Thank You…

Having finished the new book (This Beautiful Darkness), I can honestly say that, for me, the hardest part came at the end, with the thank yous. Sure, it takes some time to write the stories and edit them, but that comes naturally, flowing from me without much effort. Writing is a matter of seeing a path and forging through it, the editing a matter of trimming back the flora to clean things up. Putting the book together was a bear but that was mostly on  the shouldres of my girlfriend, bless her heart. Art, like the writing, just came. I had a title and the art sprung from it. The art was actually far easier than the writing, oddly enough. So through the whole process, it came naturally, as something familar.

Until the thanks.

That was the hard part.

It wasn’t hard because I didn’t know who to thank, because there are SO many people who I owe debts to. It was ten years since Back From Nothing and along the way, over the years, so many people, so many lives have touched my own life that they have all played a part in this book coming together. They are all part of the stories here, and all the stories I have written. There is no way to thank everyone that comes into your life. You just can’t. You can’t because then the list becomes ridiculous, and you start stretching the patience of  your readers. No, you have to choose a few, the few that have stood out and have been there for you the most, and you have to choose them and make the hard decisious. Sure, you leave people off, you forget people, but in the end, you have to make the choices.

And I made them. I can hope, I can only hope that the people who touched me know how much they meant to me, and how much they meant to my writing. That is all I can hope. We have to make hard decisions as writers and, in the end, picking who to thank may be the hardest choice of all.

It was for me at least.

c

This Beautiful Darkness

I am very, very proud to announce the upcoming release of a new short story collection entitled This Beautiful Darkness. It is being proofed right now then will be up for sale on Amazon. The book will be ten dollars and features thirteen stories. All stories, interior pictures, and the cover is by me. The layout was done by my badass girlfriend Amanda.

I am more excited than words can really capture.

Cover and back cover images below. More info to come.

10 years…

In our lives there are always going to be places, people, things, and events that mean more to us than to anyone else. Sure, people will appreciate these things but they will not mean as much as they do to us.

One of those things for me is BACK FROM NOTHING, my book of short stories that was published ten years ago this year. I am celebrating the release of the book with friends tonight and wanted to take a minute to reminisce about the book and the path it’s lead me on.

 To do this justice I have to go back fifteen years, when I was working on a fanzine turned briefly legit with friends. The ‘zine was called Ghoulash and was a dream come true for all of us involved. During that time I was writing a lot and wrote the short story that would form the corner stone that became my novel. It was also the era when I was writing a lot of the work that appeared in the book. For some insane reason I got it into my head to try to publish my stories. I mean, hell, good on me, but what was I thinking?

Well, I was thinking ‘why not’. I had been writing seriously since I was eighteen and in ’94 I was twenty and full of gumption. Oh, gumption, how I miss it. So I took some stories, I cleaned them up, dusted them off, and I sent them on their way. I went about it a little backward in that I tried to get the book first, oops, and lo and behold there were no takers. Writers talk all the time about the plight of rejection and let me tell you, it never gets easy and it never gets funny. So I got a lot of rejection. Letter after letter after letter. Until one day I got a response from a company called University Editions, who were interested in my book. I couldn’t have been happier. The thing was though that UE was a subsidized book publisher, which meant that I paid the fees and cost of doing the book and they produced, promoted, and distributed it. The cost was pretty steep, with two levels and both being pricey, but I was at a dead end, and saw no other route. Years later I can stop and see where I should have just been patient and kept writing and looking for places to submit but, well, I did what I did.

And I don’t regret it at all.

 With the help, a LOT of help, from my folks we went into the process of getting the book published through UE. It was a loooong process. It was a matter of – send in book, wait for it to be typed and set, find errors, fix them, re-submit, get it back, go through it and then there was coming up with the loot. It was a good couple of years of stops and starts before it finally came together, and I remember walking around with my draft as I went through it day by day to fix errors.

 The book was released finally in 1999 and my first signing was at Borders books in Flint, Michigan on June 14 (god, how did I forget the date, I totally had it a month ago, damn!). The signing was ridiculous but fun. I got drilled by a religious couple that happened to thumb to a place in my book where I had portrayed Lucifer, and then I got asked lots of WHERE IS… questions, as if I worked there. After the signing I had a dinner at a local restaurant and celebrated with friends.

