Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts
01 January 2015
03 December 2014
THE PRESTON BLACK MIX TAPE IS HERE!
The PRESTON BLACK MIX TAPE bundle is a literary box set! (Almost 220,000 words of Preston Black goodness.) You get both Preston Black novels—THE DEVIL & PRESTON BLACK and THE REVELATIONS OF PRESTON BLACK, plus two short stories that were only available in other anthologies. ALMOST A NEW YEAR is a vignette that shows how family and friends deal with the loss of a deployed soldier, in this case Stu Croe. RHYTHM OF WAR is Ben Collins’ first person account of his role in the Battle of Fallujah.
In addition to the stories above, you get the following essays, articles, and non-fiction bits I’ve published in various places over the course of writing the first two Preston Black novels:
- THE DEVIL & PRESTON BLACK Reading & Resource Guide
- THE REVELATIONS OF PRESTON BLACK Reading & Resource Guide
- THE MUSIC OF THE REVELATIONS OF PRESTON BLACK
- JASON JACK MILLER’S SOUNDCHECK: DON’T BE THAT GUY! THE FINAL SAY IN THE CONCERT T-SHIRT DEBATE
- JASON JACK MILLER’S SOUNDCHECK: THE MUSIC AND THE REVELATIONS OF PRESTON BLACK
- Because You CAN’T, You WON’T, You DON’T Stop: ADAM YAUCH
- Murder Ballads and Old Magic
- A LOOK BACK, A LOOK AHEAD
- AMERICANA MUSIC: THE ROOT(s) of (SOME, NOT ALL) EVIL
- PATHS TO PUBLICATION: Preston Black
- PUTTING THE BOOK TO BED
- HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PRESTON BLACK!
07 November 2014
19 December 2013
Ghosts of Christmas Past--Drunken Uncles!
It ain't really Christmas until the uncles are on the verge of passing out beneath the tree with their copy of THE REVELATIONS OF PRESTON BLACK.
18 December 2013
03 November 2013
NaNo Playlist!
Some tunes for those marathon NaNoWriMo sessions! With long(ish) and (somewhat) droning songs, this playlist was designed to keep you in the moment. Put your headphones on, turn it up, tune out.
02 November 2013
ALL SAINTS, Chapter 1
In honor of All Saints Day, I decided to post the first chapter of my work in progress. The novel, featuring Ben Collins, takes place after the events in THE REVELATIONS OF PRESTON BLACK.
Tapping into the magic of Mexico’s Dia de los Muertos, an Afghan War vet comes to terms with life after combat. And who better to guide him through the darkness than the Devil herself?
21 April 2013
BOOTLEG: Radiohead, Later with Jools Holland, London, England on June 9th, 2001.
Because I'm tired of Preston Black getting all the attention...
So I decided to retire THE MUSIC AND PRESTON BLACK and replace it with this: JASON JACK MILLER'S SECRET STASH. The concept is the same--I curate the stuff that interests me. But unlike Preston, I'm mostly literate, and plan to diverge from the 'all music, all the time' format. You can expect to see books, film, videos, photos from the archives, and trip reports.
And lots of music.
You may not enjoy everything I post here, but at least you'll get more of my jokes. (Still scratching your head over than Cesar Chavez comment? Can't help you there.) My main interest is creating a personal archive of the stuff that I like. And I figure I may as well share it with you guys.
Let's kick it off with a little Radiohead. The way I see it, there are two types of people in this world--people who'd follow Thom Yorke into a collapsing star, and those who'd claim 'Creep' as their favorite Radiohead song. I'm going to try to remedy that with a little show from 2001, taped right after the release of AMNESIAC--an experimental album they recorded at the same time they made KID A in an attempt distance themselves from the success of OK COMPUTER. The pressure of constant touring created a bit of psychological strain on the band, particularly Thom Yorke, who said, "I always used to use music as a way of moving on and dealing with things, and I sort of felt like that the thing that helped me deal with things had been sold to the highest bidder and I was simply doing its bidding. And I couldn't handle that."
So here's the music, in a live format, which makes it a bit more accessible for new listeners. And if you're a fan, you know this show. And you know how amazing it sounds.
So I decided to retire THE MUSIC AND PRESTON BLACK and replace it with this: JASON JACK MILLER'S SECRET STASH. The concept is the same--I curate the stuff that interests me. But unlike Preston, I'm mostly literate, and plan to diverge from the 'all music, all the time' format. You can expect to see books, film, videos, photos from the archives, and trip reports.
And lots of music.
