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Now Querying Live in the Dream!
I’m taking a break from promoting Christmas in Pandemonium and whining about stupid stuff to announce that I am now querying literary agents for Live in the Dream: my adult science fiction novel of approximately 79,000 words. I started yesterday and have sent out 20 queries so far. If that seems excessive, just google it and you’ll see its relatively normal.
Live in the Dream takes place in the year 2192 where Lucas Shaffer, an artificial human grown in a jar, works as a wage slave to maintain an economy on autopilot. Half the time, however, he lives in the Dream 97 program along with his virtual family, just like the other artificial workers of the world. On the eve of his retirement, Lucas logs in to find his virtual family has disappeared. Now, he has to travel across the country and the globe to retrieve each of them, one by one, uncovering a conspiracy to destroy the Dream in the process.
I hope to get a literary agent at a major New York or London firm to take me on and get my foot in the door at one of the Big 5 publishers. Hope springs eternal. I’m also getting beta readers for my other two projects: a sequel to Pandemonium and a young adult science fiction project.
Finally, I’ve heard there are scammers on social media pretending to be literary agents. I will tell anyone going this route to be very careful. It’s unlikely someone in the high society of these New York or London literary agencies would DM you out of the blue. I’ve run into it a few times already. If you plan to go the literary agent route, then you should know that literary agents generally want you to apply through an online form or through email, both of which can be found on the agency’s website. There are just too many scammers out there.
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Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein: Not a Disappointment
An amazing thing happened after I complained that Halloween was disappointing: someone released a quality horror movie. A week late. What the Hell?
I suppose it’s an affirmation of my prior assertion that Halloween movies are just scary movies that don’t have to be watched on Halloween. I just wonder why Netflix decided to release this movie on Nov. 7. Yes, it had a limited theatrical run on Oct. 17, emphasis on the word limited. I don’t wonder at all why it was released on Netflix. Who even goes to movie theaters anymore? I take the kids whenever they are showing Toy Story or something like that, but other than that, I’m good.
Guillermo del Toro’s take on Frankenstein is amazing. It doesn’t follow the book exactly, but it actually improves on it in my view, by doubling down on the themes in the book. It’s not a story about why man shouldn’t play God. It’s a story about how God should not play God. The monster looks amazing, which is what you would expect from someone who made the Shape of Water and Pan’s Labyrinth. Victor is a self-absorbed jerk, something the female lead makes clear. The ending breaks your heart.
Why they released it just to miss the Halloween movie season? I don’t know. The one thing holidays are supposed to still be about is marketing. Maybe they decided to just show contempt for the whole exercise. Anyhow, please buy Pandemonium! It would make the perfect Christmas gift…in November!
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Halloween 2025: A Disappointment
Hello everyone! Thank you once again for making the West Virginia Book Festival a success for me! I really appreciate everyone buying Christmas in Pandemonium, regardless of when, how, or why!
You know what I did not appreciate: Halloween this year, which was like a horror movie with three hours of buildup only to end with the villain being some kind of cosmic spider that can only be defeated through magic rocks. Thank you, Stephen King.
As you all remember, (yes, there are enough of you to use “all” rather than “both,” at least now) I have a thing against celebrating holidays two months early. It’s semi-coercive, obviously commercialized, and crowding out the other holidays. Well, people started celebrating Halloween in early September this year, something I have complained about, and the results were predictable: Halloween petered out before the actual date.
When I was picking my kid up from Daycare, I could see the Halloween inflatables they had starting to deflate a full week before October 31. We were taking down Halloween decorations before Halloween. Then, there were various Trunk or Treat activities for two weeks before All Hallows’ Eve. Lots of fun for kids, but what it leads to is this idea that Trick or Treat doesn’t have to happen on Halloween night. Charleston, WV, where I live, even “moved” Trick or Treat to October 30, before moving it back to the real Halloween due to weather. Everyone’s first complaint was “That’s a Friday! What about High School Football?!” Needless to say, when actual Halloween came around, the level of festivities was greatly reduced from last year, probably due to our culture having demoted the actual day in importance to such a degree that most couldn’t be bothered to come out.
May I do a side note here: where does the Charleston city council get off telling people when to Trick or Treat? Trick or Treating is a Halloween ritual, and Halloween is on October 31 because All Saints’ Day is November 1. It’s essentially a religious holiday, though we don’t think of it that way. If anyone could change when Halloween is, it would be the Pope, and I’m not sure even he could do it. If he did, I think a lot of Chicago school kids would give him strange looks the next time he went to a White Sox game.
Finally, Hollywood has fallen for this as well. The Conjuring 4, supposed blockbuster for this Halloween season, came out on September 5. By the time Halloween rolled around, you could get it on streaming. There’s no reason to go to the theater anymore. Last night, I put the kids to bed and put on the Black Cat, an old Universal film from 1934. It’s an underappreciated classic, but I fell asleep halfway through. That’s this Halloween in a nutshell.
We don’t need longer holidays. We need more holidays celebrated better. Let’s make Oktoberfest a thing. Give everyone Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s off. By the way, if we’re open to adopting Saints days and other holy days, bring back Michaelmas! If it was good enough to make it into Shakespeare, it ought to be good enough for a bank holiday.
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Thanks for Coming to the Book Festival!
