I have a few digital download codes for The Invisible Crown courtesy of Royal James Publishing and Smashwords! How do you get your hands on one of these downloads, you ask? Well, it’s quite simple: like and comment on this post, and you’ll be entered in the drawing! All I ask in return is a fair and honest review on Amazon or Goodreads. I’ll be giving away five download codes at random to entrants this coming Friday, January 27th!
Author: xeyeti
Inauguration Day
Here in the US, today is Inauguration Day: the day when we swear in the new President and prepare ourselves for the next four years. I’ll be honest, I’m not looking forward to the new administration. I have far too many friends who stand to suffer considerably as the powers that be systematically strip away a lot of the progress that was made over the last eight years. Or eighty years, even. It’s really hard to gauge how bad it’s going to get.
I’ve always been a proponent of the belief that the President, as a single individual with constitutionally-limited powers, can only do so much. It’s not like being an absolute monarch, after all. The President has two other branches of the federal government to hold him in check, not to mention his own branch filled with advisers and experts. But this is a unique situation: the same political party controls both houses of Congress and the Presidency, and gets to appoint at least one Supreme Court Justice in the next four years. All of that changes the dynamics of things. Already, Congress is working to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, which – if stories from the internet are to be believed – folks across the country didn’t realize was the same thing as Obamacare (and there’s the danger of letting your opponent handle all the branding, guys: they can make it sound downright awful to you even if it’s benefiting you).
Now, I’m a straight white guy. In many regards, nothing that happens in the next four years will hurt me in the least, assuming I don’t lose my job and have to find a new one (I wouldn’t be able to get insurance with the ACA gone, ’cause the “no pre-existing conditions” bit of the ACA – the part virtually everyone who doesn’t work for a health insurance company loves about the law – would be gone, and diabetes and mental health are huge red flags for insurance companies). But I have lots of friends who will be affected by the sort of changes the part in power is talking about doing. Friends who are immigrants. Friends who are Muslim. Friends who are gay and lesbian. Friends with health issues and dire financial straits and all sorts of other problems. Problems that can only be amplified by the lack of compassion the people in power display.
So, I’m spending this particular Inauguration Day in contemplation. Thinking about what I can do to be an ally to those in need. Thinking about how I can speak up and speak out to protect those who don’t have the same privilege and safety that I do. Thinking about how to oppose tyranny and stand for what’s right. Thinking about how to use the things I create – my novels, my music, my comics – to speak out against oppression and those who would do harm to those who are less-fortunate or otherwise unable to defend themselves. I think, and I worry, and I hope and pray I can be a force for positive change.
History has its eyes on us, America. Let’s make sure the next four years aren’t the first section of the chapter of the history textbook about America’s collapse.
Housekeeping
Conventional wisdom would indicate that the absolute worst time for an author to drop off the face of the earth would be in the month following his book’s release. But hey, everything else about how I do things defies wisdom (conventional or otherwise), so why would I buck the trend here?
Anyway, a couple of things before I bury myself under my Author Rock™* again and get back to creating stuff.
1. The Invisible Crown is available for the Kindle, Smashwords, and as a dead-tree-actual-physical-book! So many ways for you to show you love me.
2. Speaking of showing me love, reviews on Amazon and Goodreads are welcomed and encouraged! Reviews help sell books, assuming they aren’t just trashing the book or my new haircut.
3. Fellow Royal James author Steen Jones has a novel coming out next month, and the pre-order for it is up today! I’m personally super-excited about this book. Modern-day fantasy with gateways to different worlds? That is my jam, folks. She’s also running a giveaway thing on her blog if you pre-order the book and snap a pic of your receipt, so you should do that.
Anyway, the underside of that Author Rock™ isn’t going to describe itself via haiku, so I’m off to go do something very much like that.
* – All authors live under rocks. It’s where we’re most comfortable. The official Author Rock™ is only available to any author who wants one and is willing to lug the thing around. It is quite large and heavy, as befits a rock.
Good Vs. Awesome
The Wife and I attended a party at a friend’s place over New Year’s, where I ended up having a discussion with another friend (one of my beta readers, actually) with whom I am collaborating on a musical project this year. She was lamenting her poor skills on the ukulele, the key instrument in the project, saying she wished she was actually good at it.
“If punk music has taught me anything,” I said, “it’s that you don’t have to be good to be awesome.”
And it got me thinking about all the folks out there who are awesome if not actually, technically good. Take Neil Young for example. The man’s singing voice is best described as a strangled yelp. It sounds like someone is throttling a sick goose. In technical terms, the man’s voice is just godawful. He once played a guitar solo that was just the same note played 37 times.
