On Piñatas in Singapore

1. They are made in China
2. They are constructed with steel reinforced concrete
3. Number 2 is a lie; they are made of really thick cardboard, though
4. Number 3 means that instead of a festively decorated bat, the piñata should come with a festively decorated spear.
5. To paraphrase my friend Christien, they get wha they deserve for being filled with candy.

Love Dickens? Love The Wire?

Then you absolutely have to check this out.

"Omar comin', yo!"

I miss my friend Randy Schaub. The most decent person I ever met.

Here's a post about him on Bookslut from his brother Michael, listing ten books Randy loved.

Singapore calling

Last night I called Ballantine in New York because I realized it had been, oh, five years or so since I received a royalty check for Thagoth. After the initial release, sales dropped off fairly quickly, and the last check I received was for something like $25.16. Then we moved, and moved again, and I just couldn't be arsed to call long distance at midnight to talk to somebody and let them know. But of course I got to thinking about it since the Great Facebook Campaign began, and so I called.

A nice lady named Nancy is sending out my check. In the last five years or so Thagoth has earned me the handsome sum of $70-and-change. If I remember corectly, I get 50 cents or so from every copy, so that means about 150 copies have been sold in the last five years.

I'll probably sell that many copies in five days. It really is a new world for ebooks, huh?

...with a little help from my friends

In Singapore they call it pai seh. Growing up I don't think we had an exact word to cover it, but it was the feeling of embarrassment/shame for making a mistake or imposing on someone. That's what's kept me from letting many people know I'm a published writer. When it comes up in conversation, I sort of squirm mentally. 'Aw, shucks' without the sense of false pride.

Yesterday I decided to let my facebook friends know that I had an  ebook out there, and that it was only $2.99. I asked them to pass on the link to it.

At the beginning of yesterday, THAGOTH was #397,564 on Amazon and #371,279 on Barnes & Noble.

Tonight on Amazon it's #45,093 and on B&N, #224,395.

This is for my fb friends:

Note to self.

Remain calm

Some people (okay, one person) has expressed some startlement at the recent changes on this here blog. I would just like to reassure everyone that change is good, change is natural. This is still SomethingSticky, I'm just adding the bit of my life that I've mostly left out -- the writing as profession bit.

Why haven't I really blogged about that much before? Mainly because it didn't exist much after THAGOTH got published. Depression, life change, fatherhood, life in general, including a serious bout of writer's block.

But, knock wood, I've got the old tingle back. Writing is happening around here, perhaps at a slower pace than previously, but steadily. And I still consider myself a writer, after everything that has happened. Self-identification is a powerful force.

So this blog should also reflect and reinforce that.

Amanda Hocking is one of my tribe

Now don't get me wrong. It's unlikely I will ever read any of her work. Paranormal romance makes my eyes bleed. Literally. I have a doctor's note. But Amanda Hocking is one of my tribe, nonetheless.

You go, girl.

Thanks for inspiring me to believe in and promote my own work.

more proof I haven't been skiving

This is the first bit of a short story (unrelated to the WL King stuff) I'm working on. Funny thing is, I saw a call for 'monk punk' short stories, but the deadline had passed. I wanted to write it anyway. The original Rashomon story has always kind of haunted me, as has the Kurosawa film which had very little to do with the short story. Anyway, if Kurosawa can steal for inspiration, so can I.

The Rashomon Gate

In those days the Capital was in a sad state of affairs. Famine and flood, fire and whirlwind had each made their appearance over the years, one disaster leading on to the next in a chain of misery. Nearly everything, it seemed, was in disrepair, including the Rashomon Gate. All manner of wild things had crept in over the years and made their home in the dilapidated structure; foxes, badgers, robbers. And other things.

You may have heard that people would bring unclaimed bodies there to dump, and this is true. Furtive figures would mount the wide red staircase that led to the tower atop the gate, dragging their burdens, sometimes perhaps with a sketchy sort of respect, sometimes just performing distasteful chore, according to their own natures and the natures of the departed. And then they would depart, and the crows would descend from their perches on the ridge poles and the once-bright shibi that graced their tips.

Rashomon Gate was not a place one would want to hang about in the daylight, much less in the night. It would have been a curious sight, therefore, had anyone been watching, to see the wizened monk who came to the gate one midnight in summer.

He came up Suzaku Boulevard at a deliberate if staggering pace, strong legs tethered to age-twisted hips. His staff was more than an accoutrement. His robes, once a sober black, were faded and dusty from the road. It had rained fiercely the week before, flattening crops; the past five days, however, had seen a sun intent on desiccating the land.

The monk stopped there beneath the gate, scratched an armpit, hawked and spat. “No help for it,” he muttered, and began the painful climb up the red stairs.

Just to prove I haven't been skiving

Here's a snippet of the work in progress:

"This looks different from the other works," I said, and started, finding the woman suddenly standing close enough to whisper in my ear. You know, or stick a knife in it.

"Ah, yes," she said, not acknowledging my startlement or what had caused it. Her attention was on the mask in front of us. "An earlier work. Part of a series of eight."

"Where are the others?"

"Lost," she said, perfectly made up lips giving the ghost of a frown, "during the Cultural Revolution."

I let the silence build till it became uncomfortable, which took about three seconds. "What is it, anyway?"

"A death mask."

"I didn't know the Chinese were into death masks."

