One of the recent realizations I've had is how fast things have changed in only a few years. The world we lived in even 5 years ago has been completely destroyed.
The above is an interview with internet personality Mister Metokur, a figure who got his start around 15 years ago as he goes through his entire career and how different things were back in the early days of YouTube and social media when it was still a wild west. Listen to this and be amazed at how fast things have changed in such a short time.
It's a very long interview, but very informative. You might be surprised at how much things have seemingly disappeared overnight and has already been lost in the fog of the past. Also, if you have any prayers to spare then please send them in Jim's direction. He has been unwell for some time now and does not think he'll be around much longer.
Those days might be gone, but the memories remain, and there are still lessons to be learned from those weird days. Whatever lies ahead, no one knows, but even strange times like these can be used to build a better future.
Over the years since starting Wasteland & Sky I've learned a few things. I must admit that they aren't things I expected to learn, but that's how life goes. They are takeaways, regardless. Times change, and so do thoughts and opinions. No one stays the same.
One truth remains and that is that there is no real end of history. The world goes on and on and eventually it will all end, but history itself doesn't. It's always going to be behind us, and we'll be taking it with us when we leave to wherever we have to go next. This doesn't mean the truth can't be hidden from us by parties with more power than we have, but it still doesn't change what actually happened and how it rolls out to affect the rest of the world. Regardless of if you believe the grass isn't green that doesn't suddenly mean it is now purple, even if you believe it is from the bottom of your heart. Wishes don't change anything.
The world is what it is, whether you take it or leave it.
As I've covered more than a few times here, there are plenty of people today who believe they are writing some grand narrative in their head that will refashion and alter reality to be the way they want it. Writers today are trained to do this. Whether it is by hating the audience and aiming for a fictitious replacement for them that exists only in their head, or by creating new "genres" out of their personal pet philosophies in order to conquer public discourse and warp minds, this isn't a new happening. It's just gotten far too accepted over the course of the 20th century. Keep the artist and the audience completely separate and don't be surprised when they have radically ideas of the definition of such simple terms such as "good" or even "reality." We're living in the ruins of such thought processes today in the post postmodern world.
Regardless, there was a time when art was created for the audience first and then everything flowed from there. Over time, however, as we've seen, slowly we've twisted definitions of words and group definitions to now make the customer the enemy, the original sources aberrations of the now "accepted" new canon, and the traditional morals and people that allowed all these things to be made to begin with as objectively evil and wrong groups who should be destroyed and spat on whenever the chance arises. In other words, everything is now backwards and we are just supposed to accept this new state of normality. All while depression, drug usage, and suicide, is constantly on the rise. It's a mad world, after all.
This is one of the reasons the 20th century is not going to be looked back well on at all in the future. When you look at all of this from a bird's eye view you can't see what is going on today as anything other than Clown World, where everything is stupid and falling apart at the seems. The main reason to not despair over this is the truth that Clown World can not continue on indefinitely. Despite how it might feel, and how long this inane modernity might be dragging on, the way things are will not last forever.
The times do seem to be getting worse just about every day in the modern age. You see it every day if you bother to watch the sensationalistic news or go near any of the corporate owned media franchises. It all consists of weaponry against normality and sanity, bent on making you a zealot for the here and now cause they decided at their whim. Hard to deny this if you've been paying attention for the last half decade or so. The people in charge hate and wish to control you, and will do just about anything to cause division with you and your neighbor and family in order to gain the authority position in your life. Things are getting nasty out there, and they are going to get nastier.
I'm certain you've heard much of the doom and gloom bathing everything, especially recently. For the last four years or so there appears to be a new crisis every few months. Aside from that hysteria, which is bad enough on its own, we can't even have any escapism to get away from it for even a few seconds. You see all sorts of comments from people with "power" and "prestige" the correct ways to create, despite they themselves not being able to create much at all. Even worse is some of the defeatism that comes out of even those who should know better to excuse the current state of things. These are people who will do anything to avoid moving on.
