Well, here’s my writer’s year in review. What have we got? Another year of nothing much, unfortunately. Another year of spinning the wheels. Six books in all, though I didn’t write one of them, and only partial for another. I’ve been doing this the last few year, trying to keep track of what I’ve been up to and how far along I’ve gotten. I went back and reviewed the last few roundups. It’s rather distressing – basically, plugging away hard, the same projects slowly advancing or not advancing year by year. Word counts piling up, but an uncertain sense of accomplishment. Anyway, let’s jump in.
Fiction
STARLOST UNAUTHORIZED – Now Available
The giant Earthship Ark, drifting through deep space over eight hundred years into the far future, its passengers descendants of the last survivors of the dead planet earth, locked in separate worlds heading for destruction… The Starlost (1973)
Starlost, a Canadian television series, running sixteen episodes in 1973. The premise was interesting – Earth was long gone, the last survivors of humanity had fled in a giant generation ship composed of interlinked domes. But something had gone horribly wrong, an accident had taken out the bridge crew and locked the domes away from each other, and the ship had drifted out of control for four hundred years. Now it was heading on a collision course with a nearby star, and only Devon, Rachel and Garth, three exiles from a rural dome, understood the danger and faced the almost insurmountable task of trying to save what was left of humanity.
Originally, it got off to a great start with names like Harlan Ellison, Ben Bova, Doug Trumbull, Keir Dullea, Walter Koenig and Ursula K. LeGuin attached to it. But things went wrong – Harlan Ellison threw a tantrum, scripts weren’t ready, the revolutionary special effects system didn’t work. The big names departed, leaving the show in the hands of an inexperienced production crew who had no time, no money and no experience. The verdict was catastrophe, one of the worst series ever produced in the sci fi genre.
But was it? I just wrote a book saying different.
STARLOST UNAUTHORIZED, Update
1st Draft done. 2nd Draft done, Currently reorganizing up to 3rd and hopefully final draft.
Waiting to do a few interviews. Doing the cut off.
PERVERSIONS & INFIDELITIES, DEUX
Eve St. Albert returns with her second volume of Perversions and Infidelities, three more novellas of desire, transgression, sex and satisfaction. Perversions and Infidelities is a four book series being produced by Fossil Cove Publishing, with Dawne Dominque as the cover artist. The first three books each contain a series of novellas featuring erotic tales for a women’s readership. These are stories of empowerment, adventure and satisfaction. Of women breaking free of their normal lives, embarking on transgressive sexual journeys, exploring power, identity, fantasy and desire and ultimately, finding their true selves.
Perversions & Infidelities, an Erotic Collection
Welcome to Fossil Cove Publishing’s foray into Erotica, Perversions and Infidelities, the first of a four book series written by Eve St. Albert, with cover by Dawne Dominique.
Perversions and Infidelities, is a collection of four erotic novellas of women’s erotic. In particular, it focuses on women stepping out of assigned roles, refusing to accept the place life designates for them, and struggling to break free, to find fulfillment and adventure, even if their satisfaction requires transgression.
The stories explore themes of identity, both identities assigned and identities assumed; fantasy, and self discovery. Each character finds themselves in a position where they go beyond the rules to discover themselves. Sometimes they stumble there accidentally, sometimes they flee in desperation and restlessness, and for some a doorway into temptation opens. It is erotica with a literary edge, nasty stories of women who unapologetically want what they want.
STARLOST KICKSTARTER – FINAL WEEK
Starlost Unauthorized by D.G. Valdron — Kickstarter
Hello Boys and Girls and Other, Children of all ages, Sapient beings of any description! Welcome to my Starlost Kickstarter!
I am thrilled to say, that we exceeded our initial goal in the first week! We are now into our Stretch Goal of $2000 – $2500.
It’s been a great experience, I want to thank everyone for their support. But now I want to do the final push. If you’ve pledged support, god bless you, and thank you so much. I’m not asking you for money. If you’d like to support, but don’t have money, that’s okay too. But what I am asking for every single one of you, is to help spread the message, pass the word, email, post, repost this, send it to friends, send it to groups you think might get into it.
This is going to be a hell of a book, I am passionate about it. Help me make it great!
