Signs of Aging.

'Snobserver,' Wiki Commons.

You know you’re getting old when you wake up one day and you have no hair on your feet. One of the very first signs of aging is when you come home and find fifty pink flamingoes on your lawn, and you’re not even Italian. When you go to write a singles ad, and all you can come up with is, “Man with no future seeks woman with no past.”

You are old.

When you need a pill to get it up; and your biggest worry is, ‘uncontrolled priapism that lasts more than four hours.’

What are you so worried about? Word gets around, and sooner or later they’ll be beating a path to your door.

Oh, God, you know you’re getting old when attractive women start to call you sir.

When your buddy asks: “Are you up for it?”

And you just say, “No!”

When you engage telemarketers in idle conversation, you’re getting old. You know you’re getting old when beer just makes you sleepy and you can’t stand your own music.

You’re getting old when you try to get out at least once a week—as long as it’s free.

(If there’s free coffee and donuts, you invite a friend.)

You’re getting old when you have a few beers and all you can do is complain about peeing. When pudgy forty-five year olds start to look good, you’re old. You know you’re getting old when the doctor has to tell you to whack off once a day, and you keep coming up with excuses: “If my wife catches me, she’ll say, ‘if you have so much energy why won’t you help me paint the dining room?’”

Yes, when the doctor tells you, “The left hand is a stranger,” your doctor is also getting old and just a little creepy, too.

Buddy, you’re getting old when you need your reading glasses to roll a joint and when you make a special day to go out to shop for socks and underwear. You’re getting old when you go to the supermarket once a day whether you need anything or not. When you suddenly realize that young people today just piss you off, you’re old.

When you start reading the obituaries, and all your friends are in there, you’re right to be concerned. That’s because you’re old too. You’re just not dead yet. Don’t worry, you’ll know when it happens. It will be in the paper.

It’s not up to me to say whether you’re getting old or not.

You know yourself best.


This story appeared previously in defenestration magazine.


Editor’s Note: I was looking at a photo of Andre Agassi on Wiki, which I could have used given the attribution/Commons License. In reading the license, I came across the term ‘personality rights.’ While parody has a fair latitude, and no disrespect would have been intended, the content might have been misunderstood.

Due to the egregious nature of this content I have elected to go with an anonymous model. Moral rights do require consideration and we are now aware of this issue. Thanks for listening.

Setting up Pen-Names.

Interact with a new audience or readership.

At first, setting up a few pen names seems more trouble than it’s worth. We’re sort of taking it on faith that we are planting some long-living electronic seeds that will bear fruit far into the future. These seeds will have to be nurtured, so that they may grow big and strong. Each pen name only starts off with one or two products, and I’ve been building the Shalako brand for maybe three and a half years now already...


Clearly the whole process is going to take some time. The rest of my life in all probability.

One reason for a pen name is simple author bad vibes. If someone decides they don’t much like Louis Bertrand Shalako, which they have every right to do, there is little chance of them buying a book. Yet their negative perceptions don’t carry over to the next author they look at. When they see my thriller by Nicky Krappazoli, they have no idea that’s me. They’ll read the blurb and look at the cover with an open mind. Nick gets an even break where I might not. By disassociation, none of the bad vibes carry over.

In the short term, Nicky Krappazoli (thrillers and crime for example) hasn’t sold a book. It took a disproportionate amount of time to sign him up for Smashwords, Amazon, Twitter, and LinkedIn and Facebook. All you have to do is put your proper payment information on the publishing platform payment pages. It’s not that difficult to get an e-mail address and set up each character with his own password, and ultimately his or her complete network.

The worst part is getting them started on the social networks which have certain hurdles to get through.

A couple of points. While I’m not fond of total reliance on ‘passive discoverability,’ the fact is that I have sold books in New Zealand through an iTunes store, and I have sold a book in Japan through Kobo. I’m not doing any targeted promotion there that I know of, and yet we have a few followers on Twitter. Some of them no doubt find me fascinating and one or two might live in the Antipodes or the Land of the Rising Sun. Yet it could also be the effect of simply being there, in that store, when that particular customer was browsing. They saw it and they liked it. Maybe they simply didn’t know any better and took a chance.

