Blarggh!

Attack of the Yeti is finally finished. I want to thank you all for you patience. I really hope you enjoy it. For those of you who haven’t read Son of Santa, you can read it here.

Finishing this story brings a huge sense of relief for me. It was the last thing to write before I could start seriously working on the Special Editions. More info on them as time goes on. I’m still not sure how it is going to work, but they will for sure be out for the Holiday season so you can buy a bunch of copies for Christmas presents. But in the meantime, please enjoy Attack of the Yeti.

Good news everybody! You can now read Happy Valley, Son of Santa and The Tumbleweed Dossier online for FREE! Great news, right? I thought you would like that. I uploaded the text to the original content side of FanFiction.net, FictionPress.com. I did this rather than load it onto the blog do expand my audience a little bit. Plus, Fiction Press’s engine is perfect for online reading. You don’t have to be a member to read the stories, but you do if you want to leave reviews. You may experience a 403 error right away, but if that happens just click refresh once or twice and the page should load. Hard copies and downloadable PDFs are forthcoming. A few other things need to be done before I go live with those, but it shouldn’t be too much longer.

I want to say this here for the online versions because there wasn’t really a place to do it on Fiction Press. The following people deserve my deep thanks for their contributions and support during the writing these stories. Al Creed, Chris Roberts, Danny Chadwick, Lissa Stinson, Melissa Poole, Sarah Day and Vincent Ferrari. You guys are the absolute best. Without you, these stories would not be what they are. Happy Valley is dedicated to Grandma Joyce. Son of Santa is dedicated to Mom and Dad. The Tumbleweed Dossier is dedicated to Abbi.

Okay, now that all that is over with, on with the stories!

For the longest time, The Tumbleweed Dossier did not have a cover gallery because there was only one cover. But since I decided to give the “classic” tale a facelift for the upcoming special editions, there are now a few covers for you to look at. And before you say anything about covers 3 and 4, just know that there was a reason I went with cover 1, and that reason was that it wasn’t covers 3 or 4. Just sayin’.

The Tumbleweed Dossier Cover Gallery

My pal, Al Creed, has been drawing web comics for 6 years now. Quite frankly, he is the best artist the medium has to offer. Head on over and check out TCR Comix, then come back and tell me how right I was.

Happy Anniversary, Al! Many happy returns.

Hey everybody. I’m still alive over here. Sorry for the lack of updates. Let me give you the rundown on what has been happening as far as my creative endeavors go.

Attack of the Yeti – I finally got this Son of Santa short off the ground. It took me a long time to realize what this story should be, but I think I finally got something solid going. Hopefully it should be done before June. If it isn’t, it will be done shortly after that. Can’t give you an exact date, sorry. But it will definitely be done sooner rather than later.

Happy Valley Movie – No change from the last time I heard about it. Things should still be on track for filming to begin in early 2010.

Plain City Movie – Things are still on track to start shooting this summer.

New Novel – Okay, this is where things get a little iffy. I still don’t have a solid idea for the 2009 novel, but I want to start writing it in July. July 2007 is when I started writing Son of Santa and July 2008 is when I started writing The Tumbleweed Dossier, and both projects were done and available before November. But this year I want to do things differently. Remember how I bailed out of the serial novel project in January? I want to redeem myself by making this year’s novel an online serial, only I would do things differently than I had planned for the January serial. Firstly, IF I did this, there would only be one update a month. Something like the last Friday of every month there would be an update of about ten thousand or so words, the equivilent of an Act/Stave/Part of my previous books. There would be six parts in total and it would run until the end of the year. I’m not commiting to this right now, though, because any time I commit publicly to something it ends up falling on its face. But it is an interesting notion, seeing as how I have been able to come up with a ten thousand word short every month since March. That amount of words at that pace seems just about right. We’ll see where I am with all this after AotY.

And that’s about it. I’m going to be going overseas in June, so you probably won’t hear a lot from me on the website until July. It’s a living, y’know. What can I say? If you have any suggestions or just want to tell me I suck, the comments are always open.

The Strange Case of Felix Faraday is finally complete. For those of you who read part one last week, hit Ctrl+F and search for My Name is Ozymandias, King of Kings to be taken to where the story left off. For the rest of you, you can read it from the beginning.

Like Scruffy’s Revenge did with Happy Valley, this story contains spoilers from The Tumbleweed Dossier. Those who want to read TTD first, I advise you to click, buy, read then read this story. If not, enjoy!

The Strange Case of Felix Faraday

You want to write fan fiction, yes? You totally adore the characters you want to write for and want to get to know them better by writing a story for them, yes? Your only problems are that fan fiction is a joke in the literary world, those pesky copyright laws, and the fact the owners of the intellectual property wouldn’t read your story if you sent them a hundred copies and a scented candle? Three for three! » Continue Reading

Hey everybody, everybody. My mom always used to say “If Al Creed jumped off a cliff, would you do it too?” And I can honestly say that if Al jumped off a cliff, I would too, because I don’t want to live in a world without Al Creed.

Anyway, I totally stole this idea from him. There’s this website called FaceBook that everybody loves, and you can become fans of things on it. So I figured (after Al had already done it) “Hey! I can use the FaceSpace to sell books and to let all my adoring fans tell me how great I am!” Clicky-click to become a fan. All the cool kids are doing it.

Oh. Also: new story on Monday. It’s TTD related, so I hope you’re all excited.

Okay, so I know you are all wondering what’s next? How is SRD going to keep us glued to his website in anxious, grueling, unrelenting anticipation of what is to come?! Well, if you will shut up for a second, I’ll tell you.

