Read My Non-fantasy-non-sci-fi Book

The delicious sauce that I need to pull the Animal Kingdom Come dish together needs a little time to simmer. Instead of rest on my haunches and possibly piss off my patron, the beautiful woman who is also my wife, I've decided to do some editing on an earlier project.

That book is called, Finnegan Peck Deserves a Bullet in the Brain.


BE WARNED: there is a character in this story whose language may make my own mother disown me. This is a tale that is rated R for language, so if that will hurt your feelings or your opinion of me as a person you shouldn't read it. Knowing the risks, the brave among you can read the first three chapters by clicking here.

Enjoy, and as before, feel free to tell me about your feelings in the comments or over the phone or by email or by postal service or by raised middle finger when passing on the street.



You should be ashamed of your mouth, young lady.

The beginning of a book I don't have the time to write right now.

Dealing with a toddler in the heat of a tantrum and diffusing a bomb are basically the same thing.
Having to deal with both at the same time should have broken my brain. Instead, I went to my Captain's pod, flopped on my bed, and thought everything over during a painfully slow ten count.
When I returned to the galley, all my thinking had ceased.
"Cam, take the kid to my pod," I directed. She obeyed; maybe there was magic or madness enough in my eyes to keep her from arguing. Maybe she was just looking for an excuse to get away from the inevitable boom.
I shuffled past Vance--our cook--and got another eyeful of the bomb. There were three bricks of ordnance topped with a tangle of rainbow colored wires and a digital timer.
I pulled the knife out of my boot and stuck it in the counter. Everyone jumped. The door out of the galley hissed as it sealed behind Cam and the kid.
Vance saw me move and he had just enough time to squeak and raise his hands before my gun was out and a bullet was in his head.
"What the h--" Jensen stopped himself as I tugged the bomb's digital display until the wires attached to it were taught. "Hold on, cap! You don't--"
I pulled my knife from the counter and slashed the wires like they were the connective tissues of a Balwir whale.
Everyone froze; nothing exploded.
"Search his pod," I directed to Griff and Vanna as I pointed at Vance's body. "Find his comm gear and give it to Cam. She'll mojo it or whatever."
They just stared.
"Sooner rather than later," I ordered.
I left the galley and caught Cam and the kid in the hall. The kid smiled at me, the tears on his face were the only reminder of his fit. Cam shook her head. She must have heard the gunshot.
"What?" I asked, innocently. I gathered the kid in my arms.
"Who?" she countered.
"The bad guy, of course, right in the head."
She sighed.
"We'll be in the pod, join us if you want."
"One," she counted off a finger, "no matter how adorable the kid, I'm not climbing into bed with you. Two," and a second, "someone needs to figure out this whole mess."
"I was hoping you'd say that. Griff and Vanna will bring you the comms equipment so you can," I mimed using a keyboard with my free hand.
"And you'll..."
"Be napping. We're beat, aren't we little man?"
The kid nodded.
"Verna 114," Cam grumbled like a curse. It was the city where I'd first hired her.
"The best place in the world," I smirked and headed for my pod.
I crawled in bed, wrapped the kid up beside me and draped my arm over him.
I don't know which of us fell asleep first.


This story idea came to me last night as I was trying to sleep. My son started crying from his room and the neighbors were having one of their bass-heavy Friday night drink-a-thons. It also has something to do with this Wayne Reynolds illustration I was salivating over before bed.


Maybe I'll work on this guy after I finish my current novel. Maybe I won't. Such is life.

Star Wars Day!

Happy Star Wars day! May the 4th be with you all!

The First Two Chapters

My new novel is titled Animal Kingdom Come. It's crime fiction (like any serialized TV show with a male and female lead and some murders) but unlike other crime fiction it takes place in world a little different from the one we live in.
There are no Vampires.
There are no proper Werewolves.
There are no laser guns, magical swords, spaceships or dragons.
It's sad that some of the above aren't included, but if you can get over your own disappointment feel free to read the first two chapters of my story.
Notes on how I like people to read my work:
*I want to know broad things:
Did you like/hate characters?
Did you feel immersed in the world or disconnected?
Did you want to keep reading or did you soldier on because you like me too much as a friend/brother/son/husband to stop?
Was the writing in the way of your enjoyment, or was it just good enough not to piss you off?
Did you generally enjoy or hate the experience?

*I don't really need editing, as in grammar, because this is so rough that many of the things you'll catch will be rewritten or deleted before the book goes much further. Grammatical stuff is important later in the process, but right now it isn't really on the importance radar.

Enjoy! Animal Kingdom Come Chapters 1 and 2

Hooray!

This made my day:


For those of you who don't know MoMa from Momma (including me until I read the story that was posted with this picture on tor.com) it is the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Maybe the "trash" Annabelle mentions is actually her take on splatter art or any Yoko Ono apples she may have seen.
If MoMa finds this post, might I suggest this work as a way to sate any future visit from critics such as Annabelle:

Stop hating on Twilight...not the post you think it is.

