ONE MORE TIME!

On April 30, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized1 Comment

As much as I hate to do this two nights in a row, this is proving to have been one of the busiest weeks of the year, and it’s following immediately on the heels of a four-day trip. I got home at 5:15 tonight, an hour or so later than usual, and I could have gone to bed on the spot. It took five or six tries to spell “immediately” right just now, and on the last try I couldn’t figure out what was wrong.

There will be no 8 am post tomorrow. In fact, it wouldn’t startle me if tomorrow was the first day of the year I’ve missed. I need some damn sleep. 🙂

#ATOZCHALLENGE, Day 26: Z-Trip

On April 30, 2015March 31, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Music

Artist: Z-Trip
Best Album: Shifting Gears (I guess)
Best Song: Breakfast Club
This Letter Could Have Been About: Uhhh… Arrested Development did a really good album called Zingalamaduni, but I think that’s probably cheating.

Why I’m Writing About This Artist: For the last, a first: Every individual person mentioned during this project has been an MC, not a DJ. Z-Trip is the sole exception. He’s a DJ, and he’s worked with everybody. He’s also done a few solo albums, and by “solo albums” I mean he’s done Slash-style compilation albums where he produces beats for a bunch of other musicians who rap for him. I don’t think he’s ever recorded a verse of his own, and if I’m being honest the only reason Shifting Gears is listed up there as his best album is that it’s the one that I own. I’ll stand by Breakfast Club, though, a collaboration with Murs and Supernatural about getting up early in the morning on Saturday and watching cartoons while eating cereal. It’s fun, and as Murs says early in the song, if you can’t relate to this song, you’re taking shit too serious.

(This was fun. I look forward to doing it again next year.)

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Announcement!

On April 29, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized4 Comments

I am too crabby to blog tonight.

The end.

#ATOZCHALLENGE, Day 25: Yo-Yo

On April 29, 2015March 31, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Music1 Comment

Artist: Yo-Yo
Best Album: Make Way for the Motherlode
Best Song: You Can’t Play With my Yo-Yo
This Letter Could Have Been About: Uhhh… YG, maybe? Young MC? One of the lesser Youngs? Nah.

Why I’m Writing About This Artist: Uhh… this one’s kinda weak. I’ll admit it. I thought of Yo-Yo immediately for this letter, realizing after a couple of minutes that I really couldn’t come up with any other alternatives. Everybody else on this list was someone I had music from on my computer already, and for most of them I still own the CDs I bought back when they were new. I had to redownload Make Way for the Motherlode to make sure it held up, otherwise I was gonna be writing about Bust a Move, which I didn’t really want to do.

Here’s the good news: Motherlode actually holds up pretty well. Ice Cube discovered Yo-Yo, and has a prominent guest role on her most well-known song and a couple other spots on her debut album. She’s talented, if perhaps not on his level. This song at least is a classic, although she’s kind of a one-hit wonder. It’s still worth a listen.

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A note to my real-world friends regarding my books

On April 28, 2015April 28, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing13 Comments

I have a thing about advice columns. You may know this about me. They’re like crack. I can’t avoid them. And Dear Prudie dropped this on me today:

Q. I Don’t Like My Friend’s Book: My friend recently self-published his first novel. I bought a copy to support him. I really, really hate to admit it but I didn’t care for it. In fact, I didn’t even finish. I got through half of it before I gave up, read the last couple of pages, and put it down. He needs an editor badly and overall, it just wasn’t well-researched or plotted. In fact, he self-designed the cover in Photoshop. He wants to know if I liked the book, and honestly, I don’t know what to say. On one hand, I don’t want to tear him down because I know how proud he was of writing the book. On the other hand, I feel like he needs to know that he needs to improve on a few things. Is there a way to broach the subject without hurting feelings? Or do I just drop the issue and lie to him?

First things first, actually: don’t buy my book to support me. Buy my book because you think you might enjoy it.

That said: If you have bought my book to support me, and if upon attempting to read my book you discover you don’t like it, and if I enquire as to your opinion of said book at some point subsequent to your reading it, tell me the truth. I write science fiction and fantasy. I am fully aware that my writing is not the preferred genre of any number of my friends even before we get to issues of the quality of my prose. I need y’all to understand that I live in fear of being an impostor, a fear most writers share. I would absolutely one hundred percent prefer to know that you didn’t like my writing than to have smoke blown up my butt, and I am more than smart enough to figure it out if you’re trying to be sneaky with your word choices with me.

It will be fine. I will be fine. You will be fine. The phrase you want is “I couldn’t get through it,” or “I couldn’t finish it.” Say it fast, if you need to; rip the damn Band-Aid off. I might ask you why, but I probably won’t. If I do, tell me. It will be okay. I have yet to drop a friend because of their opinions on my writing. It won’t happen with this book, either.