Now, pen name number two, Astor Fondue, sold a book on Smashwords and one on Amazon within a few hours of publication. Another name, Ludmilla Getonanov, (she’s doing erotica of the raunchy variety) sold a book, but it took her about a week. Those books might sell the odd copy in stores all over the world. Once you have more than one book out, the only thing that matters is total sales. Same with pen-names. The only thing that matters is total sales. I don’t care who is whom and whom is what.

Put some meat on them bones. Hell,
you can even be better looking.

While I am not fond of ‘passive discoverability’ I am also not that big a fan of the total spam blitzkrieg, where you will politely tweet me every seven minutes for the rest of my life how you will get me another 2,000 followers for only $29.95. If only I knew exactly the correct balance.

The world would beat a path to my hut.

Here’s a bit of a problem with pen-names.

They don’t have an e-mail list. They don’t know anybody, and so they have to crack into Facebook and LinkedIn without the benefit of actually having a life! If you friend yourself, you can raid your own friend’s list, and click like on your own stuff, and share things back and forth with different audiences, etc. Whether you try to friend all the same people or extend a whole new network into areas unexploited is again a question of balance. I’m not competing against myself in the same genres, so whole new audiences are called for.

If we are writing fiction, then we are inventing characters anyway. Now we extend that idea to our pen names. Each is an individual, with unique hopes, dreams and desires. They have certain unique challenges. They exist, in a sense, in the minds of other people they interact with.

Assuming you’re not using your own picture, the better written your pen names are, the more likely people are to respond in a positive way, by reading the blog, clicking the links, and ultimately buying a book.

I think of it in broadcasting terms, although it can be so much more intimate than that. But what I have done is to create certain specialty channels. They are tuned to a particular and specific audience. This makes it so much easier to write, and I’ll tell you why.

Because now I’m not trying to please everyone, and appeal to every taste in a book that inevitably pays too close attention to tropes and tripe.

If you figure out who you’re writing for, you can now start learning, by trial and error, how to write the sort of book that someone like that might actually read.

Getting inside of the head of any character and bringing them to life is an art in itself. Being four different people in one day is kind of fun too; although sometimes I do get tired.

Here is my original post on this subject.

I’ve been working towards this goal for many years: ‘The Entity.’

Excerpt. Whack 'Em and Stack 'Em, a WIP.



Morguefile.




Fairweather Nature Park Estates was located in a secluded area of southern Ontario.

Right next door to a plethora of heavily-populated bedroom communities and a nexus of highway nodes, commuting to and from the city was a snap at forty minutes or so. The sight of athletic Roscoe Burgess, looking good in the Armani suit and Gucci loafers, wearing Italian underwear and even an Italian aftershave when he thought about it, was nothing unusual in what was a pretty affluent little trailer park. He went about forty feet down the sidewalk.

Turning, he stood and watched for a moment as if waiting for the place to blow up. Not today, apparently, which was a good thing, by any rational standard. He liked to prepare himself in order to dive away from it at a climactic moment. It was this sort of thing that made reputations.

But the suspense was killing him…with a shrug, he turned and continued on his way.

“Good morning, Roscoe!”

“Good morning, Mrs. Beauvais.”

The cheerful calls rang all up and down along the sidewalk leading to Visitor Parking. The denizens, many older but with a few students and young families too, plus quite a number whose lives were complicated or they were exploring alternative lifestyles, were pretty laid-back. It seemed watering the postage-stamp of a lawn or even raking the heavily landscaped gravel terrain that some favoured was a morning ritual.

This fine Monday morning, sunny and unseasonably not snowing, the Firm had sent a car to pick him up, by which and the preceding phone call, he deduced that he was getting another assignment. He opened the door of the domestic sedan and looked in at the strange woman driving. There really was no other kind, as his father once said.

“Hi.”

“Hi.” She waited until he was belted in and the door closed before setting off.

It was better than the ones who nailed the throttle the second your left buttock hit the seat pad and drove like there was no tomorrow. She was smooth but aggressive when she got going. The way people drove said a lot about them. One intern, he recalled, took the company car on a gopher everyone else in the office while you’re out type coffee run and never came back. The car was eventually found abandoned in Sri Lanka, in the hills overlooking Trincomalee Harbour and not too far from where Arthur C. Clarke used to live.

