Let The Insanity Begin!!! Installment 1

A little history before we start.

Some of this is still fairly humorous, but some of it is BAD. Not Eric's potty-mouth bad or going on a date with Greta bad or even spilling wine on Talbot's new bespoke suit bad... more like listening to Tiny Tim sing while playing the ukulele bad. I also wrote it when I was in my teens. It was a time when there were these really cool things called Bulletin Board Systems and Birmingham was home to the American Online BBS (before Rocky sold the name to the current America Online) and the Crunchy Frog BBS where folks could connect via 1200 or even 2400 baud modem. I would soon be working at a local comic and games store, Lion & Unicorn, while helping Sean and Genesis Books with his new comics shipment.

I was listening to a lot of Iron Maiden and Information Society. I was big into Star Wars, Star Trek, and Doctor Who... which is all still true... Oh, and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy had just come into my life.

I fell in love with the work of Douglas Adams and I think it kind of shows in what you'll be reading here. So sit back and laugh (either at the humor or the general horribleness) that is...

The Adventures of R.G. Strangemind... and Herbert

Installment 1

It was almost sunrise when the old yellow car pulled into the driveway. The car was so old that no one could remember (or discern) what kind it had been originally nd Herbert, it's driver, wasn't telling. All that mattered was that it drove well enough and that Herbert liked it and as the planet's strongest man what Herbert liked was fairly important. The house at which he had arrived belonged to his best friend R.G. Strangemind, who ironically happened to be the most intelligent man on the Earth.

Herbert had always been in awe of his friend, though distinctly more in awe when at the age of nine and having seen Star Wars for the first time R.G. had been the only person on his block to build a working blaster, in fact he had been the only person to ever build a working blaster and this in and of it self set him high in Herbert's estimation

Stepping out of the car and attempting to ignore the tremedous creak, Herbert walked up the driveway to R.G.'s door. Like many other things (among them soup that you can cook in the microwave and in fact microwaves and gadgets that in general do neat and interesting things), R.G.'s house posed a mental image that Hervert was never quite able to grasp. He could never get past the door. He understood that the door was made of a new metal alloy that R.G. had invented and he even further understood that it was the entry way to his friend residence. What he did not understand was where R.G.'s house actually was and how his friend hid all of that neat stuff behind a door standing alone in an otherwise vacant lot. Shrugging his shoulders, Herbert knocked on the door then opened it.

"Are you ready for work?" he bellowed in his uniquely loud voice. R.G. was a tall, wild eyed, lanky individual whose hair often reminded people of a cat being electrocuted. He wore a white lab coat and he carried a piece of toast in his right hand. He was the complete opposite of Herbert, who was the perfect image of masculine strength.

"You are late!" screeched R.G. in his mouse-like voice, "What is your reason?"

Herbert spoke sheepishly and with much shuffling of his feet, "I couldn't find my keys."

At this R.G. became angry. "And where were your' keys," he in an impatient but amused tone.

"In the ignition," replied Herbert.

R.G. was so angry at this moment that the toaster decided to explode, quite surprising the table upon which it had been sitting. Herbert leapt back with the speed and agility of a tiger, avoiding a flying piece of toast and tripping over the coffee table. R.G., however, was hit by the deadly piece of breakfast paraphernalia and was knocked to the floor.

"What happened," asked Herbert.

"The toaster exploded, you idiot," replied R.G. "What else would send toast flying all over the room?" With that episode at an end and with the extinguishing of a small table in the kitchen, the unlikely pair set of for work.

R.G. worked at a nuclear power plant and Herbert was his assistant. R.G. was very careful, however, only to let Herbert perform the most insignificant tasks (flipping the light switch on, emptying the waste basket, etc.). Today, Herbert task was to push the blue button that started the generators testing sequence. Unfortunately, there were two blue buttons on the console and Herbert, afraid to ask which button,
pushed them both. Herbert, who didn't notice his mistake, reacted by smiling and thought that the flashing red light and the blaring sirens, were new additions to the testing sequence. R.G., who noticed Herbert's error reacted by screeming and making terrible remarks about Herbert's parentage. The Nuclear Reactor and accompanying research complex also noticed Herbert's error and reacted by blowing itself and everything in a very wide area quite to pieces.

At this moment several not so important thing happened: a large gray space ship kidnapped a great number of purple things with a lot of teeth, that didn't exist, On the planet Earth a small nuclear reactor exploded blowing up everything around it for miles(Fortunately is was soon reconstructed along with its inhabitants and the surrounding area, by a little blue alien in a large gray space ship), A large number of nonexistent purple thing with multiple teeth escaped onto a small blue green planet called Earth, and a little boy by the name of Renaldo, ran happily out into the street just in time to be runover by a Mack truck. The truck, however, upon remembering that it had been blown up earlier that morning, quietly exploded.

