I’d be out of my mind to throw confetti and applaud it because if I had an audience for my work the size of his, I sure wouldn’t want one of them itching to crack me in the throat. something about the law of equal opposite reactions stuck in my educated brain.

Assassins are not heroes. They kill. And best anyone can hope a killer does is: kill somebody we don’t like and no one we do. Now, that ain’t much if you ask me.

We got the right (conservative/elephant) side of our political system talking small government AND Authoritarian rule. The left (donkey/democrat) WAS talking nonviolent resistance…

Charlie Kirk probably live with a great deal of deep fears and spoke (for good/ill) in spite of his reservations.

Conservatism is a fearful disposition full of loathing for the mythic, myriad forms of “Other”.

Like how the music industry reacted in the wake of 9-11 in 2001:

When i was in third grade, we sang Greenwood’s God bless the USA in music class AND learned to speak Spanish in the next class after.

Then there was this bit from the God Mother of Rock which inspired me to think back to that time.

Cornering people who already feel threatened is unwise according to Sun Tzi.

“When you surround an enemy leave an outlet free, do not press a desperate foe too hard.”—Sun Tzu

They will find a subhuman savagery in themselves deep down and die fighting if needed. The famous general advised leaving room for retreat.

Which brings up the thorny issue of fear and loathing that is infecting the left and turning them onto a type of conservatism which leads to violence and hate making them barely any different from the ones they oppose on the right.

With neither side taking the moral high road, and refraining from doing violence, we get a war hot enough to burn down cities.

And yet Charlie Kirk can be faulted for his reckless rhetoric while he was alive.Might even call it “hate speech” By an expanded definition, Kirk and the GOP were doing violence by refusing their duty to the American public: providing a livable civic environment.

Not unlike the way dharma is described in the Hindu scripture the Baghdad Gita,

The term dharma does not have a single, clear translation and conveys a multifaceted idea. Etymologically, it comes from the Sanskrit dhr-, meaning to hold or to support, thus referring to law that sustains things—from one's life to society, and to the Universe at large. In its most commonly used sense, dharma refers to an individual's moral responsibilities or duties; the dharma of a farmer differs from the dharma of a soldier, thus making the concept of dharma dynamic. As with the other components of the Puruṣārtha, the concept of dharmais pan-Indian. The antonym of dharma is adharma.

Point being: for some it’s their duty to wage wars abroad and in the material world with material implements. For all of us humans around the world the war between our psyche and our body is ongoing from the beginning of time to the end.

To put it another way, what good is any legion if its individual members are not well rested, well fed, in good morale, and top physical condition?

what good is a country if you demoralize half the citizenry?( And don’t give me that cleansing fire crap. )

And if they are well kept, why waste them on anything other than the most important conflicts? Why waste them on wars that can be won without violence.

Charlie Kirk needed to be proven wrong in a more artful manner because we as a world have to rise above this barbarism.

"History keeps her secrets longer than most of us. But she has one secret that I will reveal to you tonight in the greatest confidence. Sometimes there are no winners at all. And sometimes nobody needs to lose." ~ John le Carre

How many voices aligned with the shooter’s views silenced themselves as a result of his actions? Political violence sabotages itself.

A person need not be republican to condemn political assassinations.

I know the killing wasn’t justice. Just another bullet fired. A hit.

Replying with violent revenge won’t be either. Left or right, if you want violence you are already an instrument of oppression.

“There is no instance of a nation benefiting from prolonged warfare.” —Sun Tzu

If we ignore history (recent history) it’ll repeat the lesson. All in all, we’ve been on a good track. Sure our political rhetoric has been fraught and the canceling has gotten silly. But we can still step outside to get the mail (and our ebay and Amazon packages) and go to work in a leased Tesla (you wish you owned that $50,000 car) without hearing AK-47’s cracking off a mile away. That’s good news, right?

Yeah. So, let’s not fuck this up.

For a while, I followed lessons from Stephen King’s writing advice memoir on the recommendation of the group facilitator Rodney Richards. He prefers grammatically correct prose since his background is technical writing and his pleasure is poetry. Put together, technical writing and poetry make a good basis for an editor. And Rod’s a pro at that. A pro bono critique group run by a professional editor is a dream come true for an upstart. Of all the things I’ve learned from it, the one which keeps reinforcing itself time and again is about structure. Grammatical and narrative. It shows through in my work.