You've probably heard some of the following things said. No one reads anymore, so we shouldn't write. Everyone watches televisionmovies in theatres streaming, so we should meet the audience where they are and pander to that. Video games are the future, but only certain types. Don't color outside the lines and do what is currently successful. Invest in something--as long as it's visual and Hollywood-like or on the internet, even though Hollywood is currently dying and the internet is being locked down as we speak. Whatever you do, you must keep up with the ever-changing modern world and meet the present where it is. Think about tomorrow by doing what is popular today.
But, that was yesterday.
The nonsense that has piled up over the last few years should prove one thing for most of us, and that is that the current way of things is already passing on. In an era defined by rushing to the newest thing at faster and faster rates throughout the past century, we've long since hit the wall. Nothing lasts for long, and everything is a flash in the pan. Everything.
Think of the last really popular new thing you know, by which I mean a phenomenon extremely popular among large swaths of people, and you won't find much, and what you do find is nothing that stuck around very long before the next new thing came around. We are always hunting for the next trend at faster and faster rates. We refuse to be satiated for even a moment.
This is not a sustainable way of creating art. It's just trend chasing for novelty and the next buzz. Nothing sticks for long because everyone is just looking for their next hit, the newest drug. If that is all art is going to be treated as, which is what it has been for some time now, then why bother making it at all? There is no point participating in a grinding conveyor belt machine of product meant for little more than another buzz before cranking out the next one.
I'm not talking about creating things quickly: the pulp era was a century ago and they worked fast. I'm talking about consuming it like it were alcohol then tossing it aside before instantly moving on to the next mug. Creating work meant to be disposed of and forgotten instantly after usage is not really creating: it's supplying. Art isn't a fix.
That isn't creating--that's supplying soma. There is no reason to be part of a system like that, especially when megacorps are already falling over themselves doing that for their personal streaming services and failing big bookstores. The big dogs are already pandering to the lowest common denominator as you read this. What is the point of independent and smaller works being created if they're just going to match this failing model that has no future?
We should think higher. Not in terms of high and low art, but in terms of what the art is meant to invoke in the first place. Consuming and disposing is not a purpose.
I know there are many artists of all mediums worried about relevance and success in the modern day, but they also appear to be missing the point of creating art to begin with. Much has to do with today's expectations, most of which are tied to the most popular pieces of their childhood from the 1970s through the 1990s. None of that takes into account that those years were an aberration on how art has worked throughout all of history, and that the era of your childhood is long over and currently a haunting specter over how everything works now. It appears a new perspective on this subject needs to be given: a perspective much older than any of us.
The first is a realization most probably don't want to hear. There is a very real possibility that you will never make much of anything off of your art in your lifetime, or that no one will read it as long as you breathe. It could very well happen.
This wasn't even that uncommon in the much imitated 20th century. H.P. Lovecraft died in poverty. Robert E. Howard's success mainly arrived decades after he had died. There are countless bands from the Velvet Underground to The Replacements that had no real success when they were around but became influential and known after they had already broken up. The JoJo's Bizarre Adventure series took multiple decades for it to crack success worldwide, mostly from a new anime adaption. Blade Runner was infamously a bomb in its original release before going on to become one of the most influential movies of the century. These are just a handful of examples.
In other words, obsessing over the here and now is missing the point, especially when one doesn't know what tomorrow will bring. Plenty of things do not take off how or when you wish they would. We work on God's schedule, not our own. You don't know what tomorrow will bring.
One of my favorite pieces on this subject is author John C. Wright's essay entitled "Your Book of Gold." It was one he had written years back that still sticks in my mind today.
The article states, in part:
"If you only write one book in your whole life, and only sell 600 copies or less, nonetheless, I assure you, I solemnly assure you, that this book will be someone’s absolutely favorite book of all time, and it will come to him on some dark day and give him sunlight, and open his eyes and fill his heart and make him see things in life even you never suspected, and will be his most precious tale, and it will live in his heart like the Book of Gold."
If even one person reads your book, or indulges in your art, for even a second, and they get something out of it: then it is a success. Do not concern yourself with numbers as you have limited control over those. Concern yourself for making your art all it can be. That is your job.
Art can do wonders to the soul, especially if it connects. Should you do your best to connect, then it is hard to imagine not being able to do so at least on some level.
This is, after all, the main point. Monetary reward is secondary. Yes, even with pulp writing. That doesn't mean it isn't important at all, but it is not first.
