West of Mars

Need yourself some Trevor that you can hold, turn, fondle, and caress? Something more tree-based than a mere computer screen of one sort or another can provide?

You’re in luck.

I’ve FINALLY gotten all the bugs out of The Demo Tapes: Year 3 print version. Right now, it’s only for sale via CreateSpace’s online store, but it should be up at Amazon in a few days. You’ll also be able to order it through B&N, Powells, and any other independent bookstore you may think to order it from.

If you’d like an autographed copy, drop me a note before the end of July. The usual rules will apply: I’ll charge you the full $9.99 plus I think it’s $3 for shipping, unless you want priority, and then it’ll be $6 for the shipping. Uhh… those are US rates only, though. If you’re out of the US, holler and I’ll have my awesome postmaster look it all up for you.

Please note: the end of July! I’d like to get one batch of just enough copies, maybe have one or two others on hand, but since I don’t have to place a bulk order, I’d prefer to just get what I need.

(That said, I still have copies of Year 1 and Year 2 here, along with a TON of Trevor’s Song. Okay, maybe a metric ton. Whatever. More than I’d like.)

Remember: autographed books make great Christmas gifts! Get your shopping done now!

Holy schmoley, are you ready for this onslaught that I’ve been too lazy to tell you about?

Lazy? Really?

Well, okay. Prioritizing my own fiction over someone else’s non-fiction. How’s THAT?

First off… Steven Adler. Remember him, the drummer who got himself pitched out of Guns ‘n Roses ’cause his drug use was too intense for even the members of Guns ‘n Roses? Well, his MOM has written a memoir now, all about being the mom to an addict. Okay, an addict who happened to know Axl before he went off the deep end. If there ever WAS such a time.

I can’t find a link to the book; it’s not scheduled for release until November (according to the press release that’s been sitting in an open tab for months, anyway), but Steven himself wrote a memoir that came out last year. Why didn’t I drool over this a year ago? What’s wrong with me?

Here’s another one in the “What’s wrong with me?” category. Get ready to laugh and snicker. This isn’t even something I’d consider a guilty pleasure, but damn if I don’t want to see it.

Europe is putting out “a special edition 140-page coffee-table book, with pictures following the band on their latest continental tour, as seen through the lens of legendary rock photographer Denis O’Regan!”

Okay, so I don’t need the deluxe version with the live CD. I’m just not that big of a fan of Europe. It’s the pictures I want here, folks. The details of a live show… those are what fuels my writing and my imagination (well, that and Metallica in large doses).

Hunh. No buy link for that, either. Am I finding esoteric stuff today, or WHAT? Maybe it’s that this won’t be released until August. Who knows?

Okay… moving on…

Here’s the headline that caught my eye: Former DEEP PURPLE / RAINBOW Tour Manager Colin Hart To Issue New Book In September” (here’s the link so it’s fully cited and not stolen or anything). The wording of the article is weird; it implies that the book was first released in a language other than English. Of course, you know I want the deluxe version with its “80 pages of photos and memorabilia from Colin’s collection including reproduction of tour itineraries, faxes, letters and more. ”

Yeah. SO up my alley… And you wonder where I get my research???

Of course, if I’d ever actually get my hands on these books — review copies are beautiful things — more research would be happening, more inspiration would be happening, and then more writing would be happening, too. See how that works?

It’s been way too long since rock and roll writer Chelle LaFleur stopped in with some of her words of wisdom. Here are a few, once again, based on a true story.

Now, Chelle ain’t been here much of late. That’s ’cause Chelle ain’t had much to say. All that bad behavior we expect from our rocker heroes lately been comin’ from them politicians, and they ain’t people who Chelle prefers to pay much attention to. Chelle don’t do politics. She rocks and rolls. Which means Chelle here been bored. B.O.R.E.D.

Until word of Rattlesnake Quake came down the pike. Seems they been together so long, they be worse than an old married couple. They’re one-a them old married couples who figured out they sleep better if they each got their own room and a twin bed in it. Except them boys in Rattlesnake Quake, they did that separate hotel room thing a long time ago.

They’ve moved on in the world and up to their own tour bus.

Different strokes for different folks, we all like to say. ‘Cept them guys in Rattlesnake Quake been braggin’ about how they turned this tour all green ‘n all. Which explains why Richie and Doug each got their own tour bus.

If you think about that too much and your head explodes, don’t be callin’ Chelle here. She’s busy pickin’ up the pieces of her own brain.

Now you got a grip on the background here. Richie and Doug. Two tour busses. It oughta end there, right?

That wouldn’t give Chelle much of a thread to talk about if that were all. You boys and girls know Chelle. You know it can’t end there.

Nope. It ended on some highway or maybe a parking lot. Details are sketchy, but no one’s fightin’ the fact that it went and happened. Which means that if they’d up and been as green as they sayin’ they bein’, this never woulda happened and instead of makin’ fun of them boys in Rattlesnake Quake for tryin’ to save some carbon emissions when they’re up and drivin’ all around the country, we’re all sittin’ here instead, makin’ fun of ‘em for drivin’ into each other and spewing twice as much carbon into the air.

