Magnum Thrax and the Amusement Park of Doom

Publication calls for a promotional post. And a drink!

Check out the sweet cover by the sensational Nimit Malavia, of Fables fame!

Here's the book blurb in full:

In the barren post-apocalyptic future, former sex emporium Pleasurepit Five is the last bastion of human civilization. It has survived for a thousand years, weathering everything from nihilistic robots and gibbering megamutants to insane advertising campaigns.

Now another, long forgotten remnant of the ancient world has emerged from the smashed ruins: a rogue amusement park, under the sway of a Dark Lord wannabe. It's expanding at an exponential rate, threatening to reorganize the world into sanitized blandness.

To stop it, Pit citizen Magnum Thrax must whip a team of repurposed fembots into shape and lead them into a winner-takes-all battle for the future. Their only chance? Enlist the help of Technowitches and deliver a virus into the evil, beating heart of the Amusement Park of Doom. Yet to reach the witches, they must cross The Death Zone. Like, literally. And no one who enters it has ever emerged alive…

It's up!

Magnum Thrax and the Amusement Park of Doom is up and available for purchase from Amazon, just like a real (e)book.

I couldn't help but take a picture:

It feels like Christmas morning.

Thanks to Clickit Press

Wonderful folks.

I am a Luddite, unfortunately, and have no idea how to get the hideous grey shadow around the logo to go away.

I also go around smashing power looms when the mood strikes.

It begins!

Published my first book last night.

I don't feel any different.

The book cover is in.

The artist did an amazing job. It really looks incredible.

Now everything is ready to go.

Hope to launch within the week.

Star Wars Spoof Trailer

Best thing about it? The Swiss Army Knife of lightsabers.

It's incredibly well done, and came out only a few days after the trailer dropped.

Amazing.

Mike Duran on Stephen King breaking the rules

This a great post.

Interesting to hear Stephen King commits the sin of 'head hopping' too, a phenomenon I've just become aware of.

I've worked to minimize it my book, but there are still likely some examples skulking about.

I set out to write in limited third person, as much as I thought about it, but the rules for this POV seem a little different, and more strict, than they were twenty years ago.

After becoming aware of 'head hopping', I picked up a Dean Koontz book and one by Arthur C. Clarke, just to see how they handled POV. Within a page, both authors 'head hopped'. Both! The Koontz book was written within the last five years (one of his Frankenstein series), while the Clarke book was written in the early eighties (Songs of a Distant Earth).

Stephen King wrote The Stand in 1978, and he apparently 'head hops' all over the place.

Now, I can see how it can be confusing, and I understand why authors would chose to use only one 'head' per chapter or scene, yet I think fanatical adherence to rules just restricts creativity. Some leeway should be allowed.

After all, I remember reading The Stand and quite enjoying it. I don't remember being confused at all. Same goes for Clarke and Koontz.

Yet people claim to throw books against the wall, or into the garbage, never to be read again, just because they found an incidence of 'head hopping'.

Ye gods! Seriously? 

It seems absurdly intolerant. Unless you bought the book second hand at 99 cents. Even then it'd be better to use it for kindling, a page at a time, rather than landfill. Heck, sell it back to the bookstore. Give it to a homeless person. Make a thousand plane paper airforce.

And just because most people aren't writing in omniscient third person doesn't mean no one should be allowed to.

There are still old people out there who can handle third person omniscient POV, and odds are they read more books than most teenagers do.

Take a chill pill, people.