I wrote and published See Through Darkness (available through my site) before I knew what I was doing. I had mom edit that one. A bad idea and a learning experience by it’s own right. Why? Because boundaries. But I never heard a peep of judgement for the spicy, violent, or otherwise fucked-up content I put into that book. Only that she didn’t want to edit another one like it.

I knew Darkness had serious flaws because the process had been an argumentative one. (Never about scene content. Free of judgement.) The closest she got was “how does it serve the story?” and “Do we need it?” Her head was in the project, but not her heart (in so far as loving the characters and story like I once did) but it was (in so far as she wanted me to succeed at it) but not committed to perfecting the story beats. A better author would have molded the novel into a denser volume, perhaps. A better author would have made less drastic edits and kept the campy and ludicrous bits and gone bigger with the ending instead of altering it last minute on a whim. A better author would have saved his novel from himself (his own insecurities). The book would have been up the alley of Divergent, The Hunger Games, the Darkest Minds or one of those moody YA books which don’t do all their homework but still endear the masses. A better author wouldn’t have surrendered five years of work (2013-2018) to become dragged down by realism. A better writer. A writer gets better with experience.

A recently retired teacher (with family ties) will do a good job at editing. I can’t speak for using a professional editor on a one-to-one client basis. Crit group is something I’ve been around long enough to know.

See Through Darkness published as a first edition in 2018. I gave it to family and never heard a peep. Apart from “Are you still writing?” and “Working on a new book?” It’s enough. But my memory has just been jogged after a working shift at the day job that there was one bit of feedback I ought not forget: My cousin Katie’s mother-in-law said of, Bud, the father-in-law-to-be (whatever relation that is to me/ highly tangential)—to me, Suzy, Katie’s mother-in-law-to-be (at-the-time). Suzy says to me: '‘Bud read your book.” She’s brimming with glee and hinting toward a punchline.

What’s so funny about that? You may ask. We sure did.

“He doesn’t read,” she says and clarifies that though he knows how and buys magazines like Poular Mechanics, he’ll do so for the occasional article. The man’s just not a reader, but he read mine. If that’s not good feedback, what is? In recent years, though, it’s the courteous “are you still at it?” encouragement. I do wonder if I should be more forthcoming, vulnerable, and/or generous and enthusiastic about my own subversive imaginings.

Shortly after, I started a regular job at a steakhouse and discovered Rodney’s group. So, off I went with the starting pages of War Gone Cold which I honed, week by week, sample by sample between shifts bussing tables, at Nicole Homer’s college level creative writing class, I honed it reading aloud through a KN-95, over Zoom calls as a novelist among poets. A mismatch made in heaven. Another quirk surfaced in Rod’s group (as he became inundated with responsibilities regarding his wife’s health), I took Prometheus chronicles through its paces. The hiccup was: nobody could keep the events in order or the story straight in their head. A lot of them sat bewildered after my samples and did their best with the pages at hand. The irony being: Prometheus Chronicles has the least complex narrative structure and the most intuitive set of chapter headings I’ve ever done. At least as far as the final product is concerned. Nor did it have the Globe-trotting ping-pong of War Gone Cold. What tripped them up was likely factors beyond my control. The concerns of the outside world outweighing my spaceship story.

To rope it all back around to minimalism and structural integrity, I’ll start with the confession that I read my own books after publication. The real confession is though: I enjoy it immensely. It stands to reason that a writer ought to be their own biggest fan. Why not? Their the books he wished hard enough for and willed into existence. Gotta write the book you’d want to read.

This time, See Through Darkness hit different. I’m not just seeing the flaws. I’m seeing the shudder-worthy-almost-physically-painful to lay eyes on stuff. From the dialog choices, characterization, info dumps; the convoluted and spotty narrative structure of how the chapters proceed is best taken as an indication of just how wrong things can go (and i take full responsibility for these systemic failures) when structure is an afterthought.

