Worried about Barnes and Noble

Got a gift card from Barnes and Noble...
It's good I guess, I like that bookstore/coffeshop.

Problem is - its better competitor, Borders did that a lot before closing.  They also did all the same mistakes that Hastings did and now B&N does also.

Mostly - KIDS...

Really we have 1/3 of the store walled off into some kind of Kindergarten PAYground.  Only see kids there as part of school planned events.  But 1/3 of the store where an adult can not go unless accompanied by a child or at least an employee.  Really, let's say I got the gumption to read Peter Pan, Pinocchio or Winnie the Pooh as an adult, maybe buy a good quality hardbound deluxe book...  And even later at night when its empty dare to sneak in to look for it - "Can I HELP YOU!?!?" suddenly an employee with a forced sh-t eating grin bothering you like you are Chester the Molester ready to put a bunch of kids into a burlap sack and take them away like Krampus should the rotten brats...

On that note, 'rotten brats' well another few isles beyond the kids section is devoted to TOYS.  That's so adults can buy them as gifts I guess.  Some neat toys, "Why didn't they have toys like this when I was a kid!?"  Also stuff like gak and slime that kids love to THROW.  I've found Gak/Slime all over books.  But most are too juvenile so you only buy them if as a gift for a kid.

I also like the "Vinyl" section.  Why spend 1 second on Youtube or at worst subscribe to GooglePlay when you can spend $20-$40 and load a plastic record?  But Hipsters - the modern fake beatniks, fake hippies are programmed to like it, maybe it does sell, I sure hope so.

I do like the board game/rpg section but little time to play them.

Now, not being pessimistic - I hope B&N finds a way to keep in business.  I'll go there but still support my local bookstore when they open up again and they might.

BUT - here's my advice/suggestion/plea

1 - unless it is doing REAL GOOD please DITCH the kids stuff.  Really, I'm hardcore "Bohemian" who likes to occasionally sit at a bookstore/coffeshop with my latte going over notes on my latest novel - really fun having "Gak" thrown in there by a screaming brat and the staff is so dumb they don't even give me another one without me buying it, too busy talking to their friends.
2 - Get more Magazines.  Different distributors.  You stores use the same distributor now, and lots of stuff save places like Seattle are excluded.  Work out sane deals so they can be in different regions.  In my town we used to have a store that almost specialized in periodicals and it was nearly as big as a Barnes and Noble, tons of different and mostly short-lived magazines - they did pretty good but the owners retired and kids weren't interested in continuing.  But I know you could get thrice the selection if  you wanted to, like really all those 'arts and crafts' magazines that DON'T sell, all the "Christian" and Agitprop "Mann Coulter" piles of books gathering dust... You got the room even without messing with #1...
3 - more books.  Don't bloat the sections, go for different books.  Social, political in a radical sense, better tech section for the MAKE/STEM crowd.  More scifi/fantasy that isn't excreted in the SHi-TOR - on that note... see next.
4 - Indie books - work with places like Lulu to make print on demand limited releases and direct to bookstore order.  NO "Deal" required with any major publisher.  There's lots of neat fantasy, scifi, literature that's written by people who were just turned down for no good reason or didn't bother to try after the 30th rejection but then sell a lot of books online.  Give the tired, boring big publishers a run for their money.  I'm not saying break the bank making someone's "Look mommy I maded my fiwst novel!" project go nationwide...  But a few random printings, different ones different bookstores, perhaps print extra if a title starts selling, and if people miss it they can ask another one be printed...?  Leave some "reading copies" marked as such that if ditched get sold cheap.  Likewise books give royalties if sold but if stolen, dumped no royalty just issues with printing cost I'm sure can work with Lulu or other Print On Demand operations to make manageable.
5 - on the "Indie" please do be nice to "local authors" even if they don't sign up with major chains.  Never asked at B&N but the other guys Borders refused due to not being part of a chain.  I love "By local author" but only if signed with Tor or whatever - NOT.

RIP, Mr Stan Lee

Its in the news Stan Lee died today.
Doubtless there will be far better eulogies for him.
Like many I was a fan of him, even after I stopped reading Marvel comics regularly.

Now, while any death is tragic he was still very active into his later years and died at 95 making comics...  Far worse lives and deaths out there.

Myself I'm practicing comic art today...

Excelsior, Mr Lee!

Cover experiment for Shah-Azir

An experiment in digital painting - had hardware issues but oh well. Trying to imitate 70s Pyramid book covers, moderately successful - and the ink/simple color of early Dillon artwork - pretty crude there, oh well.

