Scribbles and Tunes

Free Noblebright Fantasy Books

If you enjoy wholesome fantasy that focuses on themes of courage, honor and nobility, then click on over here to peruse 70 free Noblebright fantasy books.

Noblebright is a somewhat new sub-genre of fantasy that started several years ago. Like I said, it tends to always have the themes I mentioned. It also avoids erotica. Mostly PG and PG-13, if you can equate it to movie ratings. Though, these days, there are a lot of PG-13s that honestly seem to veer into R territory.

The first book in my new Ruin Raiders series is in the giveaway, if you haven’t picked it up already. Seriously, it’s free–so what are you waiting for? Or, if you want to give me 99 cents (actually, I only get 35 cents of the 99–the rest goes to Amazon), go to Amazon and buy it there. After all, poor, struggling writers like myself need to be able to buy chewing gum every now and then.

Blackbird

I wrote a quick poem about the passage of time depicted as a blackbird. And turned it into a song with the creepily effective aid of AI. I have to say… it’s both scary and impressive.

I typically don’t have enough free time these days to do much song recording for Inflatable Hippies. I leave that to Son #2 who writes and records at all hours. Throughout the day (once schoolwork is done), late late late into the night. He’s recording under the name Narrin these days. I’m still not sure what his genre is called, but his output is scary. Music is his thing, but I think he enjoys performing live even more than recording. As long as the other musicians are up to a certain caliber…

Anyway, that said, I’m resigned to my fate of just writing poetry/lyrics and then having HAL take over from there. Though, it still does involve setting up style, instrument, dynamics, arrangement, intonation, structure etc etc parameters. Sometimes the results are spectacular crash-and-burn affairs. Or, other times, after a couple of hours or days of back and forth, the results are good.

Tunes and Writing

Some new tunes and some new writing. That’s what I have to show for myself today. If I had the freedom to do so, I’d spend most of my time writing songs and stories. However, life…

Life is messy. And persistent. After a while you become the metaphor for a hastily made-up sad clown failing at juggling dozens of chainsaws and Limoges porcelain while unskillfully riding a unicycle and trying to escape from a maddened mob of IRS agents, honey badgers and robotic squid armed with cusinarts. And, of course, while all this mayhem is happening, there is a beautiful slow motion sunset going on–so incredibly slow that that single sunset begins, evolves and dips down past the horizon just once for your entire life.

The sunset never ceases to amaze and awe you, every time you glance over during your frantic unicycle escape.

What’s the moral of this story? That life is short and time is even shorter and, if we firmly believe in the existence of the four dimensions of length, width, height and time, someone possesses a measuring tape in their pocket that exists outside of time but with which you can measure time. Or perhaps the object is simply a very, very tiny ruler. But still big enough to measure time.

New Inflatable Hippies Music!

Which brings me to my latest tune. Blackbird, as written by me and performed by alter ego band Inflatable Hippies and executed by hired AI studio musicians. I simply cannot perform and record at their level. Plus, I find myself content enough to just write the song. Also, for the video clip below, I tried to put together some AI lip-sync of a portion of the song. I used some Magica tools to rough success. Definitely not perfect.

New Humorous Epic Fantasy!

And… the latest story. The Ruin Raiders series. Books 1 and 2 are out. Book 1 is Rise of the Farmboy, and book 2 is Westward to Ravelock. The series follows the story of a farmboy named Ben who runs away from home in order to find adventure. And, boy oh boy, does he ever find adventure. Way too much. He ends up joining a ruin raiding crew who plunder old ruins to find treasure. Wizards, elves, dwarves, monsters, magic, ancient evil, etc etc etc. All of the above.

3 through 6 should be out shortly as well. This is fairly lighthearted writing, in comparison to the Hawk and His Boy series. I wrote Hawk very carefully, as I was deliberately trying to examine themes of sacrifice, death, family and truth. I rewrote and edited those three books for years before I was content enough to publish. Ruin Raiders is the exact opposite: quick, fun, write and move on. Another thing to note is that the Ruin Raiders book exist in the same world as The Fury Clock, but they aren’t written from such a complete lunatic perspective as Clock is.

