Author: J Edward Neill

Anti-Meme Fridays!

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Welcome to my smartass new series, Anti-Meme Fridays.

In a sad, hollow effort to spread my loathing of motivational memes, every Friday I’ll be posting some new meme-hate. Forever.

I’ll post two memes every week. The first one, I’ll put up an actual meme I pulled from Facebook or Twitter, and I’ll deconstruct its logic in the most sarcastic way possible. For the second one, I’ll post something anti-motivational and/or funny. Because…really…that’s all a good meme should aspire to be.

Enjoy! Oh, and please be assured this is all in good fun. I’m doing this to combat the stress of writing extremely dark fiction all day long.

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Meme 1

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As an author, I have a lot of bookish friends on FB and Twitter. Meaning pretty much 75% of my feed at any given time is made up of memes about writing, reading, and overdosing on coffee. This one has a nice little picture of some guy staring into the woods…and then some completely bullshit line about gardens and libraries. Did Marcus never get cold and think, “Maybe I also need shelter?” Did Marcus sleep in the dirt, alone and unwashed, but happy because he had a copy of Stephen King’s It? Considering that every single person who ever posted a meme on the internet used an electronic device to do so, it feels like maybe we need to revise Marcus’s saying to, “If you have a garden, a library, a latte, and an iPhone, you have everything you need. Except shelter, companionship, a jacket, and a spear to keep coyotes away.”

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Meme 2

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Now that’s more like it.

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Join me in destroying motivational memes worldwide.

Or at least check out my stuff.

J Edward Neill

Author of:

WebImageFront DDP 1 101 Questions for Humanity

 

Funny as F**k new book – The Strange Things People Say

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So…ummm…there’s this new book I just wrote.

It’s called The Funny Things People Say.

Look. It’s a fact. People like to talk. A lot. And for the most part, you should let them. Because you never know when you’re gonna get weird little gems like:

“That girl has wayyyy better options than living in a love coffin.”

“BTW, should we get wasted tomorrow, play Doom, and make terrible decisions?”

“Oh ewww. I didn’t think that emoticon would shoot little hearts out of its butt. My bad.”

Oh, these quotes? People actually said these. I’m not at all kidding. You see, The Strange Things People Say is a collection of funny real-life texts, sexts, tweets, emails, facebook posts, and more. They’re all out of context, but they all actually happened.

It’s right here:

The Strange Things People Say Cover

The softcover is only $4.99.  The Kindle version is only $1.99.

It’s funny. It’s weird. And it’s real.

The Strange Things People Say. Now available.

J Edward Neill

Creator of Coffee Table Philosophy

Skull Buckets and Big Old Bucket Lists

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Ages ago, I published my personal mega-bucket list.

It included 50 things I wanted to do before I die. Some were realistic. Others…not so much.

So here we are, centuries (ok, only 18 months) removed. I’ve completed a few of my self-challenges and completely whiffed on many more.

Here’s my bucket update:

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50 Hard-as-Hell Bucket Stuffers

1. Go caving in Kentucky. As in way deep in the earth. As in if I get lost, the rest of the bucket list is screwed. (I haven’t even seen a cave since making this a bucket list item.)

2. Write a book twenty books. Yes seriously.   (Done. Actually it’s 23 now. My next goal is 100. Realistic? Who cares?)

3. Hold a four-minute plank. (Kinda stuck on two minutes right now) (Did several five-minute planks. And then…promptly was hospitalized with costochondritis. For real. Google it.)

4. Read the entire LOTR trilogy to my kid. As a bedtime story. Because bedtime stories should be epic. (We got about two chapters in. Tolkien puts kids to sleep.)

5. Perform a meaningful charitable act. As in a weekend at a soup kitchen. Or ten weekends. Whichever. (Not yet. I’m a bad person.)

6. Escape office life before it kills me. The dude from Office Space had it right. We weren’t meant to live like this. (Nope.)

7. Spend the night in a haunted house. Or a sanitarium. If only to know whether all the Ghost Hunter-type shows hold water. (Nope.)

8. Climb a mountain. A real mountain. Preferably something volcanic. (I climbed a giant f’n waterfall. Does that count?)

9. Be an extra in a movie. (Free food!) (Nope.)

10. Plant at least ten trees that will outlive me. (And then promptly had to sell the land I planted them on. 😐 )

11. Make one of my books into a movie. Even if it’s a pitiful ten minute-long Youtube flick. (Nope. Though I did make a four-minute Youtube clip.)

