Into the depths of my mind...

Well, folks it's official. I am back in print with my new Cyberpunk novel - Null/Void

By the mid 21st Century, the United States are a mess of political and corporate interests muddled and uncontained. Ecological disaster, broad social stratification, urban decay and economic insolvency have turned Chicago into a war zone, faught in back alleys and with undercover cloak and dagger operations.

Beret's the best of the worst, and even he's a man with problems. A dead girlfriend he can't forget, a new mechanic he can't hide his feelings for, and a short list of close friends that are getting shorter by the day. Life in Chicago's underworld isn't easy.

Warning you now, it's not for the feint of heart. When I wrote this novel, I went for real. Violence, Sex, Language. It's in there.

If you can pick it up from a local independant bookseller,do so. Supporting independant book sellers keep independant publishers (like mine) in business.

If you can't, Null/Void is available through Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Null/Void
by Arian Drake

Publisher: P.D. Publishing, Inc.
Pub. Date: July 2009
ISBN-13: 9781933720623
184pp

Long live the king.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Music/06/25/jackson/index.html

Wacko Jacko may have turned into a freak, but he still put out some damn fine music.

Kinda messed up that his father out lived him.  (I won't go into how much I think his father was to blame for what a messed up psyche Mike had.)

That said, I give you my favorite video of his.

RIP Michael.  I hope you're free of the demons that plagued you in life.

Ok, so I'm doing my final* review for Null/Void, my upcoming novel, and I'm totally stoked.  I asked two authors whose work I adore to blurb my book.  The first, who I have a pretty good relationship with, and had offered to blurb for me, has apparently been crazy-busy and never got back to me.  A little of a bummer, but meh, whatever, that's life.

The second author I met a few years back at WisCon and after a weekend of chatting about the cyberpunk genre and how it has evolved and become this fluid near future vision that becomes closer to reality rather than fiction as every day goes by and had a totally amazing stream of conciousness conversation over several days that kick started me to really take the kernel I had been massaging for a long time and turn it into what is now Null/Void. 

When I realized I was getting close to publication I fired off an email to her and asked if she would blurb for me.

She got back to me in a couple hours and gave me a resounding yes.

I got my final* review manuscript a few days ago and fired it off to her, figuring I had a couple weeks to get my edits done because I wanted to send them back with her blurb.  I got her blurb today.

I read it, and peed myself....just a little.  I want to save the whole thing for the cover...but the first four words made every hair on my neck stand up, do a dance then have an epileptic seisure.

""Reminiscent of classic Gibson..."

Having a writer who has won a Phillip K. Dick Award (2nd place) and a Shamus Award refer to William Gibson when talking about my book in any way, shape or form is high praise indeed.

So a great big shout out to Lyda Morehouse (lyda222 ) (Author of Archangel Protocol as well as the rest of the AngeLINK books.  I'm looking forward to seeing Ressurection Code.  If you're reading this and you haven't read her books, you need to.

 - Adrian



* final is not intended to mean the actual Oxford Dictionary definition final but more of an intended or quasi-real final that falls within the ream of "almost", "nearly" and "really really soon"  These terms are non-binding, non-guaranteed and carry no more weight than a hundred angels dancing on the head of a pin.  For an alternate definition of the word final, please see the Blizzard Entertainment definition of Soon™

So the family went and saw the new Star Trek movie on Thursday.  What an amazing film!  Entertaining, action-packed, visually stunning, modern sensibilities in filming, dialogue and attituse, yet it managed to keep the essence of what what the original Trek.

Or at least that was my take on it.

I popped into the "official" star trek forums to see other peoples take on it, and was shocked to see all the venom and bile over the new movie.

"They ruined the franchise"

"They pissed on 45 years of canon and continuity"

"Abrams might as well have sh*t on Roddenberry's grave."

Srsly?  The movie was a blast!  It was entertaining as hell and told a good story and explained any differences it had with the original series in a way that made total sense. I went an saw it with two fans of the franchise (my wife and my best bud Mike) and we all walked out of there going "DAY-am that was awesome!"

Ah well you can't please everypne all of the time, and you can't please people who cannot get out of thier shells and can't look outside of the little box they live in to think.  The franchise has been doing terrible for a few ears now.  The last few movies (which I enjoyed) have not done well.  The last series, "Enterprise" bored me to death.

Star Trek needed new life breathed into it, and this movie did it.

If you don't believe me, just ask Spock:

Les Miserables.  Les Miz.  When they talk about "historic" or "legendary" musicals, it's in the heap at the top.   If you haven't seen it, you should.

