Pulp Fiction

I have begun posting my pulp fiction finds at my Etsy store. Check out this beauty from 1954:

I also have posted two more resurrected and repurposed features at Suite101:

River Jordan Breathes Life into Southern Tales

and

Artist Wants Public to be Touched by His Angels

Right now (well not this moment, but for a few days now and for a few days more) I'm reading "The Tomb," the first of the Repairman Jack novels by F.Paul Wilson. About 60 pages in, and it still hasn't developed a plot, just introduced lots of characters with problems for Jack to fix. But it's part of his "Adversary Cycle" about cosmic forces battling for the earth, so I'm expecting it to pick up steam pretty fast. (Wilson is the author of The Keep, and this story is an offshoot of that, so I understand.)

It's Today's Pick.

Peace.

Oh. Okay. One more for the road:

Vintage 'MidnightOnMars'

I opened an online store at Etsy.com recently. You can find it here under the name of MidnightOnMars. I'll be offering vintage books and handmade "art" - look for my vampire hunter kits, magic wands and other fun stuff soon.

Currently, I only have five books listed; I posted 2 on my first day and they sold overnight. I'm hoping the rest will take off that way.

Today, yard saling with the wife, we came across a woman selling totes full of old pulp detective novels in very good condition from the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. I bought 311 paperbacks for $10. I'll be posting them at Etsy in the next few weeks. If you like pulp books, you'll love these, and the prices will be lower than you'll find elsewhere (one of the books I picked up is listed "Buy It Now" on ebay for $65; I'll probably put it on sale for $20, for example).

Anyway, I also posted a couple more re-written features from earlier in my career. (These could also be categorized as "vintage MidnightOnMars," eh?) Check these out:

Florida Crime Keeps Author Tim Dorsey in Stories
and
Caricaturist Dean Minton Lives Exaggerated Life (look for an update on this one soon, as Deano has a new novel coming out soon and I'll be providing a preview of it)

It's been a long, busy day. I'll visit more tomorrow, with any luck.

Take care out there.

Peace.

Lunch and other Delights

Had a pleasant lunch with author Michael Morris, his publicist Kathie Bennett, her brother (and Panama City mayor) Scott Clemons, and reading specialist Milinda Jay from FSU-PC. We had sandwiches and tea at The Rabbit Hole downtown and spent an hour talking about everything important under the sun — family, friends, writing, writers, publishing, trends, newspapers, web sites, and on and on.

Michael asked if I blog, and as I intended to direct him here I decided I should have something fresh for him to read. (Hi, Michael!) So you have him to blame for this.

Kathie kindly offered to take a look at some of my work and see if she would be amenable to representing me as an agent, so I will be bugging her over the next couple of weeks. It will also mean I'll be focusing on what I really want to do with my life rather than posting rewrites of old articles so much.

Speaking of which:
Author Silas House Shares Southern State of Mind
is my latest, in case you're interested.

I plan to post something more substantial about Michael soon. (I'm planning to attend his Thursday night presentation at FSU-PC.) Meanwhile, you can check out my recent Sunday column about him.

And for those late arrivals, here are some more links to my online work:

— My latest blog at newsherald.com is about Grandma's Car
— My latest Undercurrents columns, collected at newsherald.com
— Most of my 366 Days short stories project

I'm trying to get these folks to buy into Twitter too. If you want to follow me, sign up at twitter.com and add @midnightonmars

Peace.

Test Post

This is just a test post to see if you're out there and receiving me (those five who have signed on to follow me).

Sorry for the silence recently. I've been distracted by mundane matters. I hope to spend some time catching up this weekend.

Peace.

A couple of things, and then goodbye

... that is, if you are expecting any further email notices from Feedblitz after this week. Just saying. You can come to the site and sign up with Google and get alerts (and have your photo in my box of followers).

Meanwhile, here are my latest freelance pieces you might enjoy:

Delta Bluesman Slim Fatz is an American Original
and
Top 10 Tips for your First Sci-Fi or Comic Con

Tonight, I was well into a piece on dealing with holiday blues when the "easy back" function of IE7 made the page go back when I drifted left with my finger on the laptop's touch pad. What does that mean? All my work was lost in cyberlimbo. The frustration was mightier than my will to continue. I'll go back to it tomorrow.

And now for something completely different:

I had a nice discussion with Kathy Bennett about the upcoming visit of Michael Morris. Kathy is the sister of our current Panama City mayor, quite a sweet person, and a literary agent and publicist for some of my favorite regional authors. Michael is the talented writer of Slow Way Home, and the only person who has ever claimed in public (or at least in a group of other writers) to be my cousin when he is, in fact, not. We have similar senses of humor, I think. I hope to spend some time in the weeks to come talking with them and sharing those talks with you.

Check out the links. And buy Michael's book(s).

Peace.

New stories

Are you still there? Feedblitz hasn't dropped you yet? Please come over to the blog and sign up as a follower in the box you'll see to the right of the homepage.

Meanwhile, here are two new stories I recently published to suite 101:

Alice's Long Strange Trip to Become Syfy Series
and
High Moon a Winning Mix of Westerns, Werewolves

In the spirit of the upcoming holiday, I've been posting spooky stuff to my blog at newsherald.com, and here's just a little something to send you off with:

Now, that's a Scooby Doo movie I'd pay real money to see. It comes from this talented artist. You should check some of his other projects (I'm partial to the steampunk rayguns he builds.)

Say G'night, Velma.

Peace.

Heads up: You're about to lose the feed

Those of you following this blog on FeedBlitz are about the lose the feed. In the next week or so, FeedBlitz will become a fee-only service, and I can't afford to carry a fee for this. So I'm encouraging you to go to the site, look for the helpful "Followers" widget and sign up under Google or Yahoo or one of the other choices. This one is free and should remain free.

Don't delay. You know how important these updates are to your mental and emotional wellbeing.

Peace.