Hi there fellow Massassians,

My next (SELF-PUBLISHED lulz) book Double Five is coming out on April 20, 2014.

It is a collection of 10 short stories about 20k words in length total, and will be available in electronic formats for $3.99 from Smashwords and Amazon (less than a chai latte at at a coffee shop).

Each story will come with an introduction.

These are the stories it will contain:

1) A Story About a Man and a Horse

This story is about a man, a horse, and The Devil.

2) The Bright Side of Kibou

Every thirty-six months, The Empire sends a ship to the distant planet of Kibou to relieve archivists who observe and record facts about the young civilization that has emerged on the planet. When Lemrin’s wife’s ex-boyfriend, an archivist stationed on Kibou, fails to report, Lemrin knows they’re in a world of trouble.

3) Only Light

Space travelling mushroom spores leave their system of origin in order to colonize other worlds; when they encounter Earth, they try to form a symbiotic relationship with its dwellers.

4) Today Before Tomorrow

In The Tower, each individual is trained from birth to perform a specific task to serve the greater good; once a person reaches adulthood, they must submit to a daily mandatory memory wipe. One such individual can’t help thinking something is seriously wrong with the way her world works.

5) Even in Death

Another day, another office, another boring conversation . . . or is it? This story has zombies in it.

6) The Wonderland Syndrome

The action begins in a stormy fortification. A blind golddigger and an athletic assassin are attracted to each other. Unfortunately, she is abducted by a rogue alien. After everything, they go to another galaxy together.

7) The Art of Exploitation

A young woman gets hired to shoot a porno flick by a team of snuff film ethusiasts who use an advanced android to inflict terrible suffering upon their victims. What the pornographers don’t know is that the young woman already has a job.

8) Bend Reality

When an artist’s paintings start to come to life, he is faced with a terrible choice: abandon his art, or abandon all reason and sanity.

9) The Chinese Chef was a Hologram

Falco is a freelance designer working on a contest submission, but no matter what he tries, he feels it’s uninspired until an INSPIRE ME NOW ad waltzes right past his spam blocker.

10) Taxi Driver

In a dystopian city of sin and villany, driving a taxi is a difficult job.

PS. My Goodreads page: http://goo.gl/enMGV3

Peace & love.

Not even kidding: I would rather mainline drain cleaner.

I'm interested, I'd buy. I'd probably consider gifting a copy or two as well but based of the descriptions I'm concerned some of them might be a little to sexually explicit for the readers I have in mind. I'll read and evaluate. Good luck!

i'd rather cock slap the president on live tv

I'd rather chew on a urinal puck.

In a free market with many firms and households, where goods produced are all perfect substitutes, prices will tend toward the marginal cost in the long run. With large-scale digital distribution the marginal cost of production is essentially zero. The only way to raise your prices in this market environment is to produce a good which is clearly not a perfect substitute.

I mean, I'm just correcting what seems to be a misconception here. Your poll options are "Yes" and "I hate Koobie", when the real answer is "the clearing price of stories is free". The high fixed costs and zero marginal costs are a major economic problem for all content creators today.

Even for indie games the market is at the point where the opportunity cost of entering your itunes password is too expensive for most users. That's basically the way I feel about e-books; money or none, the inconvenience of the transaction is more than the story is worth to me in an economic sense, especially when there's so much stuff out there for free already.

You really shouldn't bank on that. I could really like my chai latte or at least expect that my chai latte will be of good quality when I think about ordering my chai latte.

.

I could be the kind of consumer who buys chai+black tea concentrate and makes his own chai lattes for about $1.85 a litre.

Re: Jon'C's message of "cost of producing = free," it is not.

Consider cover art, editing work, not to mention the hours it took me to write these stories, revise them, edit them (prior to the editor having a look), etc., etc. 20 hours of work at LEAST, and that's just for writing the stories ... obviously the time I spent on it doesn't mean they're going to be to everyone's taste, but to think that the value of my work is nothing is incorrect.



I've plenty of other things out for free, likewise, a few people who know (think?) I do good work ...

Also, there's the FREE 30% PREVIEW feature.

Hi EAH_TRISCUIT -- thanks for the vote of confidence. Nothing sexually explicit in my stories whatsoever, though one is a bit on the frisky side (The Art of Exploitation).


Peace & luvz.

"Write scifi like Asimov" the hell, dude.

My favorite writer said it better than me:



I checked Tao Lin's page on Wiki, doesn't look like this is something that I'd find interesting ... the fact that you seem so hyped about him makes me want to read him even less, truth be told. Heh. But thank you nevertheless, I'll look into these two; the more I know the better.