As for minialism, with me, it’s a case of discernment of what’s relavant from what’s not. Some of my favorite world class writers (Haruki Murakami, Neal Stephenson, Michael Crichton, Clive Cussler, Palahniuk, and (recently added to my list) Iain M. Banks are world class for different reasons. So, if you got a style, if it works, if you have some core structure; be it minimalist like Chuck’s or something chunkier like what Stephenson did with the Baroque Cycle, be what you are. Who cares about the page count? If it’s organized in a way which has what you’re going for, love it, do it, let it blossom.

Enjoy Walpurgisnacht!

Get the words out ugly. Order the marble, set out your tools, take a few whacks and start chiseling out the new statue. Get out the easel and put the brush to the canvas. Get pen to paper. Put on your ruby slippers, Dorothy.

If you don’t, you’ll stay stuck in Kansas.

Build the momentum.

Pluck the strings, hammer the horse teeth, beat that drum, play some notes. The music will flow again. Start with garbage (lowercase ‘g’) and it might become like (big ‘G’) Garbage. The unignorable, fearsome, formidable kind.

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I’m humble. I know. Maybe too humble. You should read my books. Get the paperback, sit down, cozy up, and enjoy. You will love what I have written. It’s entertaining stuff. I am the best writer you have not yet learned of…believe me…I got ideas like you’ve never seen. The best ideas.1

My work speaks for itself.

Take my first novel for example. It’s never too early for regrets. I was a twenty-six year-old writer on a first try doing my best. Granted, while there are parts that come through a bit rough, a bit juvenile (Extended love scenes spanning an entire chapter? Yeesh2) Some bits which might have benefitted from either more editing or revision3. Writing from a place of lonliness does interesting things and stuff slips in.

Could I go back as a thirty-something writer wisened by a bit more life experience and tinker? I might.

My second novel was something like a redo insofar as it connected to a mid-point of events which transpire in See Through Darkness. The technical feat achieved with orchestrating the continuity was formidable as it was.

Then again, Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman may be a cautionary tale against such urges. 4

In any event, do check out Prometheus Chronicles. It’s the novel “they don’t want you to read”.

Believe me. You should read my work.;)

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I didn’t hate it. Interesting to think some people live and talk that way. It’s a lot of pretentious talk. There’s dancing, drinking, interpersonal drama, strip poker and arguments solved with menace and a measure of violence (But not all that much. It’s no Godfather) On a weird level, it’s like a tame version of The Hangover if you transplanted it from Las Vegas to The Hamptons and New York City.

Their scenes of talking about literature got me wondering: Is that the gold standard of being a writer—to get rich debutantes commenting to each other the merits and sins of your work?

Do I need to aspire toward Jane Austen, F Scott Fitzgerald, or Hemingway? It seems any other aspiration falls short of becoming a household name, right?

I guess it has me rethinking some things. You know—writing-wise. (and life-wise) Part of me is still disoriented by the way that the very rich kids of 1989 seem to have lived much simpler lives than myself and people in my strata of society. (at least according to one point of view.) If Whit Stillman set it in San Fransisco instead, how would it be different? Probably a lot different.

Technology has many of us behaving as if we’re rich preppies on a debutante season. Ain’t that funny?

It wasn’t too long ago that I happened into a similar film “The Longest Week” where I recognized the situations and textures of the characters. The immaturity and emotional frailty and flakiness of wealthy aging-babies. So if you’re up for another dose of snobbery, check it out. It’s pretty entertaining.

If you end up with a bitter taste on your pallet from these or a knotty notion that you can’t shake, there’s the John Wick films to cue up.

This article had me rolling on the floor about mid point. Now, the only thing I’d ever attempt from a Neal Stephenson novel is the wonderfully child-like cereal thing.

What are we to do, us science fiction authors? Did Asimov think robots were a good invention? A necessary evil? Did Crichton think it was a good idea to take people to an island full of genetically reconstructed dinosaurs? Does George Miller want to live in a desert wasteland full of murderous psychos? Does James Cameron wish for time traveling murder-bots to hunt down powerful leaders while they’re vulnerable kids or still in the womb (eg: “easy prey”)?

Not likely. At best, us authors and creators call them dubious propositions.

It puts a writer in a defensive crouch to see this stuff come to fruition.