So, they have a show in Britan called "Britan's Got Talent"  Apparently they have a variation of it here in the states as well.  In essence its a new take on the Gong Show.

Enter Susan Boyle.  She's not beautiful.  She's not a model.  She's a simple, unassuming, ordinary 47 year old woman with a simple dream.  She wants to sing.

When she comes out they pan the crowd and the judges.  They all look ready to laugh.  This woman wants to be like Elaine Paige (wikipedia her if you don't know who she is. )

So she very simply says she's going to sing "I Dreamed the Dream" from Les Miz.  Simon says it plainly. " Thats a big song".  It is.
 
And her rendition of this song brought me to tears. 

Her performance is beautiful.  Soulful.  Tear-jerking.  Worthy of the song.

 I just wish it would let me imbed it.  Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

 

I consider myself a feminist.  I'm not perfect.  I still make assumptions.  I still cling to some gender-specific concepts, even though I try my damnedest not to.

But sometimes somebody needs to be slapped.  And in this case, it happens to be a woman. (Source - Comment is at 3:40 in Video)
 

Fox Business Network anchor Dagen McDowell made her case against a new tax on Wall Street bonuses funded by the government by comparing it to sexual abuse.

McDowell: "You don't want to think if you get in bed with Uncle Sam he's going to strip you naked, chain you to the bed, leave you there and then take nasty pictures of you and then put them on the internet."
 

I don't care if you're for or against the current administration. Don't sensationalize your views by marginalizing sexual abuse.  It's not bad form.  It's wrong.  PERIOD.  For a finantial reporter on a major news outlet to do it is simply reckless and irresponsible.

So I'm redesigning my website.  Currently the design is really old and out of date.

So I'm updating it.  Should see the new improved site in a couple hours.  (EDIT - or whenever my host gets back to me.  my ftp client won't frigging connect.  GAH.  Need to update my site during normal business hours)

I'd love to hear what y'all think. (EDIT - Once it's updated.  GRR!!!)

My promise to you:

I will post no spoilers.
I will post no glimpses.
I will post no surprises.

I will say I read The Watchmen when the comic came out.  I read every issue.  I devoured them.  There was nothing like it before it, and very few things that came close afterwards.

Alan Moore said it was unfilmable.  He said a movie would never be able to capture the power, the passion and the complexity of the comic.

Alan Moore is an amazing talent when it coms to creating comics.

But he is no film-maker.  And he was wrong. 

I shuddered as the comic came to life before me.  When Rorschact spoke, I would have know who it was before he identified himself.  When Nite Owl and Silk Specter fought criminals, it was as belivable and as brutal as it had been in the book.  When Ozymandias spoke, the air of superiority lept from the ink to my ears.

If Iron Man was a triumph of the comics to movies medium, and The Dark Knight was robbed of Oscar nominations it deserved, then Watchmen is the movie that breaks the genre barrier, the same way the comic did.

In the end, it's a movie about the flaws that make people human, no matter how superhuman they are.

Henry Rollins is probably one of the most intellegent bad ass muthaf****'s on the planet. In my mind he is truly the modern incarnation of the mindset that our founding fathers were built from.

To wit :

I am an optimist because I want to change things for the better and I know that blood has to be spilled and disharmony and cruelty are necessary to do that.

To hate is to show you still care, who needs that, focus on what's really important.

My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud.

Bowing to his wisdom, I offer a page with 10 of his best rants. Enjoy.  EDIT: Skip #5  The guys filming has a laugh that would force Henry to kill him if he heard it.

Obama actually read the audiobook version of Dreams From My Father.  in his bookm he quotes a friend of his from school, who apparently swears like a sailor.

I laughed until I cried.

The link says it all.  Have headphones.

"I cry not because I'm less of a man. I cry because I am a man.''
          - Bruce Smith, hall of fame Defensive End

I don't think anything else needs to be said.

But i felt a need.  In my quest for inspiration in reading/writing I've been reading online stuff.  Specific stuff.

Online comics.

I didn't realize i had a problem until I noticed it was taking me over an hour to browse all the strips i was reading.

So here's my list of what I'm reading.

13) The Perry Bible Fellowship by Nicholas Gurewitch - Irreverant and surreal, it's a shame he's doing no new strips.  If he was, this one would be higher in my list

12) Ding! by Scott Kurtz- It's gone through a few incarnationsm but I like the new format.  I've got a few stories to submit. You may not need to play WoW, but you really do need to be an online gamer at least to get some of the gags. 

11) For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston- The only syndicated strip in the list.  I'm still waffling on the new format, but Lynn really does capture sibling relations unerringly.

