End of the Road Anthology

Amidst the turbulence of my life, I see I have forgotten to mention that I have had two stories accepted in an anthology of stories based around the theme: End of the Road. There are some truly talented (and successful!) writers included in this anthology and I feel privileged to have my name in the same book next to theirs. While I would prefer to tell you about the other stories in the book, there are too many for me to mention each of them. Therefore I will tell you briefly about my contributions to the End of the Road Anthology.

As is my normal method of writing, I was initially stumped on what kind of story I wanted to contribute to such a themed anthology. This then led to my mind (virtually) exploding with different ideas of what the end of the road might mean. Since I tend to gravitate towards the extreme, I naturally took the theme to mean death. But since I also tend to reject the obvious, I wanted to portray death in a way that might not really mean the end. So I split the difference and wrote two shorter stories instead of one long one. In what probably amounts to commercial suicide, I wrote one story with strong religious coloring (Waiting In Line), and the other spattered in blood red (The Last Hours Of Brandon Kratz). I guess I’m not real good at the whole branding thing. Actually, I like to think my writing can take many different aspects of life and roll them together into something larger. Hopefully that is what I can achieve in my novels.

The best part of this anthology is that it is absolutely free to anyone with an e-reader device. There is also a paperback available, which has been priced at the absolute lowest possible price. If you want to pick up a free or greatly reduced price sampler please check us out at Amazon or any other book distributer: http://www.amazon.com/End-Road-Jacques-Antoine-ebook/dp/B00E6IUKAM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382321989&sr=8-1&keywords=end+of+the+road+anthology

Again, thanks to those others who were involved in this anthology and were gracious enough to include me as one of them.

Themes and Ideas in The Amazing Morse

 

I’ve wanted to have someone write a paper on my book, The Amazing Morse, but as that is not forthcoming, allow me to point out some of the themes and concepts which are in the novel.

 

The book begins with a man sitting in an office cubicle, reading a book of detention hardware as part of his work. He imagines the various pieces of hardware coming together and forming a prison cell around him, even as the cubicle walls form a sort of prison of their own, a prison of conformity to which he subjects himself.

There is a definite Hindu perspective to this. Man is cut off from the greater reality, each person separated from the greater universe. I jokingly refer to Sting’s The Soul Cages in my second book, and I think that is a fair comparison. But I think the idea of walls and square dividers work on many different levels. The intellect chops things up in to little pieces in order to be able to digest it. It places a grid over the real in order to treat the whole as individual pieces of data. But whatever the intellect experiences is an indirect experience. Our deepest truths are experienced directly, in a way words can never adequately explain. But the older we get, the more we become adults, the less most of us are able to perceive the world in a direct manner. We perceive things in an intellectual manner, see things for what they represent rather than what they are. We become many levels of abstraction away from the essential truth of things.

Dave Morse’s childhood dream was to be a magician. Because of his love of magic, and because of his desire to hold on to the dreams of his childhood, he is still able to see life through the eyes of a child. Therefore he does not fit in to the business world, a place where conformity of thought seems to rule the day. But while he is a magician, he is not an escape artist. A traumatic experience in his youth has left him with a fear of confinement. Thus he is a failure to himself. Unlike his hero, Houdini, he is unable to risk his life in daring escapes. He feels like a fraud, performing tricks and illusions rather than being a true performer. So while Dave has maintained the ideals of youth, he has failed to develop his adult capacity to live those ideals.

Dave sees his personal plight working itself all around him as well. While Dave sees work as a mass of square cubicles, he sees the neighborhood he grew up in as an endless row of almost identical houses, each only a minor variation from the other. Such an environment breeds conformity. Even the field that he and the other neighborhood kids used to play in has been built over and is now indistinguishable from all the other cubed and sliced up patches of sameness that is the suburbs. There is no place left to hide from the all-consuming conformity.

And yet there are some areas that seemed to resist the wave of prefab houses that are everywhere in the suburbs, places where older buildings already existed. In one such area, Dave encounters a psychic, who with a single touch does something strange and unexplainable to him.

He begins to have bad dreams, which push his ability to make sense of his life to the limit. He begins to realize what a tentative grasp on reality humans have. He cannot find intellectual answers to his problems. Again, the intellect is an ineffectual tool for understanding the world.

While Dave’s world unravels around him, he is pushed to make decisions which could ruin his life, or quite possibly, end the lives of others. He tries to be brave, but cannot bring himself to confront his fear of imprisonment. He settles on a compromise of his values, which almost leads to his undoing. But the seeds he sewed in his childhood have not been completely fruitless.

