Archive for the ‘News’ Category

DEATH, DISMEMBERMENT AND A LITTLE BIT OF SASS is now $16.95*!

What? $16.95*? You’re crazy!!

Yes, $16.95*! And yes I am crazy! but I’d prefer it if you didn’t bring it up in civilized company thank you very much.

But for a limited time only (until the apocalypse) you can get DEATH, DISMEMBERMENT AND A LITTLE BIT OF SASS for $16.95*!

But WAIT!! There’s still more!!

Oh, no there isn’t.

Just buy the book.

Get it now at your local Lulu dealer – Click Here!

 

 

*prices are in USD.

 

P.s. Amazon.com will be reflecting these changes within the next few weeks. Thankyou for calling.

…because as of this moment Bumblebee Tuna has it’s very own website!

Woo!

So put www.Bumblebee-Tuna.com into your rss feeds.

DO IT!!

Love the zombie on the cover of Death, Dismemberment and a Little Bit of Sass?

I know, everybody does!

But not everybody has him on their coffee mug, but you can!

Just go to Zazzle.com.au and order yours now!!

So, I tried my hand at making a book trailer.

The one thing I learned when making it was this – Start with the music because it’s a bastard finding something that works at the end.

Anyway, here is the finished product.

Available at Amazon.com

or from Lulu.com

Not that I was typing my own name into Amazon.com or anything… But I accidentally came across this –

That’s right, you can now get Death, Dismemberment and a Little Bit of Sass at Amazon.com.

Awesome.

on a side note – you can also add it to your WeRead or Librarything

Yay!! Excitement!! Saving Money!! Cheap!! Squee!!

From now until the end of January you can get 10% off when you buy Death, Dismemberment and a Little Bit of Sass.

And, because I’m awesome, I’ll even tell you how to get it.

First, you go to this page here

Then click “Buy” and enter code ‘ READMORE2010 ‘ at checkout.

It’s so easy you should buy two Three!!

Plane tickets and boxes and bags. Oh my!

In just under two weeks (right before new years) I’ll be moving south. Just in time for the middle of summer. It seems like a good idea, Melbourne being just about next door to the south pole and all. But no, I learnt last year that they get heat down there too. Weird.

(Note – I just typed several paragraphs discussing the weather and the differences between here and there. Then I realised I was talking about the weather and decided I didn’t want to write about that in my blog, so I deleted it all.

But it was very very articulate, insightful and interesting.

Just so you know.)

Back to the point -

The move to Melbourne is no longer an ambiguously dated plan, no longer “some time in the future”. Not only does it have a date and a time, it also has plane tickets.

And time is moving quickly again, the end of the year is approaching like a tidal wave. The lists of things to do is enormous. Less than two weeks and I’ve barely begun to pack. I still have things that need organizing.

And there’s Christmas shopping as well!

Then there’s things to do once I’ve moved. Looking for work, looking for a place to live and most importantly – Looking for a scarf and a good jacket.

But I’m looking forward to all of it. It’s exciting and frightening all at once, as the best things are.

I’ll be starting the new year in a new place with a whole new beginning…

Wish me luck.

Death, Dismemberment and a Little Bit of Sass – my POD published book of insanely good short stories is now available at Lulu.com.

In the midst of a zombie apocalypse might one man have a second chance at love?

When a werewolf hunter faces his worst nemesis yet – a psychiatrist – who will come out on top?

A woman in a religious cult begins to hear voices but will they lead her to salvation or destruction?

A family’s vacation is cut short when they try to help a stranded spaceship, but who really needs the help?

All of these and more in this collection of eleven murderously good short stories

There is –

• Where Wolf?
• Truckstop Unicorn
• Icy Dead People
• Dah’min
• Oneirophasia

And much, much more… Eleven in total.

Here’s what the critics are saying -

“This books is awesome!! Amazing! Four stars… What? If you want more stars, it’ll cost you extra. Where’s my money?”

“I’ll say whatever you want, just leave my kids alone. Please.”

“Oh god!! Stop hitting me!! Okay, okay, Five stars. FIVE STARS!! Oh god, I’m bleeding.”

I’m very proud.

