Thundercats Ho!

Ancient Spirits of Evil, transform this decayed form to Mumm-Ra the Ever Living!
Who here can say that growing up they didn't think that was a badass phrase for one of the biggest badass villains in cartoon history? Sure Megatron was cool. Hell, you could get shot for real just by carrying his toy. Skeletor had his moments too. But Mumm-ra, now there was a dude you didn't want all up in your business.

Not only was Mumm-ra too kick-ass to be the conduit for just one evil god (nope, it took four of them to keep him on a leash), but the guy was like a bad case of Malaria for the Thundercats. They just couldn't get rid of the guy. Even when they did manage to 'kill' Mumm-ra, it was pointless. The dude stayed dead for no more than ten minutes before he'd be back messing up Lion-O's shit again.

Yeah, Mumm-ra did have one of the stupider weaknesses of all cartoon baddies. The whole reflection causing him to run away thing was kind of lame. Although it's not much worse than making Superman's main weakness a green rock that every bad guy has about three tons worth of in their backyards. Besides, give the guy a break. Wouldn't you freak if you woke up one morning and looked into the mirror to see glowing red eyes and funky dreadlocks staring back at you? Actually, on second thought, I wouldn't. I'd start my own death metal band and call it Black Pyramid.

But still, let's give it up for Mumm-ra. Here's to hoping he gives little kids nightmares for years to come. No other ancient devil priest can touch his moldy robes. And even if they could, they don't have nearly as cool of a catch phrase. And of course don't forget....

Wherever there is evil, Mumm-ra lives!

Mental Vomit

John Corwin wrote an interesting blog post on his way of creating a new book. Definite food for thought. He asks at the end which other writers use the method he outlined. All I can answer is that I wish I was that organized.

In one imagined future, (in which I sit in my lush 50 room mansion, surrounded by avaricious decadence) I can see some young reporter asking me if my book series were all planned out in one master tome. So I can't lie later on and say that yes, everything was mapped out way in advance, (much like JK Rowling claims) I'll just say right here and now....are you freaking kidding me?

No, sadly that just doesn't work with me. I've tried the whole story outline thing before. I just can't do it without getting bored and going off on some idiotic tangent. I remember one outline I tried a few years back, when I made an abortive attempt to get back into writing. It went something like this:

-Hero wakes up in a land full of demons
-Hero dies horribly....fuck you, future Rick!

Like I said, it just doesn't work for me. I tend to be far too amused by the prospect of annoying my future self than in doing that particular job properly. So much so, that I dread the thought of time machines being invented during my lifetime in that I will most likely wake up one day remembering many many past beatings at my own hands.

My writing process is a bit more basic. (or lazy, if you don't want to mince words) Most of my stories are born much like a college road trip: I know where I am. I kinda know where I want to go. I have only the vaguest idea of how I'm going to get there. Oh well, let's hop in the car and see where the road takes us!

The chaos of doing things this way is close to maddening. However, it's a whole lot of fun as often times my characters wind up doing things that surprise the hell out of me. There are whole sections in Bill The Vampire that were birthed this way. Some examples:

There's one scene in a gym that's pure mental diarrhea. I had no idea where they were going with that dialogue when I started it, but as I wrote it I imagined the dialogue in my head and just put down what the voices told me to. When I went back to reread it, I was both horrified and amused to all hell by what had come out.

Likewise, the trip up north our characters take during the story. I had no idea nor intention for that happening until it actually did. Fortunately, when it was all over it both made sense for them to do so as well as allowed me to expand upon their world a little more. Nothing worse than pumping out thousands of words that belong in a completely different story. That makes editor Rick angry and want to wait for that time machine so he can go back and SMASH!

So that's how I do things and will keep doing it until it no longer works for me. For right now, it does work. In fact, I've just recently started my second foray into Bill's world. I think I know where I want to go...sorta. Hopefully people will enjoy the first one and want to hop back into that car with me. Who knows what sights we'll see along the way? Right now, even I don't, and damn that's exciting.

A Pseudonym By Any Other Name

A few people in my professional circle have raised their eyebrows at my releasing a new novel full of what many would consider decisively unprofessional humor. Truth be told, this was not an easy decision on my part either. I wasn't entirely sure I wanted "Rick: the online professional" to be associated with "Rick: the guy with a book full of dick jokes". After all, I have no doubt there are many businesses who might might make a snap judgement that such a person would not fit into their esteemed organization.

I agonized over this for several weeks before I had an epiphany of sorts: Does hiding this side of me really change who I am? Am I not proud of the work I put into writing a full length story? Would I really want to work for a company that doesn't accept that there are many facets to me, i.e. what makes me me?

Does hiding this part of me change who I am? Not at all. I like who I am, and my results speak for themselves. There isn't any one part of me I can separate from the whole and tell to sit in an office and get the job done. That's just silly. I am who I am. There's plenty of room inside of me for all my facets, and I like to think I'm more than mature enough to know which of those facets to bring to the forefront at which times.

Am I not proud of the work it took to write a novel? This is almost too absurd to ask. Great work of art or not, I'm damn proud that I had the commitment to sit down and give birth to this story that I had floating around in my head. No one can take that away from me.

