Den Valdron

Three weeks to go!  That’s three weeks to the release of LEXX Unauthorized, Volume 2, From Here to the End of the Universe!

This is an ultimate LEXX Book, focusing on the second season of the surrealistic, sexy, strange space opera, LEXX, about a cowardly captain, an undead assassin, a virgin love slave, an annoying robot head, all of them looking for a good time, while carting about the Universe in a giant bug ten miles long that blows up planets. Twenty years in the making, packed with amazing revelations, interviews and all that good stuff!

LEXX Unauthorized, Volume One, Backstage at the Dark Zone, chronicling the first series is already out!  Volume Two will be out March 31, 2020. Don’t miss it! Spread the word!

Seriously, spread the word. I’m writing books about a series that’s been gone for almost twenty years. They’re good books, they’re amazing books, but, I could use some help. A little word of mouth, dropping notes to fellow Lexx fans, or even anyone into cult sci fi. I’d appreciate it. Really. Do me a solid, help a guy out.

To promote the book, I’m circulating weekly blog posts, to hopefully raises some interest.  So here goes!  Today, I’m offering up an entire LEXX script, never before seen by human eyes.

XEVENINETY – a bit Gothic romance, a bit ghost story, a bit Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and all LEXX all the time….

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Hey!  Free stuff!

The next few posts are to try and drum up some interest and attention for Lexx Unauthorized, Volume 2.  [Seriously! I’m trying to sell this book. So if you’re reading this, do me a solid, share the link, pass the word, and circulate this to anyone out there who might possibly be interested? I’d be ever so grateful!]

I thought I’d take people on a little trip down memory lane.

Lexx was a late 1990’s, early 2000’s Canadian cult television series about a group of fugitives fleeing on board a gigantic living space ship. The crew consisted of a red suited former prisoner, a mysterious black clad former agent of the evil empire, a plant lady, a half-alien woman, and an animatronic puppet, notable for wacky situations, occasional nudity and off the wall humour.

Farscape was a late 1990’s, early 2000’s  Australian cult television series about a group of fugitives fleeing on board a gigantic living space ship. The crew consisted of a red suited former prisoner, a mysterious black clad former agent of the evil empire, a plant lady, a half-alien woman, and an animatronic puppet, notable for wacky situations, occasional nudity. and off the wall humour.

Okay, they weren’t quite identical. Farscape was a lot less nihilistic, less surreal, and featured an American astronaut, John Crichton, trapped in deep space with the crew of fugitives learning to survive. In the first series, Crichton got beat up a lot but as time went on he drifted into the heroic american hero mold. The series had a lot more animatronic puppetry, I think that the Henson people were more involved.

They were both part of that post-Star Trek backlash that rebelled against the ST:NG sensibility that included a number of other series, like Battlestar Galactica, Starhunter, Babylon 5 etc.

Anyway, I loved them both.  At the time they were on, I used to frequent Bulletin Boards discussing each.  It was fun. I made friends, we had lively weird discussions.  I did a bit of writing, a bit of speculation.

And I accidentally created The Bobs.

Who were The Bobs?  They were cosmic rednecks, Jim Bob Turhok, Billy Bob Truckstop, and Bob Bob Roberts, divine beings of awesome power, low intelligence and lower appetites, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. Imagine Star Trek’s Q, with less intelligence, less taste and a more active libido.

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COMING SOON: March 31, 2020
LEXX Unauthorized, Volume Two,
The Light at the End of a Universe

WHAT IS LEXX: A ground breaking Canadian sci fi television series, created by Paul Donovan, Lex Gigeroff and Jeff Hirschfield, shot and produced in Halifax, Nova Scotia, by Salter Street Films, that ran four seasons between 1996 and 2002.

WHAT IS LEXX: The stories of a giant dragonfly, ten miles long, created to destroy planets for the Divine Order, now stolen by renegades. And of its crew – Stanley Tweedle, former security guard fourth class, former traitor, full time coward and Captain; Kai, a two thousand year old, unstoppable, indestructible, divine assassin; Zev, a runaway love slave with cluster lizard in her DNA; and 790, a lovestruck, increasingly psychotic, decapitated robot head.