And yet…damn, when his stuff works, it really works. Music – and most other creative expression – isn’t just about technical prowess. It’s also about the evocative, emotional expression. In that regard, Neil Young is an awesome singer. You only have to listen to “The Needle and the Damage Done” to hear the frustration and despair he feels. His guitar playing, while often grungy and sloppy, is very emotionally-fulfilling.
Bob Dylan’s another great example. No one can credit him with being a tehinically good singer, but take a listen to “Blind Willie McTell” and tell me that’s not a haunting song.
Like at artists like Chegal, or Picasso, or Andy Warhol. They’re not able to perfectly recreate the details of the world around them, but they’re evocative and powerful in ways that are sometimes hard to describe. Awesome without being good.
Anybody can play or write or draw something perfectly. With enough practice, you can master the art of crafting a sentence or a painting or a guitar chord. But it’s how you play things, the sounds and colors and words you don’t use. The way you use the ones you do put to effect. That’s what really matters, honestly.
It’s not about being good. It’s about using what you’ve got to be awesome.
I Need Reviews!
So, as you may or may not be aware (and I’m not sure what the scenario is for that second option; maybe you were in a coma until this morning? Or living under a literal rock without wifi?), my book is now available. And, though I don’t know any actual numbers, a non-zero number of copies of the thing have been purchased! This is wonderful! It means my publisher is likely to continue giving me contracts for future books.
Of course, it’s a brand-spanking-new book, and as such it currently has zero reviews on Amazon and just one rating over at Goodreads. This is a thing I’d like to see change! Book reviews for small and indie authors are a necessary, vital part of the process. No one (aside from my parents and grandparents, who love me but don’t write too many reviews) really knows about me or my book, and word of mouth is the best way to spread…well, the word.
That’s where all of you come in! If you’ve read the book, give it a quick review! It doesn’t have to be a massive, multi-paragraph ode to my authorial genius. It can be as simple as, “I really enjoyed this book and would definitely recommend it.” It also doesn’t have to be a five-star rave. If you only kinda liked the book, that’s okay! Even a three-star, “Eh, it was a’ight,” review is still better than no reviews. Honest reviews are always appreciated. Feedback and criticism are okay. I welcome it, in fact. Pointing out shortcomings in my writing can help me become a better writer, if it’s done properly (if it’s done improperly, or you’re just crapping on me to be a jerk, I will probably completely disregard what you said and make disparaging comments about you, the unnamed, unknown reviewer, to my wife, who tolerates my fragile ego shenanigans with grace and the occasional eye roll).
But please, share the book, tell people about it, and write reviews! Reviews help out tremendously, encouraging readers to take a risk with an unknown author. They also help improve the algorithms used to show folks other books they might like when they’re perusing Amazon or Goodreads, and increased eyeballs will only bring more readers in.
Hopefully, we’ll have the physical version available soon, as well as the iBooks and Nook versions. Keep reading, and thanks!
Nostalgia Trip
I spent Christmas visiting family and friends back in Oklahoma. It was nice to get to see everyone and cruise past some of my old haunts, but there was a moment that left me feeling a bit…off.
See, we were going to a friend of mine’s house on Christmas Eve. She lives just off a road I’ve been down dozens, hundreds, thousands of times in my life, in a town I grew up in and spent years wandering. I should have been able to find the place in my sleep. And yet, I drove right past the turn, kept driving, and only figured out I’d gone too far when I came to the next major intersection several blocks up. It threw me, not making the turn automatically, not knowing that was where the turn should be.
Now, I could easily blame it on the fact that it was night time, or that I just wasn’t paying very close attention. But the truth was, I forgot where I was going in my own hometown.
My wife pointed out that I hadn’t lived there since I was in high school, not full-time, anyway. Sure, I’d come back for breaks and during the summer in college, and I lived nearby during graduate school, but I haven’t frequented those streets with any regularity since I moved to Virginia twelve years ago. It’s natural to lose some of that mental map I’d built up over the years. But it was still a point of sadness for me, this minor misstep, because it means either (a) I’m getting dumb or (b) I’m losing a bit of the past because it’s not getting used with any real frequency.
Maybe visiting home for the holidays just left me feeling a bit nostalgic for a time that was most certainly not nearly as wonderful and pleasant as I’m remembering. But it caught me off guard and left me feeling a little sad.
Release Day!