As an example, Weird Tales was a middling success when it was around. It did decently but had little in the way of budget and had to use tasteful nude covers to attract buyers. The market back then was tough, after all. Many authors left Weird Tales for higher paying markets like the splatter and shudder pulps to make more money. That was their prerogative--who knows how much they needed the money, after all.
However, Weird Tales is now looked back on as one of the most influential and important magazines of its time. Any author who ran in its pages is given automatic prestige today for being in it. Those higher paying magazines? All gone and forgotten: most never reprinted. But the work many thought would never get seen? It's highly sought after now. The magazine has such prestige that modern grifters think buying the name and slapping it against their modern stories gives them instant credibility. This wouldn't have happened without the passage of time.
You simply do not know the future. That is the point.
But Mr. Wright goes on:
"I write for that one reader I will never see, the one who needs just such a tale as I can pen, in just such a time and place, some rainy afternoon or dark hour, when providence will bring my book into his hands. And he will open it, and it will not be a book, but a casement, from which he will glimpse the needed vision his soul requires of a world larger than our own, or a star in a heaven wider and higher than ours, a star aflame with magic more majestic than any star mortal astronomers can name.
"I humbly but strongly suggest you write for that unknown reader also, and not for worldly praise, or influence, or self, or applause. The world flatters popular authors, and the clamor of the multitude of brazen tongues is vanity. It is dust on the wind. The unknown reader will greet your work with love. It is a crown of adamant, solid and enduring.
"You will never meet that one reader, not in this life. In heaven he will come to you and fall on his face and anoint your feet with tears of gratitude, and you will stand astonished and humbled, having never suspected."
The future is unknown, but one thing is for certain: what you do matters, even if you do not see the results tangibly in your lifetime, and even if it isn't much from your point of view. This all goes on after you are gone, after all. Everything you do effects someone else somehow in someway you will never see or experience in this world. This is what our art should reflect. That's just how the world is and always was.
And I take that seriously.
I had a dream not too long ago. In fact, this was being added to the post when I woke from it. This was not the sort of dream I tend to have, so I found it best to write it down here. It is very relevant to the changing world around us.
What I remember was bizarre because it came oddly clear to me. I was in the mall of my youth, most of the stores were now gone and replaced with either empty rooms or far inferior establishments with little to be seen in them aside from old paint jobs and sparse décor like a handful of white curtains on the walls (there were no windows). There were few to no people in any of the shops, it was so empty you could hear the footsteps echoing down the halls. The parking lot outside was also almost barren with around two cars to be seen. There remained an odd feeling of smallness as I looked over it all where it once seemed so big when I was a child.
Speaking of the outside, it was even more odd than the mall. Half the stores across the street were also closed, either being rebuilt or constructed, or simply taken down. The road itself hadn't been repaved recently, crumbling quite badly after decades of neglect. The people nearby were confused at the world around them, the one they knew so well and so long, appeared to be going away. And sure enough, in real life, it was and is.
The entire experience reminded me of the song "Sunstroke" by the band Less Than Jake. The subject is one I think is more relevant today than ever.
When did I become
A tourist in the city I got my name from?
How did construction sites
Rise up on streets with shoes tied to old power lines?
And I'll never question why
Or where I draw the line
I'm too stubborn to decide
It's like living on a fault line
And I'm too stubborn to decide
The old saying goes
You're only missed when you start to like being alone
I'm left here in a pose
With steel beams and the fact that I'm just flesh and bone
And I'll never question why
Or where I draw the line
I'm too stubborn to decide
It's like living on a fault line
And I'm too stubborn to decide
That song was about Gen X getting older and realizing the world they grew up in was physically gone, and only really exists now in their memory. It was more metaphorical when it was written nearly a decade ago. The difference today is that these things are vanishing a lot more quickly and are more noticeable in scope and frequency.
The thing is, the real life area of the above dream is not too far from actually looking like this. Most of the places near where I grew up are long gone and paved over. It's now a patchwork of badly-aged brutalist buildings both empty and barely functional, mid-20th century megacorp franchises that just won't die, and rusted steel and badly paved roads that haven't been touched up since I was a grade schooler. It's fairly dead, and it isn't ever coming back.
