I've just handed out a few pre-reader copies of "The Eight-Bit Bard." Now the fidgets begin, where mostly I feel jealous of musicians and poets, because they can get feedback after just a couple of minutes rather than requiring days or weeks. Who thought being a novelist was a good idea?
If you're interested and think you could return some comments in less than a month, there's still time to contact me for a copy.
Novels, humor, and self-inflicted ordeals. My newest book, Scott Stokely: Growing Up Disc Golf, is available on Amazon.
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
Saturday, April 25, 2015
My Next Novel: The Eight-Bit Bard
This project is very different from the first: a fantasy novel with heavy references to early computer role-playing games. I think it stands on its own even if the reader isn't big on computer games, but it may resonate especially well with anyone who knows Ultima, Bard's Tale, Pool of Radiance, Wizardry, and other classics, and also with more modern gamers.
The current working title is The Eight-Bit Bard, but that's still up for review.
In coming weeks I'll be sending copies to advance readers for some commentary and revisions. Any enthusiastic readers are welcome to contact me for a copy, if you're interested.
I'm not sure how long revisions will take. Somewhere between two and four months from now is likely, depending on feedback.
Once things get cleaned up a little more I'll be posting some excerpts and maybe some candidate artwork for the cover.
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
'Chicagoland' Excerpt: DEFCON Drunk
The car I was in got back to the house first, while Moses’s car with Dan got delayed. Not wanting to waste any minutes of the bachelor party, everyone with me started drinking quickly. When Dan arrived, we shoved drinks at him so he could catch up. Then we had more drinks so we could stay ahead and keep stringing the late arrivals along.
We talked Dan into doing some shots, him individually against several of us, before the party moved upstairs. A while later, I went back down to the kitchen to find him doing a shot against himself. “Nobody else wanted one, and I wasn’t going to waste it,” he said.
“Why not just pour one shot?”
“I didn’t think of that.”
Soon after that, I found Dan slumped over the kitchen table, head on his arm, muttering to himself in German. I didn’t even know Dan spoke any German. “Mein freunde, mein freunde,” I heard him say, which I barely recognized as “my friends, my friends.” I tried to shuffle him off to bed, but some switch had flipped, and he ignored everything I tried to tell him in English, only responding with more German. I had maybe thirty words in the language total, but thankfully one phrase I could remember was “good night.” Heavy repetition of “gute nacht” got him to agree it was time for nighty-night. I grabbed his shoulder to help move him toward a couch.
Apparently that was a mistake. Angry, belligerent, Dan turned on me and shouted in an evil robot voice, “DEFCON 3, defenses rising!”
“Hey, wait, I’m just helping you to bed.”
Again, in the robot voice. “Does not compute. Nicht Deutch. Error.”
“Look, can we just go and-”
“Misunderstood. Mein freunde sprechen Deutch. Escalating. Approaching DEFCON 2. Nuclear assault imminent.”
“You’re a vegan, damn it; you’re supposed to be a pacifist!” He approached me threateningly, regardless. “Freund! Freund!” I shouted, desperate for any friendly German words. “Gut! Liebe! Freund!”
Dan started to deflate. “Freund recognized. DEFCON levels decreasing. Nuclear arsenals on standby. Gute nacht.” With that, he turned and walked upstairs, lay down on the couch, and didn’t move until morning.
-----
This was an excerpt from Chicagoland. The complete novel is Kindle format through Amazon.
We talked Dan into doing some shots, him individually against several of us, before the party moved upstairs. A while later, I went back down to the kitchen to find him doing a shot against himself. “Nobody else wanted one, and I wasn’t going to waste it,” he said.
“Why not just pour one shot?”
“I didn’t think of that.”