She shrugged, a minimal gesture. Like everything about her, it seemed. "Artists draw from many sources, many cultures. Insipration is where you find it."

"So who's this a mask of?"

"Unknown."

"Nobody ever asked this Deng guy?"

"If they did, there is no record of it."

"No record?"

"Deng Jian Rong shot himself in the head in 1987."

That uncomfortable silence again. This place needed Muzak. "Artists. Unstable types I guess."

She smiled politely in reply and made a card appear in her hand. Holding it out to me, she said "I'm afraid we're closing up now. Do please call on us another time, Mister King."

Shit, I thought, palms suddenly sweaty. How did she know my name?

A review

So the Speculative Book Review had some nice things to say about the story I had in the Flesh and Bone anthology. I think I like them.

we three dorks

for my children

high walls and a blue sky above
the wind shakes the trees, leaves fall,
skirl down around me
an imitation of autumns I have known-
that, in this place, you will never come to know

and the faces I have known
surround me, and some are gone
for good; some I will love for good,
for good or ill. Yours I will love for good
and all.

should you wonder about me, you should know
some part of my heart I set in a high place
to keep it clean of the muck,
long, long before you came along
but now I think I made a mistake-

I love you, I love you, with all my heart
though with these two hands I tore it apart;
I love you on the rise, but you must trust
I also love you on the fall.

How to cross the Uhwarrie River seven times in one night carrying a forty pound backpack, an M-16, a mortar bipod and a live chicken

There is a trick to crossing the Uhwarrie River in the middle of the night carrying an M-16 A2 rifle, a forty pound backpack, a mortar bipod and a live chicken. I know, because I did it seven times in one night, many years ago.

The trick is, you have to be very careful where you plant your feet, and take each step carefully, giving it your full attention, because you do not want to fall. You will be wet, all over, not just below the knees. All of your gear will be wet. The rifle and the bipod will be wet. The chicken will be wet (not that you much care, by this point). And while you will ensure all the things that can rust will become dry as soon as is practical, you will remain wet for hours in the chill North Carolina night. And being wet for hours in the chill North Carolina night is a special brand of misery.

So you place your feet very carefully, and you ignore the sergeant's bullshit direction about spacing, and you ignore the muttered complaint about your slowness from the guy behind you (he's not carrying a mortar bipod or a chicken, so he can just go fuck himself) and most especially you ignore the voice inside your head that says "Hey, you're crossing the Uhwarrie River seven times in one night carrying full kit plus a mortar bipod and a live chicken. That's, uh, that's... messed up? Funny as hell, if it were somebody else? Absurd? It's the live chicken that's the kicker, really..."

You have to ignore this voice, because this voice will not shut up if you indulge it even a little, and you will be inclined to listen to it, and chuckle along with its low wit, and you will forget to watch your footing on the slick river stones and in the moderate current.

Of course, the price you pay for ignoring the voice during the event is that, sometimes, the voice comes back years later. And then you are reminded all over again how you crossed the Uhwarrie River seven times &c. And then you are forced to blog about it.

Meet William Langston King, Monster Hunter

So I have been getting some writing done, a little here, a little there. I've gotten enough together on this work in progress to show you a teaser. Remember, this is just a first draft, and the part here is really just prologue.

 It's likely going to be a novel, and possible a series if the writing gods smile kindly. It's sort of a Dresden Files-esque doohicky, set in Singapore. This first story is tentatively titled Joo Chiat Blues.

*****

My name is William Langston King. Call me Will, please, or Bill if you must, but skip Billy or Willy unless you want me to call you something nasty right back. I currently live in exile in Singapore. If I return to the States, I'll be hunted down and executed. Ex-wives are funny like that.

Every man - every person - has two faces. There's how the world sees them, and how they see themselves. The truth may or may not lie somewhere in the middle. I like to think of myself as an ordinary guy. Average height, average build, nondescript face, pleasant but not handsome. Not someone you take a second look at. The perfect movie extra. I'm the guy that you don't notice walking down the street. I like it that way.

That's the outside, the surface. The most noticed and least important part of all of us.

On the inside I like to think I'm ordinary, too. In some ways it's even true. The little quirks of personality that make us individuals, but in a broader sense make us human, make us comfortably the same. After a hard day, I like to crack open a cold beer and sit in front of the television, not so much for the beer or the entertainment but because of the normalcy of it. I like cold pizza, and hate ironing. I think it's incredibly unfair that, as a man gets older, he loses hair from the places he wants it and gains hair where he doesn't. I like to sleep in on rainy mornings. I am, for all intents and purposes, your average Joe.

Except for the magic, and the monsters.

So. My name is William King. I am many things, just as we all are; good, bad, indifferent. But the words I had inscribed below my name on the plaque at the columbarium read MONSTER HUNTER.

If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself, and in the case of final resting places, you need to do it in advance.

Christmas was better in the Eighties

Some of you may not know, not having been fully conscious during the eighties due to massive drug/alcohol intake or because you were still in diapers, but let me assure you that Christmas was better in the nineteen eighties.
For those of you who know, shed a tear and raise a glass for what has been lost to time. For those who don't, try not to let the knowledge that you will never experience a 1980s Christmas ruin what shallow joy is to be had in these latter days.

Also, George Michael and Andrew Ridgely get together for a drink. Wham!

The Grinding Wheels of Justice bunkbed

From the best of craigslist, the Grinding Wheels of Justice bunkbed.

Some people mistake my sense of fairness for weaknes.