The end.

(And go buy my stupid little book because you will like it, dammit.)

Two unrelated things

On April 28, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized5 Comments

I have posted about Rise ‘n Roll Bakery before, at least once, but I can’t find it at the moment. The “long story short” version is that they serve the greatest doughnuts in the world, or more specifically they serve the greatest doughnut holes in the world. This is known; it’s not up for debate. The best. Ever.

The problem with Rise ‘n Roll is that until very recently the closest location to me was in freaking Middlebury, deep in Amish country, where people like me dare not go. Granted, that’s mostly because we’re lazy, as I’m sure that the people in Middlebury are perfectly nice– they’re Amish, after all– and wouldn’t, like, hurt me or anything if I tried to buy their delicious doughnuts.

Note the “until recently” there. Because just this week they opened a new location, and the new location is practically next door to my comic shop. In other words, I’ll be driving past this place at least twice a week, basically forever.

This is going to make me very very fat. Or at least I thought it was. I swung by the comic shop today to drop off some promotional materials for my signing on the 9th, since I wanted them to have them before new comic book day tomorrow. On the way back, for the first time, I pulled into Rise ‘n Roll to buy some doughnut holes.

And discovered something terrible. Something that shouldn’t have surprised me, but did, and now I am very very sad.

Rise ‘n Roll does all their baking in the morning.

Which means that by 4:00 PM, which is about the time I’ll be driving past them, almost every time, their doughnuts, and their delicious doughnut holes, are gone. And they’re likely to always be gone.

Which means that the new Rise ‘n Roll is even worse than I thought. It’s not going to make me fat. It’s just going to make me want to be fat, but it will be a terrible, no-doughnuts-for-you tease.

I may have to burn the place down.

(Sidenote: their website is risenroll.com, which I parse as “risen roll,” which brings to mind all sorts of hilariously blasphemous story ideas about resurrected Jesus pastry. This may or may not be deliberate; I’m not sure.)

Second thing, this one shorter. I got this in the mail yesterday:

Derek Dieter is running against a woman for City Clerk.

Can you tell?

THE SANCTUM OF THE SPHERE is live!

On April 28, 2015April 28, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing3 Comments

Sanctum_72dpi My third book, The Sanctum of the Sphere: The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 2 is finally officially available!

Digital version: $4.95
Omnibus print edition (Includes The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 1): $14.99

I’m pretty damn proud of this book– particularly of the print edition, as I’ve learned a lot about how to do layout for these things and, in my opinion at least, the book looks great. As of this exact second (I’m administering an ISTEP test right now, so I’m actually writing this a couple of days early) the book already has one review on Goodreads, and it’s a 4.5 star review, so at least one person liked it other than me! Hopefully by the time that link exists for you to click on there will be one or two more.

The back cover copy:

“Go rob that train.” Nice, normal. An everyday heist.

But nothing is ever normal for Brazel, Grond and Rhundi.

A simple act of motorized larceny quickly explodes into a galaxy-spanning adventure for the two thieves. Blade-wielding elves, a fast-moving global war, a secret outlaw space city, incomprehensible insectoids and one impossibly lucky human are just the start of their problems. And that’s before they learn that someone from Grond’s past has gotten the Benevolence involved…

What is happening on the ogrespace moon Khkk?

Who are the Noble Opposition?

And what is the secret of THE SANCTUM OF THE SPHERE?

#ATOZCHALLENGE, Day 24: X Clan

On April 28, 2015March 31, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Music1 Comment

Artist: X Clan
Best Album: Xodus
Best Song: Heed the Word of the Brother
This Letter Could Have Been About: The X-Ecutioners, Xzibit

Why I’m Writing About This Artist: I love that I genuinely had to think about what to choose to write about for X. I suspect most people didn’t have many choices for this one, and a lot of them are cheating. Nope! I had three without even thinking about it, and I could probably come up with a few more if I tried for a few minutes.

One movement in hiphop that I haven’t talked about very much during these posts is Afrocentrism. It came up in the Chuck D and Queen Latifah posts, if I remember right, but it wasn’t dwelled on. Enter X Clan. I still clearly remember seeing the video for Heed the Word of the Brother on Yo! MTV Raps for the first time, and it blew my damn mind. Africa medallions were a thing back then, although as a chubby white kid there was absolutely no chance that I was ever going to own one much less wear it outside the house, but X Clan took Afrocentrism to an all-new level, filling their lyrics with references to Egyptian gods and African magic and ramping the political content (which I was already used to and comfortable with) to a new level. They never saw a huge amount of commercial success, but they made a hell of an impact on me.

(Fun fact! The one contribution I ever made to a lyrics website was for an X Clan song, where I was entertained by the sheer number of wrong ways people were misinterpreting the admittedly uncommon phrase “unguent jar.” These guys got themselves some vocabulary.)

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