It's all part of yesterday. There is no tomorrow coming for them.
Outside of that dream, I had been thinking about several other areas just like it for some time now. I remember what these places were like when they were full of people, of actual life, decades ago, where now walks almost no one, empty lots of torn up pavement with grass growing through the cracks, and barred windows under old, unclean signs. The dream might not have been the exact reality, but it definitely represented what had happened to it quite well. At the rate we're going, the place I grew up in will be a ghost town within a decade.
This is the bigger point here. All the things that were prosperous so long ago are dying now. That era is over.
You never know what the future is going to hold. This is why the current obsession with trying to be big today, in the here and now, when things are at their bleakest and rot covers everything like a disease-infested blanket, is a losing game. Being king of the junkpile might feel good for a few minutes before you are dethroned by the next flash in the pan constantly being rotated in by our fast moving ADD culture. You are missing the forest for the trees trying to fit work of vitality and life into a climate that is on its death bed and falling apart at an astonishing speed. Aim higher than modernity's mediocrity. You're going to have to, at this point.
If your work is truly relevant in a culture of destruction then no one will pay it any mind today regardless. Most modernists are too busy consuming the things that are killing them to even notice. A smaller, more discerning group will be looking for what you offer--and they might not even find you in your lifetime. There is no way to know. But they will never find you if they're trying to get away from the dross that chased them away from your genre or medium to begin with, while you stay behind reveling in it hoping for kudos instead. This is backwards.
You're going to have to aim higher than this; there is no choice but to do it. Get better, go big, and do what you've got to do. Floating with the stream isn't going to get you ahead; you're going to have to risking sinking by swimming hard.
This is the way it's going to be in the roaring '20s. We no longer have much in the way of safety nets of reliable plans going forward. All the roadmaps are for roads that no longer exist and places long since torn down. The systems we thought would always be there are on their last legs. The world you knew is more or less over.
So many of us asked for this, and here it is: tomorrow. The page has been turned, and there is no turning it back. The sun has set on the old world.
What will you do, in the meantime? There is a lot coming down the turnpike, many of which will be ignored or forgotten out of the gate. Perhaps this new thing will eventually hit later, perhaps it will only hit a niche group. The point is that this material will be new, not rehashed or rewarmed leftovers from some stale zombie age that refuses to die. Will you cling to this moldy carcass forever, or will you finally let it go and bury it in the grave it belongs? Whatever our decision is, it will impact what comes next.
Let us then make it something to remember, then. Let us finally make a step forward and away from these endless mistakes of a century that won't die. We can do this. We just need to finally out the past where it belongs.
This was one of the reasons I assembled the free book on Generation Y. We are 25 years divorced from Cultural Ground Zero and the bottom is finally falling out of the old world. This book is the final word on this undying era, and it will hopefully let us move on to what awaits us ahead. Generation Y might be defined by the past, but we can use that to build a new future that expands on it, instead of living in the scraps of a world that has been over for a long time now.
There is no Star Trek utopia coming, no matter how much useless lore one spouts about it--the 20th century is done, as are its visions of utopia. We're going to need larger dreams moving forward. Better ones.
This doesn't mean that we throw the past away. Of course not since the past can't be killed. However, we are going to need new things to aim for, more than the temporal, more than the here and now, more than visions of unrealistic materialist utopias that will clearly never arrive, and more than corporate product. There is more to shoot for than the same mistakes of the bloodiest century on record repeated indefinitely forward.
Even though there is no end of history, times do in fact end. New eras begin as others fade into the past. We are at that point right now, and it is about time.
Tomorrow is here. I can't wait to see what this new day brings.
Have you been feeling down, pushed around
Feeling like everything has been done before?
Do I need to understand every word from every man
Or everything from every band?
Can I say it's all been done before?
Religion, science, similes to metaphors
Can it be that there's nothing new
When there's more ways of looking at the truth?
Of looking at the truth...
The more things seem to change
The more they just stay the same
But now it's called a different name
Can you say things are new
When you look at magazines
And things you've seen in the news?
And can I say it's all been done before?
Religion, science, similes to metaphors
Can it be that there's nothing new
When there's more ways of looking at the truth?