“So.”

She looked over.

“Traffic’s light, and we’ll be there in plenty of time for the meeting.”

He nodded. The Monday briefing was a tradition, and when the workload was light, senior executives were expected to participate. That was one reason overseas assignments, no matter how short the duration, were highly prized and the stuff of contention amongst senior staff. Being at a meeting meant not just being there, but contributing. He didn’t have anything to contribute, but that had never surprised anyone before.

“Talkative, aren’t you?”

“Huh?” He gave her a blank look. “Sorry. It’s just that meetings are the bane of my existence.”

He’d been saving that line for somebody, why not use it?

She smiled knowingly, causing him to wonder just what she did know. She wasn’t bad looking in a hosey sort of a way, with long, straight, pitch-black hair, pale creamy skin like candy and those impossibly clear blue eyes. It was the fashion sense more than anything. She had black nail polish on at both ends for God’s sakes and was heavy on the mascara to boot. Her lashes were thick and attractively curly though.

“I’m Suzie.”

“Roscoe.”

They shook hands awkwardly. Her shoes had what looked like ankle cuffs and chains, with heels three or four inches long…he quite liked the wrist guards. Her aroma was spicy and enticing, like cinnamon toast and green marmalade. It looked like being one of them days, horny as a ten-peckered Billy goat and no real prospects as she was a fellow employee. Maybe he should wrangle some kind of overseas assignment…his garden was in, and the peas were coming up already.

“Yes, I hear you’re the man of action.”

She wasn’t an intern then, even with the stud in her right nostril and the multiple rings on every finger. He wondered if she had pierced her labia or anything like that. He was just about to ask when she interrupted him. Interns were like mushrooms, keep them in the dark and feed them nothing but bullshit. Yet this one clearly knew something about him.

“Can I ask a personal question?”

“What? Oh, sure. Fire away, young lady.” If this was the sort of thing graduating from the training schools these days then the world was just in a whole heap of trouble.

“What’s with all the naked people?” She gave him a long look of assessment as they cruised down the 401 at a steady one hundred fifty or so k’s per hour.

He approved of that much. The girl could drive.

“What, you mean my place? Well, for one thing, no concealed weapons.” It made it difficult for even a Ninja to approach him, what with the constant surveillance from Mr. and Mrs. Brixton across the way and that gaily-lecherous old crackpot Pillbody over the back fence….and of course there was the well-known Ninja fear, an absolute overriding horror more like it, of being seen naked by Gaijin, (outsiders.)

She gave tight grin and a shake of her head.

“The grounds are beautifully kept, and you can’t even put up a garden shed without going through the Covenant Committee. No mini-bikes, no chainsaws…” No parties, no unnecessary noise after eleven or before six a.m.

Not too many children and half the dogs on Valium. A no brainer, really, which suited him just fine.

She looked over.

“You’re not as dumb as you look. Why, I’ll bet you even like playing volleyball naked and stuff like that, eh?”

He grinned in a feral fashion, causing a little shiver of something to go down her spine.

“You would love the pool.”

She alternately nodded and shook her head as she focused on a clump of traffic up ahead. Her eyes came around again.

“Yeah, I probably would. What do they think of you coming and going all dressed up like anything?”

“Everyone has to have a job. I cut my lawn once in a while and don’t gossip unless they already hate them—or if they’ve already heard it somewhere else.” It made sense, the key to a successful evasion.

She looked over.

“Yeah. I suppose you’re right.” She was quiet for a moment. “I could go for that.”

“Say what?” No!

She drove for a while and then turned again.

“We could barbecue some steaks and do a little swimming, you know, a little sun-bathing.”

Roscoe was sweating now in spite of the air conditioning and his expensive Italian deodorant. He thought very carefully about what he might say. That fair skin had rarely seen the sun and had suffered nothing from the loss. He could imagine its alabaster perfection.

“That would be very nice, young lady.”

Her low, throaty chuckle did nothing to lower his stress levels one iota, for all of this could only mean one thing. Suzie must, in all probability, be his new partner. Gorman had been threatening him with a partner for months, years even, and she was due for retirement very, very soon now.

This might just be the perfect revenge for a lifetime of personal torment.