12. Wander the Scottish Highlands. Confound the locals with an over-the-top William Wallace accent. (Nope.)

13. Teach my grandkid(s) things to annoy their parents. (Need you on this one, G Man.) (Update. He’s only five-years old.)

14. Live long enough to see the Cubs play in (they don’t even have to win) the World Series. (Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!!!!!!!)

15. Play lead guitar in a band. Even if for just one night. (Turns out no one I know really likes death metal.)

16. Paint something stunning. (For me, this is as close to stunning as it’ll get.)

17. Eat Maine lobster. While in Maine. And on the same trip, eat Maryland crab. While in Maryland. (Nope.)

18. Try my hand as a quarterback coach. For kids. (Nope.)

19. Road trip through Sonoma, CA. (Closest I’ve come is touring the wineries of North GA.)

20. Be ripped when I’m 50. Wait. Forget 50. Be ripped when I’m 60. (I’m pretty shredded now, but I’m still a looooong ways from 50.)

21. Try every food I hated as a kid to see if I still hate them. (Yep. Turns out I liked most of ’em. Who knew? Except beets. I still hate beets.) 

22. Win a costume contest. While wearing something truly terrifying. (Win! Some creepy monster mask is all it took.)

SkullBucketReal

23. Go to a Super Bowl (as long as the Packers aren’t in it.) (Alas, I’m considering giving up my love of football.)

 24. Buy a dinghy. Wake up at the ass-crack of dawn. Take my son fishing. Return home at dusk. (Soon!)

25. Live tech-free for 30 days straight. No cell phone. No laptop. No tablet. No TV. (I wish….)

26. If space travel to Mars is perfected, I’m there. I want to be the first person to write a book about the Red Planet while on the Red Planet. If space travel isn’t perfected, change this bucket item to: drink a Texas margarita while in Texas. Those are equal, right? (Nope.)

27. Drink a bottle of absinthe. With friends. In Europe. Preferably in Copenhagen. (Planning this one soon.)

28. Completely overhaul my wardrobe. Because if Joan Rivers were still alive, I’d be on her worst-dressed list. Seriously. I’m like a twelve year-old up in here. (I have mostly new clothes. I still dress like a teenager. Whatever.)

29. Live in London. For a week. A month. However long it takes. (Nah. Not yet.)

30. Tour every major pub in Dublin, Ireland. Alone. No friends for this trip. (Ditto.)

31. While we’re on the subject of pubs, build a ‘pub room’ in my house. Neon signs, futbol banners, stools, pool table, low lights, cute bartender. The works. (I was in the midst of doing this when I sold my house. I suck.)

32. Start an herb garden. No, not that kind of herb. (See # 31.)

33. Grow a Mephistopheles beard. Pointy and black. (Partial credit. I did the beard. Didn’t dye it black.)

SkullBucket

34. Learn how to make wine. (Gonna need something to drink after the Ebola-pocalypse.) (I’ll need a house and a yard.)

35. Learn to play the cello. (Nope.)

36. Help someone else fulfill their own bucket list. (My friends don’t like to take risks.)

37. Shave my cats to look like lions. (Ha. Nope.)

38. Spend an entire summer living on the beach. (Does five days in Ft Lauderdale count? No? Boooooo.)

39. Teach my kid to beat me at chess. Bow humbly when he does. (Halfway there. He knows how to move the pieces.)

40. Rescue a turtle. (You know…the ones who try to cross the expressway.) (Lucked out and did this one with a pretty girl!)

SkullBuck

41. Leaving this space blank _________________________ for someone else to suggest a bucket list item. (All the suggestions have been…ahem…adult film related. Thanks, guys.)

42. Find a clear night and a place from which I can see the Milky Way. Marvel hopelessly at the sky and wonder it’s all about. (Sigh…)

43. Find the recipe for my dearly departed grandmother’s homemade stew. Cook it for a big group of friends and family. (Did it! And for double points, I used the same mixing bowl she used when I was a kid.)

44. Kiss a beautiful woman in Paris. Corny, I know. Don’t care. (There’s a shortage of beautiful women in Duluth, GA.)

45. Make myself useful. Save someone’s life. (Half credit. Saved my kid another hundred times.)

46. Invent a new board game. Nothing complicated. Something like checkers or othello. (Nope.)

47. Remain apolitical. Even if I make it long enough to be a crotchety old wizard. (Yeah. I’m claiming this one. In the most vicious political season yet, I still DGAF.)