WHAT IS LEXX: The most surreal, subversive, and imaginative space opera every created, an anarchic blend of Bunuel, Jodorowsky, Monty Python, Hard Science, Low Comedy, Catholic guilt, Lovecraftian horror, teen lust, deep cynicism and high ideals. It’s Charlie Chaplin in space, if Chaplin blew up planets and was directed by Kurosawa. It’s Star Trek, if Star Trek was evil, amoral and funny. And that description, as bizarre as it sounds, doesn’t come close to doing the show justice.

WHAT IS LEXX UNAUTHORIZED?  They are the unauthorized, behind the scenes, books about the evolution and creation of the most wildly surreal show ever made, based on unique access and hundreds of hours of interviews with the stars, creators, writers, directors and production crew.  Volume One is out. Volume Two will be out. Volume Three and Four are written and in editing.

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Actually, it should be ‘Writer’s Idol,’ but I am inexplicably fond of a James Franco/Danny McBride fantasy/quest movie called ‘Your Highness.’ If you’ve never heard of it, don’t worry about it, it’s probably for the best. But it features an evil wizard who wants to bring about doomsday by deflowering the Princess, a process he calls the ‘****ening.’ So, I like ‘The Pitchening.’

And just now, on the subject of this blog, it occurs to me that maybe knowing more about my process is not a good thing.

Anyhow, here’s the deal. The Luck is coming out on August 1 (you’ll get tired of hearing that), so I need to get on the old promotional trail. That includes conventions, and I suppose that conventions include Winnipeg’s oldest and most respected Sci Fi Convention, Keycon.

So I’ve signed up for Keycon, bought my membership and all. I’d have done it anyway, Steve Erickson, the Malazan Empire guy, is the guest this year, and he’s a friend, we were in a writers group together back in the day (seriously – look up the dedication in Gardens of the Moon, there we all are). So it will be nice to see him, and maybe see if he’ll give me a plug for old time’s sake.

I’m also going to try and get on a few panels. I like panels, I’m good at them.

It’s peculiar. I have no social skills. No small talk at all, my idea of small talk is to make eye contact and stare at someone until they go away. Making conversation is excruciating. Oddly, that works for me, because apparently I’m a terrific and sympathetic listener. But really, no social skills. Find it, fix it, build it, kill it, I’m right there – object oriented programming, task based, achievement focused, process driven, learn, do, goal, object, closure completion – that’s me. Having a conversation? That’s sometimes excruciating. Sometimes I’m kind of like a robot, but with less personality (apologies to robots).

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Red letter day – February 17, 2020. I just finished the galleys for The Luck last night, and sent them off to the publisher.

February 10, 2020 – Cover Art theme got sorted out and agreed.

January 18, 2020 – Blurb. Which is just a peculiar word. But actually might be genuinely important to help sell the novel.

January 16, 2020 – I did the official updated bio. I managed to include this web site. Honesstly though, I’m not really interesting, so I’m not sure why I need a bio at all.

January 10, 2020 – I sent a couple of excerpts from ‘The War,’ the third novel in the trilogy to my publisher, Lorina, at Five Rivers. That struck me as a bit optimistic, I’m not really sure The Luck will end up justifying a third novel.  I’m not sure that the sales of The Mermaid’s Tale justified The Luck. This is a business, the book has to sell after all, and if it doesn’t…. But I appreciate the faith in me.

January 9, 2020 – Wrote the dedication and forward.

December 1, 2019 – Delivered the final edits and revisions.

I’m not sure what else is left to do on my end, as far as the technical requirements go. I do have to say that it’s been lovely working with Five Rivers Publications, and with Lorina. I’ve been invited to have a lot more input and involvement in the the technical issues than a lot of major publishers will give, or so I understand.

I don’t think, for instance, that major publishers really allow for the author to engage with and collaborate with the artist in terms of working out the ideas and themes of the cover – from what I’ve read and been told it’s more a ‘you take what we give you, and you’ll like it.’ Same with the blurbs. So that’s really nice.

Oh! Also, I have a release date!

August 1, 2020

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I’m what you might call a compulsive writer.  Or convulsive. Or something.

I write because I have to.  I’ve quit now and then, but I come back to it. Sometimes I just end up abandoning it because life gets in the way, but sooner or later I come back to it.

It’s not necessarily even fiction. I just like writing. Movie reviews, quirky little essays, ruminations and reflections, odd little things – I’ve written reviews of imaginary movies, discoursed on the ecology of nonexistent animals.