10) Red String by Gina Biggs- I just found this in the last day.  Wow.  It's a keeper.

9) Fans! by T. Cambell and Jason Waltrip - T. Cambell is one hell of a writer.  I really loved the first couple arcs, then got lost for a few story arcs, and I'm starting to drift back.  This one's on the rise in my list.

8) Fun In Jammies - It's fun, the art's very clean, and the characters are real.  Meanders a bit, but I still enjoy it.

7) Striptease by Chris Daily - Great strip.  Could use a few less characters and plot meanders, but still very solid.

6) Candi by Starline X. Hodge - I love the writing because it's real.  The art is simple but very expressive. 

5) Menage a 3 by Dave Zero and Giz. - A funny, sexy and compelling story with one HELL of an artist.  Giz's art makes me want to hold my breath for updates.

4) PvP - By Scott Kurtz. Alot of people bash him, curse him and talk alot of crap about the writer/artist.  He's been doing the  strip for 10 years, and I think he's still funny.  Brent Sienna is my hero.

3) Wapsi Square by Paul Traylor - Hot babes, action, wierdness, mysticism and general mayhem combine for a great strip.  Paul makes me tear my hair out.  He gives you just enough plot development to keep the story going, but there are times i want to just choke him and scream "What the HELL is going on!"

2) Least I Could Do by Sohmer and Lar - Rayne is the world's biggest pig, and I love him in a manly-but-no-peen-touching way.

1) Penny and Aggie by T. Cambell and Giz, AGAIN - Who would believe a teen drama in comic form would have me completely enthralled.  Shades of DeGrassi High...

So a CNN journalist asked a marine sniper what he felt when he shot a terrorist.

The marine shrugged.  "Recoil?"

You gotta love snipers.

Two Notes:

Null/Void - my upcoming book from PD Publishing is finally in editing!  Yay!!!  That makes it one step closer to being in print!

Disney, the empire of American civilization and comercialism just blew me away. A "Disney Family" article on celebrating the Solstice. Seriously? Did I just die and come back form the dead in Bizarro World?  Am I the only one freaked out by this?

Two days have passed, and of course the election furor is still high.  We have an African American president elect.  There's a feeling of change in the air.  Things are gonna be different. 

A friend of mine last night made an interesting statement.

"He's either going to be one of the best presidents we've ever had, or one of the worst."

When we pressed him as to what he meant, his stance was simple. 

"Obama isn't going to do anything half planned, half assed or half way.  He is the candidate of change.  He has a plan, and he's going to move forward with it, with the support and backing of the senate and house.  Will it work?  I hope so.  Hell, I voted for him because I believe it will work. But history isn't going to be forgiving if it doesn't.  He won't be one of those presidents that gets lost in the shuffle."

I have to agree.  I hope what he does will work, and if it does, and he can make the changes and move our country forward, in 30 years, he'll be remembered as this generations JFK or FDR.  If it doesn't work and everything goes to hell in a handbasket - even if it isn't his fault - history will paint him as this generations Herbert Hoover or Franklin Pierce.

Alot of people are happy, hopeful, joyus, estatic...hell name a positive adjective, and there are people feeling that now.  Me, not so much.  I remember when Reagan was elected and how happy and hopeful people were, and I remember  noticing just a couple years after he was out of office how urban blight had consumed neighborhoods I had grown up in, as a middle class kid in the urban midwest.

Reagan, who was heralded as the man to fix America left a legacy we all have to live with.  Bush the elder, Bush the younger, Iran, Iraq, the Mideast, tentions in former Eastern Bloc countries that are supposed to be our allies, a negative perception of the US as a bunch of gun hungry war mongering cowboys.

I listen to my Obama supporting friends (and just to clear myself, I too voted Obama) and read blogs and see a wave of optimism and happiness, and I worry that we're putting too much faith in him before he even takes office.  Over the last two days, the Dow Jones has lost over 500 points.  The economy is still grim, and he has 10 weeks before he takes the oath.  How long before he can get anything moving; any change?  It won't be the first day.  If we're lucky, something will happen in the first hundred days.

Stuart Rothenberg is the editor and publisher of The Rothenberg Political Report, a non-partisan newsletter that reports on and analyzes the United States current political developments. He noted that Democrats' expectations of our new president-elect are running high.  "They don't think he's merely going to be president," Rothenberg said. "They think he's been elected savior."

That's a bit much to lay at Obama's feet, and unfortunatly, from my perspective it  rings true.  Is it a response to the painting of GeeDub as the anti-christ?  Is it a reaction to the hopelessness seen in this current crisis?  Is it an adverse flip on the Reagan era polcies that have dominated the American landscape for most of the last 28 years?

