¡FELZ ANO NUEVO! / SELF-PUBLISHING AS VALIDATION

Helloooooooooooooooo. We're nearly three weeks into 2018 and things are already heating up!

Well, not really, but I wanted to start with something dramatic. Things are continuing pretty much as they've always done, which is either thanks to determinism, eternal recurrence or laziness, who knows.

Actually, I've not been too lazy - I spent December in Puerto Rico, then came back to Colombia, so I've been out and about seeing and doing cool stuff. I'll actually have another AWOUND THE WORLD WITH WAYNE done about Puerto Rico probably next week, so you can all eyeball the things I eyeballed, from the comfort of your bedroom/study/secret lab/wherever you read this.

I'm currently waiting to hear about more teaching work (the more observant of you will recall I've been working as an English teacher here in Colombia the last year) so to fill my time, I've been working on a few creative endeavours. Mainly music, but I'm also going to try and make a concerted effort with my writing again, if I can. But first, the MUSIC! -->

Alternate Version cover art by Grebo Gray

I wrote and released an album of industrial/electronica under the name CARDBOARD DEAD BOY VERSUS SATAN at the end of 2017 (you can buy/listen to it HERE and HERE and through a ton of other sites). The overall theme is the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, so the song titles and voice samples largely reflect that. So far, it's had one really decent review on Brutal Resonance, with (I hope) more reviews to come. I mean, I've bombarded nearly twenty relevant sites with a review request/promo copy, so you'd think at least one more of those would oblige. We'll see, I guess.

Since I'm using a service called Distrokid to get my music all over the Internet, I figured it'd be daft not to take advantage of this, so I've also recently released the Alternate Version of VERSUS SATAN. It has different cover art, and the first, middle and end tracks are also exclusive to this release (though you can purchase them separately if you want to go a little nuts and compile your own version of the album. What a time to be alive!). This can be heard HERE and HERE and, again, basically everywhere on the internet by this point.

And lastly, I uploaded my 2014 album to the same places. It's called THE CARDBOARD DEAD BOY ELECTRIC RESURRECTION INSTRUCTION MANUAL, and athough I don't think it's as focused as my new stuff, has its merits. This is also on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, Amazon, etc etc etc.

I'm currently working on a more jazz beats-flavoured bunch of CDB songs, for a four track EP that'll see the light of day at some point this year. I also like the idea of doing the CDB version of pop music and calling the release PLAYS ALL THE HITS, but we'll see if this idea pans out.

Alongside all this, I'm also trying my hand at more straighforward techno, under the name THE UNIVERSE IS DYING. It shares a fair bit of DNA with CDB but minus the jazz, glitches and noise. I'm keeping it dark though, with this quote forming the 'mission statement', if you will:

"...we have learned our own insignificance, and that amongst the infinite number of stars, each supporting their own system of inhabited planets, our earth occupies an infinitesimally small portion, and the destruction of it would make no difference whatever..." 

- John F. Blake, Astronomical Myths, 1877.

I've been making videos for each song, too, as an additional little creative challenge. You can give these an eyeball by click the band name!

And now, the WRITING! -->

I haven't had anything new published since November 2014 :'( but I did use 2015-2016 to write and polish a novel called A WRETCHED PLACE. It's influenced by Jeff Vandermeer's Southern Reach Trilogy (which is EXCELLENT) and Sophocles' Theban plays. It has a slightly weird structure, that follows a woman, her husband (who narrates his sections), an (unwitting?) agent of chaos and a sinister preacher (the best kind!) as their paths cross along fractured timelines in a world now in the grip of monstrous gods. I've subbed it to a few publishers already, and some of them requested the full manuscript, but so far no luck landing an actual contract.

Today, however, I started tweaking my first novel (which also had a lot of publishers request a full manuscript and nearly found a home in a couple of places) THIS VILLAGE NEVER DREAMS. It is/was initially a cyclic/episodic novel in which a PI, Jack Green, starts to unravel an insane conspiracy to bring ancient gods back to Earth. I thought it wouldn't really work as a single, typical narrative since it covers ten months to a year in his life, as it slowly goes down the toilet thanks to encountering monsters/cults etc.