I’d be alarmed if someone proposed a plan for a ship that operates as the interstellar Ark in Prometheus Chronicles. In fact, without getting too mired in spoilers, I’ll say, the life support system on that would-be ship is centered around the most horrendous idea for a life support system I’ve ever encountered. The inhumanities carried out are on par with Animal Farm. No way George Orwell wanted INGSOC to become a reality, nor thirty minutes hate.

Are we in an era of such ‘thintelligence’ that fiction like 1984, Jurassic Park, Animal Farm, Terminator, and to my dismay, The Prometheus Chronicles are ‘fair game’?

Do I have to preface that book and my future science fiction with a “Do Not Attempt” disclaimer? I have half a mind to do so.

Jaron Lainer’s words from 2018 have stayed with me. I was writing my first novel, grasping at straws and trying to understand internet and hacker culture for at three to five years dragging along this idea of a girl named Eliza who was some kind of unique. she evolved from a damsel in distress archetype to something more and will continue to evolve (plans to further her adventures are in the works.) Enough about her… for now.

So, in that research phase, I studied what I could going off of a sparse knowledge base (which has grown significantly since I began). I discovered this TED talk from Jaron Lainer at some point along the path. His assertion that a subscription-based World Wide Web could be a possible solution seems to have come to pass to a fair degree. I think I watched this one, too a while ago where he goes into more depth in 2020.

Flash forward a few years to 2024, after discovering and metabolizing some of the high style and fast paced works of William Gibson, the dense and utterly bewildering stuff of Neal Stephenson, and the very trippy films of the Wachowskis, I happen onto a bit of lore about these guys. And found Cory Doctrow’s short fiction, “The Things That Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away” in an anthology I got one Christmas long ago.

So, when I saw he gave a talk at Defcon 32, I got curious. It was a rousing tirade, but it also pointed to some searing rebukes of where we’re at as a culture. So, if you’ve gotten this far into this article, then I’m inclined to agree with Doctrow, we can do better as a culture. But I’m in no position to make a difference. So, it’s going to take a collective action to right the things that have gone so wrong. I don’t know how or if we can, but we have to try. Right?

It’s my honor to attend the above event.

I’m looking forward to it and I hope to see you there!

Cloud and Visibilty is better in a metaphor than out my window where it’s thundering and rainy.

a few more pre-launch arrangements need to be sorted. It’s undergoing a routine review process and by all indications, will launch ASAP.

Kindle Direct Publishing and I never got along like good friends, but the relationship was at baseline functional. I made sure my manuscript was formatted to it’s specifications, I abide the template for cover art to the millimeter.

Am i the first human writer to be hamstrung by phantom “error(s)”? This galling little red banner persists.

according to the video, KDP doesn’t play well with your files if there’s a Bowker ISBN. Comments on the above video mention that it also siezes up when you use a Bowker “Imprint”. Go figure. I could have just as much fun sending query letters to get agented and/or picked up by one of the big publishing houses.

so, here’s where the fun begins.

I have two books already out there. They’re not raking in much, if anything. So, why don’t I take a lesson from John Q.

The hostage taker’s creed. I have something you want. Now may I have your attention?

A self publishing author would be wise to abide this.

I want assurances that my demands will be met…and then I want a plane, and a police escort.

Like any good heist, this will go alot better with colder calculations, more precise timing, and more deliberate choices.

Maybe less John Q and more Danny Ocean.

Self publishing gurus are wonderful. And i need to learn more from them. The odd subliminal message I’ve gotten thus far from them: Hurry, hurry, do it quick, get it right, tailor to the audience, play the SEO game, time it on a Tuesday for whatever nebulous reason.

The subliminal level? Urgency.

Hasn’t worked yet.

So, you baked a fantastic cake, eat it before it spoils.

Books aren’t the same. Good ones at least don’t have perishable ingredients. so, why not delay? Age it like fine wine.

Distilleries don’t put out their liquor until it’s aged a bit.

So, who’s paying attention, here?

Leave a comment if you want me ever to release this thing. Definitely leave a comment if you hope it never sees the light of day.

A thousand year voyage of 4.37 Light years.