Yesterday's post lead me to this one. Therefore, steel yourself as we talk about Twilight. Other topics will include, but are not limited to: Apple, Charlie Sheen, and Donald Trump.
I'm a huge fan of comedy. Sketches, stand up, improve, bad puns (thanks Dad), dark, family friendly, whatever. I'm not, however, a fan of seeing the same funny used over and over and over again. This brings me to Twilight. When the first movie started casting I remember all my nerd sites (io9.com, boingboing.net, joystiq.com, bleedingcool.com if you want to surf some of my daily addictions) were covering it. Sometimes, they were pointing fun, sometimes they were genuinely excited, but the noise of Twilight was only just beginning. Soon Conan and Jimmy Fallon and SNL and people on networks other than NBC were poking fun. The more I learned about Twilight, the more I loved the bashing. Twilight was (passed tense because I'm no longer judging it) so lame.
You know what's lame now? Bashing Twilight.
I've heard all the sparkle jokes, I've seen the glittery bedroom erotic aid made for women who are entirely too into this stuff, I've seen more anorexic boys in face powder and bulked up Latin tweens brooding for the sake of mockery than I'd ever need. Let's get a little more creative people, let's make fun of something that really needs it.
This goes as well for Apple bashing. Pretty soon Jobs will come out with a turd and we'll all buy it like zombies. Pretty soon he'll be selling us something so small we won't be able to see it with the naked eye. Pretty soon he'll be selling us back out own souls which we sold to him for last year's iPod model.
Andy Rooney is working on an anti-apple piece for sixty-minutes right now (not actually true)! This horse is dead, and I don't know how I ever lived without my iPad, so let's just drop it.
This is funny:

This is beating a dead horse:
Charlie Sheen is crazy/on drugs/ugly/whatever, Donald Trump's a Birther now, but his own released birth certificate is fake, his hair is weird like a taxidermy squirrel, he's only running for President to boost Apprentice ratings...We ALL know this--except maybe the birth certificate thing, I threw that in there as my own personal aside--please leave it alone.
Go forth world. Give us more Cosby-Mordor thingies, but not literally more of Cosby himself, that'd kill that whole thing too.

I, am nah lef handed!

I wore a Star Wars shirt today on my errands, and two things happened for the first time.

First, a kid at Best Buy made me feel old. I know that some of my readers will be shocked that anyone under thirty can feel old, and I know that you might be mad at me for saying so, but feeling old and being old are not the same thing. I met an 83 year old man in Colorado once who still roped cattle and rode an ATV for more hours everyday than he spent in the bathroom. If you can still laugh at a whiny fart ringing out from the back seat of an otherwise silent car, then you are not old.
The reason I felt old was because that kid at Best Buy started complaining about how Lucas was making 3-D versions of all the Star Wars films and reissuing them in theaters. When I mentioned how awful it was for me to see the special editions of the original films in theaters when I was younger, and how that awfulness escalated exponentially with the release of the pre-trilogy-Jar-Jar-Binks-sess-pool episodes 1,2, and 3 he looked at me like I had poop on my nose. Episode 3 came out when he was 11! He thought it was freaking COOL! He thinks the special editions are--with the exception of the Muppet sing along in Jabbba's palace and the "Han didn't shoot first" fiasco in A New Hope--more enjoyable than the original!

Grey hair popped up all over my head as he told me these things, and when I got to the car I had a revelation; it being the second thing that happened to me for the first time today:

I DON'T CARE ABOUT THIS CRAP ANYMORE!

Not "this crap" like life, I'm not giving up the living. I mean I don't care about the thing underlying our conversation that has made me, and the rest of the geek community, grumpy for years now. Pretension. Most people won't think of me as pretentious for saying that Episodes 1, 2, and 3 sucked, but if I substitute in "Twilight" or "Avatar" or "M. Night after The Village" people might get ruffled. Sure I hate Twilight. Sure I loved Avatar and got grumpy at a friend of mine who called it "boring." Sure anyone who likes M. Night's Air bender is under the age of Ten and probably smells like an unchanged diaper, but that's fine by me. Creating something, writing in my case, is putting yourself out there. If you have even a single person who will argue with a fat bearded man in Best Buy about how your artistic contribution is worthwhile then you've made it. You've done something that the majority of people will never be able to match.
That's awesome!
Plus, everyone knows that The Princess Bride was the best thing with swords and princesses to come out of the Eighties and early Seventies, so there's no point in making a stink anymore.
Unless they remake my Bride with Robert Pattinson as Westley..."As you wish," my ass! That'd be a real reason to throw a fit.

The change they made to this part of the movie would be alright, though.
You killed my father...Lightsaber style!