Read breathlessly as Matt battles the hordes of Hell to locate a lone agent brass enough to hock his shockingly fine 1st novel, “The Crimson Web of War.”
The complete groundbreaking first chapter is posted on Matt Cates’s mind-blowing main site, www.catesbury.com
Pester Matt by scribbling to Matt@Catesbury.com It’s okay, he eats it up as long as he doesn’t have to buy anything.
Yours ’til the other side, and perhaps a bit past that,
Fast Eddie/ ’09
Jon Ronson’s up on Conan, Wednesday night, 20 July 2011. Rock on, CoCo!
http://teamcoco.com/schedule
No surprise Stanley Kubrick was obsessed with Napoleon (to the point of having an entire library of books on the dictator)… but his type font obsession…now that’s interesting!
http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=160926.0
In his books, which all feature him as a character, Ronson seems at times sensitive to criticism. He’s concerned when critics pan his work, call him either a ‘shill’ or ‘stupid,’ as he’s said. To be sure of the meaning, I had to look up shill–a shill is a person who ‘poses as a customer in order to decoy others into participating,’ or ‘a person who publicizes or praises something or someone for reasons of self-interest, personal profit, or friendship or loyalty.’ Basically, a poser.
JON RONSON SAVES is run by fan, but it is not a ‘fan’ site, per se. I have my own critiques of his work, but I’ll say this–I’m convinced he’s no shill. I don’t think he falls into the first category of shillhood at all, that of being a poser, an insider. He’s a journalist, not 1) a paranormal soldier; 2) Bilderberg Group member; 3) psychiatrist…or psychopath! It’s laughably implausible to believe he’s working from within the organizations or groups he’s exposing.
Which brings us to the second shill category, a person who publicizes things for money.
Again, he’s a journalist!!
Yes, he writes for cash, and even questioned the point of blogging (writing for free!) but calling him a shill in this pejorative way is like labeling any hard-working individual who needs a paycheck to support his or her family. I believe we can put the whole shill idea behind us.
So… is Jon Ronson stupid?
Well, there is stupid as in stupid, and there’s stupid as in naïve, perhaps? Of course he isn’t stupid stupid. He’s a bestselling author! Sorry, I know you can be successful and still be considered stupid…but chances are, most successful people may think differently about a thing, but they aren’t utter idiots or they wouldn’t be where they are (unless someone else put them there).
Now, is he stupid as in naïve?
Here again, I hardly think so. He’s unearthed some of the most bizarre cover-ups, conspiracies, and outright deceptions in recent history. And he’s done it in a very Sherlock Holmesian way–simply by playing connect the dots, by digging and digging into the minutia, by hitting a story from every angle, interviewing every bit player and minor actor who would (maybe to their later regret) speak to him. You may not agree with everything he says, but in most cases he’s not jumping to conclusions but rather presenting the accounts of witnesses and experts as related to him in interviews. Does he leave things out; does he put a spin on the stories? A bit, of course. He is a journalist, and a Gonzo one at that. But I see him as a humble one, too, a self-deprecating seeker of greater truths. He expresses his doubts often, doesn’t tell you what to think, he just tells you what was said, sometimes tells you his opinion…and then steps aside, leaving the rest to the reader.
Harrison Koehli of Sign of the Times (sott.net), does a good review (and yes, critique) of The Psychopath Test here:
http://mail.sott.net/articles/show/228876-Review-Jon-Ronson-s-The-Psychopath-Test-A-Journey-Through-the-Madness-Industry
So I had started my liquid diet on Friday morning, and kept it up throughout the weekend, finally caving to my wife’s demands that I eat ‘something.’ I’d been consuming at least as many calories in liquid form as I would if I’d been eating solids. Protein drinks, soy milk, rice milk, coffee, broth, veggie purees, juices, not to mention olive oil, red wine vinegar and apple cider vinegar… and a little beer. I was feeling great… but she wanted us all to go out and ‘eat,’ and it’s weird ordering a smoothie when everyone else is having salmon or pasta.