Cory Doctorow said “The reality is that the biggest threat to book-writers and publishers is that their works are simply invisible to people who get all their information from the Internet. …[The] biggest threat as an author isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity.” He said this as a way of explaining why he released his novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, under a Creative Commons license, which essentially means he gave it away for free online. My books, as awesome as they are, are still an obscurity. I want to change that. Here is what I have decided to do.

1) Write one more 50k word story in the style of Happy Valley, Son of Santa and The Tumbleweed Dossier.
2) Write a bonus short story related to each of the four books. (Scruffy’s Revenge, the Happy Valley related story, is already finished.)
3) Publish special editions of all these books with the short stories as bonus material. This will be the only printed edition of the fourth book.
4) Make the text of these special editions available on this website, as well as free downloadable PDFs.
5) End the printing of any and all previous editions of these titles.
and 6) Retire this format.

That is the plan and I am committed to it. This will not be easy, nor will it take place immediately. I hope to have all this accomplished by the end of the summer. Hopefully, this will help me raise out of obscurity a tiny bit. “But how will you make money off this?” Good question, stupid! Here’s an answer! There is no guarantee that this will generate any income. I am going to set up a Tipjar, and hopefully people who still like the old fashioned way of reading books will still buy the hard copy versions of the new special editions.

“So, what’s your end game?” Best case scenario: SRD.com takes off and the special editions become online bestsellers. Letters from agents and publishers fill up my inbox, begging me to write something exclusive for them. If any of that happens, my wildest expectations will be exceeded. Worst case: Everything stays the same and all the hard work was for naught. I really can’t lose, as the only thing I will be losing is time, which I probably would have wasted anyway. I’ll keep you all updated as things move along. Like I said, I’m hoping to have all this ready before the end of the summer.

Okay, now for some movie related news.

Happy Valley movie: No change. Things are apparently still on target for filming to begin in Spring 2010. I still have very little to do with the project other than provide the source material.

Plain City: This is the script I wrote for my brother, Danny, earlier this year. It is going to be a short film that spoofs overly complicated television dramas, specifically Twin Peaks and 24. Rehearsals for this thing start next weekend. Again, I have very little to do with the project besides having written the script.

So, that’s it for right now. Sorry I didn’t do a super-special April Fool’s Day prank, but you probably got enough of that all over the internet anyway. Anything I would have come up with would have been grossly disappointing.

As many of you may or may not be aware, today is my six-year anniversary of joining the massive, self-obseesed internet population. I started out on March 28, 2003 with a little Webspawner Page, and after about a month of that I bought my own domain and moved over to Yahoo Webhosting. In late 2006 I moved over here to Blogs-About over a, shall we say, misunderstanding with Yahoo. I have always had fun with this website. In the past, the main features of the website included my inane political ramblings, my podcast, and my infrequent webcomics. Since the election, I have decided to put the podcast and the column on hold. I have an employment issue that makes saying anything I want about whoever I want something of a problem. I don’t want any trouble, so the political stuff will have to wait until at least March of 2010. I have no excuse for the webcomics, though. Even though I have been told that they are probably the best sprite comics on the web, I can’t muster up the creativity required for them to not suck enough to stand out from the ever-growing dung heap of un-funny sprite comics. You can, however, still see all the old archives of them on SmackJeeves. As for the rest of the back material (articles and podcasts), I still have it stored on an external hard drive, but have decided not to repost it. There are a couple of reasons for this. 1) It’s a pain in the ass, and 2) Some of it is really bad and/or does not reflect how I feel about things any more and I am embarrassed buy it. Not all of it, just some.

So with none of my back material to back me up, I am moving forward from this day on! It is a brand new day, and a brand new blog (sort of.) Today represents new beginnings. The focus of this website will be to promote my fiction and sell books. And in that spirit, I have a couple of awesome Happy Valley-related announcements.

Annoucement the first: Happy Valley has been officially optioned to be adapted into film. You heard right, folks. There is going to be a Happy Valley movie. My good friends over at Solar Shock Pictures expressed interest in taking on the project last fall, and we signed an agreement last week. As it stands right now (it could change later) I have very little to do with the project. My only official jobs are to criticize and complain about everything, which I am GREAT at. From my understanding there will probably be a script by late summer and filming will begin in Spring 2010. I will keep everybody posted on the progress of the project.

Announcement the second: Scruffy’s Revenge, a Happy Valley related short story, has been completed and is available for your immediate and cost-free consumption. Some of you may remember the first half of this story being posted on Halloween. Well, I actually finished the story. Personally, I love it and want to share it with the world. I must warn you that Scruffy’s Revenge contains several spoilers if you have not yet read Happy Valley. This was done so that those unfamiliar with the events of HV would know what the hell was going on. I think that this story may be the best thing I have ever written to date.

You probably aren’t asking yourself “What can I do to help SRD and his forward-looking revival?” but I am going to tell you anyway.

1) If you haven’t already, buy my books and read them. 2) Post reviews on Lulu and Amazon. Let everybody know that these books are awesome. 3) Comment here on the website. But don’t comment just for the hell of it, say something interesting, insightful or fun. Anything else is just, you know, dumb. And 4) Invite your friends. The more the merrier.

Now, I know for a FACT that some of you are saying “Well, gee, SRD. You’ve said you have had new beginnings before, and you totally flake out and hit your DELETE EVERYTHING NOW button. What makes this time different?” It’s true, I have attempted to jumpstart/reboot the website before. But here is why you should trust me this time. 1) While I will update regularly, I won’t just post stuff just for the sake of posting it. You will only get updates when I have something to say/announce. Trust me, it’s better that way. 2) Actually, that’s the only reason. But it’s a damn good reason!

So, here’s to looking forward and whatever! Huzzah for the internet!