It’s finally here! The Invisible Crown is now available for you to purchase and read! I’m very excited for all of you to finally get to see the book. Thanks to the folks at Royal James Publishing for helping get this out in the world. If you like the book, don’t forget to leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads (or, hey, both). Word of mouth is my most powerful marketing tool.
This also seems like an appropriate situation for this:
Solitaire, Part 7
The Red Ace has escaped, but Eddie is hot on her trail. Will he catch up to the thief? Will he get the files he needs? Let’s find out! Make sure to check out Eddie’s next adventure, The Invisible Crown, available tomorrow!
* * *
I pulled up a vid window and called Miss Typewell. “Ellen, it’s Eddie,” I said, standing up and checking on the two guards. They were both unconscious, probably had some broken bones, but they’d live. “I just planted a tracer on our good friend the Red Ace. I’m sending you the access code now. Can you upload the signal to my GPS?” Folks rarely notice the little details of a casual touch; when I’d patted her shoulder, I’d slipped a GPS tracer under the collar of her shirt.
“Sure thing, Eddie,” she replied. “Things go wrong at the precinct?”
“Of course they did,” I said as I stepped into the hallway. Another guard at the end of the hall was on the floor, also unconscious. I was clearly on the right trail even without the GPS signal. “Looks like Red Ace just dealt herself a losing hand,” I said.
“Eddie, are the bad puns really necessary?” Miss Typewell asked wearily.
“If it weren’t for bad puns, I’d have nothing to say,” I respond.
“And what a tragedy that would be,” Miss Typewell said as she closed her vid window.
* * *
By the time I left the 4th Precinct, the tracer had come online. A small vid window over my left eye painted a bullseye on the Red Ace’s location. She was on the move, and she was fast.
The tracer’s signal eventually led me back into Old Town, down around 43rd and Watterson Ave. This was a slightly run-down neighborhood, one with security windows and bars on the doors. According to the signal, Red Ace had slipped into an apartment building on the corner, and was about six floors up.
The front door of the building was open, so I slipped in as quickly and quietly as I could. I took the elevator up to the sixth floor. At apartment 604, the GPS was blinking at me like crazy, so I knew I’d found my target. I jimmied the lock and stepped inside, the popgun drawn.
The front room was empty, and not just of people. There was nothing in the room at all, and some rather concerning scrapes along the far wall that looked like an animal had dragged some claws across it. I crept through as quietly as possible, cutting through the small kitchen/dining area which was, again, empty of anything.
The back hallway led to two bedrooms and a bathroom. The bathroom contained nothing. The first bedroom contained what I’d been looking for: a small filing cabinet full of files, and the black shirt Red Ace had been wearing, folded and sitting in the middle of the floor. On top of the neatly-folded shirt was a note, addressed to me. It read:
Detective Hazzard,
I have enjoyed our little game, though I feel as if I’ve been playing by myself while you sat on the sidelines, drooling on yourself. You may not have been the cleverest of opponents, but you were rather determined and dogged, and I can admire that. The filing cabinet contains the documents you were looking for. My client, I’m sad to say, refuses to give up their identity, so you’ll have to be content with merely solving your case.
Oh, and do be careful. There’s a guard bear in the apartment, and she hasn’t been fed in a few days.
Good luck!
Cordially,
The Red Ace
(Alice)
I read and re-read the note twice, trying to make sense of the whole thing. This hadn’t been the hardest case in my career, but it certainly hadn’t been a game, either. I reached into the filing cabinet and grabbed the documents, shoving them into a pocket inside my coat.
Then I really processed the whole note, and turned around to see nine feet of furry violence behind me.
It was a brown bear, I think. Maybe a grizzly. I’m not really sure, and honestly I didn’t want to take the time to find out. It had a surveillance camera hard-wired to the vision centers of its brain, allowing someone to track what the bear saw. The things had been all the rage a decade or two ago, but they’d fallen out of style because, even with the intelligence amplifiers and behavior controls, guard bears were still tremendously unpredictable.
This one growled at me, a deep rumble in the back of its throat, and stood as tall as the low ceiling would allow it. “How did they even get you in here?” I asked in disbelieving astonishment as the thing wound up to take swing at me. I ducked back, and the large paw took out the filing cabinet instead. The metal cabinet flipped end over end across the room, slamming into a wall to my left with a loud clung, laying on its side with the filing drawers hanging out. I glanced around, looking for an exit, and saw only the window behind me. Mind you, I was six stories up; not exactly where you want to be if you’re jumping out a window.
On the other hand, when you’re staring up at an angry and, if the letter was accurate, hungry bear, pretty much anything else looks good by comparison.