Soon after that, I found Dan slumped over the kitchen table, head on his arm, muttering to himself in German. I didn’t even know Dan spoke any German. “Mein freunde, mein freunde,” I heard him say, which I barely recognized as “my friends, my friends.” I tried to shuffle him off to bed, but some switch had flipped, and he ignored everything I tried to tell him in English, only responding with more German. I had maybe thirty words in the language total, but thankfully one phrase I could remember was “good night.” Heavy repetition of “gute nacht” got him to agree it was time for nighty-night. I grabbed his shoulder to help move him toward a couch.
Apparently that was a mistake. Angry, belligerent, Dan turned on me and shouted in an evil robot voice, “DEFCON 3, defenses rising!”
“Hey, wait, I’m just helping you to bed.”
Again, in the robot voice. “Does not compute. Nicht Deutch. Error.”
“Look, can we just go and-”
“Misunderstood. Mein freunde sprechen Deutch. Escalating. Approaching DEFCON 2. Nuclear assault imminent.”
“You’re a vegan, damn it; you’re supposed to be a pacifist!” He approached me threateningly, regardless. “Freund! Freund!” I shouted, desperate for any friendly German words. “Gut! Liebe! Freund!”
Dan started to deflate. “Freund recognized. DEFCON levels decreasing. Nuclear arsenals on standby. Gute nacht.” With that, he turned and walked upstairs, lay down on the couch, and didn’t move until morning.
-----
This was an excerpt from Chicagoland. The complete novel is Kindle format through Amazon.
Wednesday, April 1, 2015
'Chicagoland' Excerpt: Brownies
As soon as they were cool, Rob cut up the brownies into tiny pieces, handed out a chunk to everyone, and hid the rest before the roommate could return. Then we pulled out Trivial Pursuit and played for a while as we waited.
“Nothing’s happening,” Rob declared after half an hour.
“Yeah, I don’t feel anything either,” Greg said. The rest of us shrugged or nodded in agreement. Rob brought the bag of brownies back out, and everyone took another couple of cubes. Doing the math, I’m pretty sure this gave us each about eight times more than a reasonable dose.
We continued playing. I would have sworn I still didn’t feel anything, but the questions in the game kept on getting weirder and weirder. Someone ate ten pounds of what meat in a challenge? (Eel. Naturally.) From what country is so-and-so from? (Forgive the double preposition.) “Red Dragon” is a sickly prequel to what prickly sequel? (Huh? Is that a spoonerism?) Investigating a horse murder, being what book? (Seriously? What the hell?)
I placed the last card back in the box, convinced it left a broad swooping trail behind as it moved through the air. “Okay, I think maybe I’m feeling something after all. But I swear this game is also independently getting weirder. I’m not understaying what they’re sanding half the time. Um. Understanding, saying. If I didn’t know better, I would say it was on pot brownies, too.”
Everyone agreed that was a perfectly reasonable suggestion.
With a start, I realized five minutes had passed, everyone sitting in motionless silence. I felt oppressed by my own thoughts and weighted down by an unusual inertia. “I don’t think I can play anymore,” I said.
“I want to lie down, but I don’t even think I can do that,” said Langston, scooched so far down on the couch his head was almost touching the seat, and with his legs splayed across the coffee table. Gravity would get him there eventually.
“I can’t …” groaned Rob. Finish the sentence, apparently.
“We need music,” said Greg. He oozed in pudding-esque fashion across three feet of floor and started flipping through a huge stack of vinyl records. Nobody else moved. It was about ten minutes before he spoke. “Wow, these are oooooold.”
Langston said, “Yeah, I got those from Mom when she moved to Chicago. There’s some good stuff in there.”
“And some really bad stuff.” Greg grinned devilishly. “Ooh, this looks awful. I’m going to put it on.”
It was awful, we all agreed, when we could summon the strength. Greg went from record to record, listening to some for as much as ten minutes or as little as ten seconds, trying to find something worse than the previous song. He was cunningly accurate with his picks.
It did not occur to any of us to suggest maybe we put on good music instead. We just sat and/or lay there and groaned, wishing it would stop.
