Elvis in Memphis and The Stooge's Fun House

These come in at 191 and 192 on the best of all time list via Rolling Stone. I had never listened to Fun House before. I assumed it would be a wreck given its age and the fact that it’s basically a live in the studio album. Turns out going in with such lowered expectation was a good thing as it’s a fun record. It’s art-punk-pop before there were was anything like that in rock music. It’s raw, it’s brash and it goes there. It’s worth a listen, but yeah, it’s pretty dated sounding. You may not give it more than a spin or two.

Elvis in Memphis is really all you need to know about the King in his later years. Solid musicians performing a set of material that shows everything the man could do. Is it that good? I would put an early hits collection up there before this. The raw originals show off what the excitement was about this man, while this is just a solid selection of work from an industry veteran. Still, it’s worth a listen, but I wanted to go back to the original singles more than anything.

#197 of the Top 200 Albums of All Time

R.E.M. - Murmur comes in at 197. This could be considered the founding document of ‘Alternative,’ as Rolling Stone calls it, and I don’t think that’s inaccurate. In 1983 rolling into my first year at the Savannah College of Art and Design, this was a hot disc of local boys having made good. The single Radio Free Europe was heard and the album was available, but they weren’t burning up the airwaves. Bands like Yes and Asia that were taking touches of New Wave and painting themselves as new brand were taking up most of the radio oxygen. Prince was making a splash with 1999 along with a host of bands that were coming apart and new strains of punk and power pop that were replacing them. In the background was the whisper of the NWOBHM.

R.E.M. was a group of college guys playing for arty college kids that wanted something of their own distinct from the typical radio trends and the dying dinosaur of old school punk. The kids of the day would mix pop punk art new wave noise slut bitch tart funk into a brand new brew. One strain of that was the jingle jangle college pop that R.E.M. didn’t start but certainly defined. It wasn’t punk, it wasn’t folk, it wasn’t rock, it wasn’t exactly pop. It was shoe gaze before shoe gaze and it was art punk that really wanted to be popular but wouldn’t never admit it. Over time they only went from strength to strength with a lucrative career and a slew of hits that made them a household name throughout the world.

Murmur is a giant hug of an album. It has its power pop center, but it has warmth and depth with Stipe’s unusual voice presenting art school lyrics from down a well. The band is very DIY self taught style, but it has a charm and an intensity that drew you in. It has beautiful ballads and pop songs that should have been all over the radio. They refined this approach on their second album Reckoning which might actually be better.

The only missteps for me as a fan was their need to not be a rocking teenage combo. They were defiant to not just rock. They always broke the energy, the always added something to the mix to make it clear they weren’t here to be a pop band but an art project. I commend their integrity, but there were times when they just needed to embrace the fact that the were a strong rock band with an amazing power pop vocabulary and burn a stage down. The closest they got was the ‘86 tour for Life’s Rich Pageant where they were a hungry, energized band touring behind a high powered release.

#199 of the Top 200 Albums of All Time

The Strokes - ‘Is This It’ comes in at 199 and it’s touted as a refreshing blast of retro that changed everything in the early 2000s. Well… it is a solid retro pop record that sounds a lot like the Coral except the Coral do it better, and it sounds a lot like The Killers and even a bit of Franz Ferdinand, but they kind of do it better… even the Hives at this point. It’s a solid pop record, but it’s hardly a “burst,” and today it sounds dated and like a demo of good ideas. Is it fun? Sure. Is it all that… not really and I’m not sure why it’s at this point in a list of the all time best. You could put anything by The Who in this spot instead. It might just be me, but it’s not really impressing for an all time best album. It doesn’t make me want to explore for more, but I can see why people thought this was fun and cranked it in the car.

Now It Begins!

Work commences on The White Dragon. Writing-wise it will be a leap forward from The Holy White Fire and I keep beating myself up over that. I can’t though. It’s time to let the first one go, warts and all and move on. Paraphrasing the words of Mike Portnoy paraphrasing someone else: “A work is never finished, merely abandoned,” and it’s true in this case. I’ve worked on versions of this story for a long time. Each time I figure I’ve got a new angle on it, I return to what I had because it says what I want it to say. Even published through a legitimate publisher with editors and a person to help promote, it was turned into something that I thought would be a best fit for their line of titles. If they were going to do all that for me, I would absolutely turn it into something geared a little more to what they saw it as - more Young Reader and more “Christian” or at least more spiritually positive. It was that, but young reader meant toning down some of the violence and some of the sexuality - but not by much. Still, it wasn’t really what I wanted and the more I read it, the more grammar and continuity errors I find and I just cringe when reading it. At the time, I didn’t really know better, but now after going through their process and finding other resources to work with, I can see where the text is really burdened by grammatical issues.