Of looking at the truth...
It's 4:00 AM
And I just passed the westside buildings, all the broken glass
As I try to shake the cold away, but anyways
It's late at night and I'm about to crack
And decide to just walk the tracks
That I just walked yesterday
But have I been thinking too much tonight
When I realize just how my life's gone by
I check the time!
It's 4:00 AM
And I just passed the westside buildings, all the broken glass
As I try to shake the cold away, but anyways
It's late at night and I'm about to crack
And decide to just walk the tracks
That I just walked yesterday
But have I been thinking too much tonight
When I realize just how my life's gone by
I check the time!
It's 4:00 AM
And I just passed the westside buildings, all the broken glass
Hard to believe that it's finished, isn't it? 2020 has been a year of strangeness where it just seemed liked nothing went right and this snowball of disaster kept rolling downhill only getting bigger and bigger. It wouldn't stop moving, but neither would it stop snowing. Would it ever let up?
And sure enough, for many it didn't. However, for creators, we had our work cut out for us. If there was ever a time escapism was needed in this world this was our chance to supply it it the world. Did we do it? Did we offer all we could in this year of mayhem and madness? Yes, and no. There were many who rose to the challenge, but there are just as many who didn't, or couldn't. There are many reasons for this, some valid, but for independents they had an excuse. Those whose job entailed being paid by the big dogs? Not so much. In fact, they spent time trying to destroy the internet archive and prevent readers from being able to read. It wasn't a good look for them.
OldPub and Hollywood were especially crippled by the pandemic and fallout, but those of us in NewPub and in the general independent space, were far quicker to take advantage of the need to lift others out of their doldrums. This was out chance to shine, and we did, and proved we are far more capable than the dinosaur industries are.
Even when we weren't putting out new product we were busy behind the scenes preparing yet even more for our audiences. Something was always happening. It was a very big year in terms of activity, and my best since I started writing.
So what did I do in 2020. I will take stock for this usual end of year report. This might take a while, so please be patient.
The first thing I did was release a book in January, the first time I'd ever done so. It was my fourth book, and it was one I'd been working on for some time. I couldn't quite get it out in 2019, so I instead spent the extra time polishing it for a 2020 release. Turns out it was worth it since reception for it was the best I had gotten to that point. This book was Someone is Aiming for You & Other Adventures.
This was a novel containing 7 stories that tell an overarching story. They range from short stories to novelettes to full blown novellas. It was a challenge to write something of this magnitude and it was heartening to hear that readers connected with it. There will definitely be more projects of this type in the future. It was a lot of fun to write.
However, this was just the first release. It isn't close to everything that happened in January of 2020.
I also started a series of posts on the blog centered around these stories entitled Story Sheets, which is a line of articles where I talk about each individual story I've written. From inspirations to ideas to execution they were a joy to put together. Story Sheets helped contribute to making this the biggest year for Wasteland & Sky so far both in terms of traffic and content!
This is a blog abut storytelling, first and foremost, so I would be remiss to not talk about my own writing while I do so. I'm always going to put my money where my mouth is. Suffice to say, these articles also helped me solidify thoughts and allowed me to improve further as a writer, just as reader feedback does. Readers also appeared to enjoyed these posts and got some inspiration of their own out of them, so it was a win-win.
And yes, there will be more posts in that series in the future.
Oh, and it wasn't the first thing I was involved in during 2020. These might have been my first efforts, but I was actually involved in another project earlier. That would be the release of StoryHack Issue #5 which featured my story Black Dog Bend. It came out in the first week of 2020, which just goes to show how much creatives were already working for customers. StoryHack never rests!
This was a particularly great issue featuring many other great authors such as Dominika Lein and Jon Mollison. Definitely be sure to read this one. It's one of the best issues. Oh, and there will be more issues in 2021! So look out for that.
Issue #5 came out in the first week of the year, and was the first of two issues the magazine put out in 2020. Aside from Cirsova, they were the most active magazine that I could see in 2020. A few others actually shut down during this mess. Nonetheless, they've promised more in 2021, so be sure t hear more about them in the near future!