Aboard Interstellar ark Prometheus, 10,000 humans spend a

millenum keeping routine.

Commander Morrigan Kildare is plagued by nightmares, like everyone

 else aboard. But she is among a select number of citizens

with clearance to question Logos, the central AI about privileged

topics. There is something off about her colleague, Riley wells,

the head of R&D aboard Prometheus. he says there is something wrong

with the ark’s life support. Rumors swirl. The most viral theory

concerns the mystery of “Passenger 10,001”.

Then Kildare gets called to respond to an emergency inside “Torvalds”,

prometheus’s Data center which houses the Logos AI. A saboteur is at work.

Enter Blake Ryboski, lifeguard of the habitat aquatic center. His friend,

Dr. Astrid Gaines takes him up to Torvalds one afternoon to explore

Restricted data banks.

He finds out more than he bargained for.

Then it leaked: those nightmares aren’t dreams.

Man kind’s next giant leap could be our last.

Kildare, gaines, Ryboski, and wells must learn the truth.

They are too late to avert disaster. A crash is imminent.

Upon escape from Prometheus they must survive among the wilderness of a new world:

An apocalyptic, tribalized society which pits those who lust for immortality and

endless conquest against a live-wild-die-well counter-culture.

So, if that synopsis interests you…

on August 6, everyone reading this go to Amazon and look up The Prometheus Chronicles by Andrew Cosma.

The day job makes it dubious to set a diamond hard deadline, but I can say this one will launch by August 10th, 2024.

The story is penned, the manuscript is formatted, the cover is beautiful.

The paperback proofs are in transit.

A sequel is in draft 1.

Self Publishing is a solid 95% DIY process which can frustrate to no end. Sparing the gory details, (for now) it does look so easy to the outside observer. The truth is more complex.

Back to the point of frurstrations: coping with them over the course of a project means finding an outlet for the buildup of energy and tension. Think about it this way, and I’m having this epiphany as I type here: writing a sci-fi novel about a spaceship is a process none too different from enduring an extended journey through space. The solitude, the isolation, the anticipation, and the process of how a course is charted.

No interstellar traveler goes it alone. In Arthur Clarke’s novel Dave Bowman had HAL, Heywood Floyd had a team. Captain Kirk had his band of experts. The Empire was massive and the Rebels had an alliance.

A writer without peers will write a different novel than the one who coexists with some. For me, this project has been a study in social structures and integration among other things.

I have my crit group, I have people whose presence in my life I am grateful for (family and friends) . That gratitude can’t be summed up in a short concise dedication without seeming dismissive.

In this digital age even an author bio sounds dated and obsolete after some time passes.

Wild to think about how fleeting it all is amid the vastness of time and space.

Stars in our night sky loom bigger than Earth up close, yet they seem so small from our vantage point.

Reading this back to myself now, I roll my eyes at how the above meditation sounds like a Rutger Hauer monologue. (at least for a moment)

How did I manage not to end up fried by my own art? Dance lessons, nights out, movies, out for meals, working the day job, and workouts, etc. And what do you know? It inspired, informed, sustained my craft.

To any writer, i advise: Integrate yourself, become a part of the ecosystem which sustains yourself and your readers. It will be a game changer.

If you’re already doing so, fantastic! Keep it up.

All right! I’m on the Web!

This is linked for ease of access so you can click-clack back and forth as needed.

Whoa, huh?

In the 1970s Gerard K. O’Neill and his physics students at Princeton Univeristy dreamed up a wild concept for a space habitat.

Below is a conceptual depiction of the “Bernal Sphere”. Brainchild of John Desmond Bernal. First proposed in 1929 by Bernal for sustained life in space.

In his 1976 book The High Frontier, O’Neill describes three designs for “Islands”

Islands one and two are spherical deisgns of enormous dimensions.

Island three is the O’Neill Cylinder1. That’s the one at the end of Christopher Nolan’s science fiction epic Interstellar.

Maybe it was Star Wars, Star Trek, or Starship Troopers, but the idea of a lush green liveable habitat in space fell into oblivion for a while. My bet is: it was the scale and feasability. The sheer amount of parts and labor made it unpopular.

