Nearly Dead

Apologies for not updating, and being derelict in commenting on my writer friends' blogs (which I am indeed reading, though). In addition to my previously announced melancholy over the Liberace museum closing, I’ve been busy.

I am pleased to announce I've released a free short, a St. Pete-centric, tongue-in-cheek Zombie tale titled "Nearly Dead" on Smashwords. You can download it in the format of your choice (or read it online) by clicking here.

Plot summary goes something like this:

"When a New York crime boss sends a hitman to St. Pete in the middle of a zombie infestation, the hitman finds that though infested with the undead, his beloved St. Pete hasn't really changed that much. But even in the middle of an infestation, he has a job to do."

The story is perhaps too St. Pete-centric for some, with unexplained inside jokes you'd maybe have to live here to know about. Or maybe, it doesn't work at all. Who the hell knows anymore? But hey, it's free, right?

In other news, I’ve completed reviewing the first-round edits of Applewood, my New England vampire novel, and will be sending them back in the next day or so. I’m certain the edits truly make it stronger. We’ve also had preliminary discussions about potential covers. Hard to believe it’s really happening.

One reason I opted to not self-publish this one (after making the rounds of agents and publishers, of course, and sitting at Dorchester for more than three years before they said no) was for just that, to have someone else read and edit and help with production, someone to tell me which parts suck (and not be afraid to use those exact words) and point out bad habits I’d fallen into.

Another curiosity about “Applewood” is there is a completed full-length sequel, picking up where the cliff-hanging end of "Applewood" leaves off. I started writing it as an exercise to more fully flesh out “Applewood” and it took on a life of its own.

I remember thinking at the time, “Is there any greater act of faith or stupidity than writing the sequel to an unpublished novel?”

Don’t know for sure, however I suspect J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyer were sane enough to wait and see if anybody cared about the first to write the next.

But between you and me, I think the second in the series is even stronger than the first, and project it would take another four books or so to truly complete the “saga.” I’ll keep you posted.

Course with my luck, vampires will be passé right about then . . .

As always, thanks for reading!

Dog Days

Not much to report, except I DID finish a story and sent it off to submission-land. So that's something.

I blogged in February about a book release party held locally for a zombie anthology centered in St. Pete. Never having had a book release party for any anthology I’d been in, I thought that was cool enough.

And though I’d only been here a few months at the time, St. Pete had gotten under my skin enough where I realized it truly was a funky and off-beat enough place to support a zombie anthology of its own.

Though I missed that opportunity, I was inspired to jot down a few pages of notes for a St. Pete-centric zombie short that I’d get around to writing someday, if only for fun.

So color me excited when I learned the folks who created that anthology announced another, and not only that, but a whole series of place-themed zombie anthologies.

The first two announced were for a second St. Pete volume, submissions due August 30th, and a New York City based one, submissions due December 30th.

I was inspired enough to reopen those notes and tailor a St. Pete zombie tale.

Anyway, they probably have hundreds of good ones from folks more talented than me, who know the place far better. And they’re not paying anything, so I have nothing to lose. Still, had fun writing the thing and think it’s pretty good.

In other news, still puttering away on my novel-length Dick Londergan / P.I piece.

More than two hundred folks have downloaded Telegraph Hill, my free Dick Londergan short available on Smashwords, with at least a couple of more every week. Nobody has written to complain, so maybe there's a market for it.

Having fun too (thus far only in my head) with prospective titles. I want folks to know it’s a Dick Londergan tale, so I’m trying to both think of a way to get his name in the title as well as to parody great crime novels of the past.

So far, “The Big Dick” is in the lead.

(:>)

St. Pete Loves Its Zombies

My Week (and welcome to it)

Fun and interesting week. Went to my first game at Tropicana Field on Tuesday night and saw the best-in-baseball Tampa Bay Rays beat the best-in-the-west Oakland Athletics 8-6 in a terrifically exciting and back and forth game. The win made the Rays 15-5 overall, the best start in baseball since the 2003 Yankees.

Of course, problem is, I was one of only 10,800 or so who saw the game in the mostly empty Trop. The newspapers had a field day with the low attendance, ammunition to move the team from St. Pete to Tampa or frankly, anywhere else.

So, I decided on the spur of the moment to go to the next night's game (it's in walking distance and tickets are cheap) and saw the best-in-baseball Rays defeat the Athletics again to go 16-5, the most wins of any Rays team in their history and . . . there were even fewer people at this game, a mere 10,691, the lowest attendance of the season.

Didn't go last night, but the Rays beat the Royals 11-1 to go 17-5, and the paper reported a slight uptick in attendance, to around 12,500 or so. But still, I just don't get it.

Something truly special is happening here, they've got the cheapest seats in baseball, and though folks from Tampa whine about coming to St. Pete ("I have to go over a bridge!") the Trop is not that bad a stadium, nor is it hard to get in and out of.