48. Start the tradition of giving gifts on my birthday. (Maybe next year when I’m not so broke.)

49. Try sushi. (Tried it. Didn’t like it. Oh well.)

50. Pay for all this stuff with a thriving writing career. (Working on it!)

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Next update: December 2017!

 J Edward Neill

Author of the Tyrants of the Dead dark fantasy trilogy

Co -Author of Hollow Empire – Night of Knives

The Sister Series Superstar – Leanne Davis

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On an otherwise quiet afternoon, while fishing in a blue lake beneath the summer sun, we caught a fish.

Only this was no ordinary fish.

This was Leanne Davis, author of The Sister Series and The Seaclusion Series, both of which are huge.

And this is no fish story. If you like to read, and you want to catch some top-notch fiction, just go right here.

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But first…read our exclusive interview with Leanne!

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So…Leanne…you’re kind of a big deal. (No blushing allowed.) Let’s talk about your uber-successful The Sister Series. Give us the goods on what it’s about and why you decided to write it:

… So kind of you to say so… but I’m very small fish in the big pond of authors on Amazon. But it has allowed me the privilege to write full time for a living, and I am SO grateful for the opportunity.
Anyway, The Sister Series is (so far) a seven book series that will be ten books when I’m done with it.
This series came about when I had just finished writing my Zenith Trilogy which chronicled a rock band living in downtown Seattle. I had already written my Seaclusion Series which is about a handful of families in the small town of Seaclusion. I wanted something different. And I found it. I had this idea of a soldier and girl… but it didn’t go exactly as I first planned. It became a much involved story than I first intended. The beginning of this book has Jessie Bains kidnapped and being held prisoner in Mexico. Though the time spent there is short; the shock of what happens to her follows her through the rest of her life. She suffers from PTSD, something that I show her dealing with through several books and it spills around to those she loves. The premise of this book and series came about when I happened onto the subject of drug trafficking at the United States border which led me to Mexico, and eventually to how prevalent sex trafficking is, and how it has become tied into the drug cartels. From this research I started to design the overlying theme of this series. The concept for Jessie’s kidnapping was inspired by some of the stories I found and as horrifying as my fiction is, the real stuff is literally sickening. The rest of the series has grown into different relationships and storylines, but the starting book set the tone for the series as my most serious, dark and emotional.
The Sister Series is about the emotional scars and battles that are often hidden in people.
Rape. Drugs. Abuse. Violence. Pain. Betrayal.
And how they can be overcome.
Love. Joy. Family. Forgiveness. Faith. Hope. Redemption.

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The overlying arc of this series is exploring the lives, loves and familial connection of two sets of sisters and their daughters. Each book is a separate story but related to the other books. The series focuses on these women’s trials, tribulations, dreams and their individual quest for acceptance, love and happiness.

You’ve cracked the top of the charts with several of your books. First of all, congrats! Second, wanna share your marketing strategy with the aspiring masses?

Thank you! I’ve had the privilege of some really amazing days in the trenches of Amazon. It’s not often or for long, so when it happens, you will find me taking lots of screenshots of my books as if it’s my child at their first day of school!
My strategy… luck? Seriously, I think a lot of it was due to luck and being in the right place at the right time. When I released The Other Sister it was often picked up as a ‘dark romance’ through Goodreads and when free in the Amazon store. Dark romances, a few years ago, was a relatively new concept of these really intense, almost sadistic romances. My book is not actually dark like that, but the premise sounded like it, so it helped propel interest to it that led to a lot of downloads. From these downloads the book garnered quite a few reviews. It was because of these reviews I was able to use marketing services such as BookBub to run book ads. The large number of downloads from the exposures from these outlets introduced my writing to most of the core readers who follow my books.
When I was picked up by my publisher (The Wild Rose Press) they sent me this list of fifty ways to market as an author. The number one marketing tool was to: write another book. I took that one to heart. I’m much more apt to be found writing another novel than marketing on twitter, Facebook or even blog interviews (look at me doing it now!). I decided that I could do: I can write a lot of books. At any given time I have up to ten novels I want to write. My ideas and characters and desire to write them down is only limited by my physical time to write and edit them! So that is probably my number one marketing strategy, write, write and write some more.