BUT, now I think I might be able to do it. I'm going to try and break it into MONTHS instead of typical chapters, and weave the various cases together so that, for instance, he starts one as another is ongoing (at the moment, events and people are referenced/completed between stories, but they're still "this happened and then this happened"). It's going to require a lot of work and narrative/structural wizardry, I reckon, but I think I need to get back into my old writing discipline of doing at least a few hours a day. Plus, at least I have the whole damn thing already written - I just need to reshape it, so I'm confident this is achievable.

The aim is to then (re)send this off to publishers, but a tiny part of me is considering self-publishing. A ton of my writer chums self-publish and seem to do alright from it, but the issue I have is a) finding an actual publisher still feels like legitimacy and b) you need to have a decent network/marketing plan in mind if you're going to handle all this yourself.

Now, I have no qualms about, effectively, self-publishing my music. Partly because this doesn't take me as long to write and partly because there are, as stated above, services and ways to get your music on the most platforms possible (and therefore decent pay from sales). I don't know if there are any such services for writers, other than manually uploading it to all the various self-publishing sites.

I've also been considering, as a kind of 'test-run', releasing a collection of short stories - all previously published, but now out of contract. I need to tweak them, and ideally want to include at least a couple of new stories, but one of those stories is wildly out of control and doesn't want to end. I pride myself on being the sort of person who doesn't say something unless he intends to do it, so I should probably put my money where my mouth is and actually get this done haha.

ANYWAY. This has been a bumper update, so that should tide you over for a while. Speaking of 'tide', can you believe we all live in a world where kids are eating laundry detergent? I probably put stuff I shouldn't have in my mouth when I was a baby, but I had the self-awareness of a baby then so it's expected. Kids these days, good grief.

Let me leave you with what it literally filling my ears as I type this right now:

FEAR IS A POWERFUL WEAPON

I'm suddenly aware I'm still holding her hand. Her beauty is hypnotising me again. “What are you?” I ask, my voice almost a whisper again.

She does a fine impression of a coquettish youth, all smiles and coy looks. I figured her to be Temptation but I'm starting to believe she might be Chaos.

She leads me down several streets, past numerous old buildings and new businesses. People hang from windows and lay in alleys, throats constricted and wrists slit.

“Who clears the bodies away?”

“Whoever needs them the most.”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

More to come.

UNAUSSPRECHLICHEN

The City's night was alive with the sounds of violence. As Harry Cash walked the rain-slick streets, he was soaked in the noise of society as it revelled in the unbridled optimism birthed by the end of the war. The door had been opened for reckless hedonism, and it covered everything like a dirty blanket. Quiffs and drugstore cowboys littered the streets; human detritus caught in the wind of change, free to roam the night. Drunks spilled out of clubs and bars, the signs above the doors buzzing and popping with coloured electricity. This was his New York, drenched in neon, with red like blood and the green of disease. The sick thing was, Hope was a cancer eating The City alive, but no one realised it. A steady drizzle couldn't dampen people's spirits; instead, it only served to give the pavement the appearance of having bled black blood. The roar of traffic became the growl of a gargantuan shadow moving behind the nearby buildings. Always on the periphery. Usually always.

[More on the way]

OUTER SPACE AND INTO MY ARMS (OR: QUICK, NAIL DOWN THE MOON!)

My name is Pretzel Chimney. You've never heard of me because I don't exist yet. No, I'm not a talking foetus or anything ridiculous. I'm a pottery-powered super-hero. As long as I'm holding pottery, I'm gifted with remarkable, and yes, incredible powers, the likes of which you might find in any comic book or even some form of instruction manual. I exist in the future but I'm sending this message back in time in the hope it'll help avert the diabolical tragedy that we haven't been able to avert in the future, which is right now for me, but in the future for you. I think it'd be best if I start at the beginning.