I’m not a wizard at grammar, but at this point, if I can’t understand why something is wrong, I at least know to stop fighting with it and re-write it in clearer, more simpler language. My text is deemed “simple” and something that a 5th or 6th grader could easily understand. I’m fine with that. It’s action / adventure not Faulkner, and thus, it doesn’t need to be overwritten. In fact, in cleaning up the text after not having gone threw in some months, it was easy to combine repetitive scenes that didn’t need to be separate, and to take out passages that had nothing to do with the protagonists character arc.

I pulled most of the extraneous material that was “foreshadowing” or “telling the tale in parts” or “puzzle-boxing” and put it back where it came from originally. It streamlined the story of the Holy White Fire coming to Bully and it pointed out that series was about the carriers of the White Fire and not about all the lovely world building and backstory and extraneous characters that I was so in love with. I still shed a tear for my edited precious words… and then move forward!

Today I will work on re-outlining and layout the pieces parts for The White Dragon and I will see what needs to be done with the promotion of the first book which is now available for purchase in paperback in the Amazon BookStore! There is two books worth of material for this part of the story and I need to beat it down and whip it into shape. What was going to be a five book series will only be a trilogy at this point if I can help it. There is so much backstory and history and setting devoted to these books that it will be easy to write any genre of story set within.

#200 of the Top Albums of All Time According to Rolling Stone

AC/DC, ‘Highway to Hell’ is the last album to feature Bon Scott. It solidified them as major rock’n’roll act in the late 70s, and it certainly contains some of their best stuff, particularly the title track which remains a classic rock anthem. In Ohio where I grew up it certainly was all the rage on the Wayne High quad. Is it a great album though? Is it top 200 worthy? In context of what they set up, I can see it.

The context of the album was as an answer to punk which was quickly morphing into new wave, and to the lack of a heavy rock scene as many dinosaurs had imploded and were biding their time for a 80s come back. It was a refreshing blast of energy that led to the quintessential AC/DC album Back in Black. With the death of Bon Scott all eyes were on its follow up, and for many Back in Black was seen as their first album. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap served as a reminder to just who Bon Scott was and what he meant to the band.

In that context, Highway to Hell was a top album for serving as an influential launching pad for their next phase of life and for influencing many bands to follow them, including a host of bands in the NWOBHM that were ready to sweep American shores headlined by Iron Maiden and Def Leppard. In the context of the music itself, it’s pretty good. It’s a solid forty minutes of rock’n’roll that made the boys bang their heads and the girls flash their boobs. It made the stoners on the quad turn up the jams man. It certainly won’t win awards for the originality or the innovation of the material. I find it an odd placement at #200 with some of the actual blues talent and original rockers further up the list.

I would suggest that AC/DC is best served up today in their Essential playlists on Apple Music and Spotify - and your own personal best-of’s. There is an easy 2 hours worth of material to make up the perfect playlist for hitting the road in a great car as you get your girl out of that mean old town.

It's A Lot of Face...

For a new series it’s a new look. The beard will stay, but as soon as I feel brave enough or as soon as a hair care expert becomes available, the hair has got to go… and go it will! One thing no one counted on - barbers and hair stylists becoming unavailable for a month. I’ve actually not had a good two week period to let the beard grow in… it was always too ratty for business and I’d shave it off, but this I think I’ll keep for awhile.

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It's Alive!

I can announce today that my series is alive and well! It took a few months longer than I planned, but with the recent time off, I got caught up on the loose ends and dropped the idea of waiting around for another publisher to come along, and I did it myself. It’s a little rough and ready, but as I learn the ropes of indy publishing, it will get better.

So - The Dance of All Beings Book One: The Holy White Fire is now available on Kindle and soon it will be available in Trade Paperback. It includes most of what was published as Bully the Bear by Portals Publishing but is re-edited to include the unpublished second part of that book. It is also a more mature version of the story as it was originally intended. While I would not mind a middle schooler reading it, it is very graphic in some of its sexual identity and violence details. I’ve manipulated the text so many times, taken in so many readers, editors and other writer’s suggestions, this is, I can say the final version of this book. It’s how I want Bully’s story told, and I’ve let it go so I can move on to the rest of this series as well as brand new things I want to write. Some of what was edited out will be included in the second part of this series, tentatively titled The White Dragon and will be available soon!

Ah, that moment...

When you go back to restart a project and bring it up to speed and you find all these little gems within that you’ve long forgotten about. Time to bring an editing eye to the first story in the series - Deemos the Troll, his latest Man host, Carl Barkett and of course Albert. There are a lot of “stereo instructions” to remove, but in between are a lot of lost little gems.

A Step Back and a Step Forward

So today starts with planning for a New Year, New You kind of thing.

  1. The first piece of information is that I’m no longer with Portals Publishing. It is on an undetermined hiatus, and I’m okay with it. It was a life goal to be published with something as personal as Bully is, and I’m glad that I did that. After kind of being in limbo for a year, it finally has a closure, and I will be moving out on my own.