R.G. awoke and hit Herbert. R.G. hit Herbert again. Herbert did nothing. R.G. picked up a hammer from his tool chest and was about to use it on Herbert's head when he realized something. He realized that they were alive and that they shouldn't be. R.G. dropped the hammer, which unfortunately landed on Herbert's head. R.G., not noticing where the hammer had landed, began pacing the room. Herbert woke up and
picked up the hammer.

"You shouldn't leave your tools lying around, R.G."

"Yeah, Geek," exclaimed the hammer.

"It's alive, R.G." yelled Herbert,"It's alive!"

R.G. left the room quite oblivious to Herbert's rantings. Herbert dropped the talking hammer and followed R.G. out of the room, ignoring the ravings of the hammer, who was upset about having been dropped.

As Herbert walked outside he noticed R.G. standing in the road. Suddenly they were surrounded by Purple thing with a lot of teeth (that didn't exist). Herbert didn't whether they existed or not, they looked dangerous enough to him. Just the creatures were about to reach them, there was a flash of blinding blue light and a large gray spaceship was now overhead. The nonexistant purple thing (with as lot of teeth) leapt at R.g. and Herbert. Herbert yelled as one of the creatures swung at him, missing his head by only a hairsbreath. R.G., being a far less courageous creature retreated violently to the ground, unconscious. Herbert, seeing his fallen friend, charged one of the ceatures in a last ditch effort for victory. It is was at that time, that there was a blinding flash and everything went black.

End Part 1

See? Now don't you feel tons better about your own writing? :) Tune in next week for more of what I was doing in the 90's and additional examples of me horribly aping Douglas Adams.... by which I mean Installment 2 of The Adventures of R.G. Strangemind and... Herbert.

Note: This first appeared in Birmingham Telecommunications News - Volume 4, Issue 3 and remains Copyright 1991 by Jeremy Lewis

The Thursday Update

Looking for updates on my writing and other miscellaneous wackiness? One place you can find them is right here on Thursdays. Even if all I post about is the status of the current work in progress or what I'm going to have coming up on Friday.

Project 'Mancer Statistics:

Current word count: 21,894
Estimated Percentage Complete: 29.2%
Project Completion Date: No later than 12:01 AM August 1st, 2010.
Current chances of hitting that target: Looking Good.

I'm even working on my John Paul Courtney short story and my Talbot short story a little.

Upcoming Releases:

Staked (French translation) from Bragelonne: TBA
Staked (Italian translation) from Newton Compton: TBA

ReVamped in mass market paperback from Pocket Books: October 2010
ReVamped (French translation) from Bragelonne: TBA
ReVamped (Italian translation) from Newton Compton: TBA

Crossed in mass market paperback from Pocket Books: Early 2011

But now (BUM BUM BUM) for an update on what's coming up tomorrow...

I was recently reminded of a sci-fi comedy serial I wrote for a local BBS magazine back in the late 80's/early 90's. And because I think there are a few laughs to be had by doing so and because it serves as an object lesson in how a writer's craft develops over time AND because I think there is always value in being able to laugh at once's self, for the next few Friday's, I'll be posting episodes of the teenaged J. F. Lewis's attempt to write like Douglas Adams.

Here's the first sentence:

"It was almost sunrise when the old yellow car pulled into the driveway."

To read that again as well as the rest of the first installment, you'll just have to check back tomorrow.... or you might prefer to run screaming from the internet. Your choice. ;)

The Reign of Darkness Will Continue As Scheduled

I'm ba-ack!

There are new things coming up on the blog and I'm not going to tell you what they are exactly. But beginning next week prepare for updates at least three times a week beginning with my new Monday feature... Morbid Mondays. Each Monday, I'll blog about something morbid in a hopefully humorous way. Next Monday's post will be about one of the many ways I don't want to die.

Oh... and did I mention that one day next week I'll even be posting some free fiction?

See you then. :)

Threepio?!? Where could he be?

"Where could he be?!"

