Stranger in Strange Blog

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#MFJackson, books, Finalist

There is NOT enough coffee!

Hey there, readers!
Apologies for not blogging for a while, but I’ve been so busy with so many events! Both good and not-so-good.
The bad first:
Life rolled a small crate of lemons my family’s way in October with the passing of my Dad. I’ve also been caregiver for my 15-yr old adopted puppy, who has turned diabetic and blind. But everyone is content and at peace.

The good news:
Health – I’m alive; I got my vaccinations; I can walk again! Though I could stand to lose the mass tonnage gained during the knee operations and Covid19.
Home – Let the remodeling begin! Stage 1 is gonna be a challenge for my patience and my wallet. But at the end, I’ll have a whole new basement, an extra bedroom and 1/2 bath, and a new home office.
Work – “My Friend Jackson” was published! It was a Finalist in Indies Today’s Best Books of 2020. I’m still waiting to hear if it makes its mark in three other competitions; Two more of my short stories were published in new anthologies – “Writes of Passage” by GLVWG, and my first paying gig in Firebringer Press’s “Meanwhile in the Middle of Eternity.”
I have several short stories trying to wheedle their way into the hearts of several magazines and anthologies;
Juggling amongst all that, I’m also working on two sci-fi/horror novels “Sentry of Eternity” and “No Place Like Home”;
All of which you can keep track of on my website.

Click to Visit My Website!

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I Detest “Your Favorite Things”

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books, interviews, reviews, writing

Apologies if the above statement raises your hackles, but I do not intend to say that I detest your favorite things, or that I loathe the Sound of Music. It means I dislike being asked “What’s your favorite {anything}?”

My tastes are beyond eclectic. My hobbies are widespread. I have held professional positions in the fields of electronics, physics, math, computer programming, music, graphic arts, computer animation, and of course, writing.

Now comes the problem. With the upcoming release of my book, My Friend Jackson, I will soon be across the internet on blogs, radio, podcasts — anywhere an independent author can crowbar open some space and market his work product. People who know me, will tell you even my personality is a mixed bag of introvert and extrovert. It’s tough to get me going, but once I start, I can easily fill almost any amount of broadcast time and/or print space.

But the question commonly asked in interviews — “What’s your favorite {XYZ}?” — trips me up every time. If I have the presence of mind, I might answer that question with “What time is it?”

My favorite on any topic will change with the month, the day, sometimes even the hour. Music is where I truly have eclectic tastes. One day, I will be listening to a Prokofiev symphony over and over, the next I might be OD-ing on Emerson Lake & Palmer, or any of King Crimson, Andreas Vollenveider, J.S.Bach, Tom Waits, Genesis, Stanley Clarke, Jan Hammer, G.F. Handel, Frank Zappa, Igor Stravinski, Bad Manners, Wendy Carlos, XTC, … well, you get the idea.

Of course, during book tours I’m more likely to be asked what my favorite book is. There I am truly lost. I have no such thing. I may have favorite authors — A.C.Clarke, H.P.Lovecraft and Kurt Vonnegut — but I still would be hard pressed to select one book. Looking across my desk, I fret that my reading pile is now three piles. So who knows if I find a fourth, fifth, etc., favorite author in the near future?
One thing’s for sure – I won’t be bored!

On the topic of new authors, keep your eyes peeled for My Friend Jackson. a YA urban fantasy/horror novel. The tag line?

An Ancient Guardian Has Chosen Her.
Neither the Guilty, the Innocent, nor she are safe.

Bwa-ha-ha-haaa! Amazon pre-orders will start on September 15, and be available on October 1.
OR… you could get a signed copy for free! If you’ve read my previous books, Pindlebryth of Lenland and If I Can’t Sleep, You Can’t Sleep, then file a review for either of both of them on amazon.com. I will select a review at random from each book, and the lucky reviewers will win!