I’d like to extend my thanks to everyone who attended the West Virginia Book Festival yesterday. I met a lot of new readers and sold a lot of books. Hopefully there are some new readers to this blog by virtue of all those bookmarks with my URL typed on them. It was great getting to sell my book in public.
I’ve got a few things coming up in the next couple of weeks. I’m going to submit one manuscript for beta reading. It’s a young adult science fiction novel about a girl who runs away from home by hitching a ride with an alien. I’m also going to put the final touches on “Live in the Dream,” my more serious science fiction novel before querying it.
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Reminder: West Virginia Book Festival, October 25th!
Here is a reminder that I will be at the West Virginia Book Festival with signed copies of Christmas in Pandemonium on October 25th! The West Virginia Book Festival is at Charleston Coliseum and Event Center in Charleston, West Virginia, in the event that any of you are in the area. I’ll draw you a map if you want. Be there! Buy a copy of Christmas in Pandemonium! Come to think of it, buy one now!
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Meet Me at the West Virginia Book Festival!
Hello everyone! Another great week of book promotion! We are approaching the West Virginia Book Festival, October 25, 2025, in Charleston, West Virginia, at Charleston Coliseum and Convention Center, where I will be present and available to sell copies of Christmas in Pandemonium, my new novel. Here’s the link once again.
I’ll also have copies of Beer Run and Beer Run 2 if anyone is interested in that. I’d love to talk everyone’s ear off. I hope you caught my interview with my publicist, Joe Mycut, last week, and if now, here’s the link for that.
Links, links, links. So, in summary, buy Christmas in Pandemonium. Buy Beer Run. Go to the Book Festival and buy me and actual beer. Afterwards that is. They don’t sell beer at the book festival. They do sell pepperoni rolls, so get me one of those. Meet me at the Book Festival at Charleston Coliseum and Convention Center, Saturday after next, in Charleston, West Virginia.
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Catch My Interview on YouTube!
Hello everyone again! I swore I’d never do two blog posts this quickly in succession, but here we are! My interview with Joe Mycut, my publicist, is out on YouTube! Be sure to watch and to subscribe to the channel.
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Don’t Fall for NYC Silent Book Club Scam
Hey, we’ve got a lot of stuff in the works such as an interview about Christmas in Pandemonium and different formats. Today I’d like to post a warning, not an ad, however.
Silent Book Clubs are local organizations that encourage people to read more and often feature local authors. However, they rarely feature authors from other parts of the world or country and never ask for a fee. This is important to know because someone has been impersonating the head of the NYC Silent Book Club and asking people for fees to be featured as part of their “weekly discussion.” This is a scam, as the Silent Book Club does not accept fees in return for spotlighting authors. You can read about it here:
https://silentbook.club/pages/caution-scammers-are-impersonating-silent-book-clubI nearly fell for this scam, which is embarrassing as I should know better at this point, but the internet is like a dangerous back alley behind the Mos Eisley Cantina where someone’s trying to sell you drugs. If you have to be there, watch yourself. Thankfully, my publisher, I Ain’t Your Marionette Press, caught this before I made the mistake of sending these band of thieves $300 to reserve a “spot” that doesn’t exist.
This guy is using the picture and name of the actual head of the NYC Silent Book Club (“Thomas”). The picture is available on the web and could easily have been swiped. They first made contact with me on Twitter. I’ve reported them to Twitter, as they are a scam. Hopefully, Elon and the keystone cops catch up to these people.
This just goes to a point I’ve made before. Paid promotion is a scam. Authors shouldn’t need to pay someone to promote their book. They need to help promote each other’s books. Like Kent Wayne, whose book, A Door into Evermore, I recently reviewed on Amazon and Goodreads. It’s a great young adult fantasy novel, I highly recommend. You may have heard of his blog, DirtySciFiBuddha. That’s how to promote a book. Don’t give any money to people on the internet you’ve never met.
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Christmas in Pandemonium: One Week In
Hello, everyone! It’s been a week since Christmas in Pandemonium came out. If you haven’t bought a copy, here’s the link:
Yep, I’m pretty proud. It’s been a full week of promotion, sending links to old friends and beta readers, and working all the kinks out of the promotion machine. In the event anyone is interested in meeting little ole’ me and buying a physical copy, I’ll be at the West Virginia Book Festival on October 25, 2025. Please come talk to me. I need all the ego boost I can get.
In the event anyone has read the book already and has any questions, I’d be happy to answer them. You might not hear much from me in the next month other than for me to keep promoting this book. I’ve got a lot on my plate with this book, and work, and raising two kids. We took little Frankie to his first pre-school basketball practice yesterday. He preferred coloring. Maybe team sports at the age of four is a little premature.
In any event, please buy Christmas in Pandemonium. I mean please. Pretty please. Please with some sugar on top. Come on. Buy it. Want me to post the link again? Here:
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Christmas in Pandemonium is Now Available on Amazon!!!!!!!
The moment I’ve been holding my breath for half a decade has finally arrived: Christmas in Pandemonium is now available on Amazon!
In this momentous moment, I’d like to thank I Ain’t Your Marionette Press for taking me on, Solstice Publishing for publishing my prior works Beer Runa and Beer Run II, my parents, God, and the universe for putting up with me. I’d like to thank all of the readers of this blog. It’s been a long time coming!
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