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What kind of stories inspired you to write The Sister Series and The Seaclusion Series?

Often news stories. Which isn’t the typical ‘romance’ inspiration. It’s not the facts that inspire me but it’s pondering what the emotions behind a certain event or experience would make someone feel and the affect it might have on the rest of their lives and relationships. That’s usually where my stories pick up… with my characters dealing with some underlying issue. I like to write about difficult subject matters, I especially like to explore unlikely personality matches or situations and see if I can’t twist the story around to end happily. I take on a lot of untraditional characters for romance heroes and heroines. I’ve written about a drug dealer, several PTSD survivors who aren’t coping well, alcoholics, and even cheaters, just to name a few. I really hate stereotypes so I enjoy seeing if I can’t go against them.

What do you find most challenging about being a modern-day writer?

Time. Exposure. Piracy. Reviews. Sales. The list goes on!
I also think social media, binge watching TV shows and movies… you know everything electronic, distracts potential readers and are our biggest competitors.  I think we authors compete more with other forms of entertainment than we do each other. Many blame the “glut” of new authors and novels as the challenge—as if a flood of books is a bad thing—when I believe it’s merely less readers reading.
The other challenge, as with most authors, is getting “found” on the behemoth Achilles Heel of all authors: Amazon.
The catch-22 of Amazon. I sincerely love Amazon in so many ways. I would not have a career without it, let alone the sales I’ve had or even begin to sustain it. Amazon allows me to publish what I want, when I want to, how I want to and also have the potential of readers.
The catch being, I don’t control it. Why are some books successful? Others release to crickets. I’ve had both. I didn’t do anything different marketing-wise. So if I could find the seemingly mythical formula, I would be a rich author. But in this access to readers, I also hand over all my exposure to Amazon and only Amazon. All my eggs are literally in their basket. They have a lot of control over my career and that is never a smart long term business plan… but at this point there is no better one to have. So… huge catch-22.

Looks like you’ve got a book coming out pretty much now. 🙂 It’s called The Broken Sister. What’s it about and when can readers grab their copy?

The release date was June 20th to Kindle! It is the seventh book in the Sister Series and takes on the daughter of the main character from The Wrong Sister (4th book in the Sister Series).  This book deals with a twenty-year-old college junior being drugged and date raped. She doesn’t remember it, so she doesn’t know what to do in the aftermath of it. As an added twist to this story, her love interest is the brother of her rapist, and she just doesn’t know it… yet.

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To be more official, here is the blurb:

Something happened to Kylie McKinley during her freshman year in college. Something no one knows about. The thing is: she can’t remember it fully, so what could she possibly have to say about it? Why, then, does it keep screwing with her head so much? When another, far braver girl than she comes forward with a story that is eerily similar to Kylie’s own, she begins to see she can’t keep silent forever. Bolstered by this girl, Kylie finally finds the necessary strength after two years of indecision to do something about it. But will it be enough to finally end the silence that has almost broken her?

Then she realizes exactly whom her accusations will pit her against.

Tristan Tamasy has long term plans to be the next head of the Tamasy legacy. Tristan is smart, focused, cultured, and ready to expand their family’s corporation. Tristan is nothing like his younger brother, whose antics have lately started disrupting everything. Now, Tristan has been commissioned for damage control after two girls start making noise against his brother. That’s when he meets Kylie McKinley. From the start, she challenges the road he has chosen for his life. After he starts to realize she might be telling the truth about his brother, his integrity to do what is right conflicts with his loyalty to the family he’s been groomed to protect. It tests everything he believes about himself and threatens to squelch the feelings he has for the one woman he should never want.

Again, thank you for hosting me here today!   (We were happy to have you!)

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The Broken Sister is now available right here!

 Connect with Leanne:
Website: http://leannedavis.net/Blog/
Amazon Author Page
Facebook Author Page
Twitter: @leannewrites

 

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Enjoy this interview? Be sure to check out ALL of Tessera Guild’s best creative sit-downs right here.

Interview compiled by J Edward Neill

Painting with Darkness – Part X

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After a short layoff, I’m back to doing terrible things with my paintbrush.

Dark cities, twisted terrains, and this time around, an eerie, abstract tree.

I call this one, ‘The Last Autumn.’  The original is for sale here, if you’re interested.