  2. The good news is that in the new year I plan on getting out three books on my own probably through Amazon and iBooks if not Barnes and Noble. I plan on it being in physical copies as well as ebooks. It will be the finishing of this group of stories and, hopefully, it will launch some newer material as well.

  3. The books will be “re-mastered” to be more like they were originally intended to be, but aside from a few plot changes and some “heavier,” more “adult” oriented notions thrown in, it will mostly be about restoring the books to their original format. Bully was never supposed to be the first book out, but it had, at the time, the most commercial accessibility, and thus I wanted to push that forward to give myself the best chance at publication. Now I know how to make sure all the work is so accessible and as immediate as Bully is - at least to me. It also means that I do not have to shoehorn in the characters from other books to help Bully make sense and make them available in future books. Bully in the Portals format is a very literary, very personal take on storytelling for me, and I’m proud of the work. Some find it triggering because of the abuse it describes, but for me it is a catharsis in many ways. In the original flow, Bully is the end of an epic cycle. If I could only publish the two Bully books as I submitted them to Portals, I would be fine with making that statement, but now it can also be read as a whole work and in place.

  4. The books I intend to get out will still be under The Dance of All Beings Cycle. Book 1 will be Deemos the Troll. This book is about an important character of the multi-verse and an introduction to the events that set up what the whole cycle is about. It will also allow me to dive as deep into some of these characters as I did with Bully without shoving so much extra info into another book. The second book will be David the Hawk which will allow this character and his quest with Bhaltair the Templar Knight to make more sense with better motivation and better action. Dissecting the original book about David for Bully allowed me to see what the core of that story was as I removed half of what was there, and it gave me clearer focus as to what it should be. The third book will be Bully The Bear which will be the slightly re-edited contents of Bully the Bear and the 2nd unpublished book The White War Bear. This is how Bully was originally intended, and on my own, I can update and restore some of the situations to be a little more mature than was presented in the Portals text. Not to make it purposely offensive or sexual, but to add back some of the nuance that was lost in trimming it specifically for publication. The last book has yet to be decided. I have two different books that were supposed to fill that role, and I will decide which way I want to go now that I have a better editing eye.

  5. I will also be pitching these books to bigger houses and if they get picked up, well, great! If not, that’s ok too. I am comfortable with upping the ‘maturity’ to make it even more Adult if that’s what is wanted, and I’m comfortable with trimming them down in places to make it more Teen or even Young Reader friendly. I liken it to the difference between the Watchmen theatrical and director’s cuts. It’s literally a few seconds of film that make the difference - not long passages of violence or gratuitous nudity. Though, as a thought, the theatrical cut of Watchmen would be better with about 30 seconds of specific nudity and violence cut…hmmm… If the concern was the length, though looking at some of the doorstops out there, I can’t believe length is an issue for some houses, there are natural separations in the stories where they could be split, though I’d hate to turn 3-4 books into 6-8.

This will be my writing for 2019. Hopefully at this time next year two if not all three books should be up. Even though Bully is the “3rd book,” I will release it alongside the first book so that people who want the ending to that story can get it before cycling back to the beginning.

OK.

Ever award and ever upward!

Getting Back on the Air

I wasn't sure what was happening there for a little while, but Portal's assures me that we will see The Dance of All Beings Part 2: The White War Bear this year! So, yea! I will be diligently working on the text in preparation for the publication of the second part. It is ever changing and this extra time I've had to work on it has dramatically changed the text for the better. Parts of what I sent originally for the editors to go over may no longer be in the text itself, but that's ok. I think the text is improved and it has benefited from deciding where I really want the story to go.

Having to break the book up to make it more immediate and more effective for the reader means having to figure out what to add in to make the necessary story points and what to take out that while a good read - at least to me - is not necessary for the story to move forward. It's heartbreaking in some cases to take the words out, but when you're no longer building that same story, you have to serve the story you are telling. It will also mean turning what was a side character into a hero character, and it will allow there to be any number of side stories to be built and many of them could be stand alone. That's not really a standard idea in big story arc series, but it does have an appeal to be able to explore that corner of the world if I wanted to and not have to connect it to something bigger. 

I've also had people question the male-centric cast. To me, this is the story that I wanted to write with no other inspiration other than that. There was no agenda politically or otherwise in the characters that came to mind and then to paper. The cast is also quite limited at least in the beginning. I think, for Bully's condition, with his families devoutness, the limited circle of people he interacts with is appropriate. It's about his insulated relationship with his family - particularly his father. That focus, at least initially, is very narrow.