In February I offered my first bit of free fiction on the blog (more on the way!) entitled Why Not: A Gen Y Fragment. This was a piece I had been wanting to write for awhile but was unsure if there was an audience for it. It isn't really an action or adventure story, really, but more of a time capsule and an attempt to show a specific place and time in as few words as possible.
This was inspired by stories by other authors such as Brian Niemeier and David V. Stewart who supplied their own examples of Gen Y. If there is one thing 2020 did it was raise awareness of this lost generation and give them the spotlight they need to finally be able to understand they have an identity beyond what entertainment corporations assigned to them in the 1990s. It was a hard idea to get across, but I believe many of us successfully did so. Either way, we won't stop beating the drum anytime soon.
Here is a reading of Why Not: A Gen Y Fragment that was done by David V. Stewart on youtube. I appreciate him bringing more life into this short story.
The Gen Y posts have brought a lot of discussion out in studying and questioning just what this lost generation is and why continuing to ignore them is actually doing damage to both their futures and to their very souls. I spent many posts about this subject over the year, but this small story was my first attempt in trying to define it in a time and place.
I'm sure the topic will get more traction next year. I know I am not done with it. In fact, you might get a Gen Y surprise sooner than you might think.
But of course, didn't stop there. This is still the beginning of 2020!
March ended up being a big month for the entire world. However, I also ended up putting out even more content despite the madness. As I said, there is no point slowing down when people are asking for more escapism and you can give it to them.
The first release this month was Planetary Anthology Uranus which included my story Cold Heart of Ouranos. For those who don't remember, in 2019 Superversive Press's Planetary Anthology series was revived by Tuscany Bay Books and given a facelift. As a result, a story I thought might have been lost was finally released. Do you like sword and planet stories? Then why don't you own this anthology yet? It was a fun story to write.
The Planetary Anthology series is finally nearing the end after spending so much time in limbo. Much applause and kudos should be given to Tuscany Bay for pushing s hard with this project. All their efforts have borne fruit after much uncertainty. By February of 2021 the series should finally be complete after near half a decade of work. Check out this 11 volume project for yourself. There are around 100 authors included. But it won't be the final time I talk about it!
This wasn't everything that happened that month, as you are well aware. This was the start of a worldwide series of events still affecting us today. But that wasn't everything!
Also, in March, a bunch of us NewPub authors got together to offer something in the midst of the first widescale lockdowns. This was the Corona-Chan Anthology, curated by author David V. Stewart, which is still completely free to purchase to this day. Here you can read Someone is Aiming for You for free before you read the titular book I put out back in January.
But aside from me, you can find a host other stories inside that vary in tone and in length. Here is the entire author and story listing:
“Quarantine” by artist Jesse White
Anacyclosis by Brian Niemeier
"A Song of I.C.E. and Fire" by Jon Del Arroz
In the Forest of Wast by Alexander Hellene
"Exiled in the Desert" by John Daker
"Iron and Steel" by KP Kalvaitis
"Someone is Aiming for You" by JD Cowan
Immortal Thunder by Matt Wellman
"Bringing down the Mountain" by Nathan Dabney
"At the Feet of Neptune’s Queen" by Abraham Strongjohn
“Going Native” and “Warrior Soul” by Manfred Weichsel
The Battle of the Turasa Nebula by Yakov Merkin
“An Eye for Eligos” by Alexandru Constantin
Adventure Constant (full-length novel) by Jon Mollison
For a moment it was even outdoing OldPub darlings in the amazon rankings, and is still doing quite well even right now. Not bad for a free anthology with little promotion and no outside support from the industry. People clearly wanted their escapism!
NewPub did not fail to let audiences down. Reminder that this was only the third month of the year. There is plenty more to go through.
At the same time as all of this I was busy writing between these releases. What some of the projects were I will reveal at the end of this post. But of what I can talk about here, you have certainly been made aware of from what I put out this year. There were two projects that came out in this span of spring and summer that are still listed on the sidebar to the blog.
The first is the free novelette Duel on Dalpha that you can get simply by joining my newsletter. This was a giant robot space horror adventure that was edited by Dragon Award winner Brian Niemeier. He knows his mecha and his space adventure, so you know you're in for a good time! He helped me to turn this into an excellent piece I still feel proud over today.
And this is where things get really out there. Even for me.