Greg gasped, eyes wide with a child’s enthusiasm. “This! Here we go! John Barleycorn Must Die. That’s got to be the worst possible name for an album. It’s going to be terrible.” It was. It really was. He played it through five times in a row.
I finally found the strength to stand up. “I think I have to go lie down,” I said, dragging myself back downstairs to my temporary bed. Not since my first experience with the stuff—when I was convinced my arms were shriveling up into little Tyrannosaurus rex claws, and I could feel my tongue turning thin and forked like a serpent’s, darting around evilly inside my own mouth—had I been so disoriented by mere tea. Slumping on the couch, I lay for hours, half-catatonic with one foot in the land of Nod and one foot firmly planted in outer space.
-----
This was an excerpt from Chicagoland. The complete novel is Kindle format through Amazon.
“Nothing’s happening,” Rob declared after half an hour.
“Yeah, I don’t feel anything either,” Greg said. The rest of us shrugged or nodded in agreement. Rob brought the bag of brownies back out, and everyone took another couple of cubes. Doing the math, I’m pretty sure this gave us each about eight times more than a reasonable dose.
We continued playing. I would have sworn I still didn’t feel anything, but the questions in the game kept on getting weirder and weirder. Someone ate ten pounds of what meat in a challenge? (Eel. Naturally.) From what country is so-and-so from? (Forgive the double preposition.) “Red Dragon” is a sickly prequel to what prickly sequel? (Huh? Is that a spoonerism?) Investigating a horse murder, being what book? (Seriously? What the hell?)
I placed the last card back in the box, convinced it left a broad swooping trail behind as it moved through the air. “Okay, I think maybe I’m feeling something after all. But I swear this game is also independently getting weirder. I’m not understaying what they’re sanding half the time. Um. Understanding, saying. If I didn’t know better, I would say it was on pot brownies, too.”
Everyone agreed that was a perfectly reasonable suggestion.
With a start, I realized five minutes had passed, everyone sitting in motionless silence. I felt oppressed by my own thoughts and weighted down by an unusual inertia. “I don’t think I can play anymore,” I said.
“I want to lie down, but I don’t even think I can do that,” said Langston, scooched so far down on the couch his head was almost touching the seat, and with his legs splayed across the coffee table. Gravity would get him there eventually.
“I can’t …” groaned Rob. Finish the sentence, apparently.
“We need music,” said Greg. He oozed in pudding-esque fashion across three feet of floor and started flipping through a huge stack of vinyl records. Nobody else moved. It was about ten minutes before he spoke. “Wow, these are oooooold.”
Langston said, “Yeah, I got those from Mom when she moved to Chicago. There’s some good stuff in there.”
“And some really bad stuff.” Greg grinned devilishly. “Ooh, this looks awful. I’m going to put it on.”
It was awful, we all agreed, when we could summon the strength. Greg went from record to record, listening to some for as much as ten minutes or as little as ten seconds, trying to find something worse than the previous song. He was cunningly accurate with his picks.
It did not occur to any of us to suggest maybe we put on good music instead. We just sat and/or lay there and groaned, wishing it would stop.
Greg gasped, eyes wide with a child’s enthusiasm. “This! Here we go! John Barleycorn Must Die. That’s got to be the worst possible name for an album. It’s going to be terrible.” It was. It really was. He played it through five times in a row.
I finally found the strength to stand up. “I think I have to go lie down,” I said, dragging myself back downstairs to my temporary bed. Not since my first experience with the stuff—when I was convinced my arms were shriveling up into little Tyrannosaurus rex claws, and I could feel my tongue turning thin and forked like a serpent’s, darting around evilly inside my own mouth—had I been so disoriented by mere tea. Slumping on the couch, I lay for hours, half-catatonic with one foot in the land of Nod and one foot firmly planted in outer space.
-----
This was an excerpt from Chicagoland. The complete novel is Kindle format through Amazon.
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