New Novel in Works

I'm working on a new novel: tentative title is Best Served Cold. It's about a couple of homeless guys who attempt an elaborate revenge on a hedge fund manager who purposely tripped one of them in a coffee shop.

As you would expect if you have read my stuff before, things come off the tracks in bizarre and wondrous ways. There is a Colombian drug cartel, a task force of bent cops, a reality TV show featuring the divorcees of South Beach, a Colombian assassin who loves romance novels, and a self-styled witch from Trinidad and Tobago. Explained in the process: a more hopeful solution to homelessness, how reality TV leaves its viewers stewing in their own depravity, why it's a bad idea to see too many women at the same time, and how to practice detachment and self-denial in the midst of plenty. Think of it as a kind of modern take on the Book of Job without all those long-winded and judgmental friends . . . and maybe a few more vulgarities 'cause, you know, profanity is my second language.

I decided to use NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) to jump start productivity, and two weeks in, I've already accumulated over 43 thousand words, some of which are pretty funny, or at least it seems so to me. With a little luck the first draft should be finished mid-December. Another month should do for edits and proof-reading and yield a clean beta-test version. Anyone interested in being a beta reader, let me know here in the comments, or via e-mail and I'll put you on the list.

I imagine every author uses beta readers a little differently, so here is an of what I'd be looking for. I provide you with an e-pub or mobi file of the book. (I may be able to do other formats, including hard print. We'll see.) You read the book and send me feedback about what you liked, what didn't work for you, what you might like to see added or deleted or rearranged or whatever. It's kind of like a focus group.

I use your comments and suggestions to do the final rewrite and then publish. You get a free signed copy of the finished work, and if you give me something that saves my authorly ass from embarrasment or poverty, I'll even mention you in the forward. That's as good a deal as I can make.

The aim is to make the book as engaging and entertaining as possible for my readers, enabling me to sell a lot of books and ultimately to buy the Cadillac I covet. Thanks for your interest in my work.

A Little Rhyming Philosophy

with apologies to Jonathan Swift and Augustus De Morgan

You Know It's True!

Drug Test the Rich?

 I keep seeing a post or posts on Facebook and Twitter supporting drug testing of welfare recipients as a prerequisite to their receiving any money. At first blush, this seems an entirely reasonable position to take. No one in their right mind wants to see tax dollars used to support a drug or alcohol habit, and requiring testing would, if this were the only issue, be a reasonable and viable way to prevent that happening. Unfortunately, the mere use of drugs and alcohol by people on welfare is not the only issue involved. It is not even the most important one.

So far, in virtually every state that such laws have been enacted, the cost to the state of the drug testing has exceeded the amount of money saved by denying benefits to those who tested positive. The reason? You have to test everyone, but the percentage of welfare applicants testing positive for drug use is actually less than the national average for all citizens. In other words, we are spending money to solve a problem that doesn't actually exist.

We do this a lot—usually at the behest of a Republican ideologue who is busy spending our money needlessly when he is not otherwise engaged in accusing the Democrats of spending our money needlessly. The upshot is that we deny benefits and assistance to people who actually could use it in order to provide a windfall to people who were already doing pretty well for themselves.

In the case of drug testing welfare applicants, the only people to benefit from these laws are the labs who provide the testing. In Florida, one of the primary labs providing such testing is owned by the wife of the governor. Pretty sure she doesn't need the money to feed her children, so—you know—FAIL!

I wonder how the folks who support this kind of draconian legislation think that it will work. The irony is that it only works at all if you stop thinking before your thinking comes to a kind of logical conclusion. I imagine it would actually look something like this:

1. If you take away a crack whore's welfare money, she will not stop buying crack. What she will actually stop buying is food for her children because, you know—crack helps you get through times of no money better than money helps you get through times of no crack, and being stoned makes it easier to tolerate the crying of hungry babies, whereas withdrawal from crack will make you want to throw your well-fed babies out the window.
2. When the crack babies begin to starve, they will be taken away from their mothers and placed in shelters and foster homes where the burden of feeding them will fall on different programs from the ones that were feeding them before. The cost of feeding them will not change very much, although if it does change it will probably go up because shelters and foster homes cost more than actual parents. When you look at the crack babies' former program expenditures, however, it will appear as though there have been some savings even though there has only been a transfer of costs from one program to another.
3. Notwithstanding that there are no actual savings, the apparent savings will be transferred to rich people in the form of tax cuts in the sincere, if misguided, hope that they will use the money to create jobs for the rest of us.
4. The wealthy, who have already created all the jobs they plan to—none, will actually use the money to buy champagne, cocaine, and prostitutes. (If you think about it, this is the fairest possible outcome. I mean why should poor people get to luxuriate in the care-free indulgences of addiction, when that kind of happy leisure ought to be reserved for the rich who truly deserve it?)
5. And so we come full circle. The effect of our enlightened new laws will be:
   1. slight increase in the cost of feeding crack babies as foster homes and shelters get more money to feed children than do their parents
   2. reduced tax revenues and increasing deficits because the wealthy are contributing less and the poor are costing more
   3. increased demand for and therefore higher prices for drugs because the rich don't care how much they pay for coke if the money is coming from poor children
   4. increase in crime rates to pay for higher priced drugs because you still gotta smoke that shit no matter what it costs

So maybe it wouldn't look just like that, but I bet I'm closer to reality than you are. All I'm saying is you have to think about this stuff before you spout it on Facebook because there are a lot of people there who will take what you say at face value if the first sentence makes even a little sense. Why? Because that's almost always as far as they are going to read.