Also, Re: Mediocre Writing, read some Jason Sanford. Or China Miéville. Or Paolo Bacigalupi ...
[h=3]Yeah, you can Google too.[/h]

EDIT: [boasting / not important]

Those chills that you spill up my back keep me filled with satisfaction when we're done, satisfaction of what's to come.

You don't know the difference between fixed and marginal costs. There'd have been no shame in admitting this, but for some reason you didn't. Why is that?

Fixed costs are things like writing, designing cover art, typesetting, office rent, health insurance. You pay the same amount irrespective of the quantity of goods you produce. Whether you sell 1 book or 2 million, you pay the same amount for these services.

Marginal costs are things like paper, ink, hourly wages for printing and binding, fuel for distribution. You pay more the more you produce.

In the case of internet distribution, your marginal costs are equal to the cost of bandwidth for a person who downloads your book. This is ~0 per copy. (The retailers' cut does not count.)

In the long run, competition causes a downward pressure on prices toward the minimum price that people can offer a product without immediately going out of business, which is the marginal cost. Which, in your case, is ~0. (In an economic sense it is literally zero, since setting up an account and entering your credit card information has an implicit cost as well. Also, your competitors are already offering their products for free.)

l.s.s. if you're serious about selling goods it would probably be a good idea to read something about business, finance or economics. ywia.

Also, on a completely different note, I'm really not surprised that Koobie's role model is Harlan Ellison.

Jon'C. What is your point? That it should be free?
That I should get an agent?
I will get an agent.
But that's a different story ... and this is a different book.

Koobie, as long as you never ever give in to someone telling you to stop writing for the genre you want, I'll be happy for you. I hope that you'll see some revenue from this as well.

Hehe ... yeah, after 14 years stopping isn't really an option. I feel I'm getting closer and closer to the very first step of the ladder I want to climb, too, so it's all good. And that's not even to mention all the wonderful people I got to meet along the way. Peace & loves (listening to Nightwish right now ... COINCIDENCE?)
Heh.

& thanks for the kind words, Sir.

I'd rather hand-feed a school of piranhas my dick.

.

Reid, I wrote & write everything, not just SF. I prefer speculative fiction. Also, what you're talking about is Hard SF vs Soft SF. Asimov = Hard SF. Philip K. Dick = Soft SF. Any story worth a damn (usually*) has plot, prose (?), conflict and language (?). But just for you ... here's a "literary" story.

* * *

Punk Girl
by Yours Truly

Kristina had dyed her hair green the day she ran away from home. It wasn't that she hated her parents; they were an alright bunch. An office worker daddy and a stay at home mom – she'd been destined for a life too ordinary. So, she ran. She'd fit everything she needed into a single backpack, borrowed some survival money, and bought the first train ticket to Budapest.

She'd planned it well, of course. She'd made rules.

Rule 1. Do not trust.

There were cold nights and hard nights, and this one was an equal measure of both. She sat with her back to the wall on a thin blanket in the Astoria metro underpass, cold and uncomfortable. It had been her second week in the city, and she'd spent the last few nights with a group of punks, who'd lent her the blanket in the first place. They said they liked her hair.

"And I tell you I've got only two hundred," Grabber said. He and Bubba were supposed to have been covering the tourist areas during the day – they should've made five, six thousand forints from begging at the least, even on a Wednesday.

"It's the bums, Kris, it's the ****ing bums! They take everything!"

It wasn't the bums. Grabber smelled like a distillery. He and Bubba must have drank half a hundred shot bottles between them; she was impressed he could stand, not to mention talk.

"Where are the others?"

"Still out. Just go to sleep will, you."

"It's too damn cold to sleep."

"Well, I've got two hundred. We can get a couple of shot bottles. My treat."

"You'd do that for me?"

Grabber smiled. He missed three front teeth, but she was charmed nonetheless. "Okay. I'll wait for you here."

"Nah, you gotta come too."

"Why's that?"

"Come on, just come."

"Store's just a street away, Grabber."

"It'll be an adventure. Come on, Kris. Besides, I'm buying, right? Make me company."

"Fine, fine. Can't sleep anyway." She folded the blanket into her bag, and followed Grabber out.

The punks had treated her like one of them: vagina jokes aside, she preferred their company to that of the bums. Grabber even helped her sneak into a gym's shower cabin yesterday. She'd washed off layers of grime, and now felt like a rose flower. A frozen rose flower. Grabber had no such luck, but by now her nose filtered the stink on auto-pilot.

"Hey, didn't we pass our street?"

"Yeah, shop's closed. But Bubba told me of this other place, they can help us make some money."

"What money?"

"You'll see."