So, what became of science fiction was a world of rocket propelled tin cans hurtling across the starscape while the crew settled in for a long nap until their vessle navigated to their point B.

February 25, 1990: Theresa Marie Schiavo2 went into cardiac arrest and was successfully revived with massive brain damage. After two months, she enters a persistent vegetative state. The incident and subsequent years (1998-2005) sparked a quagmire of a legal debate which left repercussions still felt today.

Enter Cryonics3. Does it work? Should it?

I don’t know. But I have some ideas.

I’ll keep you posted about when Prometheus launches.

I had the privilege of reading “Love in the Time of Cholera” in my community college stint. I didn’t understand it’s staying power back when I read it. Something about my dysfunctional love life in a changing world did serve to bond me to that book on a gut level. I didn’t hate it. Did i like it? That’s complicated.

I respected it.

The exercise of reading a book for a college level English composition class? That I hated. Like a POW on a forced march through Poland in 1945 from one stalag to another, I slogged through it. It made me a fast reader, it taught me how to phone in a few observations, critiques, and smart sounding comments. Also, it taught me the value of taking time reading a book. For a while, I became an intentional, deliberate reader as a reaction to that intellectual exercise.

As it happens, I’ve got my copy of Love in the Time of Cholera beside me right now. It’s ruined by half-assed, color-coated highlighting and jotted notes taken and left in the margins and at the back of each chapter. It must have been a thorough study of the book because I get a headache looking at these markings and my rushed handwritings.

Back to the reason for writing this. Controversy: Marquez wanted his last novel Until August destroyed after his death. But his heirs published and distributed it.

According to the article I read, Kafka burned his own works before he died.

Who knows what Harper Lee thinks of Go Set a Watchman ? Sequel to Mockingbird or roughdraft? It got lost. And then found and published.

What do I think of the publication of Until August ?

I side with Marquez’s heirs. Publication is the only right call. Since they’d take flak from everyone else either way, it might as well be flak from the direction of the ones who say ‘destruction’.

Why?

Simple. If a writer desires their work destroyed, best they do it themselves while they’re alive. Because if the heirs are held responsible, the wise and honest move is to put it out and let the fans decide if it’s great or if it sucks. It’s an artifact. Did the T-rex at the Smithsonian write in its will, “Take me there and display my bones?” No.

End of story.

Maybe I’ll read it. I ought to pick up at least one other book by the guy. I haven’t read his work since college.

We have this out of tune piano my father refuses to get retuned. due to the cost of the procedure tuning it requires, and the scarcity of piano tuners near us, dad plays it as is.

it’s like that car which that one relative struggles with. Pump the gas, turn the key three times, turn the ignition back to off, cross your finger and hope it starts on the fourth attempt.

This was the dance he did with the old 1984 Dodge Ram he used to drive until my brother and I were in middle school. The heater didn’t work in that thing by the time us kids were of school age.

Back to the music. This piano of ours works in a “King of the Gypsies” kind of way.

growing up I always thought it was my ear for music that made the tunes sounding from that thing seem off. (like they were heavier and more somber than necessary)

No matter how he played the songs, the damn thing made every song feel like “streets of Philadelphia”.

It was a blessing and a curse. An emotional trial by fire of a sort which I would not trade for an easier situation.

Like the saying goes: gotta have the bitter to appreciate the sweet.

Thanks to that stupid piano of ours, I’ve developed the kind of impenetrable sense of humor as black as a forest at night and other “giggle at a funeral” kind of quirks.

is Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence” Supposed to be sad? I just find it mellow and slightly ironic.

is that relisience or am I as crazy as whoever wrote this movie?

Don’t answer.

In a perfect world, hate speechers would be booted from every platform which exists. The act of deplatforming them would be checkmate.

The world is far from perfect. Hate is a terrible challenge. It’s like the tumor which never goes away. I wish I had something uplifting to say, but I’m just averse to that kind of dishonesty. So, Here’s a saulte to you (a little something I dug up from the web because of a trend I’ve noticed in the culture.

Ok that one was just for fun. This is more sincere. (Because, I ain’t no goddam Nazi, I do stand with you.)

I and many more.

So, if you’re thinking of quitting on substack, please, i beg you to stay. For the sake of the good ones.