It occurs to me that so much of what indie writers do is putting on a show for appearances. Here’s a sale that I’m putting on with my non-existent publicist. Here’s a guest-post I did on some other schmoe’s blog. Here’s some “content” I created; I’m a “content creator”.
I’m sick of being that guy. Continue reading
Check it, y’all. So there’s this site called NoiseTrade. Here’s how it works:
That’s it. No strings attached. Free stuff for the cost of an email address. You like the stuff, maybe you buy more stuff in the future. You don’t like the stuff, you unsubscribe from the emails. Bing bang boom, e-communism in action.
To that end: Deep Sounding is now free on NoiseTrade, forever. I figure it’s like dealing heroin; I’ll hook you with a taste.
So look. Everybody and their grandmother is talking about HBO’s True Detective; which, having aired its final episode tonight, has firmly cemented itself as a work of television perfection. But I’m not interested in doing that dance*. I don’t feel like recapping the premise (it’s great), or the visual direction (it’s stellar), the genius of the dialogue (it’s genius), or the performance of Matthew McConaughey (which, holy fucking shit). I have ZERO fucking interest in one of those abominable “recap” articles, which serve no purpose I can identify.
What I want to talk about is purely story-structural. It’s something I need to get off my chest about True Detective, as a writer, which I’ve not seen anybody else express. I want to talk about how True Detective is an act of genre- sleight-of-hand, which exists within the framework of one kind of story, while carefully being another.
(If you’ve not finished the show, bla bla bla spoilers etcetera.)
(And if you haven’t seen True Detective, you’re a jerk, and this post will mean nothing to you.)
About a week ago, I took a trip to New Hampshire, to climb Mount Washington for the eighth or ninth time in my life. It’s a yearly ritual for my family, and it’s one that never fails to get me all nostalgic and sentimental.
This week, in preparation for fall, I set myself to the long-put-off task of cleaning up my horrid fox-warren of a room, the nooks and crannies of which look like an episode of Hoarder’s. In the process, I found a letter I haven’t seen in almost ten years, since just after my dad died.
It feels surreal to type that. To think that it’s been almost ten years since he went. Almost half my life I’ve now lived without him, and yet he looms in my memory as large as the mountains he taught me to climb.
It’s odd, then, that I barely remember this letter. I read it yesterday as though for the first time; a message from beyond the grave.
There are parts of this letter I don’t care for. There are parts of it that hurt to read. But it’s a beautiful, direct communication from him, and the writing is surprisingly strong. Or maybe not so surprisingly — after all, he did always want to be a novelist.
Perhaps it can serve as a kind of closure. I wrote last year that I was standing at a kind of crossroads in my life, and I don’t feel less at a crossroads now, but I suppose I must be. The next chapter of my life is fast approaching: as an artist, as a craftsman, and as a man.
I can think of no better send-off.
It’s my birthday. Time for presents!
Join my mailing list this week, and I’ll send you a free copy of Deep Sounding in .mobi, .epub, or .pdf format.
I’ll also send you a free, personalized dwarven haiku, based on a three-word prompt of your choosing.
Such is life:
stubborn and angry, drunk on
endless hunger.
— Bardan Hardoch, of Whitemount
This one’s out of left field, and admittedly a pretty stupid thing to write about. But what can I say? Sometimes I read a story in the news and it’s so purposefully misleading it makes me foam at the mouth. Continue reading
Here’s a snippet from the new novel. Enjoy! Bear in mind that this is hot off the presses, totally unedited, and will likely change substantially before publication.
I’m aping AA Milne a bit here, so for increased enjoyment, imagine the text as read in the voice of your favorite Brit.
Starting to get more visitors to the blog, and with this Phil Fish thing, I find myself thinking more and more about creator-audience interaction. Here are my publicly-stated GROUND RULES O’ DA GAME for the blog, going forward. Continue reading
Deep Sounding Volume 2 is going on indefinite hold. It’s not for lack of trying, but I have almost fifty thousand words of…well, to be frank, crap. And I don’t mean “typical first draft” crap; this book’s a total wreck, the literary equivalent of shooting half a movie and then realizing you left the lense-cap on. D’oh. Continue reading
Solo animators, indie filmmakers, and all-around unnaturally-talented badasses M Dot Strange and Jimmy Screamerclauz invited me onto their podcast, Forever Alone Filmmaking!
Come listen to us ramble about copyright, self-marketing, ~The Problem With Hollywood~, crappy vampire novels, and how smartphones are corrupting the youth of Athens. Also cackle derisively as a $30 headset from Target single-handedly strips my voice of all its sultry, brassy bass, and reduces me to a mouth-breathing squawk-voiced nerd.
Finally, once you’re done doing that, go check out M Dot Strange’s hypnotic and beautiful Heart String Marionette (if you want to dip your toes into some surreal Ninja Scroll -style weirdness), and Jimmy Screamerclauz’s nightmare-inducing Where the Dead Go to Die (if you want to dive headfirst and shrieking into the abyss).
The Workbench 