"Don't tell me you think my two hundred's enough for a wine-coke."

"I thought we were buying shot bottles."

"Nah, Bubba's got a plan. Trust me."

It was eight in the evening, and the street was full of party faces, people hurrying home from work, the well-dressed strangers giving them disapproving looks. Grabber turned into an alleyway.

"Where are we going?"

"It's a shortcut."

She'd followed him for a few meters until she'd realized that the lampposts along the sidewalk were broken, and the alleyway was dark and silent of life. She stopped. "Where are we going?"

"A shortcut, like I'd said. Come on, Bubba's waiting."

"So we're meeting Bubba?"

"What's the holdup, baby? Don't you trust me?"

"I think I'll just wait for you in the underpass."

"Come on, Kris, we gonna make some cash."

She took a step back. "Yeah, Bubba probably wants me to suck someone's cock again. I told you before, I'm no whore."

"Nothing like that!"

She took another step back.

Bubba stepped out of the shadows, blocking the exit from the alleyway. His friends, the three other punks she'd called brothers in drunken arguments more times that she could remember, stood behind him. "It's exactly like that," Bubba said, "Relax. This isn't going to hurt a bit."

Kristina couldn't believe this. She'd always felt Bubba was a *******, but she hadn't expected this from Grabber. "Grabber, you ****ing *******."

"Relax," he said, looking away. "It's gonna be all right. It's like a ritual. Everything's gonna be all right."

She pulled out a switchblade out of her jacket's pocket. She'd never showed it to the boys before, precisely because she was afraid of something like this. "Grabber, move out of the way."

"What's this, a knife?"

"That's what YOU want," Bubba shouted; she turned around – Bubba's casual walk turned to a sprint in a second. She had no time.

Rule 2. Do not fear.

She unfolded the switchblade and flicked it at Grabber's eyes. He raised his hands to protected himself, and she kicked him in the balls as hard as she could.

He'd bent over as she ran past him into the darkness. They came after her, shouting curses as she they ran, Bubba the loudest of them all. But she ran and ran, taking turns at random, street after street, until the curses and the screaming were far behind and she found herself back on the main street, close to Astoria. A university campus was nearby; she'd heard there was a pub there. A crowd was what she needed.

The club was in the basements of some administrative building at the rear of the campus. Drunken students sat on a bench outside, others smoked by the entrance. Disco music played loud enough for the windows to vibrate. She went in. It was full house.

Kristina took the backpack off and pushed through the crowd up to the stage. She wondered if she could hang out here 'till morning. Bubba's boys probably were looking for her nearby, but they'd return to the underpass to meet the morning if there were no police patrols tonight, and she could slip away, take the five AM tram in the general direction of away. Where exactly, she did not know; somewhere warm, she hoped.

The people around her headbanged to the electronic beat screaming from the speakers. Students. Her parents wanted her to be one of them one day – to graduate with honors, to bang her head to idiot music, to go work in an office, get a pension plan, get married to a reasonable young man, make lots of babies, make everyone happy. "Babies make everyone happy," her mom had told her once. She cringed at the disco music; some Rock & Roll would've done this place good.

What was her alternative? To live like a bum? She'd tried that, it wasn't pretty. She could handle herself, sure, but she'd been lucky so far. One day her luck would run out; and it wasn't about luck, anyway. The real reason she wanted out of her house was fear. Fear.

The realization hit her like a slap to the face. She'd been scared that if she followed the rules, she'd end up just like everyone else: miserable. She'd been afraid she'd fall into the money trap all adults seem to fall prey to sooner a later, when money – survival money – became more important than living out their dreams. Living for survival was for monkeys, not human beings, and the last time she'd checked, she didn't have a tail.

Kristina was afraid that maybe, she wasn't special at all.

Rule 3. Do not ask.

It was a chilly November afternoon when she'd knocked on her parent's house door. Kristina's mom opened it on the third knock. Her face went through a spectrum of emotions as she stood in the doorway, watching her runaway daughter bow her head in shame.

She hadn't asked Kristina where she'd been. She just hugged her.

-- THE END --

* * *

*There was this one story that won a Nebula without much of a plot a few years ago, I gotta admit. It was about a human woman being raped / ****ing an alien in an escape pod. That's it. That was the entire story. Won a Nebula. Yay. It's called Spar by Kij Johnson if you're interested.

But thanks for the advise. The descriptions of each of the stories were for Massassi (and G+) only, they would not be included either in the book or in the book's description. Instead, each story will come with an introduction. Well ... I'll probably quote the "description" I have here for story #6, as it was generated for me by an online SF plot generator (because some dude said I'd never write a decent story on an idea that thing gives me). I think the story turned out Okay ... or at least, I know that quite a few people really liked it, and that's good enough for me.