So, BUY IT NOW! and enjoy almost 200 pages of murdery goodness!

I know I did -

AKA – A long post about what I’ve been up to lately…

Due to unforeseen circumstances, it looks as though I may not complete NaNoWriMo again this year.

I say “may” because there is still time left, and if I were to write just over 5000 words per day for the next week I might finish… Though a daily word target like that is highly unlikely to be hit around here. I haven’t even finished cleaning my place yet.

But I have come up with a list of ways to NOT get it finished. Here is the top ten things to do if you don’t want to finish NaNoWriMo this year.

Number Ten – Procrastinate.

…Obviously. Putting things off is a great way to not get things done and there are so many ways in which to do this.

A few personal favourites include watching Tv, cleaning, twittering, or even just going for a walk. All of these are a great way to push work away for a good chunk of time.

When all else fails, I like to use coffee as an excuse to put things off for a few minutes. This works well as I love my coffee and it sounds quite reasonable to say “I’ll get started right after a coffee”

Number Nine – Quit your job.

This sounds like a good idea, and in most ways it is.

But it won’t help you if you’re looking for more time to write. With so much extra time there is no longer any urgency to get any of it done. There is always time to do things later, you have all day tomorrow to catch up and next week you can work extra hard all week to make up for what you didn’t do this week.

I quit my job a few weeks ago. For other reasons, not to make time for writing, but I did think that with all that extra time and with a little tenacity I might be able to get a lot done.

That was until I…

Number Eight – Burn your hand

A great way to keep yourself from writing is to incapacitate yourself. And what could be more laborious and slow than typing with one hand? I mean apart from typing with no hands.

Nothing. Exactly.

So that’s what I did.

This happened to me one night while saving a box of kittens from a burning building, I was set upon by a group of ninjas and robots… and robot ninjas. They were all packing microwave meals, overcooked and only seconds out of the microwave. They demanded the box of kittens and when I didn’t comply they began throwing the meals at me. I managed to dodge most of them except one, which gave me second degree burns on the fingers and palm of my left hand.

I swear all that is true… Except the building, the kittens, the ninjas, the robots and the robot ninjas.

Number Seven – Watch Television.

I know I put this under number ten as a form of procrastination but there are two reasons that it needs it’s own spot.

For one, Television is the enemy of creativity. It really is.

Just by having it on you’re slowing yourself down, but added to that it dulls the creative process. I’ve always found that days in which I watch less television, I get alot more (and better) work done. Unfortunately television works much like any addiction in that unless you cut yourself off from it completely, including all access to it, then it will slowly and inevitably creep back into your life.

And I’m not ready to do that just yet.

Maybe after this season of Dollhouse has finished…

And the second reason this got it’s own entry – I accidentally miscounted and when I realised I didn’t have something for seven this was the first thing I came up with.

Number Six – Get Tattoed

A great way to spend a sunday afternoon, having needles stuck in your arm and/or leg and leaving deposits of ink there. Ah, good times.

Got two done myself last week… After six years since my last tattoo, I finally got around to getting some new ones.

And if you wanted to waste a little more time you can do what I did and walk to the tattoo parlor. Then, once the tattooing is done, you can find out that you’re in some backwards place that doesn’t have eftpos and so you’ll need to spend some more time walking to the shopping centre down the road. All in all, I spent about an hour and a half walking that day.

** A haircut could be substituted here if you prefer not to get tattooed… Or you can do what I did and get a haircut aswell.

Number Five – Buy a new computer

Who doesn’t like a new toy? Especially a nice big-ass super-expensive one like this –

This is my spanky new bitchin’ all-in-one touchscreen multimedia high definition yada yada computer. Ain’t she sweet? The touch screen is fun to play with. It’s heaps big monitor-wise and it’s all new and pretty.

The best thing about new toys like this?

You can spend all day just setting it up. Installing all your favourite programs and getting all the settings to how you like them and so on. I’m still not finished doing all that.

Number Four – Have a personal life

I’ve been trying this out lately. Doesn’t seem to be working for me. I’ve learned that there is nothing better to get in the way of writing than to have a personal life. Especially one as disasterous as mine.