Not too long after Duel On Dalpha came the quadruple #1 amazon bestseller that I was blown away by the reception of. It is still selling quite well even as we speak. This would be my first non-fiction book in The Pulp Mindset: A NewPub Survival Guide.
I can't say I expected this explosive reception, because I hardly expected the book itself. Between blog posts, editing other stories, promoting myself and other authors, and writing, I got the idea that a work like this was needed in the online space. What can we do to bridge the gap between what writing actually is and what conventional (and wrong) OldPub wisdom tells us it is? How can we reach readers hemorrhaging from the medium for other spaces? It's all about mindset.
We needed a guide that could adjust the mindset for new creators and let them know that the creative landscape is entirely different from what it was even a few years prior. We need to change how we write and how we think about writing itself. This requires a Pulp Mindset, being able to adjust to the wild west era of art and remembering what the masters once taught that we have forgotten. It requires reconnecting with the past so we can forge a new future.
One of the pieces in this was written for an upcoming book on pulp writing (which is still on the way!), however it then sparked the idea in me to expand it into a full work. This is what soon became The Pulp Mindset: A NewPub Survival Guide. The reception has definitely been worth the effort. I'm hoping this will be a work that will help a lot of artists in the future. We need more creators and we need more patrons! Art is about growth, so let us continue to grow together.
It's at this point I should finally mention the blog itself. Output has increased this year from previous years. In fact, this year has had a 40% jump in posts from every other year of the blog's life, which you can see your yourself in the sidebar. In other words, I have objectively put out more content in 2020 than any other year, even if you're just counting the blog.
In addition to the free stories and promotion posts for NewPub authors I even crossposted my Halloween Cannon Cruisers podcast episodes for the entire week, and introduced some of my most popular pieces on the blog so far. 2020 was the year of content on Wasteland & Sky.
Speaking of Cannon Cruisers, despite having the main show delayed for most of the year, I instead recorded Gaiden episodes of my own to keep content up. Twenty-six in total, actually. This kept Cannon Cruisers content going while the madness with the world was still happening and we were unable to put out normal content. I used this opportunity to cover movies we wouldn't have covered in the main series, so be sure to check it out.
We have since gone back to our normal episodes (and have just finished our recordings for the season!) and are in the process of releasing our usual weekly posts. It's been quite the year for Cannon Cruisers.
Finally, in November, Planetary Anthology Sol came out, which is one of the last volumes of the series. This one was a long time coming.
This was the second to last release I was involved with this year, but it is no less as good as the others. Sol is an anthology I know the editor spent a lot of time pouring over, and it shows in the final product. My story Judgement Sun was included inside which was one of my favorites back when I finally polished it up for submission.
Yes, this is the opposite of the story in the Uranus anthology, being about fire instead of ice, but it is no less exciting than the former tale. In fact, both stories are part of the same series of sword and planet adventurers. How many more are there? Two, actually. Four in total, and they follow a specific pattern. Can you figure it out with the two that are out so far? However, they aren't quite done yet. Will they be out in 2021? We will see . . .
For now be sure to check out the above stories. Sword and Planet rarely ever gets so hotblooded, ad coldblooded, I suppose!
Finally, in December, I included my hero story Under Suspicion in Summerside for FREE in the Superhero Mega Anthology.
Inside of this massive release you will find prose stories, comics, and many others in its 600 page length. There is no shortage of entertainment, and it's all free! Not only that, but there are free offers and raffles inside for even more free stories and books (including some of mine!) so be sure to download. It's completely free, after all.
This brings us to now. So what else have I been working on that hasn't been released yet? There is plenty. I can tell you that you will find out come 2021, but let us be specific.
My long-promised short novel Brutal Dreams has been sent to an editor and returned with edits. That is my next project which will be out in early 2021, but probably not in January. Someone is Aiming for You & Other Adventures taught me that January is an uphill battle to gain traction with readers. Nonetheless, the book just needs editing and formatting and it is finished. It's been a long time coming and I am eager to have you read it.