If you refer to "science fiction" as SF, you might as well just give up. SF stands only for Suomi Finland PERKELE.

Heh, Harlan Ellison. The guy who chided Gabe from Penny Arcade for not having a college degree, to which Gabe replied (something akin to): "So, you write these Star Wars books, huh?"

Ah, culture wars.

Harlan Ellison never really finished uni AFAIK, so I kind of doubt it, but something did happen! Found an article; interesting! http://www.avclub.com/article/harlan-ellison-vs-penny-arcade-16597
Thanks for the info.

I'm just curious what of China Mieville's you've actually read that makes you categorize him as a mediocre writer? King Rat was admittedly a bit awkward but it was his first novel as well so I think that much at least is understandable. But if it's any of his later works I'm going to have to re-re-re-affirm my opinion that you're simply wrong about anything to do with writing.

What makes you think I categorize him as a mediocre writer?

Reid said SF that isn't hard SF is mediocre ... I'd pointed out a few writers who are anything but. I've read Perdido Train Station and Embassytown.

EDIT: [pointless personal insult is pointless]

Every hard sci-fi fanatic (including Harlan Ellison) thinks that.

My point is that there's such a glut of sci fi on the internet that people are unlikely to read it even if it were free, but at least if it were free there wouldn't be an active barrier against it happening. The question you need to ask yourself is whether it's more important to expose yourself to more criticism so you have a hope of actually improving some day, or to collect literally less than $20 from well-wishers who will never read what you've written.

Right, Harlan Ellison got expelled at the start of his sophomore year for punching a professor who criticized his writing. Despite the fact that he's an amazing writer, nobody wants to work with him because he is an insufferable, sensitive little flower who takes himself and his work far more seriously than deserved.

Remember that time Harlan Ellison thought computer games were all dumb and shallow, and was certain he could do a better job designing one, and then accidentally a Roberta Williams puzzle adventure?

Remember that time Harlan Ellison got mad at Gene Roddenberry for removing the drug-dealing subplot from his episode of a childrens TV show?

Oh! Wow! Em ... but FGR! Harlan Ellison doesn't write hard SF! But you probably jest, for you are FINNISH. Hehe.

I think what he writes is best characterized as speculative fiction, a blend of SF and fantasy, I suppose. I love the man's works. Jon'C's pretty close on the money saying he's my role model. I mean, I don't think I have a role model per se, but if I had to have one, it'd be Harlan Ellison.



Jon'C, how can you expose myself to criticism if you never actually get any work out there?

And while I have been a member of active writing critique communities, right now I'd be more interested in joining a "closed" group of people who'd actually made some sales ... not that the writing crit forum people don't help, they often do, but I'd rather exchange crits with people with a bit more experience nowadays I think.

As for the "hope of actually improving one day" my personal measurement of success are stories sold (and read), whether to editors or to the general public.

I'd also made a good friend (and dare I say, fan?) from self-publishing Extatica Part 1 who is my first (and to date, only) beta reader, so all's good. And the reason he's my beta reader isn't because all I want is praise, believe it or not ... but you probably don't.



Hehe. Kind of reminds me of somebody I'd met on the internet once.

Yes, naturally, the man who hates computer games would VOICE the main antagonist and be heavily involved in the game development process, hehe ... talk about "taking things too seriously," heh.

Remember that time he won the 1968 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation as well as the Guild of America's Award for Most Outstanding Teleplay for the same (Star Trek) episode anyway?

You know who else was an award-winning *******? Steve Jobs.

(because you're both *******s)

Release it for what it's worth: $0.

Ouch. I guess explains the substance abuse.

Is it yourself? Because if it isn't, you're missing the point.

Harlan Ellison thought computer games were all dumb and shallow, and was certain he could do a better job designing one than the moron plebs in the industry.

It turned out to be a clone of a game released in 1987.

He voiced AM because he felt that nobody else's voice could possibly convey enough contempt for the player, which is basically accurate.

Yes, it's one of the best Star Trek episodes.

Remember that time his ****fit over this episode carried on into the 2000s, despite winning an award for it?

Remember all those times Ellison used his pseudonym as a way of "disavowing" works, but making sure that everybody knows Cordwainer Bird is actually him, just in case it gets popular anyway?

Almost like he's a prissy little princess who wants the cash for potboilers but doesn't want to accept the personal consequences of working on crap just for money??

If it turns out bad it's never my fault, it's the industry's fault!!! always and forever!!

but just in case it turns out good, I'll leave my D out so you can S it.