A surprisingly simple solution to homelessness: provide housing!

When I first saw this picture, I had to wonder how many people have
looked at it and decided the dude doesn't deserve an apartment
if he can't keep it cleaner. 

This is a great and thought-provoking article on a saner and more compassionate approach to homelessness. If you've got some extra time, follow the link in the article to the Malcolm Gladwell piece from New Yorker on "Million-Dollar Murray." It's another eye-opener made doubly relevant in that it also points up the extreme high costs to society of a health care system that doesn't provide preventive and maintenance medical care options for those who can't afford it on their own. If you think those costs go away if they are not born by the government (taxpayers) in some systemic way, you are sorely mistaken.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/02/housing-first-solution-to-homelessness-utah

My Super Power

My wife pointed out the other day that I have a real talent for rationalizing procrastination. She said it's my super power. She may be correct as I think I have yet to actually use it.

Kofia Kat

He only looks this serene when his next meal is in sight.

Panamabra - cool venom!

Mongoose, my ass!

The Sheikh

Not Rudolph Valentino perhaps, but imposing and handsome nonetheless!
. . . and way more manly.

Shemagh Kat

I love this little guy!

Meerkat in Shemagh - looks like vigilance.

. . . and occasionally he rhymes.

Sticky Fingers and a Stiff Upper Lip

nothing exudes confidence like a monocle and bowler!

Not Your Hogwarts Owl

wiseass owl with attitude to spare

Oh, for an Opposable Thumb

with an opposable thumb he could sip a martini too. 

Fedora Bob

as if he weren't cool enough already!

Without Remorse

Animated Book Cover?!!

These have been around for a while. I just figured out how to do them for my own covers. Now it's time for Amazon et al to accommodate these animated GIFs for ebooks on their sites.

A Short Monologue on Writing Dialog

Oh, yes indeed we do!

I worked with a really great editor at Wag's Revue several years ago while prepping my short story, “Mourning Jimmy Crooks,” for publication there. We had a lengthy discussion about dialog in which he told me that sometimes it is useful to write dialog as if the parties to the conversation are not talking to one another. In other words, no one is responding to what the others are saying. He seemed to think that this was a good way to end up with realistic dialog, even if the process seemed somewhat counter-intuitive.

At first I thought this quite odd. Logical flow, give and take, is the whole point of dialog after all, and the best practitioners of written dialog in my experience, Elmore Leonard in virtually everything he wrote and George V. Higgins in TheFriends of Eddie Coyle, didn't write like that. Then I got to thinking about many actual conversations I have had in my 65 years on the planet. Yeah, I know. You too, right?

What the editor had suggested is in fact an excellent way to portray realism. It is the way people actually talk to one another. In any event, it is the way that people talk to me. I've always thought of it as a problem, but maybe, just maybe, it's not my problem alone.

One of the reasons I took up writing was so that I would be able to express a complete thought before someone hijacked the exchange to take it in a different direction. When I talk, hardly anyone pays any attention to what I have to say. What they do instead, while I am weaving conversational brilliance all around them, is to work out what they want to say next. When they have got it firmly in their minds, they just jump in wherever I may be to tell me what they think about whatever it is that they just thought. I don't really need to be there except for people to be able to say things later like, “I had a really great talk with Jonah the other day. He seems really smart . . . and nice too. Don't remember what he said, but I told him . . .”

Here is an example of what I'm talking about from a recent dinner party at our house. Feel free to jump in anytime.

Me: I watched Gotham on TV the other night. I thought it was pretty good, but it's been getting panned all over the Web.

Wife: There sure are a lot of shows based on comic books lately.

Adult Son's GF: My favorite is Iron Man. I just love Robert Downey, Jr.

Granddaughter: I'm getting a new tattoo to fill in this empty space on my side. I'm thinking Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones because, you know, she's got dragons! No, wait . . . dragons. That's it. I'm gonna get a dragon. I'll be that other girl with the dragon tattoo.

Sister1: I found these shoes on sale at Steinmart last week. Aren't they cute?

Granddaughter: Maybe a direwolf would be better than a dragon. I don't know. It's so hard to decide. The girl with the direwolf tattoo?