She couldn’t possibly have meant it seriously.

End

Arts and Culture Grants

Michelangelo's 'David.' - Ricoh Heil

by Louis Shalako





Do arts grants subsidize people’s hobbies?

In this Huffington Post article by Peter Worthington, he asks and answers that very question.

My chief objection to arts grants, both provincial and federal, is that if a client of the Ontario Disability Support Program received a cultural grant, it would be treated as income.

I wrote then-Minister the Right Honourable Margaret Meilleur in 2006 and asked, ‘What would happen if I received a cultural grant of $12.000?’

The lady never got back to me on that one. If she couldn’t answer the question, who could?

Here’s what I think.

The province would allow them the first $100 free and clear and then claw back fifty percent from of their benefits. And she didn’t want to put that in writing. Howeer, if someone very much like Mr. Worthington were to ask the present Ontario Minister of Community and Social Services, or the Minster of Culture, and ask them that question, I'm sure they understand the issues very well indeed and would be more than happy to assist him.

It is theoretically possible to operate a business under ODSP guidelines. Publishing is a business. Writing can be a hobby or a way of life. We subsidize people's way of life all the time. Don't we, Mr. Worthington?

Here's how it works for Ontario's disabled:

One, their benefits are already thirty or thirty-five percent below the poverty line. Two, a police officer twenty-three years old and starting off at $78,000 a year can get a grant, and receive the full benefit of that grant—even though they arguably don’t need financial support to write a book, create some new artwork, or to make or study music.

A provincial arts grant, a ‘book-writing grant’ can go up to $12,000 here in Ontario. The recipient can only receive $20,000 in any two-year period. You would be applying year to year. It makes no sense to go off an approximately $12,000 a year disability pension (for a single adult with no dependents) to go on a grant which can never be anything other than temporary, for the illusory notion of living on grants. With all of the free time available to the disabled—over fifty percent of whom are unemployed at the best of times, surely they have a good chance of making it as best-selling writers. After all, any asshole can write a book these days.

I don’t have serious moral issues with a teacher, a construction worker, a single mom with two kids getting cultural grants, and for the most part, writing books that don’t sell more than five hundred copies. I don’t care if they get $2,000 to make a quilt celebrating local history that will ultimately hang in the town hall. It buys goodwill for the government that provides the support. The government taxes you, but look at all the benefits it provides to regular Canadians, ‘real’ Canadians, and real Canadian culture, too.

Does it encourage ‘art?’ In some limited sense I think it does. It probably doesn’t generate too much world class fine art, but that’s not the entire spectrum of art.

But because I can’t share in that bounty, the whole thing smacks of unfairness. It looks like discrimination.

We all accept that governments stay in power by the judicious use of patronage.

Spread it around a little—a little more. Spread some of that this way. I have no idea of how ‘professional’ writers, that is to say as defined by Mr. Worthington, those who are ‘making a living at it’ feel on this issue, but I can take a quick guess or two. Because they can’t apply either as far as I know—because they don’t need it to ‘develop’ their art.

Maybe it’s unfair competition. Maybe it takes up space on bookstore shelves that might have gone to another product. Maybe it saturates a tight market with too much unprofessional and unwanted competition.

What would be of most benefit to further advance my career, my development as an artist, and who knows, maybe even be fiscally successful enough to get me off of disability?

I don’t know, but it ain’t a cultural grant. It simply doesn’t meet my needs.

Anyway, I would like to thank Mr. Worthington for his perspicuousness.

Incidentally, I’ve written ten books without any help from grants whatsoever. You might want to have a look at them here on Smashwords.


END

Personal Space Craft.

In the Lensman series of science fiction books, E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith created a character named Rob Kinnison, who was a member of the Galactic Patrol. He was entrusted with The Lens of Truth. One of the stories I read involved Kinnison being abandoned or marooned on an asteroid or moonlet of low mass.

Somehow or other, and that part is a little vague in my memory, Kinnison leapt or propelled himself off that little rock at escape velocity, enough so that a little additional thrust from a gun or a small gas bottle or something, gave added impetus to his trajectory and he was captured by the gravity of a bigger planet, and one I think where he found additional resources. From the story telling point of view, let’s say it was the base, the hideout of some space pirates or other bad guys—the ones who had dumped him there in the first place.