Dave learns that the world he lives in is far larger than any he has allowed himself to believe. He realizes most people live in a small world for fear of the larger, more dangerous one that exists. But in hiding from the dangers of the larger world, they also cut themselves off from the magic that exists. Most people live in a small world and so feel cut off from the real world. They perceive the stars through a telescope, see a world so vast that they feel like they are nothing. In living in a small world, they can pretend they are bigger than they are, but they are cutting themselves off from the truth, and the truth might just be beautiful. No matter how small a part we play, we are not outside observers. We are all part of that great big universe. If we live fully in the small space that is given us, we are playing our part in that vast and cosmic play. In truly being ourselves, rather than submitting ourselves to an artificial reality, we become one with everything.

R.I.P. Darrell K. Sweet

My bucket list is fairly long, but I have been fortunate to have crossed off a number of items. I have seen The Kinks play Apeman live, I have met a few Hall of Fame Rock and Rollers, and I have written novels and pieces of music. But I just realized that there is one thing that will never come to pass. In addition to writing a novel, another goal of mine was to have the art of Darrell K. Sweet on the cover of one of my books. But I just learned that he passed away in 2011.

I first became aware of his work when I saw Lord Fouls Bane in a local bookstore. The back cover blurb was interesting, but it was really the cover that pulled me in.

Two successive chapters in the Thomas Covenant series followed, and each time the artwork called out to me:

I would have bought them right away had I not been an eleven year old with barely enough money for a comic book.

As it was, I would gravitate to them each time I found myself in a bookstore. Eventually, I bought and read the series, which completely lived up to the artwork. Yet I couldn't help wishing he had done more than just one picture per book.

Evidently, it wasn't just me who appreciated his work, since his art has graced countless other books. For me, he has achieved THE trifecta, in that his artwork was chosen for the three greatest trilogies of all time, namely The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, The Lord of the Rings,

 



and the original Foundation series:

Perhaps it is wrong to judge a book by its cover, but I can't help thinking that Darrell K. Sweet inspired an awful lot of people to open a book and explore when they might never have otherwise. Farewell, Mr. Sweet, you have left an impressive legacy, both in what you have drawn and what you have drawn others into.

The Road to "Perchance To Dream"

 

Perchance to Dream is my new novel, and I wanted to take a moment to explain how it all came about. First of all, it may be obvious to some that it comes from Hamlet's second soliloquy. It is a play on words, referring to the Dave Morse’s ability to see things in his dreams. The name was originally a working title for my first book which eventually was changed to The Amazing Morse. Perchance to Dream was never really meant to be a title for any book, but it happened to hang around for a long time just out of convenience. But when I had finished with The Amazing Morse, I couldn’t help the feeling that I had really only begun to flesh out ideas with the novel. Not ideas of characters or plot, but ideas about how people, myself included, perceive the world. I wanted to explore these ideas further, and these characters I created for the first book were eager to investigate their universe more fully as well.

And so began my next novel. And the title, Perchance to Dream, just seemed to fit. It dealt with the subject of death, of man’s attempt to escape it.

Which then leads to the cover image. I wanted to show the elements of escape artistry, thus the chained coffin. I wanted the cover, like the last one, to look like an old-time magic poster. Magic has always made use of the macabre, so a coffin would fit right in with the concept, as would a spirit rising from it. But beyond making a good magician’s poster, I wanted it to say something about man’s attempts to explain death, to triumph over it. Originally, the spirit rising from the coffin was inspired by this album cover:



I wanted to show man's ability to transcend over his earthly condition. It started well:



 



But somehow it got lost in the final version:

So we went with scary instead, which worked out well:

Let me give a quick shout out to the people who took my ideas for a cover and made them a reality. First of all thanks to Nate Adams who is perhaps too willing to trust my judgment on matters and tirelessly tries to bring them to life. His blog can be found here: http://nates-art.blogspot.com/
Also thanks to Suzie O'Connell for her graphic work that seems to come effortlessly and adds things I didn't even know I needed. You can find her website here: http://www.indieproud.com/
I feel as if I expanded upon the concepts that were begun in The Amazing Morse, but I also think there’s some grand vision that I want to achieve with the series. There are some deep religious ideas that can play themselves out against the background of a magician/escape artist, his assistant, and the people they encounter. They exist in a word far beyond their abilities to understand, and need to find their own places in the universe. There is nothing supernatural about that, but it can be magical.
You can find my new novel, available for Kindle, here: http://www.amazon.com/Perchance-Dream-Amazing-Morse-ebook/dp/B00F7O5C20/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1379297712&sr=1-3
More formats will be available soon.
 