 After the signing I sorta waited. I didn’t know what to do and was deathly afraid of reviews, so I waited to see what happened. Fool that I was, I didn’t really go out and promote the book. Within a year of publication I got a letter from UE stating that they were going out of business and that if I wanted my books I needed to pay shipping or just wave goodbye to them. More money spent and now I had to distribute, sell, promote, and do everything else for the book.
Damn.

 It is empowering to do everything yourself but it’s also exhausting because after you write all the indie booksellers, and try to get it reviewed, and try to get people to buy it, what then? Well, you keep doing it. You do conventions, and art shows, and any other damned thing you can do to get the word out there. You talk it up, and you sell it. For me, it’s never been easy to do all that because I try to be modest in what I am doing, and it’s hard to ‘sell’ it. But I try.

 In ten years I have given away far more books than I have sold, far more, but the book is out there, and people have liked it. I am sure people have hated it just as much, but screw them, what do those people know? HAHA. Since BFN came out I have been published four times  – three times in a periodical and once in a magazine and was twice awarded honorary mention in a respected book. I have put together near to ten chapbooks of new material. I wrote a novel. I have put together enough stories for a few more collections. And I still write and do other stuff. And I am still looking to get more books out there.

 It has been a crazy ten years, and despite all the setbacks and disappointments I am still here. Still writing. Still working.

And that says more than I can with any amount of words or time.

 …c…

The Other Sides

It is pretty clear that there are a few sides to my creativity and writing, while the greatest part, is but one of those sides. Art and Photography, both new arts to me, are now integral parts of who I am.

After I did the skull painting I had the notion of a painting of a man flying another man as a kite. I wasn’t quite sure how to show that so I opted to attach the poor fella TO the kite as it flew in the air. I am sure he was fine with it. Sure.

The pictures I took this weekend, and just struck me as interesting.

Secrets

Can I tell ya a secret?

I am awful at keeping secrets.

It isn’t so much that I like giving people details they don’t want, need, or are privy to so much as I just say too much sometimes. I guess it’s having a big mouth. Ha, a writer with a big mouth, imgine that!

So, not being so great with secrets, and not having the best OFF switch on my mouth doesn’t make it easy when you have a big secret you are keeping. UGH, lemme tell you about THAT. Wait, I can’t.

I have been working on some things for a while now that I am getting ready to reveal and man, it is about time. It has been killing me to have this big revelati0n that I cannot tell anyone about. This Friday I can finally let the proverbial cat out of the bag at the ten year anniversary dinner I am doing for my book BACK FROM NOTHING. Hopefully the news will excite everyone as much as it excites me.

We shall see.

And YOU shall see as of this Saturday. All will be revealed Saturday.

Until then…

c

Art With a “Message”

I can be called many things but an elitist is not one of those things. I grew up a dork, and remain a dork to this day. That is who I am. And having not done art since I was a teenager, I am a self taught artist, so any ego I have about my ‘art’ is pretty minimal. I like what I can do, and I am working to be better at it, and people can feel what they want from there. I hope people dig what I do, with writing, art, or photography, but it is what it is and people dig what they do.

And let’s face it, we all do what we do for us first, and the world second, which is as it should be, to be true to your own voice and vision. And we all do some things people like and some things people won’t like. AS an artist, and AS a person active in a community though,one thing I don’t just dislike but truly hate are self important artists who play at being deep and involved when really they are just focused on themselves and how talented they are.

I hate art with a message.

There, I said it.

I hate art with a message.

I think the notion that some art has a message, and other art does not is an utter farce and is as shallow and selfish as an ‘Artist’ can get. While I will never claim that my stories, pictures, or paintings are terribly deep, there are messages there. Sometimes they are subtle, sometimes the messages are overt but they are there. For me, all the things I do all stem from a desire to tell stories so that is always at the heart of what I am doing. Hell, sometimes I may not even see any message because I am too close to see it, but it is there. It is always there. I have known a LOT of artists, and all of them, me too, have an ego about their work, even if it is minimal. You have to have it because without that ego you cannot do it. Without a belief that what you are doing is valuable then why the hell would you bother with it all? What sucks is when an ego gets so out of control as to believe that what they are saying is IMPORTANT, which then lends itself to inferring that other art may not be so important or deep.