As for the Gemini Warrior sequel, Gemini Drifter, I can only repeat what I did last time and say that it is written and in my editor's hands. The same with the third book, Gemini Outsider. Silver Empire has slowed down releases due to the current climate, but both are still on the way. Trust me, I enjoy writing these and definitely wish they could be out for you now, but it is what it is. 2021 should be quite a ride for readers of Gemini Man and the rest of the Heroes Unleashed line. Silver Empire has a lot in store for their readers!
That is all for the known factors. As for brand new, I have a project I am hoping to start in the new year that should be quite out of this world. It is the sort of wacky idea I've wanted to tackle for a long time now. I wish I could give you a hint as to what it is, but it's fairly bizarre, even for me. More on that in 2021. Be certain: it's weird.
There are other things I'm doing that I can mention, such as being in the upcoming Pulp on Pulp book of essays, spearheaded by authors Misha Burnett and Ben Cheah, but others are not quite in that stage to be discussed yet. Nonetheless, I can definitively say that you can look forward to even more from me in 2021. It's going to be quite a ride is we head into the new decade.
And that is it for 2020! I hope you had a good one, or at least as good as can be allowed, and are ready to move on to better days. There's much coming ahead.
Thank you for reading and for all your support! You've got even more to look forward to. I can promise you that!
I'm going to leave you with the interview I had on the superversive livestream back when The Pulp Mindset: A NewPub Survival Guide came out. It was a lot of fun to record and I hope you have a lot of fun listening to it.
Not much to say today, except I hope you had a good year and that 2016 will be even better for you.
For me it was a pretty slow year. I only had the chance to officially release one short story despite actually having written nearly four novels this year. I still need the money and time to seek out a good editor, but at the very least I was productive.
I hope next year I can go at least a little bit further, but for now I'm grateful for what I've had and what little I've accomplished. Trust me when I say there have been years when I put out nothing at all and did even less. Thanks to God's graces I'm still here and trying much harder.
Boy, this has been an odd one. First I get roped into NaNoWriMo (I should have hit my goal of 75,000 words by tonight of early tomorrow), then there is some personal brouhaha, and that's not even going into world events. Not the most easily digestible month in memory.
But at least I finally got started on a project I wanted to and I put out a short story as unedited and raw as it is. Getting something done is better than saying you're going to get something done. Oh, and Advent started, which was something that certainly lifted my spirits. So, despite a lot of weirdness, at least it evened out in a way.
I also played a pen and paper RPG called Fiasco for the first time with a friend this weekend. We were just trying it out, but it was a lot of fun. I certainly hope to play it again. I'm not a fan of the Coen Brothers' style of storytelling, but the core structure of the game is really fun. That's the part I want to play around more with.
All in all, time to bid farewell to November after such a strange run. Here's hoping for the rest of Advent and December to pick it up!
I don't know about you, but I'm ready to bid farewell to this year. Hopefully December can carry out the rest of the year with some holiday cheer and joy. I think we could all use more of both.
By the band Jimmy Eat World. Though I have grown out of a lot of the music I listened to when younger, some still stick with me. This is one. It is the final track from the band's breakthrough 1999 album, Clarity, and one of their most famous.
They were a pretty big deal in the late '90s and early '00s, but since the pop world is so fickle, there's a good chance no one in that scene listens to them anymore. I have been to concerts where bands with well crafted songs and engaging themes are not as warmly received by the audience as the newer flash in the pan bands (and I mean flash in the pan, I looked up some of the bands I mean and they haven't done much in years), but some manage to keep marching regardless of how fickle their audience might be.
The lyrics on this album are probably the best the band ever put out, and this sixteen minute song (!) is one of the best of the decade. Seek it out if you can.
Goodbye Sky Harbor
Written by: Jim Adkins, Rich Burch, Zach Lind, Tom Linton and Thomas Darrell
Is tomorrow just a day like all the rest?
How could you know just what you did?
Like all the rest, how could you know just what you did?
So full of faith yet full of doubt I ask . . .
Again, I shall ask you this once again:
He said, "I am but one small instrument"
Do you remember that?
Time and time again you say:
"Don't be afraid, don't be afraid!"
The only voice I want to hear is yours.
Again, I shall ask you this once again:
He said, "I am but one small instrument"
Do you remember that?
So here I am above palm trees so straight and tall,
You are smaller, getting smaller . . .