Would I really want to work for a company that doesn't accept me as me? In short, no. There is no corporate-minded Rick. No novelist Rick. There's just me. And that person has the self discipline to know when it's time to put together a serious PowerPoint presentation for upper management, and when it's time to take the hero of his story and toss his ass out of a third story window for nothing more than laughs.

I'm a package deal. Much like Cable TV, I don't come A la carte.

If you are a professional during the day who masquerades as a writer by night, much like a somewhat less heroic Batman, than I hope I've given you something to think about. Be proud of your work and who you are. I know I am.

As for the rest of you, what are you still doing here.....go check out my book! :)

My New Novel: Bill The Vampire

I am pleased to announce that my new horror/comedy novel, Bill The Vampire is now available!

It is currently available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble Nook. Available soon in Apple iBooks and in paperback format.

**************

There are reasons we fear the night.
He isn't one of them.

Meet Bill Ryder: programmer, gamer geek, and hopeless dweeb when it comes to women. All he ever asked for out of life was to collect his paycheck, hang out with his buds, and eventually (someday) ask out the girl of his dreams.

However, then Bill met Sally. She was mysterious, aggressive, and best of all...smoking hot. Bill never stood a chance. Before he knew what was happening Sally had lead him to his death, and that was only the beginning of his troubles.

Now Bill awakes to find himself an undead predator of the night. The only problem is he's still at the bottom of the food chain.

He's in way over his head, surrounded by creatures more dangerous, better looking, and a whole lot cooler than he is. Worst of all is the dreaded Night Razor, a master vampire who just can't stand him. He gives Bill a 90 day deadline to either prove himself or meet a more permanent kind of death, and the deck is definitely stacked against him.

But Bill isn't exactly average. A vampire like him hasn't been seen in over five centuries. He's got a few tricks up his sleeve, unlikely allies to help him out, and an attitude problem that makes him just too damn obnoxious to quit. He may just pull it off...if he doesn't get his teeth kicked in first.

**************

Please follow any of the links above and download a sample chapter. If you like what you see, the full text is available for $2.99

Busy week

I realize it's been a while since I posted. Besides being a semi slow news week (at least for anything I felt like discussing), I've also been fairly busy with a new novel I've been writing. It's in the finishing stages (minus editing) and I imagine I'll be done in another week or two and be able to give this blog some TLC again.

Head in the Cloud(s)

A few weeks back I posted my thoughts on the Dropbox situation, and also stated a few of my thoughts on "The Cloud" in general. With the recent announcements by Apple as to IOS 5, this is even more relevant.

Now don't get me wrong. I am very excited about some of the features of IOS 5, some of the cloud functionality amongst the things I'm excited about. I love the idea of using the cloud to house my media (songs, photos, video) for playback regardless where I am. I also, to a degree, like the idea of doing the same with some of my documents. Notice how I said some. That's the kicker. Some information, I have no problem being out there hosted on some servers that I have no control over. However, some I very much do mind. Hopefully IOS 5 will be smart enough to allow me to pick and choose which information I want backed up, and which I do not.

Case in point: my resume: fly it away to the clouds, I say.
My taxes: No, so sorry. I'd prefer to be the sole non-government owner of that information.

My concerns here are both privacy and security minded. I believe what I've mentioned above should cover most of the privacy portion just fine. As for the rest, it'll be interesting to see how this plays out with regards to law enforcement. Personally I'm not worried about this one for myself, but certainly there will come a case where the police demand access to someone's slice of the cloud, whether or not justified. We should all be keeping an eye out to see what sort of precedents get set once that happens.

As for security, just to get it out of the way, let's not be silly. I have no delusions that whatever safeguards Apple will have in place won't look like Fort Knox compared to my tiny (but fairly solid) home network security. That being said, Apple is also a much larger target than myself.

I'm uneasy with the prospect of potentially sensitive information being stolen as part of a mass data breach. Obviously, if my home network is compromised the data is just as gone. However, as I just mentioned there's the concept of scope here. Outside of a virus or other malware that manages to slip through my scanners, someone targeting me would need to actually target me. That probably means that somewhere down the line I pissed off someone I shouldn't have. That's kind of on my head. Outside of that, I have some relative security through the obscurity of just being another pc in my neighborhood. In short, I don't stay up most nights worrying about hackers brute-force attacking me. Whatever encryption and other security Apple or other tenders of the Cloud have in place, they're going to be major targets and I for one would prefer to not have my deepest darkest secrets just lying around in the Cloud should another Sony PSN debacle come about.

How about just watching the movie you paid to see?

Reblogged from a link from gizmodo, comes this story. I love this. In this day and age we all know how important customer service is. However, having been there myself a few times, I can attest that the customer is not always right. This is especially true if accommodating one individual's inappropriateness comes at the cost of harming the whole. In other words, I love that this company not only sticks to its guns with regards to their policy, but isn't afraid to throw it back in your face if you feel entitled to violate it (and annoy the rest of the theater). Kudos to them, and here's hoping that the 'victim' of this maybe has a moment of introspection down the line and realizes the wrongness of their attitude. I doubt it'll happen, but one can always hope.