Beginning to think that St. Pete (if not Tampa Bay) just can't support a major league baseball team.

In other news, St. Pete was the focus of the political world last night, as Governor Charlie Crist announced here in St. Pete that he would switch from Republican to Independent and continue his senate run (he was getting trounced in the Republican primary by tea party hero Marco Rubio). He made his announcement in a park about two blocks away (he's a native of St. Pete) so I walked down and took it all in.

In writing news, work continues on the pirate thing, though I hit some troublesome plot snags which slowed things down a bit. Thing is (and it's easy to say, harder to do) that you've got to just keep writing, even when you know its crap, or the coincidence you just inserted makes no sense, or whatever. It's too easy to give up and leave something half-finished, as I've already done once with this thing.

At any rate, just shy of the 40,000 word barrier which leaves me probably at about the halfway point. All downhill from here, right?

I figure the first draft of this will be done by the end of May, and after that I'll let it percolate a bit before sending out a few copies to friends and family to hear what they have to say. Not looking forward to the query process at all, but I'm gonna exhaust every traditional route I can with this. Think it may be unique or offbeat enough to garner somebody's interest. Time will tell.

Interesting to see seventy-four people have downloaded my free short story "Telegraph Hill" from SmashWords. If you have any interest, you can grab a copy here.

I've mentioned before it was simply gathering dust on my hard drive (not to mention, the pop culture it references is probably already a little stale). But I love the main character, a clueless gumshoe named Dick Londergan.

Like him so much, in fact, that a few years ago I got 6,000 words or so into a novel about him before concluding that I suck and abandoning it. But that's what I'm gonna move onto after I've finished this one. Maybe parlay the free story into folks shelling out, you know, actual cash for the new one.

Nah. Never happen. (:>)

In conclusion, here's today's totally draft and probably senseless excerpt of what I'm working on:

Chris was surprised to see there were so many of them. Seventeen or eighteen, at least. Maybe twenty. He'd personally only shepherded a dozen or so out of the sand, or water, or wherever the hell it was they had all come from, so a few must have had to fend for themselves. Or maybe, the others had helped them make the transition.

However it happened, most looked as if they still wore clothes from the donation bin, but it also appeared as though some of them had gone back and chosen something more . . . appropriate. To Chris, their outfits now looked less ridiculous somehow. More threatening.

Of course, they could all be wearing clown noses and floppy shoes and what was going on in this room would still look threatening.

The Captain was standing on a wooden chair in the center of the room, surrounded by his formerly loyal crew. His hands were bound behind his back. Sykes was the only other man standing. He had turned around when Chris entered the room, and his leg was still lifted off the ground, frozen in that moment of time just before he was about to kick the chair out from beneath the Captain's legs.

One end of the noose was tied securely around a beam about ten feet off the ground. Its other end was tied around the Captain's neck.

Zombie St. Pete

Now THIS is how you throw an anthology release party:



The event takes place Saturday evening, February 27th, from 5:00 - 10:00 PM down at The Pier. It's within walking distance of where I live, so I'm definitely going to check it out.

If you're in the vicinity, for more info on the event, click here.

And the cover looks awesome!



The cover is actually The Pier where the event takes place (and I suspect a story or two is set) which is very, very cool.

Best of luck to all of the authors and the event organizers.

I'll see you there!

With Most Sincere Apologies to the St. Petersburg Police

It was about 6:30 this morning and still dark out when I began to hear the pounding on the door.

Now, I live on the second floor, the entryway is shared by two other apartments, and seeing as how I don't know a single soul in this town, the knock certainly wasn't for me.

The only other time someone pounded on the door like that was in the afternoon on Thanksgiving Day. On that occasion, after the pounding had gone on a while, I did pop my head out, went down the stairs, and asked the women what she wanted.

She, of course, was looking for someone I did not know (have I mentioned I know not a soul in this town, with the exception of my landlady and the maintenance guys, who have keys anyway, and if they wanted to get up to see me, they could?)

Anyhoo, this morning's knocker was certainly tenacious, but after a while, the pounding stopped.

But only a few minutes later, I heard voices down below and then footsteps coming up the stairs, followed by a knock on my door.

I approached the door tentatively and said, "Hello?"

My landlady's voice came from the other side.

"Yes, Mr. Myers, the police are here and they have a few questions for you."

Heart pounding, I went to the door, opened it, and there on the landing was my landlady, looking like she'd just been woken up, and yes, a uniformed police officer. My landlady went on.

"They need you to go down to the station for a few minutes."

She let me stand there a moment, looking stunned or faint or however the hell I looked, before she said, "They need you to move your car. There's a road race today and they need to clear that side of the street."

It took a few moments for my befuddled mind to process this information.

It had indeed been a police officer pounding on my door, looking for me, and not being able to contact me, they phoned the landlady, whose phone number is posted on the door.