DARK CANDLE by R.J. Hore
THE LATEST RELEASE FROM FOSSIL COVE PUBLISHING
A JOURNEY INTO THE PAST. An experiment in hypnotic regression at a socialites party awakens a mysterious shadow of the past in the body of mild mannered accountant, Martin Owen. As the experiments progress, a band of friends are slowly drawn into a quest for King Arthur’s tomb and a Roman Emperor’s lost treasure. But the mysterious shadow has its own agenda, and as it slowly takes over Martin’s life, the friends must come to grips with their own desires, betrayals and illicit passions. Is the shadow from out of time leading them to glory… or doom!
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0D5H13HZM/ref=sr_1_1?crid=30DJGTKLRTE2Z
BOOK NEWS – DRUNK SLUTTY ELF AND ZOMBIES
Just a quick note. DRUNK SLUTTY ELF AND ZOMBIES has been uploaded to IngramSpark. It can now be ordered from the 40,000 platforms, including thousands of brick and mortar bookstores that IngramSpark spark!
Just a note of explanation – IngramSpark is to print books what Amazon is to Ebooks. They’re a giant publisher and distributor, hosting many titles, and providing services to small and independent publishers. Getting onto IngramSpark is potentially a major breakthrough.
Does that mean I’ll be getting into real bookstores? Probably not. The economics don’t quite work.
Basically, physical bookstores operate on a rip and return basis. They order books, they try to sell them within a specific period of time. If they don’t, then they just rip off the covers, send them back, junk the rest and only pay for what they’ve sold. Believe it or not, that’s the way it’s been working for a hundred years, and it’s been working fine… mostly. It’s the operating mode for books, magazines and newspapers. And it works fine for big publishers, dealing in substantial volumes.
TINY PLASTIC MEN – JUST GO WATCH IT
I’m a horrible person. I freely admit that. But I’m not horrible all the time. I have moments when I’m even okay to be around.
And when those moments happen, you’ll find me searching for the gently quirky, the strange, the oddball. All those hidden treasures and diamonds in the rough we all go blasting past, on our way to our busy lives.
Which brings me to Tiny Plastic Men, a very quirky, very fun little television series that deserves cult status and a lot more attention than it seems to have gotten.
Tiny Plastic Men is about three guys who work in a little independent toy company, Gottfried Brothers. Gottfried isn’t Mattel or Lego, but by God, they’re in there giving it their all, from board games, to action figures, to video games and somehow, they’ve managed to care themselves a niche.
Our heroes are three peons who work in the testing department: Crad, played by Chris Craddock — the everyman of the group, middle aged, divorced, burnt out, anger issues and yet somehow struggling to get by and be a decent person while pining for his boss, for whom he nurses a crush; October, played by Mark Meer, who starts off goth and gets seriously weird, and Addison, played by Matthew Alden, a kind of stereotypical lovable lunk of a manchild. Rounding out the cast are Alexandra Gottfried, played by, Belinda Cornish, daughter of old man Gottfried, and a piranha in a woman’s body, who Crad pines for. Beyond that, there’s a revolving cast of recurring characters.
Given that this is a show about three buddies working as product testers in some second string toy factory, you shouldn’t expect this to be your regular sitcom about people sitting around their apartments or having real jobs in the real world. There’s a basic silliness to the premise, a bit of surrealism, a bit of absurdity, a lot of off the wall stuff. This is not Friends, trust me. It’s not even the Big Bang Theory.
In fact, I don’t think that there’s anything quite like it. The closest I can come to is a sort of Earthbound version of Red Dwarf or perhaps a more insane version of the IT Crowd.
COMING SOON – SQUAD 13
[draft cover by Dean Naday]
SQUAD 13 – Suppose all those unkillable, masked slashers from the 80s and 90s were rounded up and enlisted into the army as a nightmare squad of unstoppable killing machines. Suppose you used them for problems just as terrifying – vampire infestations, zombie outbreaks, alien invasions, incursions from another dimension, all those supernatural paranormal nightmares. The situation is bad, the Squad goes in and they never leave survivors. Suppose they’re worse than anything they face. Suppose you’re trapped in their nightmare.