Now let’s talk about how The Last Autumn came to be:

Last Autumn 1

It all started with a 24″x 24″ super-thick white canvas. I used a straightedge, a level, and a twenty-year old pencil (yes, really) to divide the canvas into perfect halves. With my little wooden palette, I paired up acrylic golds, blacks, reds, yellows, and whites. I mixed them at random, and when I was done with the first coat, I poked golden dots all over the right side of the canvas. Voila. What you see above.

Last Autumn 2

For the left side, life got a little easier. I mixed gold, black, and umber, and went nuts with fast, broad strokes. Before it dried, I poked little white ‘leaves’ into the background. The difference between the two halves was stark. I loved what I was seeing.

Last Autumn 3

About 0.0003 seconds before starting with the right-side tree, I had a revelation. A. I wanted to flip the painting over so the darker half would be on the right and the red/gold half on the left. I have no idea why. It just felt right. B. I pulled out a sand-based gel with which to paint the tree. For those not familiar, the gel adds a texture you can see and feel when you’re up close to the painting. It’s so ridiculously fun to paint with; I suggest everyone try it.

Last Autumn 4

For the left side of the painting, I mixed pure black with more sand gel. I used four different brushes, starting big and working down to the tiniest branches using pretty much the smallest acrylic brush you can buy. It was tedious, but I loved it. Each flick of my wrist gave life to a new branch. The picture here is pre-varnishing; the sand gel takes forever to dry. The plan for this painting is to use a heavy gloss, which will make the colors pop and allow The Last Autumn to be a centerpiece for any room.

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Thanks for reading!!

For previous Painting with Darkness entries: Part I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VIII, IX.

To buy The Last Autumn, go here.

J Edward Neill

Author of Matrix-like A Door Never Dreamed Of.

And creator of the Coffee Table Philosophy series.

 

The Super Smart Summer Book Sale

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You’ve got answers.

Well I’ve got questions.

For the next few days, four of the most popular books in the Coffee Table Philosophy series are on MEGA-discount.

Meaning each of the Kindle titles shown below is available for only $0.99 (or £0.99) in the US and UK!

These are the supreme books for armchair philosophers. They’re designed to provoke, question, and challenge.  Once you taste one question, you’ll want to devour them all…

101 Qs for the End of the World Front Cover 444 Questions for the Universe 101 Deeper Darker Cover

101 Questions for Single People Front

444 Questions for the Universe is an especially awesome deal, considering it contains four books: 101 Questions for Men, 101 Questions for Women, 101 Questions for Midnight, and the extremely popular 101 Questions for Humanity.

Oh, and I’d love ya triple if you left me Amazon reviews.

Cheers to you, my excellent mofos.

Drinking Wine

J Edward Neill

Who also writes deadly sharp fiction.

The Complete Backstory of the Tyrants of the Dead Trilogy

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Many years have passed…

And many books have I written…

And yet none are as sacred as these first three…

TheOrbOfSoulsSliderBizCard

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It’s dark now. It’s raining in cold sheets. Thunder shakes the earth. Lightning tears away the night, at least for a half-breath.

It was on one such night, long ago, I dreamed of writing a story so deep and so dark as to challenge all books ever written.

And so I did.

And when it was finished, I named it Tyrants of the Dead.

Three books. Three individual epics. All woven together in the grandest tale I’ll ever dream of.

This is how it went:

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On Dec 26th, 2001, while lounging in my chair on a bitter winter’s night, I began writing. I’d had a dream, and I needed to get it out of my head. The first words I typed were, “Morellellus, oldest harbor of Furyon, was not always so gloomy.” Many of the tens of thousands of words in the Tyrants of the Dead series would change or vanish altogether, but not these. These have always remained the same.

And with that… Down the Dark Path, book one in the series, was born.

Soul Orb New DDP Cover Second Try

The first and (by far) the longest book in the Tyrants trilogy, Down the Dark Path is at its heart a simple story about a young woman who wanders into a world-ending medieval war. It took me more than ten years to write, rewrite, rewrite again, and finally publish. By the time I finished it in 2013, it had become much more than a tale of a girl and a war. Over the years, I’d added darker and darker elements, including merciless warlords, traitorous knights, and sorcery of the blackest kind. To counter the themes of war and suffering, a love story blossomed in the middle, though whether the tale’s heroine, Andelusia, would ever survive to see her romance through became a question only answered at the utter end.

After completing Down the Dark Path, two things happened.