I remember as a teenager, I built an entire fictional fantasy world, Loranth:  maps, geography, races and animals, populations, everything.  Never did anything with it, never showed it to anyone, I just got satisfaction from doing it.

I’ve done stuff that I’ve never shared with anyone.  Often because I know I’ll be the only person interested in something so esoteric or off the wall.  A regular person will look at it, and just not see the point.

Anyway, a few years ago, I was browsing the web and I found this topographic map of Mars.  For those of you who aren’t up on your NASA, Mars is just a cratered reddish brown glob of a globe.  There’s darker, there’s lighter, but it’s pretty dull.

Then about twenty years ago, they put a satellite up around the planet, a Global Surveyor, I think, that photographed the whole planet in extreme detail.  I mean extreme detail – this was a level of resolution which would show up a buffalo as a couple of pixels.  Not bad for twenty-thousand  miles up.  So any kind of elaborate structure – a boulder for instance, the size of a house, would show up.

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Normally, I’m not all that interested in commenting on politics.  I have opinions. Steven Harper’s muzzling of science and wholesale destruction of research and evidence is absolutely heinous. Donald Trump is a repugnant human being. And anyone who supported Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court is an irredeemable moral degenerate.  I’m not going to showboat it, but I’m not backing down from it.  If that’s a problem for someone… it’s not my problem.

Vaccinations work.  Manmade global climate change is a real thing.  The people who deny it are either crazy or dishonest.  That’s not politics, that’s common sense.

Which takes me to Rush Limbaugh. He’s recently announced Lung cancer.

Let me first say that I’ve lost several family members to Lung Cancer.  And more to other kinds of cancer. I would not wish that on anyone, not even Limbaugh. It’s a horrible ugly slow way to die, and I wish him a recovery which is unlikely, or in lieu of that, I wish him a speedy painless death.

Unfortunately for him, it is likely that Rush Limbaugh will die. The survival rate is 5%, and Limbaugh is an older, appallingly obese man in extremely poor physical condition with a history of alcohol, drug addiction, dissolution and waste. That’s not really a good recipe for pulling through.

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I’m told, in this ‘Brave New World of Writing,’ that it is marketing uber alles. I need a brand. I need to be a brand. I need a platform. I need to create content, lots of free content, to give away, so that people will pay for some other content.  How charming.

So anyway, here goes.

If you look up some place called Wattpad, I offer you an novel length freebee in many installments.

The New Doctor: A Doctor Who Alternate History

https://www.wattpad.com/story/205604218-the-new-doctor-a-doctor-who-alternate-history

You’re thinking to yourself, “Wait, this is fanfiction, I don’t read fanfiction!”

Or you’re thinking to yourself, “I don’t even know/care about Doctor Who, why would I want to read this?”

My god, but you’re a ‘hard to please’ bunch!

Let me assure you – The New Doctor: A Doctor Who Alternate History, is not actually fanfiction, and it is not really about Doctor Who! Unless of course, you want it to be, in which case it is. It’s a Schrodinger’s cat kind of thing, it both is and it isn’t.

Let me explain.

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So, I was having a conversation with someone the other day, and they were railing on about ‘woke’ media and ‘SJW’s and ‘Mary Sues,’ ‘political correctness’ and the whole nine yards.

Then he said something that got me.

He said, “Why do they have to have all these political agendas. Why can’t they just tell a good story without politics like in the original Star Trek.”

I burst out laughing. I couldn’t stop it. It just came roaring out of me. One second, we’re having a conversation, the next second, I’m bent over laughing uncontrollably. I was just taken by surprise.

Because the original Star Trek has an episode all about racism, involving white/black people being racist to black/white people. They did stories about racism. About sexism. About overpopulation. Pollution. The Cold War. They did everything.

Not only did they have all these political agendas, but they were absolutely ham handed about it every step of the way. They were totally anvillicious. Star Trek always wore its politics on its chest, and was as subtle as a bull in a china shop.

So, I’m just laughing helplessly, I can’t stop it, and he’s looking at me like I’ve grown an extra head. He’s trying to decide whether he should be offended.

And I make it worse. I say….

“Have you actually ever even watched Star Trek?”

That’s it, he’s offended.

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