Millions of years in the future, counting the creation of the universe as the starting point, things are looking bad for our planet. Yes, that's right: EARTH. And things aren't looking too bright for it. Our planet, that is! Wars and famines and murders and taxes are rife, long-running chain stores are biting the big one, and politicians have given up kissing babies in public because the instant they do, the rival parties brand them paedophiles and get them lynched. This is not as easy as it sounds, getting politicians to stop kissing babies, because since 2018 babies have been genetically-modified to taste like candy, partly in an effort to maintain a 'new baby' smell, and also in a confused attempt to kill the phrase 'like taking candy from a baby'. Well, you can't do that now, fellas, because the baby IS the candy, and that's called kidnapping.

I work for an international justice cartel called The Unstoppable Inexorable Justice Anti-Crime Squad Group Club Team, which is comprised of various heroes from around the globe, and like all reputable law-enforcement organizations we're funded by the Mafia. We work cases and solve crimes and generally fuck bad guys right up, but unfailingly, our biggest and most dangerous problem is The Terror Gang of Terror Gang, led by the mysterious bastard named Guff Bandwagon. Seriously, he's a real bastard. Once, he entered the Sport's Day at a children's hospice, then won all the races. The UIJACSGCT cross swords with him and the TGOTG on a regular basis, so much so that we've had a public holiday named after us.

There was a brilliant but absolutely bananas scientist called George Armitage who, in 2019, invented a bomb that could give people super-powers. He called it the SUPER-BOMB! (the capitalisation and exclamation point are both his) and his plan was to detonate it over a random city, see what happens. So, he drops it out a plane and it goes off over New York, which by this time had slid a bit further down America due to extreme coastal erosion in Florida. The only trouble is, also by this point, everyone in New York already had super-powers, so he couldn't tell if his experiment had been a success or not. Plus, he'd had to use the prototype SUPER-BOMB! because he didn't have enough money to build more than one. So low were his funds, in fact, that he reportedly had to move back in with his parents. Suffice to say, shame followed George Armitage around like a particularly lusty tramp.

That last fact is only important if you think it is. I'll let you make your own mind up.

Oh yeah. Apparently it's unwise to reveal too much of the future to anyone in the past because it could have dire consequences upon the future. I'm sure you're also probably thinking 'Obviously we don't stop the diabolical tragedy already hinted at because otherwise Pretzel Chimney wouldn't have sent this note'.

To you I say: the tragedy hadn't been averted at the time I wrote this note because I hadn't sent the letter back for you to read yet. However, now you are and soon you'll put a plan into action that means, from the moment after I sent the letter back, my present – your future – everything is a-okay. So thanks for that.

Okay, now I've painted a picture of what is to come you need to pay even more attention to my words. Guff Bandwagon is aided and abetted by a vast consortium of diabolical evildoers, all possessed of insane powers and terrible manners. Chief among them is Panda Nazi, Guff's right-hand man and weapons expert. Some say he is the real brains behind the TGOTG, but others say the real brains is Mental Conundrum, perhaps the only member of the TGOTG who actually has an appearance and powers relevant to his name. Whoever's the real brains, they came up with a scheme to collide the moon into Earth. Yes, I know I took my time getting to the really important information, the bit that has an actual impact on my present, your future, but I like the sound of my own voice, especially when I'm writing it down for others to read.

So there you have it. I don't know how or why exactly the TGOTG want to do this, although TV pundits have stipulated it's because they're supervillains and that's the sort of ridiculous thing supervillains do. All I know is, if the moon hits Earth, it'll cause a level of destruction and horror not seen since Oprah Winfrey married Robert Downey Jr and had a baby with five heads and each head farted sandwiches. I'm telling you, the future is a crazy place. Oh crap, maybe I shouldn't have told you that, because you might decide it's not worth saving. Maybe you're really working for the TGOTG! Maybe, you don't give a shit. Well, you should! Give a shit, that is! Billions of people will die if you don't put a plan into action that'll inexplicably save the future. I actually came up with a plan, but in the interests of protecting the space/time continuum, I can't tell you it. Okay, so I can hint: you have to stop the moon hitting Earth.

Go now, and put something into action! If I can offer any other suggestions, I'll send another note through time and the internet, but mostly through time. And the internet. I understand that this may all sound a) implausible b) insane c) anti-climatic but that's the kind of world you're destined to live in ever since the Great Remake Eruption of 2021, in which movie studios failed spectacularly to create anything new, thereby instilling an inescapable malaise into the general population of Earth once they realised that they already knew how all films ended because they'd already seen all films.