First, I considered letting one book be the end of it. After all, it was epic length, more than enough to consume three books in most modern fantasy trilogies.

Second, I decided that because it was so long, I wanted to offer it in a four-novella series. Four little books would be easier to wield than one vast epic, I figured.

And so these were born:

DDP 1 DDP 2 DDP 3 DDP 4

These four little novellas comprise all of Down the Dark Path. Meaning, book one in the Tyrants of the Dead trilogy can kinda sorta be four books, depending on how you read it.

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Moving right along…

Remember how I mentioned I almost let this be the end of the story? Well…turns out the little feeling in my gut lasted only about two weeks. Shortly after publishing Down the Dark Path, I realized I wanted to create a true fantasy trilogy, and that I wanted it to be huuuuge.

And along came Dark Moon Daughter.

Dark_Moon_Daughter-InitialCover

A few facts about Dark Moon Daughter: It’s the shortest book in the trilogy, significantly shorter than the other two entries, but no less an epic-length read. ALSO…it can be consumed as a stand-alone novel or as a prequel to the third book in the series. Meaning readers don’t necessarily have to read Down the Dark Path to get into it.

In Dark Moon Daughter, I took the themes from Down the Dark Path and tightened them into a story about one person instead of many. The deeper I delved, the darker the plot became. A budding sorceress with a broken heart decides to leave an easy life behind in favor of chasing something…only she has NO IDEA what that something is. Turns out that something isn’t something good. It’s something very, very baaaaaaaaaaad.

Something like:

Andelusia knows she is not like other girls.
More than ever, the night calls to her, the stars grant her serenity, and the shadows of black magic pool within her blood. In the dark spaces between her dreams, she feels the power of the ancient world awakening.
And as the enemies of mankind prepare for the world’s end, she must choose:
Fight them…
…or join them.

I published Dark Moon Daughter in 2014. It was my favorite of the three to write, and ironically the least ‘dark’ in the series.

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A few hours after successfully publishing Dark Moon Daughter, I found myself sitting in the shadows again. I was lonely without a book to write, and I needed to get immediately back to work. I’d long ago decided how I wanted the Tyrants series to end. And for all my love of such greats as Tolkien, George R.R. Martin, Rothfuss, and all the rest, I believed in my heart I could do fantasy endings better. And by better I mean more adult, more visceral, and darker than anyone had done it before.

Along came Nether Kingdom.

 NetherKingdomWebLgAt the world’s edge, Andelusia awakens to the terrible realization that all her dreams have come to nothing. No matter that her father, the warlock, has fallen into exile. No matter that the enemies of mankind have retreated into darkness. When the shadows in her heart cause the seasons to change and deadly storms to sweep across Thillria, she knows what will come:
The Black Moon will descend.
Grimwain will return.
The Ur will rebuild their haunted civilization atop humanity’s graveyard.
Unless she alone wages war against the Nether Kingdom, the world will burn.

In Nether Kingdom, things go badly for every character who survived the first two books. A villain thought long-dead is resurrected. Planet-snuffing demons roam the ether, ready to remake everything in their image. No one is fully good. Plenty of people are dedicated to evil. For all of Dark Moon Daughter’s departure from pure wickedness, Nether Kingdom brought it back. I gave the bad guys a spotlight and shoved everything else into the shadows. And I really, really enjoyed writing one character in particular, whose name I shall not utter here.

I published Nether Kingdom in 2015. It concluded the Tyrants trilogy. But…and there’s always a but, it doesn’t mean I won’t come back to the series someday. I have plans long in the making that include a prequel AND a two-book sequel. The only challenge: living long enough to make it happen.

Maybe I will.

Maybe I won’t.

I hope you enjoyed this glimpse at Tyrants of the Dead. If you want a little more, I created a fun glossary of characters, places, and things from the series. Check it out.

I also hope you’ll read the books. Love them to pieces. And review the hell out of them on Amazon. :)

Until next time…

Love,

J Edward Neill

Humanity, and the loss thereof

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Sometimes I’m grateful I don’t watch television.

Life is usually better on the days I don’t listen to the radio, chat about the latest news, or accidentally overhear someone running their mouth about politics.

And when I say ‘sometimes,‘ I’m referring to always. I avoid the media like the plague. Because let’s face it; the 5 ‘o clock news doesn’t make anyone happy. No matter how many splashy stories about puppies and charities they run, CNN, Fox, and all the other outlets are little more than a mushy stew of sadness, conflict, and death. Every day. Every night. Always.