Like Chelle said, don’t think too much about any of it. Your head might explode, same as I heard that toilet on Richie’s bus did when Doug’s bus hit it.

You heard it first, and you heard it here: goin’ green means one bus, no matter how much better y’all sleep when you all got your own space.

***
Like I said, this is based on a true story, but which parts are true, I’ll leave up to you to figure out. If you’d like to keep YOUR head from exploding, head over to Three Word Wednesday or the Friday Flash hub and check out what other tales folks are spinning this week.

I’ve been mentioning CJ Lyons here enough that you guys ought to have figured out by now I’m a fangirl. Of CJ’s writing. Her storytelling. And, mostly, of who she is as a person. She’s what you’d want from a pediatric ER doctor: calm, in control. She exudes these qualities and best of all, she’s funny at the same time.

When she said at the Pennwriters Conference last month that she’d just put out a new book, I got very excited. “You have to stop in for a Featured New Release for it!”

And, so, here she is. CJ Lyons, answering the famed one-question interview: What song makes you think of your book (and why)?

I always write to music and often find one song that I play over and over again because it resonates so much with the theme and characters of a book, so this question was easy!

For NERVES OF STEEL, the first in the Hart and Drake series, the song was Chad Kroeger’s Hero (from the Spider Man soundtrack). He sang a line about needing a hero, “but I’m not going to stand here and wait.”

That so perfectly summed up the main character of NERVES, Cassandra Hart, an ER doc who is so passionate about protecting her patients that she risks her career and her life to save them.

SLEIGHT OF HAND, the second in the series, was just released and it’s more about the relationship between Hart and the police detective she becomes involved with, Mickey Drake.

They’re both wounded heroes, fighting to regain their balance after the trauma they experienced in the first book. They guard their hearts, frightened by the feeling of vulnerability love brings–especially after almost losing each other in NERVES OF STEEL.

The song that I kept coming back to, over and over, while writing SLEIGHT was Godsmack’s Touche.

The refrain is: I’ll only do for you what you’ll do for me….perfectly capturing that post-honeymoon phase of a relationship (especially one so young and fragile and already bearing scars) where it’s a give and take between two people, until they both surrender and learn to dance together rather than spar.

Another line from Touche that struck a chord was: wasting time like it was free…again, reflecting the essence of both Hart and Drake’s inner conflict, that they want to do so much more with their lives but outside forces keep curtailing them, drawing their focus from what is truly important: their love and their passion for protecting the innocent.

SLEIGHT OF HAND really ups the ante on an emotional level while also raising the stakes for both characters until they end up risking everything but discover that the one thing they can’t lose, no matter how hard they try or what the outside world throws at them, is each other.

Wow! And CJ says she doesn’t like to do promo… she’s NUTS, I tell you. This was a fantastic answer, probably one of the most detailed explanations we’ve ever gotten around these parts. Just… wow. Awesome.

Go pick up Sleight of Hand. (Yes, this link is an affiliate link, which means if you use it, I’ll get a few pennies. Those pennies will either support maintaining this site, or they’ll go into some cool gives for you guys. It’s all up to you!)

And can I just comment on how most excellent CJ’s musical tastes are? Chad Kroeger and Sully? Two very hot singers, indeed. (But they ain’t got nothing on a certain Mitchell Voss, now, do they???)

You know how when you upload a digital book to a service like Smashwords or Kindle, it takes a few days for it to get approvals and for the book to go live. That means if you’d like your book to come out on, oh, say the 15th of the month, you may want to upload it on … oh, say the 12th.

And because you have never lost blind faith that it’ll all work out, you announce this date of the 15th and don’t waver, even when it becomes obvious that the print copy won’t be ready in time.

So… when you upload the book to Smashwords on a Sunday night and less than five minutes later, it goes live, what do you do?

Announce it at Twitter, of course. And on Facebook. And THEN come over here to the blog and tell folks to head over to Smashwords to get their hands on Demo Tapes 3.

Or wait a day or two, and it’ll be up on Kindle. But why wait? I get better royalties over at Smashwords, after a. ll. And it’s already selling over there — that took maybe five minutes from my Tweeting about it. (You guys are amazingly devoted and I am amazingly lucky to have you.)

I’ll let you know when the print copy is available. In the meantime, go pick up the ebook versions, will you? And help spread the word, too!

If you’ve been here long enough to hear me gush about the Rabbi’s Cat books and my deep and enduring love for Joann Sfar, you know I’m open to the idea of graphic novels and comics.

Now comes word of this British offering. At least I THINK it’s British. I opened the tab on this eons ago. Possibly a few months.

It’s Phonogram: Rue Britannia and it was written by Kieron Gillen and Jamie Mckelvie. Here’s the blurb. Sounds like more a mindfuck than a piece of rock and roll literature, but hey. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by things before.

Britannia is ten years dead. Phonomancer David Kohl hadn’t spared his old patron a thought for almost as long… at which point his mind starts to unravel. Can he discover what’s happened to the Mod-Goddess of Britpop while there’s still something of himself left? Dark modern-fantasy in a world where music is magic, where a song can save your life or end it.