Though the conditions in which some of my readers might be asking the above regarding yours truly are likely far less dire than those experienced by Luke Skywalker when he shouted those words from within the grinding bowels of one of the Deathstar's many garbage smashers, it's still a fair question. Part of the answer revolves around any number of real world day to day normal life issues which I fear would bore the heck out of any blog readers, but the more interesting (to most of you) answer is: I've been writing. Some of it has been Eric/Void City related writing and some of it not. But for those of you who want an update, we'll start with status of Void City:

VOID CITY, BOOK 3 (Currently entitled CROSSED) has been turned in to my agent, passed along to and purchased by Jen Heddle over at Pocket Books, and I am currently awaiting my revision letter letting me know what Jen would like done to it before you guys see it. Trust me, you want Jen to look at it first. Without Jen's feedback, the Eric/Talbot/J'iliol'lth aerial fight over Void City from ReVAMPED would never have been written nor would readers have ever gotten a chance to meet Esteban (Lady Gabriella's lover)... just as without Shawna, my agent, the Werewolves On Ice hockey fight from STAKED would never have made it to the page either.

The first draft of VOID CITY, BOOK 4 is currently around 14% completed and I'm writing it pretty much simultaneously with another project that I'm really afraid to say much about... not because it's some big media tie-in (it isn't), but because I'm so attached to it that I'm a wee bit paranoid. So, for now, I'll refer to it as PROJECT 'MANCER and assuming it sells, you'll get to find out for which word that lonely little apostrophe is standing in.

PROJECT 'MANCER is actually more than one project or at least more than one story. So far, it consists of a roughly 9,000 word novelette (which I've just sent off to the first prospective market), several short stories in various stages of completion, and a proposal for several novels, the first of which is roughly 25% complete, has a synopsis, and will be heading out to my agent tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed on this one, please. I really want it to happen and have spent the last few years tweaking the way this particular form of 'mancy works and thinking up the character arcs as well as plots for at least four novels... and a fair amount of speculation about how to approach a fifth novel and further if I were allowed to write them and people wanted to read them.

Backburner Projects (which doesn't mean I love them less, it's just that there are only so many hours in a day and I spend a lot of those at the day job anyway):

GRUDGEBEARER, my epic fantasy project remains unsold and at this point I'm considering another revision to pull one of my favorite characters forward into the first third of the novel with the rest of the "cool kids". After all, I already know what she was doing then and it might be interesting to show that too.

URBAN FANTASY PROJECT 3: THE ONE WITH DEMONS IN, could actually be submitted to my agent as a partial and a synopsis, but I think it's still cooking. The cast has changed a great deal and though the plot remains the same, it's very important to me that I have the powers of the main character just right and that all the metaphysical stuff is ironed out before I bombard Shawna with it or commit to finishing it.

YOUNG ADULT PROPOSAL #1 is basically dead, having been ruled "Too icky" by my agent.

YOUNG ADULT PROPOSAL #2 is still underway albeit slowly.

YOUNG ADULT PROPOSAL #3 is basically in the same boat and #2.

MY HOMICIDAL CYBORG LOVE STORY is actually about 13,000 words already and has something of a synopsis, but I'm still doing some world building and fleshing things out.

And last (not really last, but the last I'll mention in this post), but certainly not least… no one from MARVEL COMICS has offered to let me write my reinvention of DEVIL DINOSAUR & MOON BOY, but I've actually written scripts for the first two issues (in case they ever ask or I'm trapped with Joe Quesada on a desert island) and they totally kick ass. :) Seriously.

(Note: I seem to be a little better about updating my FaceBook fan page than I am when it comes to blogging, so if you want more regular updates, you might want to join the fan site. I seem to be a little faster when it comes to responding to messages there, too. You can even friend me if you want. I'm the tall blond guy standing next to Darth Goofy and looking a bit silly.)

Bitten By Swag!

The nice folks over at Bitten By Books are giving away free swag to folks who show up and comment/ ask questions/chat etc. Show up for free stuff!

I'm logging in and out answering questions, too.

:)

Chocolatey Badness!

My post about coming up with "For Want of Chocolate" is up over at Edmund Schubert's blog. You can read it here. It begins: "Something is terribly wrong with Edmund."

Vampires + Chocolate = Mayhem

My first ever short story in the Void City universe is up in this month's IGMS. It's about a newly turned vampire named Haley realizing she can no longer eat chocolate. A Godiva store is involved. If you like the books, you'll probably get a kick out of the story. If you haven't tried the books yet, at $2.50 an issue, IGMS is a cheaper way to give my writing a try.

It even has a cool illustration by Kevin Wasden.

:)

This is the one that actually got me (jokingly) threatened by another author. For more about the threat and the making of "For Want of Chocolate" check out Edmund Schubert's blog Side-Show Freaks where he'll be posting an essay from me about that pretty soon.