have carried pocket sized notebooks; most recently plain manila Moleskines, but I think the habit started here:
Then there was the time I got quoted in Entertainment Weekly:
Why not make a special collection truly special?
400 Boys Art
After hearing me talk about David Fincher’s abandoned animated “400 Boys” project (part of an attempt to revive Heavy Metal as a 3D feature) on The Outer Dark podcast (listen in for the full story), Anya Martin of that very same podcast contacted Raymond Swanland and managed to get permission to post two pieces of concept art. There’s an image of HiLo confronting one of the 400 Boys, and then a promotional image featuring a Galrog. Since I own the property on which these images are based, I’m going to see if I can help get permission to display the rest of Raymond’s wonderful work on this project. If nothing else, it would be nice to be able to run the images alongside the story, even if only online.
Evidence from the KGB Files
Fantastic Fiction at KGB has posted their recording of the reading I did there last week. This includes “The Finest, Fullest Flowering” and my new, improved Frankenstein, now with actual monsters.
Daniel Braum read an unpublished work, and they hold off posting those until the story has been published.
There are also photos of the event!