I've added a little prologue to my debut novel, The Amazing Morse, and wanted to post it somewhere so that anyone who read the book already could have a chance to read it. Any comments or catches on spelling/grammar errors would be appreciated.

Prologue

 

The bell attached to the front door rang, signaling Evelyn’s arrival. This would be Jennifer’s only client today, she had cancelled all the rest. She would have cancelled this one too, but Evelyn simply would not take no for an answer. She had important news to share, needed the wisdom only Jennifer could impart.

It was touching, really, the amount of trust her clients placed in her. But there was nothing she could do for her, nothing she could do for any of them any longer. She had seen their futures and knew she was powerless to protect them.

Jennifer steeled herself for the encounter, attempted to assume some pose that would hide the dread that welled up in her. At length, she forced herself to open the door that separated the room she was in from the spacious foyer where Evelyn waited. Evelyn entered in excitement, the brightness of her mood cutting through the darkness of the room.

“I’m sorry,” said Evelyn. She was wrapped up in her own joy, too much so to notice the horror that the other woman was attempting to conceal. “I know you didn’t want to be bothered,” the words escaped Evelyn’s lips, enthusiasm besting courtesy. “But I just had to share the news with you. It’s maybe the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and I owe it all to you. I just had to thank you for directing me the way you have. And…”

She paused, hoping that she wouldn’t have to ask. But Jennifer sat unresponsive in front of her, barely listening.

“…and I wanted to know if it was as good as it seems. I need your advice, I need to know I’m not rushing into anything. I just need a quick consultation…just in case.”

Evelyn smiled an appeal at Jennifer to no avail. But Jennifer’s enthusiasm would not be denied.

“Oh, please? Just a word. Just a simple yes or no. It’s only that I trust you completely that I ask you.”

Jennifer stared up at the taller woman, prepared herself to tell her whatever needed to be said in order to get her to leave. But when she grabbed the hand that was already being held out to her, the flood of emotions and images she received from the contact was too much to bear. She envisioned terror in Evelyn’s eyes, saw fingers tightening around her neck, felt the savage glee of the man who would soon take her life.

“Run!” Jennifer tore her hand away from Evelyn’s. “Don’t you see? You’re going to die! You’re all going to die!”

Jennifer ran from the room, leaving her client alone in the shadows, confused and frightened by the revelation.

 

Of Artistic Integrity, Dignity, Zombies, and Paris Hilton’s Sex Videos

 

I recently heard another writer talk about how many more hits he gets on his blog every time his subject of conversation is zombies. This got me to thinking about what would attract people to my blog. Is it as simple as mentioning Vampires, Hobbits, Werewolves or Aliens? Or could I get a million eyes upon my blog simply by referencing a famous movie such as Harry Potter, Twilight, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings or the Godfather? Not that I would do such a thing, of course, and if I did, it would only be as an experiment.

After all, it would invariably be a disappointment to whomever stumbled upon my blog to find their favorite movie or television show, such as Fringe, Buffy The Vampire Slayer or Lost was mentioned merely as a way to get someone to click onto my blog.

It would be a cynical ploy to make mention of the Kardashians, Honey Boo Boo, Selina Gomez, Angelina Jolie, Hunter S. Thompson, Brad Pitt, Jennifer Anniston, Jennifer Garner, Jennifer Hudson, Jennifer Lopez, Jennifer Lawrence, Jennifer Jones, or Johnny Depp. The truth is, I’d be more likely to garner negative attention by doing such a thing. Still, I have to admit to a certain amount of curiosity, whether or not I could direct traffic to my blog through such means. I guess another way of going about it would be by checking out what is trending now, like baby pandas, Ben Affleck as Batman, Anthony Weiner, Martin Luther’s I Have A Dream Speech, etc. But the truth is, I’ve never attempted to be a trendy person, and really don’t see much to be gained by associating my novel, The Amazing Morse, with the ephemera that flits past our consciousness briefly and then is never thought of again.

I’d like to think that my name might better stand with the giants of fiction, people such as Jack London, Victor Hugo, William Shakespeare, Joseph Conrad, George Bernard Shaw, or Oscar Wilde, that my work might someday sit on a shelf next to the likes of Brave New World, Pygmalion, The Picture of Dorian Gray, or The Scarlet Letter. But this is an extreme burst of vanity on my part. Truth be told, I’d be content to have my books sitting next to the likes of James Patterson, John Grisham, George Martin, Dan Brown, or Terry Brooks.

