Category: About Me

Today, I am a man

In these pages find worlds to explore, creatures anxious to meet you. Take these gifts, these seeds, and grow.

It’s in the mid-1960s. I’m not ten years old. It’s Friday, noon. Every Friday noon my mother picks me up from school and we go out for lunch. Sometimes it’s Howdy BeefBurgers (long out of business), most often it’s the lunch counter at the Valley St. Plaza’s Woolworth’s. The lunch counter women know me, we show up so often. Mother gets to gossip, I get extra coleslaw. They know I like it and give me two scoops (I immortalized this lunch counter and these women in the “About the Cover” section of Reading Virtual Minds Volume III: Fair-Exchange and Social Networks). Once lunch is finished, we go grocery shopping at Champaign’s. Sometimes we go the S&H Greenstamp Redemption Center and mother has a separate bag of all her completed stamp books. Usually something for the house. Once she got me a recorder and I played it on the way home. Sometimes we go to the Rexall’s so Mother can get her medicines.

The Rexall’s has a section down aisle 5, near the middle. Books. Rows and rows of books. Magazines, too. I buy my first Doc Savage book here. Also Choice Cuts, The Dreaming Earth, countless others. Champaign’s has magazines and some books at the end of the medicine aisle. Not very good books. Not my kinds of books. I wonder if medicine and books are linked somehow.

I’m already hooked on books, on the magic of them. My sister, Sandra, got me started.

I also got hooked on books for another reason, a primal, almost primitive reason. I’ll get to that at the end of this journey. Bear with me.
Continue reading “Today, I am a man”

The Proper Way to Describe the Itsuro-Shegami Technique When Applied to Nipple Joints

Ain’t nothing better for a wayward nipple

 
Rahki World author Rennie St. James invited me to guest blog WRITING REALISTIC HAND-TO-HAND COMBAT SCENES and I did.

I did I did I did!

Can’t tell you how many versions I came up with.

No, actually I can because I revision everything – four.

Some of those early versions…a beautiful demonstration of not knowing what to write about. There were lots of ways to go at it. Do I write about my many years teaching hand-to-hand mixmaster beef loin braising techniques at the Academie du HaHa in Paranormal, France?

Probably too graphic for most readers. No.

Instead I went with how to write a combat scene such that the reader believes it.

Hope it worked.

Let Rennie and me know, okay?

And thanks.

“Writing Something Horrifying” now on TimothyBatesonAuthor.com

Psychologists and philosophers debate “horror” as a concept. Authors have it much easier. They want to give readers chills. They want to make readers nervous. Uncomfortable. They want readers to turn on all the lights, to check locks on the doors, to tuck their feet up under themselves so nothing can grab them from below, to check under the bed before getting under the covers, to look in their closets, to look at their loved ones suspiciously.

Remember last week I wrote “Why This Were Here, Now?” now on TimothyBatesonAuthor.com?

Remember that amazing post?

You’d think he’d learn, ya know?

Well, he asked me to do it again. Or something similar.

This week’s theme is horror and I thought he wanted something horribly written.

No, he assured me. That wouldn’t prove a challenge for me.

He’d much rather I write something about crafting horror.

Hopefully I did, and hopefully it’s not too horrible.

Give Writing Something Horrifying. Leave a comment or two. He’ll like that.

And thanks.

INSIDE THE WORLDS OF JOSEPH CARRABIS, AUTHOR OF THE AUGMENTED MAN

Hey Joe! Tell us a little about yourself.
I consider myself boring and dull.

Sounds impressive, doesn’t it?

It starts with “Not only is Joseph Carrabis a fellow Black Rose Writing and Book Fiends author friend, he’s an amazingly nice and generous guy. I am looking forward to meeting him in person in November, but right now you can get to know him a little better with my next World-building Showcase interview.”

The Mighty Phoebes (Steampunk author Phoebe Darqueling, for those who don’t know) asked me lots of questions, I fumbled through several answers.

The real kicker is where I wrote “I’m told that my work is so tightly written that it’s tough to remove stuff without throwing everything else out of whack.”

The Mighty Phoebes, proving the lie, pulled about four pages from my responses and you’d never know.

The Mighty Phoebes is a Mighty Editor, she.

Take a read, hope you enjoy, be sure to leave comments. She’ll like that.

“Why This Were Here, Now?” now on TimothyBatesonAuthor.com

Werecreatures are nothing new. Cave drawings frequently depict humanimals. Study any culture’s mythology and one wonders who wasn’t a werecreature. The concept of versipellics as evil is relatively new compared to human recorded history (about 800 years v 35,000 years).

Timothy Bateson put a call out for his 31 Days of Halloween and I hid.

But he found me. I was cringing behind my mobile (it’s a big mobile. Not quite so mobile a mobile, you might say).

Anyway, he wanted something about were-creatures. I’ve written a few stories about were-creatures. Therefore, I’m an expert.

NOT HARDLY!

But I came up with something and he, being gracious (probably also taking pity on me), accepted it.

So make him happy, do yourself proud, and go take a read of Why This Were Here, Now?

Here’s a tease:
Let’s say someone wants to write about werewolves but nothing they’re coming up with fits “werewolf.” Probably they’re putting the hearse before the horse. Their interest is on the were, not the were’s purpose in the story.

Be sure to leave comments. He likes them.