Which is hilarious because, like I said, all art has a message.

Listen to the BEACH BOYS and their songs are about love, and partying, and surfing, and all manner of fun and does that mean there is no message? Uh, no. The message is that life is good, and we need to enjoy it. I get the same message, or a similar one, from MONET, who seemed to love to show how beautiful the world was. So was that not a message? I write dark stories and there are messages, sometimes as simple as that life is not what we believe it to be, or that we can find power in our meekest selves and push onward, or even that we must make sacrifices in order to protect and help those we love. Messages, all of them. So to say that some art has a message and other art does not is ridiculous.

Art with a message indeed.

Oh, wait, what of ‘pop’ art or ‘trash’ art, or mass marketed art. To tell those artists, whomever they are, that their work means nothing is pretty damned bold. Even a painting of a silly monster has meaning. Maybe we need to look a little harder sometimes. Maybe that is the REAL message, not that certain art has meaning and other art does not.

Ridiculous.

As an artist, questionable artist though I may be, I get frustrated when any other artist feels that they are better trained, better schooled, and have deeper art than anyone else. The more walls you build around yourself and your art the less people see of you AND the art. The less people try to see. Sure, they may go to your opening, or gallery show, and they may like your stuff but do they FEEL it? Do they want to? You can get meaning and feeling from a stick figure just as you can do art of of people of color and claim high ideals and that you are for the People and the Unserved and still say NOTHING.

For me, the more you put on your art, the more baggage you give it, the heavier the piece is, and art is most powerful when it is light, and natural, and makes you feel. You can tell people all you want that you are doing Good work and are helping the people, and are for the people and all that nonsense but dammit, you can help the world just by doing what you do, and taking a moment to legitimately help people, face to face. Telling them you are helping them isn’t quite as effective.

Me, I will just do what I do and let you figure out what it means. And trust me, it means something.

…c…

Changing Faces

So I was out with friends a couple weeks ago doodling and while doodling I came up with a few ideas I wanted to paint. One of these ideas was a goofy looking guy with a misshapen face and googly eyes. I haven’t painted in a while so I got the stuff out and started painting a couple days ago. Things were rolling along pretty well for a while but I hit a spot where I just didn’t like it. I was stuck on what color to paint the guy’s eyes and chose black instead of white, wanting to go against what I normally would.

Big mistake.

As soon as the black was on I hated the painting. It suddenly looked dumb and aggravated the hell out of me. I have only painted over a couple other paintings in my short life as a painter but I have done it, and this was one of those times. I just couldn’t see a way to salvage what I had done.

VOILA!

I painted over the picture with all black and worked on another idea I had had floating in my head for a while of a ghost appearing from darkness. It evolved from there, as can be seen in the final work, but the heart of it is there. I kinda dig this. I was in the middle of it and wasn’t really happy with it but it came to life in the details and layers.

So this is what I have been working on. Other than the BIG PROJECT that is still waiting to be completed. But soon…

The Ones That Get Away

Twice I can recall times where writing just broke my heart. The first time was I was still a teenager and had been working on a story called Road Kill for what must have been weeks. It was the longest piece I had written I was really proud of it. I had a notebook I had the story and some other random stuff in and, for some reason, I placed the notebook on top of my mom’s car and forgot it. Naturally she went somewhere that day and POOF no more story. I was crushed. I was so proud of that story and it was just, gone and lost. The loss of it still bothers me because it was my fault. The good thing is that the story was strong enough that nearly twenty years later it is still in my mind and waiting to be re-written. Just a matter of time.

The second time I had my heart broken by writing was a bit worse. A bit scarier for a writer. A few years ago I had been having trouble with the computer I had at the time and it was just acting up and being finicky, as computers are wont to be. A friend of mine, a woman I had dated a few years earlier, told me she could fix the computer without a problem. She’d back up everything and re-install Windows and do it all up. Not a problem. Awesome. So she came over with a friend and started working on the computer. It was a long job so her friend and I hung out and talked and watched as the computer was worked on. Time passed and I was sitting in my living room with the friend of a friend and we were talking and all of a sudden my friend starts freaking out and crying and I am like, uh-oh. We rush into the bedroom, where my computer was, and my friend is bawling her eyes out. She screwed up something. She had forgotten to burn discs of all my documents, including personal letters, and all stories, and I had lost all photos and all music. Oh crap.