Book I'll someday write in the stories of Shah-Azir Exile of Irem. This story will bridge the earlier, murderous amoral Shah-Azir with his later self a more principled mercenary.
As it is I'll probably release it as a comic book though I've written the first chapter and much of the major plot. Maybe both. It'll come after "At the Hand of the Lizard King" this image done a while ago with computers - maybe try to paint but make Dillon/Pepper like?  (Leo and Dione Dillon and Bob Pepper for the sincerest form of flattery)

Won't ruin the plot to those that later see this and hopefully become interested.  However, the plot is not always the story...

The best movie never made

This is an old topic - and I don't give a F---



Way way back there was this project to make a movie of a suddenly popular Science Fiction novel, Dune.  Lots of awesome names.  H.R. Giger  Moebius Dali Pink Floyd...

And headed by filmmaker/writer Alejandro Jodorowsky.
In short, Jodorowsky's Dune project.
 "Best movie never made" look it up - worthy movie to buy on GooglePlay

Sadly, it got cut and later on they made that 82 movie that was awesome but somehow a bit diminished...

Then the SciFi channel made a longer running series.  That adapted the book better but was dry as the sands of Arrakis, something the 82 movie wasn't...  Both fell far short of Jodorowsky's vision.

The thing with his movie:

A - it would have been a ruinous nightmare, destroyed at the box office, destroyed whatever theatre made it.

B - it should have been made.


Oh, it would have been a 14 hour movie.  As reviled short term but long term brilliant as "Greed".  It would have deviated from the novel, but captured its spirit the same way the 82 Conan movie with the Governator starring as him.  Not REH's Conan, but true Blood and Thunder and helped keep REH's works alive by drawing many people to him.


This movie...  I can only imagine if made.

I imagine my Father dragging me to it.  There'd be a "Cult" following of the movie, the reels "Ordered to be destroyed" rescued by fanatic fans.  Later they'd buy huge 100lb "Blocks" of Laserdiscs and even later get a suitcase size VHS collection, a big box DVD collection, finally a digital omnibus, likely sold on several 32 Gigabyte SD cards...  (as I write this you can get a 128Gig SD card cheap like $20, I meant a few years back)


But it wouldn't be the movie, it'd be like "Rocky Horror Picture Show" - the cult around the movie.  There'd be Dune costumes, likely rooms setup in Arabesque setup.  We'd watch the movie for hours, have an intermission to eat and stretch out and bratty kids like me would play with each other, looking like some wild swirl of crazy Arab kids (this is alternative universe 80s I imagine this) then back to another showing, another intermission, another showing, then we'd go to sleep in a room of bean bags and cots...  Several days...  Well visitation contract I'm in Dad's household for a while, and I do that or we go to church and church camp...really debatable...

I'd probably not have appreciated it back then as much as I should have.  My early sophomoric self was skeptical of Dune.  Yes, I read even as a young, bratty kid, including science fiction/fantasy works.  As science fiction it'd fail the Gernsback/Campbell era - it's essentially "Bolognium" (1) to max powered by magic and G-d...   Makes even "Star Wars" more plausible - the latter being a decadent near Level 4 Civilization that is retrograde and pretend to be a near Level 3...

BUT - as storytelling, analogy, vision, message it's perfect...  I mean, I have strong issues with the "New Wave" scifi which this is one of the champions of, but rather its with what it mutated into.  As an adult I do recognize its brilliance.

In this alternative history I'd be eagerly going back to the "Dune Parties" dressed appropriately, having read the novels fully and ready to discuss, play act, etc.

So, what do I think of the new movie upcoming...?

Sorry, but I am a bit skeptical.  I've seen nothing but any memory of past years swallowed, chewed up, regurgitated or excreted.  It's insane.  They do it again and again, even when they flop one after another.


Now, times change and move on.

And I think Jodorosky did best by himself using the obsession of years of his life preparing for the movie to make his own lifetime work - the Incal series - not as famous as Dune but science fiction of a theme both tributing and transcending...

 Not going to waste my life pining for what should have been.


Just putting this message out to seize the moment and do your best to do what you can when the moment is right, be it art, a project or anything that needs to be done - and if you sanely can go out of your way to help if something is right.  The world is made a better place for it.



1 - Bolognium is a Larry Niven term.  Look it up if you care.

Unleash the Legions of Polypropylene!!!

Raaarrrggg!!!!

Just a silly here - and this image is sourced from one of my favorite blogs - "Fantasy Toy Soldiers" - a site devoted to cataloging this wonderful sub-facet of culture.  Way back as a kid I loved these things and it was fun finding out how much I missed.

Warning!
Fantasy Toy Soldiers blog can cause a drain on the pocket via Ebay...