In '88 I went into the military and voted for Bush the elder.
In '92 I came back and saw the mess this country was in and voted for Perot.
In '96 voted for Clinton for lack of a better candidate.  If Perot hadn't fallen off the deep end, I might have voted him again.
In 2K, I voted Nader.  Gore had my home state locked up in the polls. so I voted Green just to send a message to the big two that they were out of touch.
In '04 I voted Kerry, not because i was voting for Kerry, but because I was voting against Bush.

Welcome to 2008.  The next four years are gonna be one hell of a ride.

Why vote, right?  Why bother?  The election's already sewn up.  It's already done.  One vote won't matter right?

Wrong.

Need a reason to vote?  Need an excuse?  Here's some of mine.

The 2000 Presedential election was decided by less than 1000 votes. 

100 years ago in this country, if you were a woman, you didn't have the right to vote.  People toiled, went to jail and fought to give women the right to vote.  If you're a woman, and you don't vote, why did they bother?

In 1965 the Voting Rights Act was passed, guaranteeing the right of any American citizen the right to vote without hinderance.  This is a landmark in American civil rights, and civil rights leaders mark this as a hallmark of advancement.  If you're a minority, and you don't vote, why did they bother?

My own family fled an opressive regime that sent people to work camps based on belief, religion, politics...anything.  They came to the States to be free.  The ultimate expression of freedom is the ability to cast your vote and choose your nation's leadership.

To wit, as I am a fan of quotes:

“The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.”  -  Lyndon B. Johnson, 36th President of the United States

"The ballot is stronger than the bullet."  -  Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States

OK, so a while back I posted an entry called "Fine then...hang him" about a rapist/murderer who was trying to get out of the death sentance by claiming he was "too fat".

It seems the Ohio State Supreme Court disagrees.

If there is a hell, Richard Cooey, enjoy your stay.  If there isn't, I hope the worms enjoy the meal.

My heart goes out to the families of Wendy Offredo and Dawn McCreery.  I hope his death brings you closure and peace.

---

On a side note....Ohio doesn't have a "last meal".  But they do let him have a "special meal".  His consisted of a T-bone steak, hash browns, french fries, four eggs over easy, onion rings, four pieces of toast, a pint of Rocky Road ice cream, Mountain Dew and bear claw pastries.

Maybe I'm missing something, but does the word "irony" come into play?

I don't watch alot of television.  I honestly don't have time.  Between writing and my family and gaming and my half dozen other passions, TV (other than American Football) takes a far back seat to the rest of my life.

Except for one show.  CSI.  Not CSI:New York.  Not CSI:Miami.  The original. 

Ok, here's the story.

In a nutshell:

Psycho kills and rapes a pair of 21 year old girls.

Sits in prison for 21 years, using every last method of getting around the death penalty (except insisting innocence)

Gets within 13 hours of death in 2003, but a federal judge approves an appeal.

State sets a new date to put him to death (Oct. 11 2008), and in responce he files an appeal based on he's "too fat to be executed" and that because of medication he takes, he has built up an immunity to the drugs they would use to put him out before administering the lethal injection.

Enough is enough.  Why does death for condemed killers have to be painless? Were his victims given the same sort of mercy?  He's been in prison nearly as long as his victims were on this planet. Being protected from "cruel and unusual punishment" somehow means "merciful"?

Bullshit.  if they're mentally compitent and can distinguish between right and wrong, fry 'em.

Yes, everyone deserves a fair and impartial trial, and I would never want to take that away from people.  Give them thier appeals.  But base thier appeal on what they did or did not do, not some bizzare technicality or politically correct b.s. about "we've evolved as a society beyond needed to execute criminals".

Too fat for lethal injection?  Fine. He's got 12 weeks. There's a program for that.

So....

I take a week off of work to try and write.  Try and finish up my sequel to Null/Void.  Just sit down and pound it out.

*sigh*

And next to nothing comes out.

I keep looking at the nearly blank page, going over in my head where my story is going.  I have an outline.  I have some critical plot points coming to a head.  I know where it's going.  I know what I'm doing with this book.

And in four days, I've punched out less than 1K.

Everything distracts me.  Life distracts me.  Motes of dust in the air distract me.  Anger distracts me.  My inability to put word to paper distracts me.

This isn't writers bock.  I know where the plot is going.  i know where the subplots are going.  I've got this b*tch scripted tighter than anything I've ever written before.

Why can't I do this?