I had lost a LOT. In terms of music and photos, and personal letters, I lost a LOT. As for the stories, I was lucky in that I had a lot of stuff saved to discs and stuff but really, I lost a lot. Dozens of stories were lost for the ages. Gone and, now, forgotten.

I was crushed, I was heartbroken, but it was the first time I had really shown the stuff of adulthood because I let it go. My friend didn’t mean to do it, felt awful about it, and that was all there was too it. I lost the stories. Hell, I lose a lot of stories from sheer forgetfulness. Maybe the stories were great, maybe not, but there were more in the well, all I had to do was drop the bucket and haul them up.

Going through what I have with stories, I always wonder what other stories have been lost, to me and to anyone else. What poems. What art is lost to the ages for whatever reason. The ghosts of the ones that got away are thick with the arts. Haunting us with what may have been and never shall be now.

And you have to honor the passing and the dead, the lost and the never found. You have to honor them because for a moment they were all you thought of and could imagine. For a moment they were your future. But futures change and we must change with them. We have no choice. Some dead will never be buried, but that doesn’t mean we forget them. With luck, with work, we honor their memory and move forward, taking what we learned from and through them and hoping we can do their likeness well.

I have lost a lot of stories, but in their losses, perhaps the lessons learned were more important than the stories themselves.

Ten Years Gone…

Today is one of those days in life where it is important for me, means something to me, but which no one will really care about. For me, today marks the tenth anniversary of my first book signing, which was at the Borders Books and Music in Flint, Michigan. The anniversary though is more for this year, which marks the tenth year since my short story collection Back From Nothing came out.

What is funny is I remember more about the signing than I do the book coming out. The book was a project that was long in gestation and seemed to take forever to come out. I began the process, at best guess, in 1996, and after a long search for a publisher, I found one that finally said YES. The hell of that YES was that the publisher was a subsidizer, which meant I would pay the expenses of producing the book and they would print it, set it, and would distribute and promote it. Back then it was the best I could do and so I went with it. With a lot of help and support from my family I managed to get the money together for the book and, finally, after a ton of edits, and corrections, and waiting, the book was released in 1999. What’s funny is how much did and didn’t change.

I was suddenly an author, I had a book out, but I wasn’t making any real money from the book. And, within a couple of years, the publisher had gone bankrupt and I was left paying shipping on some 1,400 + books so that they wouldn’t be disposed of in some dumpster. Over the years I have learned a lot about writing, and about self promotion, and it’s never been my strong suit. I can do it, but not terribly well. I prefer to tell the stories than to have to pump myself up to convince people to buy my work. The book has never sold well, but I have moved copies. It is something that shows my youth and inexperience yet still packs an emotional impact. It is still one of my greatest achievements. A lot of people talk about writing, or putting a book together, and I did. However it came out. I did it.

The signing was funny because they set me up right in front of the door with my book, which seemed awesome but which really meant people were asking me where stuff was. Then I had the religious couple that came and started speaking with me, and flipped through my book and found the ONE DAMNED PIECE that would be inherently offensive in that it was from the point of view of Lucifer. Oops. That night I had a celebration dinner with some friends at a local restaurant and it was great.

I have done so much since those days, have grown so much as a writer, and I cannot wait until I have another book to illustrate this growth. Over the years I have put together several small collections (self published called ash-cans or chapbooks, if you will) for conventions I have done and just as examples of my growth. I have been published four times, in two publications, have worked conventions and fairs, have done podcast reading, and have met some of the most inspiring people I could ever imagine. Ten years goes by fast though, and I am still so far from where I want to be as a writer.

Ten years ago I officially began a journey that has taken me to places I had never dreamed, but it was the first step, and while I have taken a few since, I am still working to find a way to balance my writing with my life, my writing with my art, and am working to find ways to get my stories to the world. If you have been with me along the way, I thank you, if you are just joining me, I welcome you, and hope you’ll stick around to see where the journey leads.

Now let’s get going.

Garden of Eden 3

These are the last of my Garden photos that I did last weekend down the alley where I live. These are less whimsical and are more visceral. The theme is similar to what has been seen in photos I have done before but I am more confident with the camera, have a better camera, and have a much different backdrop for the darkness that underlies these photos.