The bear took another swipe at me, this time with more power behind it. I barely managed to dodge out of the way. The bear’s claws scored the wall on the right hand side of the room with deep gashes. That window was looking pretty tempting at this point.
“What the hell do I have to lose?” I muttered, jamming my hat down on my head and running toward the window at top speed.
Security glass shattered around me, the fragments flashing angry red letters to let anyone who cared to check that a window in the building had been broken. The alley between this building and the next was thankfully narrow, and I slammed into the metal railing of a fire escape, knocking the breath out of me. I chanced a quick glance behind me and saw the bear reaching through the window, persistent and angry. I couldn’t remember whether you were supposed to try to make yourself bigger and scare bears away, or curl up and make yourself smaller so they wouldn’t consider you a threat, but decided it didn’t matter and crawled over the railing of the fire escape to reach the ladder down to the next level. Behind me, the bear roared its frustration, which only served to speed up my efforts. The fire escape shook, metal groaned, and suddenly the safety scaffold was sagging towards the ground several stories below. I held on for dear life until I saw a dumpster below, the lid open and something suitably soft-looking inside. Again, figuring I had nothing left to lose, I let go of the fire escape and dropped into the dumpster.
The dumpster’s contents weren’t as soft as I’d assumed, but they weren’t as hard as the pavement. The wind was knocked out of me by the impact, but I coughed and gasped and sputtered, lying there among the trash. When I’d caught my breath, I dared another peek up at the room I’d jumped out of. The guard bear was nowhere to be seen, which was good. I’d escaped with my life and the documents.
“Guess we’ll call that a win,” I wheezed to myself, clawing for the rim of the dumpster.
* * *
I took the bundle of documents and stuffed them into a large manila envelope, slapped a few stamps on the front, and dropped the parcel in Miss Typewell’s outgoing mail tray in the office. She didn’t ask any questions or even make any snarky comments about the fact I was covered in garbage. I made my way back into the inner office, slumping into my desk chair and reopening a minimized vid window hovering low over the scarred surface of my desk. It displayed solitaire game #2,146, all of which had been loses. Some of those games had been close – on more than one occasion, a single missing card was all that stood between me and total victory.
I looked over the cards blearily, scanning for a move, any move, that I could make.
All I needed to start the cascade of cards that would signal a victory was a red ace, but none were available.
With a wry chuckle, I pinched the vid window shut and reached for a bottle of cheap whiskey.
Solitaire, Part 6
Eddie has captured Red Ace, and now it’s time to interrogate the mysterious burglar. What could possibly go wrong? Come back tomorrow for the story’s exciting conclusion!
* * *
The interrogation room at Precinct 4 was a stark, utilitarian affair. It was not a room that the 21st century had touched, let alone the 22nd. The walls were bare, the table was made of a single piece of machined aluminum bolted to the floor, and the chairs were uncomfortably Puritanical in design and form. One wall was the traditional one-way mirror, and the door was set in the opposite wall. The one token nod to modernity was the small video camera that floated in the air above the table, maneuvering on small air jets to take in the whole room.
Red Ace was already there when I arrived, unmasked and handcuffed to the chair across from the one-way mirror. Turns out the burglar was a woman with a close-cropped shock of bright red hair and a dark complexion. Her eyes were a pale green, but burned with a fierce anger borne of (1) being stuck in an interrogation room and (2) having been caught by me.
“Red Ace, how nice to finally meet the real you,” I said as I walked in. I patted her on the shoulder as I skirted the table and took a seat across from her, my back to the one-way mirror. The door clicked shut behind her, locking again and only openable from the outside. She sat in her chair, resolutely saying nothing.
“So, what’s your name,” I asked, pressing on against the tidal wave of annoyed silence emanating from her.
The silence continued, unabated.
“You might as well say something,” I opined, hoping she’d open up after such a clever bon mot.
She didn’t.
“You’re only making things worse for yourself, y’know,” I said. “Even now, Captain O’Mally’s getting a search warrant to toss your place. We’ll find the files, and we’ll find all the other stuff you’ve been stealing lately, too. It’s just a matter of time.”
This time, she snorted a laugh, and a smile that had nothing to do with humor flickered across her face.
“They won’t find anything in my place,” she finally said, a sneer on her lips. “And your client will just have to live with the fact that she’ll never have those files she wants.” Her voice had a slight accent, a melodic lilt that was difficult to place but made her seem exotic. It was the sort of voice you could fall in love with, if it weren’t for the fact she was a notorious thief.
“You know, you’ve got a nice voice. It was a shame to hide it behind the vocal modulator like you did.”