And they knew it was my car from the parking permit on the back, or maybe the license plate (funny to think of computers humming somewhere looking up my address . . .)

So when I finally did process all of this, I looked at the officer and said, "Man, I am so sorry. I mean . . . I heard the knocking, but I don't know anybody in this town . . . and figured it couldn't be for me . . ."

He continued to stare at me like I was a suspicious character. And, considering all the facts, I suppose I was.

Anyway, still shouting my apologies, my landlady and the officer turned and left. I threw on some jeans and moved my car to the other side of the street.

But most sincere thanks (and continued apologies) to the St. Petersburg police and the officer in question. You went out of your way, and I certainly appreciate it.

And yet another reason to like St. Pete: Where I come from, they woulda just towed the car.

So, now that I have a few hours distance, and can look back and even smile about it, I have a message for my landlady (who is a hot shit, by the way):

Payback's a bitch.

Synchronicity II

Because of my recent move, mail to my old address has to jump through a few hoops to get to me, so I find myself still awaiting my contributor's copy of the latest issue of Necrotic Tissue featuring my 100-word fiction short "Adagio."

This past Sunday morning, I went to Google see if the magazine had become available and discovered that it had. As always, the cover looks really, really cool.



So, to friends and family and all the ships at sea, this fine magazine is now available for purchase, directly from the Necrotic Tissue website or from Amazon.Com.

Pick up a copy! Support your wastrel brother and friend!

You'll be glad you did.

I've mentioned before my own ambivalence about my story ("Is it really any good? Are they just being nice to me? Am I just pulling the wool over their eyes?") emotions perhaps familiar to the more neurotic among us.

But I get that same feeling any time something I've written gets put into print. Because now, it's out there . . . for all the world to see . . . and there's no taking it back.

And so, with these emotions on my mind, after learning the story was out there, I decided to grab my bag and take a long walk around my new city. It was a beautiful sunny day with temperatures in the seventies.

I walked the few blocks down to the waterfront, to stare at the beautiful skyline of waterfront condos and marinas packed with thousands of boats.

It was such a nice day, I grabbed my camera from my bag and took a few snapshots.





Still, I continued my brooding. I walked along the waterfront, past dozens of long docks mooring hundreds of sailboats each.

I stopped at one point, to lean on a fence overlooking the water, all the while still wondering:

Is it really good? Are they just being nice to me? Am I just pulling the wool over their eyes?

Then, I opened my own eyes and saw this (click for big version):



What it means? I have no idea.

But for those who have read (or will read) the story, you'll understand there is perhaps a double-dose of synchronicity in the image above.

Made me feel a little bit better, anyway.

On a related note . . .

Before composing this post, I learned that my friend, the marvelously talented writer Aaron Polson, has already received his copy of the magazine and has provided a review of it on his excellent Skull Salad Reviews blog.

I'm embarrassed to report in this space the kind things he said about my story, however please click the link above and read all about it.

All I can say to Aaron is I can't thank you enough.

It really means a lot.

And the check's in the mail . . .

Dispatch from St. Pete

"the town of the newly wed and the living dead . . . a good place to come to die." – Jack Kerouac

The city itself reminds me of waking up the morning after my parents had a party. The living room is a bit askew. Chairs have been moved out of their usually precise positions. Mysterious new spots have appeared here and there on the carpet.

Half-filled glasses and empty bowls of snack mix and overflowing ashtrays adorn the coffee and end tables. The room is empty now.

But you just know it must have been one hell of a party.

Homeless stand on every street corner bearing signs asking for money. Every other street corner has a hand-made sign reading some variation of: "Must Sell: Three Bedroom. $32,000. Cash Only."

The news reports that 60% of Florida homeowners are upside-down on their mortgages.

Two out of three storefronts are empty. Even the pawnshops appear to lack for business, as if everything that could be pawned has already been pawned.

Morgan Memorial and Goodwill are two places appearing to do a brisk business. And the tattoo parlors. The many, many tattoo parlors.

The weather too appears to have it in for South Florida. Temperatures have been record cold. 30% of Florida's winter crop has been lost. Tens of thousands of dead fish are washing up on the shores.

I fear my new neighbors will think me a cold weather Jonah and try to keep a low profile.

Every other radio station is devoted to Jesus. He's really big down here. Even has his own show on the FM dial, "The Jesus Christ Show." Every time I tune in, there's a guest host.

In the news, an eleven-year-old girl and her fifteen-year-old boyfriend are charged with pouring gasoline around her mother's bed and setting it alight.

A young man convicted in the infamous "homeless murders" of a few years ago raps out a song on the witness stand while awaiting the jury's death sentence verdict.

Everyone I've met has been wonderful. More on them later.

But only time will tell if Kerouac was right.

I take no solace knowing he died eleven months after pronouncing his own judgment.