Check out this fun (and incredibly intelligent, insightful, entertaining) radio interview with…ME!
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
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The Next Big Thing — Blog Hop!
I was invited to participate in what can best be described as a chain-letter blog hop. Here’s how it works: someone gave me 10 interview questions which I’m going to answer below. Then I passed on the questions on to 5 other authorswho will post their answers on their own blogs next week, and they pass on the questions to 5 more authors and so on and so on until there is some kind of nuclear blog dirty bomb disaster with a half life of 500,000 years.
The very talented author and superior human being, Kate O’Reilley invited me to this bunny blog hop. Here’s a link to her fab blog and quite interesting answers: http://katevsworld.com/2013/02/20/the-next-big-thing-blog-hop/
So without further adon’t, herewith are my pithy (yes, I do write with a lithp) replies:
1: What is the working title of your book?
The Book of Paul. Does that work for you?
2: Where did the idea come from for the book?
The first line of the book is: He practiced smiling. I wanted to explore a character that had been so damaged that he’d completely shut down emotionally. Could someone like that be redeemed by love? Why yes, of course he can! Right? Well, I hope so.
3: What genre does your book come under?
The Book of Paul covers a lot of ground: occult horror, mystery, thriller, crime, dark fantasy and sci-fi⎯with a healthy dose of humor and a sassy sprinkling of erotica.
4: Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
Read MoreIt’s Flu Season!
Deck the halls with balls of Kleenex! yes, it’s that most wonderful time of the year again…flu season! Once again, I neglected to get a flu shot, relying on my interferon pumped immune system to get me through the winter without a single day of bed rest. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of jinxing myself by pointing out to my wife that I haven’t had the flu or even a teensy cold (allergies don’t count right?) for the last TWO years! 48 hours later I woke up to find myself so fatigued and achy that I had to get back into bed, which suddenly reminds me of a song by Ian Dury and the Blockheads called Reasons to be Cheerful, where the back-up singers happily wail to a disco beat “Why doncha get back into bed? Why doncha get back into bed?”
Which is exactly what I did, and consequently had an unpaid (by me), unproductive (except for the New York Times crossword) sick day. Ick day. However, were it not for the compounded interest jinx fee I’d have to pay if I came right out and said that my immune system rallied true to form and handily defeated a battalion of tiny spiked tennis balls that are commonly known as influenza viruses, let me just say this: Vitamin C. And not just any form of Vitamin C either! Nosirree…none of those fake capsules and tablets that could be Vitamin F or U or K for all you know. No glass of juice (from concentrate) that’s strained to the point where you wouldn’t be able to guess what fruit it came from in a blind taste test. No, take it from a viral ninja tenth degree black&blue belt–only one daily supplement is required to keep you on your feet and hammering boards across all your doors and windows to fend off all the zombie hoards of flu sufferers who want what YOU have:
ORANGEBERRY! And brains. What kind of brains? The kind of brains that heat-seeks the very best in daily entertainment, courtesy of their kick-ass-take-names-big-bad-Book-of-Paul-blog-tour!
Hmmm…it might be a too late for you. Open wider and say: AHHHHRRRRGGGH!!
The Mudge Report – November 15th Blog Talk Radio
Ancient occult secrets, science and alchemy, dreams and the nature of reality. All that heady, weird stuff plus gripes with bible literalists, 6,000-year-old dinosaurs, Silas of the DaVinci code vs. Paul and other trash talk. Jeff was really a wonderful host and so great to gab with! Hope you enjoy! Listen to internet radio with […]
Read MoreWriters News Weekly Interview
Chainsaw the end off a coffin? Did I really do that?
Yep. A way-too-revealing interview with yours darkly by the I wonderful folks at Writers News Weekly.
What do these things NOT have in common?
You have to be dead to use one of them.
Apocalypse How???
In an earlier post, I related the acronymic amusements of our prepper friends, known to the uninitiated as survivalists. But as much as I might personally relish and benefit financially from the Zombie Apocalypse in the form of a pulse-pounding exploitive screenplay – that’s just not how it’s going down.
The Singularity. That will be TEOTWAWKI (The End Of The World As We Know It for those who still refuse to click the link above and believe me you’re really missing out if you don’t, cause it’s funny as fuc…but I digress). Even if the Singularity doesn’t spell doom for the human race, it will still be TEOTWAWKI. Why? Let’s go to the tape:
Read MoreJerusalem — still crazy after all these years!
I’ve been trying to digest my feelings about my Jerusalem trip ever since I returned last week. Being an ancient culture junkie and writer of occult paranormal fiction, I fully expected to come back full to the gills or maybe even drowning in inspiration.
Well, not so much. Or perhaps I should say not so much inspired in the ways I expected to be.
Read MoreThe Fighting Irish
My parents fought all the time. One particularly horrendous episode lasted for months without a break. My brother and I used to hide in our rooms. You did not want to be anywhere near their line of fire. My mother was an alcoholic, my father a rage-aholic. Both of them were “Irish.” I use the quote marks because they called themselves Irish, even though they were both born in Buffalo, NY.
My father’s mother was born in County Clare, Ireland. I never met her, though I have her to thank for my dual Irish citizenship. I have never been to Ireland. After my mother died and I was making an attempt to connect with my father I invited him on a trip to “the old country.” Even bought the tickets. He first accepted the gift, then declined. I can’t remember why. I can’t remember what I did with the tickets either, but I didn’t go.
I never met any of grandparents. They were all dead before I was born. My parents rarely talked about them, and when they did it was chiefly to complain. Alcoholism. Abuse. Neglect. And so on.
In an earlier post I wrote about this same topic:
“My parent’s never told me anything about my Irish heritage. The Book of Paul was my way of trying to make sense out of the way my parents behaved – or why they even bothered having children in the first place. One time when I asked my mother what her father was like, in an effort to understand where I “came from” and how “she got that way”, she immediately broke down, sobbing uncontrollably:
“He was…a…bastard!” she sputtered, immediately followed by father’s contribution to the conversation: “Gooddam it! Why are you upsetting your mother?”
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