 

Drawing On Experience

Tags

Babylon 5, books, CGI, Iron Man, Lightwave3D, OTAKON, Star Trek

One of my hobbies that turned into a vocation is CGI, or computer animation. In case you’re unfamiliar with the terms, think Pixar.

My first animation project was the opening animation for OTAKON 2001, “Mecha Run For It“. Though this 6-minute animation proved I had the chops to hack it, I simply didn’t have the bucks necessary to fund my own animation studio. And since wonderful ideas like Kickstarter did not yet exist, that dream quietly settled on the back burner.

Now that I am an (hopefully up-and-coming) author, I use this skill to enhance my publishing efforts. Although it isn’t animation, I use the same skills to create all my cover art and most illustrations to go with my stories.

How you might ask?
I employ LightWave3D, a CGI modeling and animation software package used in several sci-fi franchises (Babylon 5, Star Trek, Iron Man, to name a few).

Consider that animation is merely a series of photographs shown in rapid succession to fool the human eye’s persistence of vision. What better, than to my use animation to create my still-life illustrations?

I create the 3D models, pose the model actors, set the camera and lighting, exactly as if I were crafting an animation scene. The result is a photo-realistic image. If I need to convert the photo into pencil, charcoal, ink or paint styles, I have several converters at my fingertips in Lightwave3D itself, and other tools like Photoshop, to skin that particular cat.

You can see all my covers, illustrations and animation projects at anigrafx.com, but just to whet your appetite, here is an illustration used in “If I Can’t Sleep, You Can’t Sleep.”
And here’s the illustration submitted with my short story “If These Walls Could Talk,” slated for Firebringer Press‘s upcoming anthology “Meanwhile in the Middle of Eternity“.

Bet you can’t wait to see what I’m cooking up for my next novel, “My Friend Jackson“!

Thanks to DT Krippene for suggesting this blog topic.

Dirt, Dogs, and Digs

Tags

Autumn, books, cleaning

Autumn is almost upon us, and the signs are everywhere.
Leaves falling.
Ripe nuts and fruit dropping from almost every tree in the neighborhood.
Add to that the usual lawn detritus of grass clippings and fiendishly concealed animal droppings, and it all quickly builds into a noxious pile of organic matter that finds its way into my home.

I cringe every time I step on one of those marble-sized bombs, consisting of a bumper crop of crab-apples, Japanese dogwood berries, pygmy pears, and who-knows-what-else.

During this benighted time of year, I am forced to clean my walkway, my dog, and mudroom on the average 3 times a day — the walkway before I walk my dog, my shoes, the dog’s paws, and linoleum afterwards. And we still somehow manage to track in grass, leaves, mangled corpses of squished fruit, and whatever crud their juices sponge up onto my shoes.

I am by no means a demigod of domesticity, despite the fact that throughout my formative years, I was allergic to everything – dust, mold, mildew, animal dander, and more. My poor Mom had to clean-clean-clean when she wasn’t exhausted from holding down two jobs. Fortunately, my dog was one of those breeds that doesn’t shed, otherwise I think she would have bleached the pooch.

I thank God I have outgrown my allergies and asthma, otherwise I would be forced to continue that unfortunate tradition. These days, I break out the vacuum cleaner once a fortnight (or less), resorting to bucket and mop when I must — far less often than my Mom ever did…
But these Fall invaders of muck and mire have me cleaning far more often than I care to think about.

This season, with nature relentlessly dumping its dirt upon us, reminds me of a pithy bit of humorous wisdom a co-worker imparted, during a tour of a Silicon Valley clean room, where super-clean “bunny-suits” and air-purifiers abounded.

“There is no such thing as ‘perfectly clean.’
There is only the level of dirt you’re willing to tolerate.”

OK — I admit it. I can’t think of even the most tenuous segway (segue) from the subject of cleanliness to the topic of my books. So here’s this blog entry’s blatant bit of self-promotion…
Buy my books!