I sometimes wonder what kind of person would want to read my book in the first place. My ego says it would be people who have read Plato, Socrates, Erich Fromm or Lao Tzu. Only slightly less egotistical would be to think that those who have the same influences as myself might enjoy my writing. Perhaps those who have read Alan Moore or Steven R. Donaldson might see a little of them in what I do.

In truth, music seems to have been an even bigger influence on my life than books. I can’t help wondering if the works of The Beatles, The Kinks, The Animals, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Yes, and King Crimson have somehow shaped me as an author. Again, I am not name-dropping. If I were, it would be silly to waste space by naming such obscure influences on me as Stackridge, echolyn and Änglagård.

I know that ultimately a writer will be judged by the work he creates and not by the company he keeps. And I know that getting people to my blog is far different than getting anyone to actually read it. Still, the life of an unknown author can make a person feel like a voice in the wilderness. It would be nice to think that there might be easier ways of connecting to an audience. And self-promotion, no matter how unsavory a thing it is, is part of any artist’s job.

And who is Matt Kenseth, anyway, and why is he trending?

Indie and Proud

When I was in the process of writing my first novel, the idea of self-publishing never entered my head. But by the time I had completed it and was wondering what to do with it, self-publishing seemed the obvious choice.

Like a lot of others, I tended to view self-publishing as a route for those who were not good enough to get a publishing deal. This was a bias that had been ingrained in me despite the fact that I have never held contemporary fiction in high regards. I am just as susceptible to lazy thinking as anyone else, and so the idea that acceptance by the authorities equaled quality found its way into my thoughts, despite the fact that my general observations have been the exact opposite. I have always tended toward the independent film or the indie rock band. If I am looking for a book to read, the last thing I would think to do is look on the New York Times Bestsellers List or read some trade publication that is supposed to tell me what is new and important at the moment.

The comparison to music says it all for me. I look at my music collection and find next to nothing from any of the major labels. Surely there are the established classics, The Beatles and The Kinks, just as my bookshelves hold Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky. But when it comes to recent music, bands like Änglagård and Echolyn stand head and shoulders above anything I can find on the radio, despite the obvious lack of resources. Let’s face it, the corporate influence dictates that the central focus be on the bottom line rather than the actual worth of the art being made. Rather than allowing an artist to express his or her opinion, focus groups, spread sheets, and people in cubicles dictate what the final “product” should be.

If you read only the first chapter of my first novel, The Amazing Morse, you will know that I express a dislike for “the corporate mindset that crushed wonder”. Virtually everything you read, see or hear nowadays is delivered through the corporate entertainment machine, or is a reflection of same. While I believe it is still possible for an artist’s voice and vision to get through, it is increasingly unlikely to happen, at least not through the major channels. Corporations rule the way we think today in the same manor the Catholic Church ruled European thought in the Middle Ages. So deeply engrained is the corporate mindset that we are not even aware how much it shapes our perceptions. So deeply engrained is the corporate mindset that I held a bias against the indie writer despite all personal evidence to the contrary.

So I am proud to consider myself an indie writer, happy to sit outside the mainstream and thus be in a position to see and critique the dominant paradigms of our day. My voice is wholly my own, uncensored by any person or persons that are part of the groupthink that is inevitable in our corporate era. Without the voice of the indie, the range of vision for our society will constantly shrink as the variety of voices will be silenced. In the place of innovative filmmaking, you will have a constant barrage of sequels to Adam Sandler films.

Yes, there are obvious advantages of having the financial and promotional backing of an established company, but the corrupting influences are too great.

Perhaps you have found the spelling error I had in the fourth paragraph and thought to yourself: “Strictly amateur. Assuredly, if he had an editor, that would have been corrected.” Well, perhaps it would have been caught. But the tradeoff would be that I would need to be branded as a particular type of author and sold to a particular market. My writing would then have to reflect what the market thinks is hot, rather than what I want to write. I would be just another commodity to be sold on the market. The edge of any point I try to make would have to be softened until it was incapable of offending anybody. It is not my intention to offend, but it is my intention to make a point, to tell the truth as I see it and permit the reader to decide what my opinion is really worth. I do not need nor do I want someone to change my writing in order to maximize profits and appeal to the proper demographics. I just can’t think like that, and if I could, I probably wouldn’t be writing books.

And that is why I am Indie and Proud.