You may not enjoy everything I post here, but at least you'll get more of my jokes. (Still scratching your head over than Cesar Chavez comment? Can't help you there.) My main interest is creating a personal archive of the stuff that I like. And I figure I may as well share it with you guys.
Let's kick it off with a little Radiohead. The way I see it, there are two types of people in this world--people who'd follow Thom Yorke into a collapsing star, and those who'd claim 'Creep' as their favorite Radiohead song. I'm going to try to remedy that with a little show from 2001, taped right after the release of AMNESIAC--an experimental album they recorded at the same time they made KID A in an attempt distance themselves from the success of OK COMPUTER. The pressure of constant touring created a bit of psychological strain on the band, particularly Thom Yorke, who said, "I always used to use music as a way of moving on and dealing with things, and I sort of felt like that the thing that helped me deal with things had been sold to the highest bidder and I was simply doing its bidding. And I couldn't handle that."
So here's the music, in a live format, which makes it a bit more accessible for new listeners. And if you're a fan, you know this show. And you know how amazing it sounds.
02 March 2013
From TIME: Literary Revolution in the Supermarket Aisle: Genre Fiction Is Disruptive Technology
I happily avoid the literary/genre debate, because no good can come from such discussions. Feelings get hurt, people cry. But by not worrying about the distinctions between genres, or between genre and literary, I've been free to write pretty much whatever I've wanted. So don't call me a 'genre writer' or a 'literally writer.' I'm neither. I'm a happy writer.
Writers should take the time to read Grossman's commentary though, if only to arm yourselves against the haters.
"Blue-chip literary writers — finding that after years of deprivation under the modernist regime their stores of plot devices are sadly depleted — have been frantically borrowing from genre fiction, which is where plot has been safely stockpiled for all these decades."
"Something nagged at me while I was reading Krystal’s piece, something familiar, and I’ve finally figured out what it is: it’s another New Yorker piece, from a few weeks ago, a profile of Clayton Christensen, the Harvard business professor who first applied the word “disruptive” to technology. Christensen had observed that in many industries, established companies based on high-end, sophisticated technologies tend to become complacent. They consider themselves invulnerable, or at best they look for challenges from even-higher-end technologies. But they’re looking in the wrong places, and what in fact happens is that they are disrupted from below: crude, low-end technologies develop at the bottom of the marketplace, then evolve to the point where they take over their markets and displace the established high-end companies, who never saw it coming.
I’m beginning to wonder if something like that is happening in contemporary fiction. We expect literary revolutions to come from above, from the literary end of the spectrum — the difficult, the avant-garde, the high-end, the densely written. But I don’t think that’s what’s going on. Instead we’re getting a revolution from below, coming up from the supermarket aisles. Genre fiction is the technology that will disrupt the literary novel as we know it."
Read more: http://entertainment.time.com/2012/05/23/genre-fiction-is-disruptive-technology/#ixzz2MObwFIUE
Writers should take the time to read Grossman's commentary though, if only to arm yourselves against the haters.
"Blue-chip literary writers — finding that after years of deprivation under the modernist regime their stores of plot devices are sadly depleted — have been frantically borrowing from genre fiction, which is where plot has been safely stockpiled for all these decades."
"Something nagged at me while I was reading Krystal’s piece, something familiar, and I’ve finally figured out what it is: it’s another New Yorker piece, from a few weeks ago, a profile of Clayton Christensen, the Harvard business professor who first applied the word “disruptive” to technology. Christensen had observed that in many industries, established companies based on high-end, sophisticated technologies tend to become complacent. They consider themselves invulnerable, or at best they look for challenges from even-higher-end technologies. But they’re looking in the wrong places, and what in fact happens is that they are disrupted from below: crude, low-end technologies develop at the bottom of the marketplace, then evolve to the point where they take over their markets and displace the established high-end companies, who never saw it coming.
I’m beginning to wonder if something like that is happening in contemporary fiction. We expect literary revolutions to come from above, from the literary end of the spectrum — the difficult, the avant-garde, the high-end, the densely written. But I don’t think that’s what’s going on. Instead we’re getting a revolution from below, coming up from the supermarket aisles. Genre fiction is the technology that will disrupt the literary novel as we know it."
Read more: http://entertainment.time.com/2012/05/23/genre-fiction-is-disruptive-technology/#ixzz2MObwFIUE
28 March 2011
THE DEVIL AND PRESTON BLACK on AmericanStandardTelecaster.com
I thought it was a pretty cool place to see the book pop up. Thanks for the tag, Ron.
AmericanStandardTelecaster.com
AmericanStandardTelecaster.com
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