 

As the story progresses, aside from his mother, there is a female doctor who is the lead on his case, and in the next book, he gains a female confidant that he does physical training with. He gains a new male friend that is bi-sexual but more so A-sexual if I had to quantify him, and I'm not sure that I had to, but once making it clearer how he and Bully bond together, it seemed to draw this side character out more strongly than just using him as a convenient prop. Bully will also gain companions that are of other human and non-human races, some of which don't have a label at all for sexuality aside from, 'yes please', with no real distinction in gender desire. So as I look at who interacts with Bully, to me, I see it as more logical progression for him as a character rather than a purposeful side-show of diversity. As I move forward in the series, I can certainly expand the palette of types that Bully interacts with. He is introverted, physically challenged, gay adolescent. He's not going out of his way to find party crowds to hang out with. Eventually, the party crowds will come to him.

Radio Interview with Artist First Radio

Just did a great interview with Tony Kay at Artist First Radio - it was about an hour and will be up in a day or two as an mp3 to listen to. It was a really nice time and Tony was quite able at making a lot of out the little bit that I had on offer. So many thanks to him.

The book can be bought at Amazon!

I do want to let people know I'm on Facebook with an author's page Eddie W. Presley.

I'm on twitter as well: @eddie_presley.

I also have pages on Google+ and on Goodreads. Google is just a place for me and a few geeky friends that are still on Google+ to chat, and my Goodreads pages will ramp up once the second book comes out.

For those coming from the radio interview - Bully the Bear is a coming of age story of a young man, William 'Bully' Exeter Jr. who finds himself dealing with an abusive father, a religious fanatic of a mother and a sudden onset of extreme gigantism, as well as having to deal with the fantasy realm he has fallen into and the Holy White Fire, the judgement of God being bestowed upon him.

It has its high fantasy elements, it has its dark horror elements, but it's about the characters and how they deal with the situations they are forced into. If I have to compare it to something, I will compare it to Stephen King's 'IT.' It's high fantasy, it's dark horror, but it's about the characters and the kids first and foremost in its 1000+ pages. The same here. Fantasy, horror, and character-driven coming of age. As a teen, it wouldn't bother me, but some adults have been "triggered" by some of it as it is quite dark in some spots - so parental guidance is suggested. I appreciate any and all feedback!

The link to check out the interview when it gets posted will be HERE.

Post Irma Book Signing Update!

Well, things went afoul with Irma. I had to evacuate twice. Not complaining. No indeed. There are others far worse off than I wound up being. It was at first going to be a hurricane over my house as a Cat 4. Then it slowly eased itself all the way over to the west coast where it would hit where I evacuated to as Cat 3. So I bugged out of there so I would not be stranded 2+ hours from home, and I watched it was over us as a Cat 1. It quickly departed, but it did bring some scary wind. It did not, however, bring the rain as I expected. Once the main feeder band lifted over us, literally, it was done with just the howling wind left. The power went out that night, but it came back on in about 24 hours. So yea us. However, we did have to reschedule the book signing. It is now OCT 14. Behold the new poster!

 

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Reader's Reactions

I must say that I have been surprised at receiving feedback for my first writing effort. I didn't get a lot of feedback as I tried to roll Bully up onto his feet, and my first tastes of people's impressions of Bully are unexpected. There are still the non-committal reviews where it really wasn't their cup of tea, but they are trying to be nice, but then comes the "I couldn't get past this part because it was really kind of dark." Of course, I ask them to try again as that one part is just a small part, but I am, in a way, excited that it elicited such a response. I have to say, I would be kind of disappointed if everyone was non-committal in their reviews. My one hope was to be able to say that Bully made someone one cry at one point or made the laugh out loud at one point. That would be a solid win. It is dark enough in some places to trigger a tear, and there is enough growing up nostalgia and angst to elicit a laugh in some places at Bully bumbling through. To hear someone say it was so dark at this point I couldn't continue, is in the same ballpark - kind of a win. I want them to go on; I want to be able to explain to them the context behind it, but still, it's kind of a win. To me it is very dark in many places, some would say it was a bit of my own 'shadow work' coming out in word form - a therapeutic workout if you will, and I would have to agree. There is one part just reading it back that makes me cry every time. I have wondered if family members would read it and think, 'so that's what that was all about.' Though, I don't think there is anything in Bully that is quite that literal a translation as if it were an autobiography.

Other reactions have been very positive. I put it up for an auction at an arts and crafts fund drive for their festival and it sold. I'm not sure for how much, but apparently it "did very well." So there ya go. I hope to return to that festival in October and have both Bully Part One and Part Two to sell as that is a complete story - the whole original story. It was cut in two to meet the requirements of the publisher and I don't blame any press for not wanting to take on nearly 800 pages of Bully in one fell swoop as a first book. It also allowed me to fix a lot of troubling things with the text and create a whole new 'middle' for it, so it actually was a good thing to do it this way.

I do want to get part 2 out by this summer as I want to be able to hand to people a complete story and firm platform on which the other stories will be built.