The Douglas Coleman Show Author's showcase special

This was really a great experience. Douglas is a great radio host, with a manner that's engaging and witty, and he asks great questions of his guests. I'm pleased to share this with you as Douglas Coleman interviews me and a few other authors. Check it out!

Hiatus for a few weeks

Hello, everybody!

I'm sorry I've been scarce, but my family and I are preparing for our move to Hawaii. This is a big, exciting thing for us, but it's taking a lot of my time. So it'll be a few weeks before I post again, as I'm focusing on getting us ready.

I'll see you later! Aloha!

What Are You Reading Wednesday - 5/27/15

What Are You Reading Wednesdays is a weekly meme hosted by It's A Reading Thing. To participate, link to your blog post or comment with your own answers to the questions.

The Questions
1. What are you reading?

2. Go to page 34, or 34% in your ebook, and give us a complete sentence.

3. Would you like to live in the world of this book? Why or why not?

My Answers
1. History, Mystery, Imagination, and Woe by Adelle Kirk. It's a dark collection of poetry and stories that has a voice I find amazing.

2. In another, one which seemed acutely fresh to my knowledge, a two-headed mutation lay in repose on the pristine tray, the small brains lifted from each skull with expert care and attention, tendons and phosphorescent arteries still attached, clearly showing the intricacies in how the brain was attached to the spinal column better than any other demonstration I have seen throughout the whole of my medical career.

3. This world is filled with intriguing horrors and dark creations that live beneath the notice of the world...except for a few. I think I'm more comfortable not hanging out with them, thank you very much.

Thanks for coming by! 

Enjoy my writing? Sign up for my newsletter at http://t.co/i0omWnNkgf and receive a free copy of my award-winning urban fantasy novel, Chains of Prophecy.

Me, Myself, and Monday! 5/25/15

It's time for another Me, Myself, and Monday! During this weekly feature, I talk about...myself! Let's begin with a favorite question.

On almost every author interview or in-person event that I've been to, I've been asked, "Where do you get your ideas?"

I love Mr Stephen King's response on this issue in his book On Writing, where he mentions (paraphrase) that a writer basically sits with a pad of paper and a pencil, then stares off into space. To the layman, he says, this looks remarkably like goofing off.

But that's not the way it works for me. I get my ideas from gaming.

See, I'm an avid RPG player (that's roleplaying game, for those of you not in the know). I've been reading since before I could remember, but they were my first real introduction to telling stories. I was always roped in as the DM/GM (Dungeon/game master), entertaining my friends by making things up. I had to think on my feet, too, because as anyone who's ever played knows, it's pure folly to assume that the player characters are going to follow your well-laid plan. Oh, no! They'll kill the damsel they were supposed to save, or run off in the opposite direction from the dragon's lair you spent a week preparing for.

And you have to adapt.

I really think that these experiences are what formed both my writing style and the types of things I enjoy writing. I make no bones about the fact that I'm an "organic" writer, someone who eschews plotting his story in favor of running with what the characters do. I decide on a protagonist, an antagonist, and what their central point of conflict is...and boom! There we go! I don't know who any of the supporting characters are going to be or what any of their idiosyncracies are. I find those out during the story.

So I have to thank gaming for giving me the mental flexibility to write this way. I get to be the first reader, now, thrilled by the story as I discover it within myself. I enjoy the hell out of it, and wouldn't do it any other way.

What about you? Tell us something about yourself in the comments, or link to a post about yourself. Happy Monday!

Facepalm Friday - 5/22/15

Hello, faithful readers! It's time for another Facepalm Friday!

And, boy, is this one going to be a doozy.

Unlike the usual Facepalm Fridays where I talk about several different issues, this whole post is going to be about one. One big mother f-ing issue that I have with the American justice system.

If you're a proponent of routine infant circumcision, then you might want to turn away. I'm not going to pull too many punches here.

Okay?

Right.

So a lot of you have heard about the Heather Hironimus/Chase courtroom affair that's been playing out these last several months (especially since I mentioned it last week). This case is now over.

And stupidity won.

Yep. The lawyer, one Thomas Hunker, withdrew the federal case. There is some talk amongst the intactivist community as to whether or not this was corrupt lawyering or something else. I don't know. What I do know is that Mr. Hunker never consulted with anyone in the intactivist community before dropping the case...and that, when questioned by Judge Gillen, acknowledged us as "fringe elements" that he had not spoken to recently and would not again.

Hey, dude! Who was paying your $50000 bill, anyway? Oh, right. It was those freaky fringe element intactivists, wasn't it?

/shaking my head...

But that's not the worst of it. Heather was brought into court and threatened by the judge that, if she did not sign the consent form to have Chase circumcised, she would lose custody and stay in prison for an indeterminate amount of time.

Wait, what? Read that back to me. 

Since when has holding a gun to someone's head been an acceptable means of getting them to accept a medical procedure? Even IF you grant that Chase can't make this decision for himself (he's been very clear on the fact he doesn't want it), and you say that the parent(s) need to be able to make that decision for him...how can you coerce that decision? This isn't a gestapo state, or it's not supposed to be; it's the United States of America! Freedom? Personal rights? Remember that crap?

I don't understand how this can happen in a court of law. I don't care if you were circumcised, if you think it's the best goddamn thing since sliced bread to come along. You're there to uphold the Constitution, the laws of the land, and that doesn't include terrifying a mother by threatening to take her son away so that she'll let bits of him be cut off.