Save us! Save the future! Make like an egg and get cracking! If it looks like you're taking too long to do anything, maybe because a new tweet has appeared on Twitter that you just have to read, or maybe because someone's posted a picture of a cat on Facebook (all things that are extinct in the future) I'll end this note with a SHOUTY BIT LIKE THIS!

I'VE BEEN RIPPED OFF. SORT OF. ALSO: HELLO, I'M STILL AWAKE!

In trying to remember the names of people I've remixed, I used Google and found *THIS*

It's some sort of bizarre, badly-translated version of this blog.

Except, it sort of isn't. It appears to be a random amalgamation of every blog ever. Very strange indeed! A part of me wonders if that link might kickstart a blog feedback loop. If it doesn't, maybe *THIS WILL*

But enough of that, it's almost 2:30am. Time to hit the hay!

SEXY DEATH

The building was old, narrow, tall. Maybe four floors, but the gap between them wasn't consistent so it was difficult to tell. A narrow pathway ran down the side of the building, with overgrown trees and bushes on the left of it. The building only had windows looking out over the pathway, and not all of them had glass in. Every level was one long narrow room, filled with miscellaneous junk and dust. Bare floorboards. Bare walls.

A small, old doll lay just inside the entrance, covered in a dry brown, brittle-looking growth, like dead sponge. Although I'm sure it was dead I didn't want to touch it, because I strongly suspected it might turn out to be a dormant fungus. There was someone else in the building with me; a woman, I think. A friend whose name I'd forgot. The second/middle floor had an old tv and Megadrive games system in it. We fought over the controls.

I couldn't access the top floor from inside, so I clambered up the side of the building. Most of the top windows were filled with birds, sleeping in nests. They were all regimented and ordered, something that shouldn't have been possible naturally, which asked two questions. The first: if it was natural, what did this say about the intelligence of the birds responsible? Secondly: who would come to an otherwise abandoned building purely to neatly organise bird nests, on a floor you couldn't reach from inside the building?

Most of the birds appeared to be pigeons. I looked in one uncovered nest to see a batch of eggs. One had turned black. In a nearby nest a pigeon woke up and stared at me. It had a black-feathered face. The other birds looked like they might be blackbirds, though they were all asleep - unless they didn't have heads at all. Their feathers shone with the sort of rainbow that plays across the surface of oil.

Something else about the house - it made want to tear the woman apart and make love to the remains.

The most surprising thing is, I wasn't even dreaming.

HOOP-LA, YOU BASTARDS!

My laptop is screaming CRITICAL BATTERY! I'M GOING TO DIE, WAYNE! at me, so QUCKLYQUICKLYQUICKLY head on over to:

http://www.sixbrickspress.com/

where my piece DONKEY PICNIC has found it's home!

SIX LITTLE THINGS GETS ITS DONKEY ON

Hot diggity!

SIX LITTLE THINGS is an online literary magazine of short prose, and in the not-too-distant future I shall be joining its list of contributors!

As mentioned below, I've written a few "experimental" pieces, and DONKEY PICNIC is one of 'em. That's the treat your eyes can devour in the next issue of Six Little Things, so keep 'em peeled on their website and/or this one for updates!

Woop?! YES!

DON'T TOUCH ME

I've also wrote a few 'experimental' pieces that I'm going to try and see if I can find homes for:

DONKEY PICNIC - Would you like donkeys in the mail?

FOOD OF THE GODS PART 3 - 6. He brooded on him, and when that person tried to escape by accelerating hard and has glowing red eyes and green scaly skin “They are bold” had thus been brooded on, a mouth burst forth like a nightmarish egg. From the mouth proceeded South Carolina, from South Carolina ,Agni (fire).

SELF-HYPNOSIS AS A WEAPON - Let us take the latter's theoretical arsenal and apply it to show how they bought the property ten years ago. These methodologies arrived covered in pine trees on the academic scene. In Deleuzoguattarese, the aborescent-root-system model of the academy first branches into colleges – “even though some people think they’re weeds."