In any case, I enjoyed the three days of eating nothing and giving my system a chance to mellow. I’ll certainly do it again, maybe once a month or so. As proof that I was consuming enough, I weighed myself before and after… I did lose a pound, but that could fall within the normal daily range of gaining and losing. I don’t count it.
In other news, and more pertinent to this blog–I finished the first draft of my first Young Adult novel, “The Seven Useless Abilities of Hector.” This is the working title, but I’ll probably keep it. So who’s Hector, you may be dying to know? Soon I’ll be posting an excerpt from the first chapter, which will explain all about him…
In the meantime, have changed the title of “The Crimson Web of War” to–”Veteran of Screaming Vengeance.” Yes, there’s an homage in there to the Judas Priest album… In the book, Operation Screaming Vengeance is the continuation of Operation Enduring Freedom…
Here’s the latest pitch:
Over the next generation, the disparate factions of the global jihadist movement unify. Seattle’s Space Needle is brought down in a commonplace, high profile attack—another day in an impoverished America at War.
After a brief hiatus to lick their wounds, the U.S. Armed Forces have massively re-engaged in the Near East under Operation Screaming Vengeance…this time featuring road-capable stealth aircraft and a fledgling high-tech branch—the Cyber Corps. This is the backdrop of “Veteran of Screaming Vengeance,” a distinctive 81,000-word cross-genre novel of black humor.
Sergeant Preston Redmark plays the idiosyncratic protagonist struggling to reveal the conspiracy behind his paralyzing disablement. A survivor of enigmatic accidents and a failed suicide bombing in Afghanistan, Redmark battles skewed perceptions from PTSD and a good deal of substance abuse. His jaded life is plagued with police harassment and pop-ins from extremist cult members, while his fevered brain worries over Wendy, his sultry ex who may’ve played a part in the attempts on his life, and Jeremy, his vanished confidante. Purposefully overdosing on his memory recovery prescription, Redmark embarks on a solipsistic journey through his haunted past and encounters an unexpected enemy skulking there–Fast Eddie, a Shakespeare-obsessed alter ego hell-bent on shoving Preston off a mental cliff into an ocean of nightmares and murderous thoughts.
Melding elements of SF and literary prose in homage to the insightful style of Philip K. Dick, my goal’s been to create a book with broad appeal, something unique and thought-provoking. Ripe with veiled (and obvious) modern-life critiques and subtle religious and cultural contrasts, the causal messages contained within the prose undercut the cavalier tone of the existentialist narrator; the text strives to be more than it seems.
Cheers for now,
Mc
www.catesbury.com
Didn’t make the finals for the PNWA writing contest, but that’s okay. Looking back at that pre-revision MS, maybe I would not have selected it either. But the final version? It’s gotta sell! Still waiting to hear back from my first agent query, and yes I know it’s a long shot to get the first (or twenty-first) agent you aim for… but I’m an optimist. Not really, but I do believe in the quality of the writing and the story. The only thing I think may hold it back is simply classifying it–it doesn’t quite fit the standard sci-fi bill, but *God love them All* if they can’t open up and expand their horizons!
Incidentally, I recommend this book!: Shortest distance between you and a published book, by Susan Page.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0553061771/ref=ox_ya_oh_product
I found out about this book via another one: 101 habits of highly successful novelists (which I also recommend!).
I sent off my first agent query the other day (maybe I shouldn’t advertise that?), and am still waiting to hear back about the PNWA literary contest (which I know I won; I HAD to…). Other than that, business as usual, and waiting to get out of this place.
Do I need a copyeditor?
I have a freaking writing degree, why don’t I just spend the time and do it myself? These are the questions I ask myself as I wrap up Revision #1 (out of how many, I wonder). From my initial inquiries, proofreading of my MS will run from $1000 to $1500, with actual copyediting costing up to $2500. Not that I’m cheap, but I can probably do this myself. For now, the draft is in the hands of two good friends and we’ll see what they have to say…
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