I don’t know why anyone watches it.

…

So…the Orlando shooting just happened, and it’s about as bad as it gets.

People keep asking me what I think about it. I guess I really don’t know. I’m speechless, sort of. For as long as I’ve been writing, I’ve never really been tempted to talk about any specific world event. People get enough misery already, I figure. When something awful happens, like yet another mass shooting, what can little me add to the dialogue? Another opinion? Opinions are pretty much the weakest ventilation of human dialogue. And odds are, whatever crappy thing just happened probably took place because of…you know…opinions.

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But tonight I have an observation:

When something bad like this happens, as in really bad, here’s how it goes: At some point early in the discussion, someone will ask, “Why? Why did this have to happen? What could we have done to stop it?”

And meanwhile, another question, infinitely more insidious, will creep up behind us and ask, “When will it happen again?”

Why?

How?

When?

No one has the answers. No. One. I certainly have none. I want to, but I don’t. A crap-ton of people on the internet (with the aforementioned opinions) will tell you they have the answers, but they don’t, either. Everyone starts screaming when dark stuff happens. They’ll talk about more guns, fewer guns, walls, immigrants, religion, hate, tolerance, and everything in-between. It’s the same conversation every time. We ask why, and even though deep down none of us know the answer, we talk like we do.

And it sucks.

Truth is: it’s a treacherous place outside our doors (and often inside them, too.) Having answers to the question of ‘why do assholes kill people’ won’t make our lives any safer. It won’t. I’m sorry. And that’s not to say we should all be afraid all the time or limit our excursions into the wide-wide world. But just that we should expect, at some point, for reality to burn us. Because apparently the world is full of crazy people. It feels like they’re everywhere. And maybe they are.

So with all that said, I guess I have one lonely little piece of advice to give everyone:

Stop trying to make sense of horrific things.

It’s an almost automatic response, right? Mass murder happens, people die, buildings explode, and we all want to know why. We ask the question a million times. Our Facebook feeds erupt with countless sentiments, most of them followed up by the admission that we don’t have any clue how something so terrible could happen.

Everyone wants answers.

Almost no one will ever find them.

And even if we did understand why someone did something horrible, so what?

Unless it stops the next horrible thing from happening, it doesn’t matter. Does it?

Now let’s be clear. I’m not suggesting inaction. I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to get to the root of this deadly problem and wipe it out. Of course we should. And while maybe the cynic within me says we’ll never, ever stop the pattern of mass murders and dangerous ideologies, we still have to give it a go. Right?

It’s just that, having seen and heard about all these horrible things happening over and over again, I’m not sure asking why is the right question anymore. I’m not sure there’s a real, tangible reason why some people choose to do awful things. I’m not convinced a mass murderer’s thought process is something we’ll ever really be able to understand. We call these people crazy for a reason. The definition of crazy – mentally deranged, especially as manifested in a wild or aggressive way. You see what I’m saying? Killers, fanatics, and psychopaths can’t be reasoned with. They’re like little Terminators. Somehow, someway, they’ve been reprogrammed (or they reprogrammed themselves) to cause the rest of us pain and suffering…and enjoy it.

Why do they do it?

I don’t think we’ll ever know. And even if we did, I’m not sure we could use that information to stop them.

How do we stop this from ever happening again?

I don’t know that we can.  I’m eager to try. But for the moment, I have no answers. I don’t know why. I don’t know how. Maybe, just maybe, it’s time to try something else other than asking questions. Trouble is, I don’t know what that something else is.

I guess what I’m saying is…

It’s hard sometimes being human.

Often, to find some small contentment in this world also means the acceptance of our own powerlessness.

Which sucks sometimes. A lot. Especially on days like this.

*

J Edward Neill

Author of the Coffee Table Philosophy series

 

 

7 Ways to step up your Indie Author Career

  By , ,

For many months, I’ve resisted writing this.

Author advice columns and ‘do-it-better’ blogs often come off as pretentious.

And that’s the last thing I want to do.

Even so…

After swimming in the shark-infested waters of self-publishing for many years, I feel it’s time I share a few nuggets of wisdom. About writing. About marketing. About presenting oneself to the literary world. Now…these aren’t gonna be your typical Stephen King-ish motivational tips or super supportive rays of sunshine. I’m going off the grid with some of these. Because everything else has been said.

Here we go.