Wife: This mango key lime pie is wonderful, isn't it?

Adult Son: Speaking of Iron Man, can you all get the ESPN coverage of the Honolulu Triathalon?

Adult Son's GF: I'm trying to find a good recipe for flan.

Bean (my greyhound): Rrr. Rrrr. Mmmh? [translation—is it time to feed the dog yet?]

Me: I just don't think Gotham is that bad. I think it's the best Batman derivative . . .

Brother: I think everyone's interested in comic book style entertainment because Obama has screwed the country up so bad it's gonna take a modern day superhero to fix things. People just wanna get back to good old fashioned good versus evil because, you know, Obama is evil and we need to believe there's some good out there.

Bean: Rrr. Rrrr. Wooo. [Some dinner would be good.]

Sister2: Did you all see where somebody hacked naked pictures of Jennifer Lawrence off of the iCloud? What a nightmare for that poor girl. She had to tell her dad about it and everything.

Sister1: She's so cute. I wonder where she gets her shoes.

Me: . . . that ever made it onto TV. Sure, it's not . . .

Brother: I blame Obama for that too.

Adult Son: Wait . . . what?

Bean: Rrr. Rrrr. Argh? [Hey, did you guys know it's Talk Like a Pirate Day?]

10 Surefire Ways to Carve Time out of Your Busy Life to Write

Note: results may differ depending on placement in the election cycle.

It's hard to find time in a busy life to write. If you've got a job and children and a spouse who doesn't pull their own weight, the odds of you cracking the best seller lists are slim to none - unless of course you know some tricks and life hacks to carve out the time you need to practice your craft. Here are ten that work for me. Please note: I don't have a job or children at home or a spouse who doesn't pull her weight, so I probably don't have to find as much time as those of you who do. Still, I'm occasionally challenged by my schedule and have difficulty making my planned daily word count. So, admittedly, these may be more tailored to my lifestyle than yours, but my guess is that they apply to more of us than they ought. If you recognize yourself, take heart. You are not alone.

1. Write every day. Pick a time to write and a word count goal. Make a schedule and stick to it.
2. Get off of Facebook.
3. If you have trouble staying off of Facebook, turn off you computer and write with a pen and paper until you reach your goal.
4. Seriously, get the hell off of Facebook.
5. Tweeting about getting off of Facebook does not count. If you think it does, you need to get off of Twitter as well.
6. If your pen runs out of ink, refill it. If your pencil gets dull, sharpen it. Do not Tweet or update your Facebook status about your ink and pencil lead deficits. What you have is an attention deficit and you need to get right off of Facebook.
7. No one on LinkedIn cares that you are not feeding your Facebook or Twitter Jones. If you think they are, get off of LinkedIn. Stay off of Facebook and Twitter. Honestly. I can't stress this enough.
8. Ditto Instagram, Pinterest, and Google+. If my use of the word 'ditto' just made you nostalgic for Ronald Reagan or furious about Barack Obama, then you need to quit listening to Rush Limbaugh too. Turn off the radio. Get off of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and Google+. Do it now.
9. Did I mention that you need to get off of Facebook? You really do. I think this is crucial.
10. Of course none of this will be very effective unless you actually get off of Facebook. Of all the advice I could give you about finding time to write, I think that one is probably the most important.

If you want to know more tricks, hacks, and secrets to a productive writing life, you should friend me on Facebook and like my page. 

https://www.facebook.com/AimlessJonah

Book Cover Blues

I submitted the cover of Speedster to the cover contest at Joel Friedlander's website, The Book Designer, last month. I thought I would get some useful feedback, maybe some praise, and possibly some free publicity that would result in a few more sales. Judging by Joel's comments (below) my cover was not nearly so good as I imagined. That got me to thinking that the cover might be part of my problem. It's a well established fact by now that, in spite of the old saw that you can't, readers judge a book by its cover—especially the readers of ebooks. If that cover is confusing, inscrutable, and illegible, as Joel says mine is, it doesn't have much hope of attracting attention.

Jonah Gibson submitted Speedster designed by Jonah Gibson. “I had this photo of an Auburn Boattail Speedster that I took at a car show several years ago. I’d already excised the car and created a poster. When I finished the book, it seemed only natural to use the poster as a cover. It all just kind of fell into place.”


JF: An odd background choice, a car that appears to be flying, and typography that’s inscrutable and in some cases illegible

Legible, scrutable,
grounded, and red.
Is this enough? IDK!

Taking that thought to heart I have redesigned the cover for Speedster. Here is the new one.




I think it's better, at least insofar as it addresses Joel's misgivings about the old one. On the other hand, I clearly don't know a good cover from a mediocre one since I was pretty jazzed about my first effort. Maybe you can tell me how I did by leaving a comment. Or maybe this whole subject just bores you to tears, in which case I apologize for taking up your time and your bandwidth. Either way, if you got this far, thanks for listening.