“It’s chauvinists like you who are the reason I did it,” she replied defiantly. “I hate being judged by what I look like, or what I sound like. Never for my abilities, always for my physical characteristics!”
I raised my hands defensively. “Easy, tiger, I was just trying to make conversation. Don’t get so defensive.”
Red Ace sat there casually, a defiant and confident sneer playing across her face. “Your kind is always the same. You think you know everything, but you’re just as ignorant and self-serving as anyone else. You’re just less honest with yourself.”
I was starting to get annoyed. “Look, lady, I’m sure your degree in gender studies or whatever makes you imminently qualified to lecture me on this,” I said, “but all I really want to know is who you’re working for.”
This time, she gave me another smile, one that not only still had nothing to do with humor but that promised someone wasn’t going to find what happened next funny at all. “Detective, that’s not really an issue right now. What is at issue is that I will be out of here in the next few minutes, and the only thing I’m not yet sure of is whether you’ll be able to walk out under your own power or not.”
I shifted uneasily in my chair. “You do realize you’re handcuffed to a chair, right?” I asked.
Red Ace barked a short, sharp laugh, shoved her chair back away from the table, and flipped over the back of it, bringing her handcuffed hands in front of her in the process. “A little help!” I called out to the floating camera, hoping the guards who had been posted right outside the door would be able to do something about this new turn of events.
The guards burst in, stun batons raised and ready. But Red Ace was ready, too, and swung her chair in a wide arc, catching both guards across the face and knocking them down. She knelt down and grabbed the handcuff neutralizer, touching it to the band on first her right and then her left wrist, deactivating the cuffs. Rubbing her wrists, she then grabbed the two guards’ stun batons, twirled them like she’d spent her life leading a marching band, then turned to me. The whole display had taken all of maybe ten seconds, and I hadn’t even had time to think about getting out of my chair.
“Well, detective, what will it be?” she asked, twirling the baton in her left hand.
Call me a coward, but I know when I’m beat. “I like walking,” I said, hands in the air with resignation.
“I thought you might,” she replied. She turned and walked out the door, balanced and poised as a dancer.
Solitaire, Part 5
Eddie has captured the burglar Red Ace. The local police captain, Edison O’Mally, wants some answers from our hero. Come back tomorrow for part 6!
* * *
Captain Edison O’Mally of the Arcadia Police Department stood near the door while a uniform took my statement outside the Funeral Parlor. Two more uniformed officers were rolling Red Ace into a custody wagon, the bubble from the popgun having not dissolved yet.
“So you just happened to be having a quiet drink when a known criminal entered the bar in a completely unrelated coincidence?” the office repeated back to me, incredulously. I’d had to embellish my story a little bit to protect the not-so-innocent (me).
“That’s correct, Officer Higgins,” I replied, my face attempting to beam honesty and settling for not completely giving everything away.
“So, how come five other patrons report that the suspect was seen at your table, having a rather heated conversation with you?” Higgins was good. He could actually ask a question and could compare facts to each other and see when they contradicted each other. Most of the uniformed officers I’d seen over the years were the type to accidentally ended up asking the wrong person the wrong question, like, “Was it you what done the deed, then? Oh God, why are you pulling my spleen out through my mouth?” Higgins was one of the good ones, which was making him a pain in my ass at that moment.
“I’d asked him to pass me a coaster. He didn’t want to. Wasn’t a very neighborly burglar, I can tell you,” I said innocently.
“Hazzard,” O’Mally called as he came over to us. The captain, the walrus tusks of his gen-mod gleaming, nodded at the officer taking my statement. Higgins nodded back and stepped away. “Care to tell me just what the hell is going on?” His jowls quivered slightly, as a walrus’s jowls are wont to do. O’Mally thought his gen-mod made him look intimidating, but mostly it just game him fish breath.
“Captain, as I was explaining to your man Higgins here, this whole thing is completely innocent, just a big misunderstanding.” I attempted to put an arm around O’Mally’s shoulders, but the look he gave me made me think better of it.
“Drop the act, Eddie,” O’Mally said. “Be straight with me.”
I sighed. “Fine. I’m working a case, all right? Red Ace is my one lead on it, and I managed to trick the guy into meeting with me, but he wouldn’t give up anything.”
O’Mally nodded, sending his jowls quivering again. “We can give you some time in the interrogation chamber with Red Ace, Eddie, but I don’t know what else we can do. Most of the evidence linking this character to those burglaries is circumstantial at best.”
“Right,” I said, turning up my coat collar. “I’ll be down at the precinct in an hour.”