People lie, people betray, people confuse and humiliate, people leave voids and people leave sorrow.

And you can’t control them or understand them like you do the characters you’re writing.

Bastards.

Number Three – Work on plot

Stop and think about your plot. Are things flowing as you want them too? Is the right information revealed at the right stage? Which scene goes next? Is the story moving to slow? Or too fast? And so on…

This is a great wait to slow down your writing. And if you really think about it, it may stop you altogether.

I did this. I decided to do a bit of plot planning, starting with listing all the scenes/elements that I wanted in my story. I came up with a list of 105 things, and it’s still growing… much more slowly now but still it’s growing.

Here’s a wordle of the list -

(because I haven’t posted a wordle in a while)

Anyway, working on the plot always seems to lead to –

Number Two – Starting from scratch.

Yeah, I’ve started to do this…

Well, I will when I’ve finished with everything else on this list. I’m still working on the plot a bit more. I’m going to put all of the elements/scenes that I listed in order and then write more on each one… and all the rest of it. You know how plotting is.

Writing is like eating soup with a fork, only you keep missing the bowl and stabbing yourself in the forehead.

Number One –

Instead of writing the story, write a top ten list about how to fail at writing the story.

To be fair, it’s not exactly a top ten list. It’s more of a ‘first ten things I thought of that I’ve been doing lately instead of working on NaNoWriMo’ list…

There are probably more that I could think of but I have some writing to do… So I’m going for a nap now.

What goes up must come down. This is basically what my last month has been like, since I last posted anything here. I’ve been meaning to, but never got around to it. But, long story short, good shit happened, bad shit happened. Some other good shit happened. So it goes…

For a while there I was on a writing streak but then, as I often do with this project I’m working on, I stop and ask myself if I’m writing it the right way. Maybe it would work better in third person. No, First person. Maybe more linear storyline. No, go the disordered route. Second guessing my second guesses. So I’ve gone back to the drawing board… or writing board. And am re-planning the whole thing. This time on little cards.

Speaking of writing – The NaNoWriMo starts in less than a month. Will I work on this project? Or another one? Who knows. But whatever the case, I plan on being more prepared this year. I plan on getting some planning done first. Maybe. Also, whatever the case, I plan on totally rocking the 50,000 words this year. You just watch me.

You might’ve noticed that little guy in the corner. That there is a sneak peak. To what? Not telling. But that’s a little snippet of what I’ve been working on the last few days like a zombie with a hard-to-break-open skull in his hands. It’s all looking great and I’m hoping it won’t be too long till I get to show all of you people who care nothing about it. Wink.

Speaking of Zombies… Yesterday this little baby arrived in the mail -

It’s Forrest J Ackerman presents Anthology of the Living Dead. A great book full of awesome zombie-fied short stories. There’s some really good stuff in there so if you haven’t gotten a copy yet, you’re missing out. But never fear, for I is here, you can get a copy from Amazon – Click Here.

There’s something strange about this book though. I opened up to page 163 and found a short story whose title seemed oddly familiar and the Author of which had a very odd name. Here’s a picture of what I’m talking about -

Weird, hey?

It’s almost like it’s my short story in that book…

Oh wait, it is!

Booya!

I actually sat down and read it last night. It’s the first time I’ve looked at the story in over a year and the first time ever I’ve read my work without editing or any such thing, and I have to say I enjoyed it. Is it wrong to laugh out loud (several times) while reading your own short story? It’s not exactly akin to laughing at your own jokes, is it?

Well, in any case I found myself laughing throughout the story. All the things that I worried about not being funny, just being stupid and weak, they worked… for me at least. I hope they do for everyone else to.

Oh… I promised myself I wouldn’t cry. I’m just so proud!!

Wink.

Anyways, get yourself a copy. It’s awesome. I’m off to read the rest of the book soon, it’s all been great so far. Then up next on the To Be Read List is this odd little number –

You might’ve also noticed the picture of yours truly up in the banner. It’s not there because I’m vain or anything, I’m just that pretty. Actually, it was just a bit of practice that turned out much better than expected. And so I’ve taken to putting it up there. A little howdy do.

Anyway that’s it from me, catch ya later.