All for now. I have to get back to land use and water policy. California.

Rise of the Farmboy

Rise of the Farmboy is the first book in my new humorous epic fantasy series Ruin Raiders. From the Amazon description:

Ben just wanted to join the army, punch some goblins, and retire with a plot of farmland and a wife prettier than the tavernkeeper’s daughter.
Instead, he finds himself on the run from the secret police, thrown in a dungeon cell, nearly murdered by a gorgeous woman with a disturbing interest in his eyeballs, and recruited by a washed-up wizard and a homicidal elf-thief who’s just stolen the map to an ancient, accursed city.
Ben wanted adventure.
He just did not expect quite so much of it.
Rise of the Farmboy is the first book in Ruin Raiders, a light-hearted epic fantasy series filled with magic, danger, unlikely heroes, and one farmboy trying very hard not to die before his life has properly begun.

I have the first six books in the series done and waiting in my computer. They’re on the short side (30 to 40,ooo word range), which allows me to write them fast. A traditional 200,000 word monster takes a long time to write. This means the endings can be on the cliff hangerish side of things, but hopefully nobody gets too upset about that. After all, I’m going to be pricing them dirt cheap and, to be honest, it’s a wide world out there with lots of other choices.

As an old friend used to remark, “fly low and stay cool.” I never used to understand that, but I do now.

New Humorous Fantasy Book

The new humorous fantasy book is almost ready to publish. That is… as soon as the artistic combat between myself and the cover is concluded, I will publish. However, I’m not sure who is winning the battle at this point. Here’s a truncated look at the current version, minus the lettering and a big portion of the image. This should be enough to give you an idea of the stylistic feel of the story: light-hearted, humorous fantasy, leaning heavily on the farm boy trope.

I’m determined to get this one published before the end of the month. As long as the rest of life doesn’t intrude too aggressively: family, church, job, water policy, satellite crashing to Earth, etc.

In the Meantime, Here’s Some Music

In other creative fronts, I’ve been reproducing a lot of my old songs via my Inflatable Hippies alter-ego band. I have way too much fun doing this. I think I first started writing music when I was around twelve or thirteen, and I’ve always been engaged in that to varying degrees ever since. You’ll have to pry my guitar from my cold hands before you put me in the grave.

Mary is about soldiers going to war and not coming home. That was my grandfather in my family during WWII, but it’s a common experience to many. Sad theme, but definitely worth exploring in any creative medium. I’ve always been fascinated by WWII and Cold War history. Music is a quick way to integrate that creatively. That said, I have several book projects I’m chipping away on that use WWII/Cold War as a context. Part of my list of about thirty books I need to write…

Charlie’s Road is about someone trying to find meaning in life and not understanding that you can always find that right at home. Right where you are, of course. I wrote this one from the perspective of a love story, but also managed to work in an Ozymandia allusion for the Percy Shelley afficionados–I love that poem and have worked it into quite a few different things I’ve written.

Anticipation of Impact is an old song about the lie we tell ourselves, that we’re in control of our lives. We’re mostly not. If I remember correctly, I wrote this after being in a car accident. For days and months afterward, I would have sudden moments where I thought something was about to collide with me. My mind would freeze up in anticipation of the impact.

Life Has Come Undone is more deliberation on that same theme–the lack of control we have in life, combined with the persistent sense of not being able to find our way home, even when at home. I don’t know about you, but that odd sense of homesickness is something that’s persisted through my life, regardless of a happy home life here in Planet California. I suppose it’s because of the innate longing we all have (at least, I hope you all have it) for heaven. That’s the only explanation that makes sense to me.

I’m Off to Punk Rock Land

Those are the new ones for now. Recently, however, I’ve started writing songs veering off into punk rock. It’s a fun, energetic style (and no, I’m not growing a mohawk) and I love the inherent protest feel it has. Plenty of things to protest these days. Such as the horrifying abuse issue in the UK recently highlighted by Rupert Lowe’s report. 250,000 Girls is the song I wrote for that.