So he sneaks up on them, arrests or subdues them, and uses their ship to bring them to justice.

While I don’t remember much about that book, novel-length as it was, the idea of a person with nothing but a spacesuit and some imagination, going from one body in a system to another sort of stuck in my mind. I probably read that book when I was in my late teens. I’m fifty-three now.

That was thirty-five years ago.

When we see people flying in suits that inflate and give them control in a free-fall jump, or when a guy flies across the English Channel with a wing strapped to his back successfully, then we have to ask what comes next?

I’m thinking the Personal Space Craft can’t be too far behind. The total mass of Vostok 1, in which Yuri Gagarin made one orbit of the planet, was about 10,420 lbs. With modern technology, much of that mass could be fuel, and it doesn’t even have to stay with the pilot. I see a high-altitude aircraft launching a booster that expends ‘x’ amount of energy and propels a man, probably a daredevil the first time or two, out into space and ejecting him in a suit designed for the limited duration of his flight. The booster descends by parachute, and the radio-control mother ship is landed like any other aircraft on some desert strip somewhere in the boonies.

There was a guy in Southern Ontario, years ago, who was designing a small conventional chemical rocket. He hoped to ride it up, jump out and parachute down…or something like that. The chute might have been on the machine, although he would have worn one as well.

He might have made it into the stratosphere, but maybe not into space. If my suit only weighed five hundred pounds with me in it, it takes a lot less energy to get into space compared to the Vostok. I wouldn’t have to achieve high orbit to enjoy the thrill and the joys of personal space flight. It’s like jumping out of a helicopter with a surfboard and a parachute…and a camera strapped to your head. I wouldn’t have to achieve 17,000 miles per hour or escape velocity, and I wouldn’t have to worry about re-entry. If I’m sitting inside the machine, the cabin can be low-pressure air, that’s for comfort, and my suit would be skin-tight and all life-support strapped to my backside. There would be a quick-release hatch out of the cabin in an emergency to be used at low altitudes. We’re coming down in something akin to a big model airplane.

Here’s a similar news story from Oregon.

The first buyers would be young, of course—the kind of guys that jump off of cliffs with parachutes on their asses and cameras on their heads, with no real thought of commercial development or even fame. It will be more for the thrill of doing it, doing it before anyone else, and maybe having a few good friends along that understand what it’s all about.

We don’t necessarily have to orbit the Earth. Just launching in California and landing in Nevada, Utah, or Arizona, somewhere remote, would be quite an achievement. While the focus of the wingsuit pioneers is to fly like a bird using the human body for control, my design might be more of a lightweight airframe with simple controls and the pilot lying comfortably in the Formula One position with pedals and stick control. All controls would be simple and sturdy cranks and pushrods, operated by digital-proportional, fly-by wire electric servo-motors. That’s where my old-school sort of begins and ends! At high altitudes the air is thinner and the speed of sound is lower. The system would have to be capable of sustained Mach-plus speeds. Until we get a little closer to the ground.

The Space Shuttle and other conventional spacecraft carry a lot of mass and a lot of velocity, require a precision landing. They have a lot of momentum on re-entry, and they came in from higher in space. But a light object, subjected to the drag of the thin higher atmosphere, would begin with much less momentum, hence the drag would be more effective in slowing it down without heavy thermal protection systems or possibly even retro-firing of motors. It’s smaller because the mission is simple. A large tail, some fairly small wings, and just remember to carry enough velocity for steering control, and on board is a pair of chutes if all else fails. A few devices that are similar to automotive airbags in the cabin in case of heavy impact and Bob’s your uncle.

The ship doesn’t even need windows, although most pilots would prefer it. Pilot vision could be accomplished through simple external cameras and goggle-type hookups with selector switches and multiple cameras, and other backup systems. With proper feedback telemetry to friends on the ground, a remote control operator could take over and fly an unconscious pilot down safely in the event of an emergency.

Don’t try this at home.

Disclaimer: Personal Space Craft are dangerous and require training. Always consult an expert before attempting to design, build, test or fly a Personal Space Craft.   The author is not responsible for loss or injury resulting from attempts to build Personal Space Craft inspired by this blog post.   END