To that end, I'm joining a campaign started by Chase's Guardians, a Facebook group that helped raise the legal fees for the court cases and is dedicated to protecting him. We've already reached out to the urologists and surgeons in Florida, and none of them will perform the surgery. Now Dennis has 90 days to get the procedure done, and we're expanding our reach, writing to every single goddamned pediatric surgeon and urologist in the country to keep this from happening.

Because it's wrong.

This isn't about whether or not you believe circumcision is good or bad, healthy or traumatic, whatever. This is about coercion, about forcing someone to agree to something that they don't want. This is legal rape. 

For that, and I never thought I'd have to do this, I went to find a facepalm worse than the Batman one I gave this last week. And I did.

So, congratulations, Dennis Nebus and Judge Gillen...you receive the BABY FACEPALM!

Triumphant Thursday! - 5/21/2015

Triumphant Thursday is a look at several things I've found in the last week that are just awesome. We celebrate victories, both individual and globally. I share my own and those of others.

So here's the first Thursday Triumph. As a note, I love John Oliver and everything he does.

SMOKING RATES DROP PRECIPITOUSLY; HUMANITY BREATHES A SIGH OF RELIEF

In this segment, John Oliver discusses smoking across the world and how it relates to the tobacco industry. It's hilarious, as his show tends to be, and he doesn't hesitate to take the industry to task for being ridiculously stupid. My favorite line: After a short commercial from Philip Morris International, targeted at its employees to explain why they're using a particular slogan (Don't be a "maybe"), Oliver said...

"That is a pile of horseshit."

And it's true. But that's not entirely what the triumph is about (although, seriously, watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UsHHOCH4q8). What it is about is something that he said at the very beginning of the show and that I later confirmed: In the last fifty years (from 1965), smoking rates in the United States have dropped from 42% to 18%. 

Wow!

That number astonished me, so I checked for the official figures at the CDC website. You can find them here: http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/tables/trends/cig_smoking/. They have the rates at 19% for 2011. 

Also! Australia passed a "plain-packaging" act, removing the branding from tobacco product and replacing it with disgusting (but awesome) images of eyeballs, lungs, and toe-tagged corpses to illustrate the dangers of smoking. As a result, smoking in Australia, as of March 2014, was at its lowest ever...and they even beat the tobacco companies' lawsuits to make it happen!

But the coup de grace is Jeff, the diseased lung. Presented by Oliver as a new mascot for Marlboro, there are ALREADY BILLBOARDS with Jeff in Uruguay! I can't believe it! Seriously...I don't "lol" that often, but seeing Jeff next to the citizens in Uruguay made me. 

And then there were the Jeff-themed shirts that the show sent to Togo. Oh. My. God.

That's fantastic! I'm sorry, tobacco companies, but your PRODUCT IS A POISON. You don't have any right to say that it's not. You don't have the right to hide it. Stop trying.

JK ROWLING WINS LIBEL LAWSUIT, FORCES PAPER TO APOLOGIZE PUBLICLY

Many of you know JK Rowling as the author of the incredibly influential, best-selling-in-every-list-ever Harry Potter series. As a public figure, everything she says or does in public is scrutinized for meaning, slip-ups, etc.

In September, 2014, Rowling published an article in Gingerbread (article: http://www.gingerbread.org.uk/content/1901/J-K-Rowling) that discussed her efforts as a single mother before hitting it big with HP. It was an uplifting piece about struggle and commitment and all the other great things that we hope to hear from our heroes.

And then, The Daily Mail, a tabloid located in England, ran a piece that accused Rowling of composing a "sob story" about her time as a single mother. It said that she made negative remarks about her fellow church-goers and that they were bewildered and confused by the accusations.

Of course, none of this is true. And so Rowling sued them for libel and defamation. They fought back, saying that there was "no way" their article could be seen as defamatory.

And...she won! Ladies and gentlemen, good wins out again. The paper was forced to apologize, publicly, and have it read aloud in court.

Rowling plans to donate the damages to charity, seeing as how she doesn't need it. Congratulations!

~~~

Thank you for reading! If you want more of my writing, sign up for my newsletter at  http://eepurl.com/WKiav . Have a good day, and see you around!

What Are You Reading Wednesdays - 5/20/15

Time for another What Are You Reading Wednesday! 

What Are You Reading Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by It's a Reading Thing (http://www.itsareadingthing.com). Be sure to stop by and visit them! To participate, just answer these three questions about what you are reading this Wednesday. If you have a blog, feel free to link to the post, your just leave your answers in the comments below.

The three questions are:

1. What is the name of your current read?

2. Go to page 34 of your book, or 34% of your ebook, and share one complete sentence.

3. Would you like to live in the world that exists in this book? Why or why not?

My Answers

1. I'm reading an ARC copy of The End of the World is Rye by Brett Cottrell.

2. "Can they help you make these sandwiches?"

3. It's too early for me to tell. I mean, obviously there's a Heaven, which means an afterlife, and I'm all for afterlives...but there are also incarnations of things like Insanity that show up in people's cars and kill them for the hell of it. So...yeah, still up in the air until I read more.

~~~

Thanks for reading! If you like my blog, sign up for my newsletter at http://eepurl.com/WKiav to receive a free copy of my award-winning urban fantasy Chains of Prophecy.