One thing I'd like to do - and I'm posting this to hope someone can help - is to make my OWN "Fantasy Toy Soldiers".  That is a "Death on the M'Kunga River" set with cardstock jungles, plastic hollow rocks for buildings, the sacrifical statue, lots of characters for Rexx, the Professor and his daughter, tons of Cannibals, etc.  I'd love to make that and sell on my websites or list on ebay for sale, etc.

Now - I have:

1 - the artistic/creative ability to make the figures.  I could mold in sculpey or sculpt in Z-brush.
2 - the shop skills (well I'd have to buy a welding torch) to make molds - some sacrificial wax casting, plaster of paris, aluminum - to make clamshell trees.
3 - printers/printing services to get the cardboard cut outs and boxes made - thank the Internet - #4
4 - the Internet to buy the plastic and to market it.


What I need is:

A small scale jet molder for plastic.  I look on ebay and find things the size of my house for $20K - good if I wanted to make a MILLION sets a day...  Left to rot when they sent the factory to CHINA.  However, I know from seeing it there used to be desktop sized devices for injecting plastic into molds.  As a bratty kid in the 70s, being told to wait in the corner as Dad talked with some guys making it - they didn't want me to burn or crush my hands, and I might have so good advice.

Now I do NOT mean those pieces of garbage that have a heater and a hand crank handle.  Expensive, you'll waste 70% of material, I could rig that myself.

These things were the size of a desk.  Had 2 chambers for plastic so you could add to one then use another while waiting for the plastic to heat, and/or do dual color stuff.  Air compressor.  Electric heater and motor for injector.  Clamps and injector.  Kind of the "3d Printer" of the 70s - but you made the design by hand

Oh, and a 3d printer wouldn't help.  Well it'd make a "Death on the M'Kunga River" playset (imagine the image but jungles, cannibals, African explorers) cost $300 break even with long waits to print and the thing breaking from overwork versus $50 or less even if I want to profit and being able to make a few dozen in a few hours or less and only need to overstock if I have to pre-order the prints for the cardboard cutout/boxes.  And take forever to make.  A few of them - in the $1000 range  - I might use to print out the 3d models if I make them 3d but need a blank to cast for the clamshell mold for injection - those "GlueGuns on an axis" don't cut it for miniatures.



I'm not asking for charity, save maybe someday someone reading my stuff or skipping blogs knows what I'm talking about and points to where I might find it.  Hopefully in a few years I'll make as a gag but a serious one playsets/toys based on my stories to promote them and ask for $ in a way that isn't just charity, like special toys and badges for crowdfund projects and such.



Now, yes I could go to Alibaba...
Or, given its me, INDIA
And get these things made.

I'd rather have it a "Made in the USA" thing.  And be able to almost casually make figures, buildings, space ships in RL and sell them online as part of my writing someday.

Getting the party started...

Greetings, friends, sorry for the abrupt interruption.

I go by "Maxx Feral" obviously a pen name.  Been writing stories for years, not much publication but don't care.  Now self-publishing works and making a blog to express myself a bit and hopefully develop a rapport with some fans.

I'm a fan of pulps and fantasy/science fiction as was dominate in the past.  I like warped, pulpy stories.  Some I'll post for free.  Some on Drivethrufiction/lulu for people to buy if they wish.

Why you should support me:

1 - Well you'll be reading enough of my stuff for free so if you like my works, and I'll do my best to make the first few pages readable in any sale product so you'll know if you'll want it.  Please support me buy buying a story once in a while:-)  

2 - You vote with your dollars for what you like, versus buying what the publishers decide to put on the shelves from a very huge pile of "I wanna be the next Martin, Tolkien, Rowling..." manuscripts.  I don't ever expect to be "The next...." coz I'm not a hack.  Oh, writers should stick together, I'll avoid like the black death berating any other writer as a hack, though I think they'll call me "Pulpy" and whatever.  I'll focus on putting out as many stories as I can till I drop dead and Inshallah (If God wills it - a fav phrase from some overseas friends) I'll be able to quit "The day job" forever and frequently travel back to India and other places!

3 - I have a motto "Death, Death DEATH to P.C." and I don't mean I'm a Mac user.  

P.C. = "Political Correctness".  

IMO Political Correctness is being on an ocean liner and you go below deck and find the crew sealing the pressure relief valve on the ship's boiler because someone complained they couldn't stand the whistle.  And the ship is running on it's emergency backup engine while its two house sized engines are dead due to non-maintenance because the investors would panic if they showed a slow profit despite constant "$1/Day" ticket sales for a luxury cruise ship.So, indie writer, doesn't want to sell out, likes pulp, hates political correctness.