Mmm. Music is magic and where a song can save your life or end it… I am SO there.

But wait! There’s a second volume!

It’s the first weekend of summer vacation, so I’m headed to the pool and stuff with the kids. Get it in before I get tired of them, you know?

I have some new fiction for you. Well, not really. It’s old fiction that’s been hanging around my hard drive, waiting for the right time to make an appearance. But it’s new to you and it features a tender scene with Mitchell and Kerri and I just love it, so…

Head on over to the #amwriting online home site and read it there. Yes, it’ll be included in Demo Tapes 5. But it’ll be AT LEAST two years before that comes out (most likely. I mean, hello? Have you seen Demo Tapes 3 yet? This week, I promise — well, not in print. That’s going to take a bit longer. Stupid mail.).

Why wait? Go read it now.

Yep, it’s true. If you’re in or near Pittsburgh, you ought to road trip over to the Penguin Bookstore in Sewickley on June 17. Come between 4 and 7.

You just may see a certain someone emerge from behind the famed Orange S on a Red Background.

If you come early enough — between 4 and 5 — you can ask her a question as part of the Q&A.

If you buy one of her books, you can even get her autograph. It might even look like this: (not really, but you can hope!)

June 17. Penguin Bookstore. Sewickley, PA. 4-7PM.

No better time to join the Trevolution. It’s an ever better time to let the Trevolution grow.

Okay, it’s Friday and we’re going to try this Hangout thing one more time. Maybe it’ll work. I hope so.

Here’s something to inspire you. The cover of ShapeShifter: The Demo Tapes (Year 3). Awesome art by my good friend Lakota Phillips.

You’ll be able to buy the book June 15, if all goes well. I’ll keep you posted.

Before I go, here’s the Hangout rules:
Here are the rules…

1. Leave a comment here, on this post. Say hello to me, tell me what you’re reading, what song you’re jamming to… You pick, just say SOMEthing! Leave your link (I can’t get Comment Luv to work regularly) to your blog.

2. Go visit the blog link in the comment above you. Tell them “I’m from West of Mars” and hopefully something nice about their post. Because, you know, the best way to make new friends is to actually read what they write.

3. When three people have left a comment since your last one, you may play again. If no one’s commented for two hours, you may play again. This is the ONLY time you may visit someone other than the person above you.

4. If you’re new here, your comment will go into moderation. I’m going to try to keep on top of that, but do check back to make sure no one missed you. If you were skipped, leave another comment — even if you break the three-person rule.

5. Be nice. Have fun. Make new friends — that’s what this is all about. And, of course, I operate on the Commutative Principle of Friendships, whereby any friend of yours is a friend of mine. Which means anyone and everyone is welcome to play.

6. Game ends Sunday night, even if I post something again in the meantime.

There just isn’t any other word for it but COOL.

It may have taken 113 years to realize Andrew Carnegie’s full vision for what was one of the country’s (and perhaps the world’s, but I don’t know that much history about libraries around the world) first free library, but it’s happening. In Homestead, PA.

If you don’t know, it ain’t like West of Mars. Homestead’s an old steel town. Unemployment is rife. Unlike around here, high school graduates aren’t assumed by anyone to be heading off to the Ivy League.

The library? The third one in the city built by Mr. Carnegie as part of his chagrin over the Homestead Strike (or so I was taught in my Pittsburgh history classes and you can tell I don’t recall ALL the details.). This place OOZES history.

And now it oozes sweat — from the thousand-seat music hall. From the health club. Yes, a health club in a library!

But wait. You know how libraries ought to be climate controlled, to preserve the books? Well, back in 1898, when the place was built, there wasn’t exactly air conditioning. So that pool in the basement? Made perfect sense.

Apparently, it still does. It’s being renovated, but that doesn’t take away its title as “the longest continually operating heated pool in Western Pennsylvania” (That’s a direct quote from the morning paper and thanks to them for letting me use it).

There’s also a bowling alley inside, which doesn’t surprise me, having spent a few summers in a bowling alley on the Chatham University campus — that one is located inside of what was first a private residence and only later became part of the school. However, the bowling alley in the Carnegie Library of Homestead may find a new purpose: that of a spot for some indoor baseball training.

Doesn’t matter, does it? The idea here is that these extra things will help fund the library and help create a community center. Now, 113 years after Carnegie shared his vision with the city of Pittsburgh, it’s being realized.

Andrew Carnegie was, at times, a controversial figure (see above mention of the Homestead Strike), but for us, today, who are facing budget cuts in our libraries, isn’t this a model we ought to explore more? If that music hall and that health club and that swimming pool can keep people’s minds fed along with their bodies and their musical souls, shouldn’t we support them, cheer them on, and make sure they succeed?

Here’s the link to the full article. Use it. Homestead isn’t the only local library going this route.

Kudos to them. And kudos to anyone else in any other city who heads down this path. Let’s save our libraries, folks!