“Boy, when you’re dead, they really fix you up.  I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something.  Anything except sticking me in a goddamn cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you’re dead?  Nobody.”

- The Catcher in the Rye

Through a weird series of events, having to do with some silly quiz a friend and I took online that put its results in our various Twitter streams, both of us were compared to J.D. Salinger.  My friend wasn’t familiar with Salinger, and I was, but only through:

• Vague memories
• The fact that Salinger died this year

…so I had to look him up to make sure I was getting the details right.  Which made me revisit him, the author, as a person.  Someone who, when he made it big, totally shunned his fame and turned his back on it.  Here I am pushing fifty, having written most of my life and never making it big, and then there’s this guy who made it big and I learn that was the last thing he wanted.

So suddenly I’m interested in the guy.

I can only barely remember reading his one novel, The Catcher in the Rye, and like most I only read it because of a high school English teacher assigning it in class.  Jeeze, what was I?  Fourteen?  There were no aliens, rocket ships, or time travel involved so reading it was a chore and I’m pretty sure I opted to go the Cliff’s Notes route.

So here it is 2010 and I decide, you know, maybe I should read this novel.  Of course, me being who I am, I hopped on my Kindle and searched.  Nope.  Nothing.  Nada.  Salinger had never authorized it to be interpreted as a Hollywood movie, and it appears he didn’t feel it appropriate to be turned into an ebook, either.  So I had to obtain it the old fashioned way, and order it on Amazon.com.

It cost 10¢ plus $3.99 shipping, and when it arrived I found it full of some high school girl’s handwriting.

(I’m actually having just as much fun reading this anonymous girl’s notes as I am reading the manuscript itself.)

One thing that struck me right away in revisiting this only dimly remembered novel is that it reads exactly like some well-educated kid’s blog.  Not somewhat.  Exactly.  Holden Caulfield, if written today, would be a blogger.  Totally and completely, and my apologies to J.D. Salinger who I know is spinning in his grave at this thought.  But it’s true.

Go back and read this book.  If you’re an avid blog reader or writer, especially if you’ve perused the wit and wisdom of places like LiveJoural, Blogger, or Xanga, you will recognize this writing style immediately.

It makes me wonder which is the chicken, and which is the egg.  Do blogs read like this because most of us were forced to read Catcher in the Rye during our formative teen years?  Or does it read like this because Salinger caught the tone of teen angst perfectly and completely?

Probably the latter, I expect.  Still, it’s distracting, even as it makes the read enjoyable.  And to my utter surprise, this book is worth revisiting, especially looking at it with a more mature eye.

I’m happy to announce that I have an anthology of my stories out and available for the Amazon Kindle.

“God, Time, Perception & Sexy Androids” features 27 of my short stories, written over the last 30 years or so – all completely revised and updated for this book.

Trying to come up with a title for this thing, we batted several ideas around, considered using the name of one of the short stories, but then finally I kind of summed up a thread I found among the majority of the tales. 

There’s a lot of what-if stories dealing with religion and/or the occult, several time travel fantasies, and a good dose of sexy androids.  And the one major thing I seem to explore among just about every story is the mystery of perception – what’s the difference between what we perceive, and actual reality?  Is there a difference?  Does our perception of something actually affect reality?  Can we change reality?  Are there other realities?

Or, basically, “What is reality?” 

That’s been my favorite question to explore since I was a teenager.  That and all the facets of reality – free will, destiny, synchronicity, and ultimately existence itself.

And, also, what is perception?  Do we alone perceive things?  If we program a machine to observe and recognize, is it truly perceiving?

This pretty much marks the end of my short story writing career.  I know you should never say never, but unless this anthology actually takes off, I’m going to concentrate on both longer, and conversely much shorter, works of fiction: novels and flash.

Call me crazy, but I’ve been looking forward to this exact gizmo since I first replaced my last PDA with my first iPhone.

Now all we need is a word processor on the iPhone that has true spell checking, and I’d be able to work on my novels on the go again without having to lug a laptop around.

Rumor has it that Microsoft’s Office for iPhone (if it really exists) is due to make an appearance about the same time this goes to market.

Starting tomorrow, the organization who runs The Orwell Prize will begin publishing Orwell’s diaries, each diary entry to be published exactly seventy years after it was written.

Now that’s some serious network lag.

This is a rather gray area market which is seeking previously published works of fiction (up to 50,000 words).  Your work has to be accepted, and when it is, it goes into the digital equivalent of a big pile at the center of the website.

Readers then comb through the stories, figure out which ones look interesting, and add them to their custom built anthology.  When their anthology is full, the reader picks a pretty picture for the cover, ads a title, forks over $14.95 and a freshly minted copy of the book is POD’ed and sent directly to them through the mail.

If they choose one of your stories (or one of your covers, for you artists out there) your account gets credited a set royalty for the sale.

I have my doubts about the ultimate viability of this business model, but you never know.  It could be the next big thing.

Did I submit any of my previously published stories to AnthologyBuilder.com?  No, I did not.  Legit or not it still smells of vanity press to me.

The Complete Manual of THINGS THAT MIGHT KILL YOU.

From their website:  "Hypochondriacs have long had to satisfy their needs for self-diagnosis with medical reference materials written for the masses, but this revolutionary book is dedicated entirely to the hypochondriac’s unique perspective on health. The world’s worst maladies, conveniently organized by symptom (real or imagined), will ignite even the mildest hypochondriac’s fantasy life. We’re all going to die of something—why not choose an ailment that’s rare and hard to pronounce?"

It features: 

• Profiles of over 300 deadly diseases
• Organized by symptom for ease of self-diagnosis
• At-a-glance ratings system of contagion, pain, suffering, and death
• Fascinating spotlights on terrifying medical phenomena

Society is not doomed so long as humor survives.  This book just might save your life.

SF Gospel: Explorations of religion in science fiction and popular culture

While some think that science fiction and religion shalt not mix, I completely disagree. Science fiction and fantasy is the perfect place to explore religious themes, especially as the genre as a whole is one of ideas and “what if’s” … and so it’s a safe place to ask questions such as, “What if, instead of eating the flesh of Christ, Christ instead ate your flesh?”

(Just in case anyone is wondering, that is a Philip K. Dick reference.)

In fact, not only am I a Dickhead, but I’m proud of it.

I’m such a Dickhead, in fact, that I mourn the idea it took me such a long time to discover this absolutely wonderful blog: http://totaldickhead.blogspot.com/

I have been a major fan of Philip K. Dick’s writings since I first stumbled upon A Scanner Darkly way back in the days when old Phil was still alive. Over the years I had managed to collect a copy of every single one of his books, some of them signed, and they saved my buttocks during the DotCom Crash when I had to unload them on eBay to save my house from foreclosure.

I miss the books, yes, but I’m heartened by the idea that they’re all back in print and not so hard to get anymore.

David Gill’s Total Dick-Head blog, as I am equally heartened to discover, is a great source of up-to-the-moment Philip K. Dick news, etc. I had never even thought to look for something like this.

And some wonder why mass media is so paranoid about, and hostile toward, the blogosphere? It gives readers what they want, instead of what mass media wants to give them.