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Audience

1.  Audience Building

We’re not talking about genres. We’re talking human beings, and we’re talking how you approach them after you’ve already written your masterpiece. So you say you’ve crafted a new work of erotica, an epic fantasy series, or a vampire romance? Fine. It’s all fine. Whatever floats your boat. The key to your success, assuming you’ve actually got the writing chops to write a good book, is to make people care. Spamming ‘check out my book’ ads on the net? Not gonna fly. Auto-messaging unsuspecting people on Twitter? Fail. The key here is to be interesting. You’re a writer, after all. When marketing, you’ve gotta use the same chops you used when writing the best parts of your book. Don’t be dull. Don’t be static. Build some awesome blurbs and engage people. Hand your business cards out at DragonCon. Strike up conversations with strangers at the bar who might like to read. Be your book. Live it.

Also…when audience building on the internet, use perfect spelling and grammar. It doesn’t matter whether or not you think it’s important. It is. Whenever an author posts a blog or funny facebook post with garbage grammar, it leaves an impression. And it’s not the one you want.

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Negativity2. Stay the F**K away from Negativity

You probably think I’m talking about other people’s negativity. I’m not. I’m talking about yours.

Let’s say you’ve got a website dedicated to your books, your art, your whatever. And let’s say from time to time you write interesting, relatable pieces about your life and your experiences (you should do both of these, by the way.) You wanna know what never to do? Project negativity. Ever. Like anyone else, writers have opinions. That’s all well and good. But for the most part, your army of loyal readers wants to hear positive (or least non-negative) stuff. Hate your neighbor? Cool. Shut up about it. Got a headache and some writer’s block? Nope. Another author crap on your book via Amazon? Deal with it. Sales in a slump? Don’t say a word.

It’s a slippery slope, negativity. Everyone feels they have a right to complain. Maybe they do, maybe not. But as a professional and as a person who wants others to feel good about your books, your persona, and your ability, I recommend keeping all but the most dire complaints to yourself.

Actually, I recommend this to everyone in the entire world. Not just writers and artists.

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3. Get Great Cover Art

To be fair, some people can get away with having bland, homemade, or just plain bad cover art. What I’m saying is: don’t assume you can. Now…it’s true cover art can get expensive. Artists will charge hundreds for good work, and they’ve every right to do so. It doesn’t matter. No matter your budget, you’ve got to find a way to put your (presumably wonderfully-written) book beneath a cover worthy of cracking open. It doesn’t have to be an epic Greek sculptor/Sistine Chapel wonder of the world, but it needs to look good. Or cool. Or crazy. Just not boring. Never…ever…boring.

Oh, and speaking of good cover artists, try Amanda Makepeace.

And speaking of great covers she created…

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Ego 4. Shelve Your Ego (not your Eggo)

What’s that you say? Someone left you a shitty review on Amazon? You got a rejection letter from a publisher? An author refused to do a review-swap (which you shouldn’t have agreed to do anyway)?

What I recommend in these and a thousand other less-than-awesome scenarios is that you not get butthurt. Ever. Artistic endeavors of any kind, and indeed life endeavors, don’t care about your sensitivity. Anger, jealousy, vengeance, frustration, cats sitting on your keyboard and deleting an entire chapter…all part of the dance. Simply put, you’ll get more work done if you shrug off all the crap and vent it creatively, rather than on Facebook.

Tip: Your ability to find greatness might very well depend on your ability to carve through all the emotions…and arrive on the other side unscathed.

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Brush Off5. Brush off Compliments / Embrace Criticism

I’ll keep this one brief. Maybe. When seventeen of your friends read your book and tell you how awesome it is, ignore them. You heard me. Ignore them. Smile and nod, but let their words fall off your shoulders like yesterday’s dandruff. Why, you ask? Because while they mean well, their compliments don’t mean anything. Compliments and superlatives about your work won’t make you a better writer. Sunshine up your bottom might feel good, but it won’t lift you to greatness.

But criticism might. Your most valuable review on Amazon might be the single-star one. Your best asset might be the lone family member who tells you your ending doesn’t make sense, or that one of your characters is a whiny loser. When you free your ego (see #4) and become willing to embrace criticism, you allow yourself to grow.

If you need a metaphor, imagine a tree. The oldest, strongest trees are covered in knots, scars, and broken limbs. And yet the tree never complains. Not once. Not ever. It simply adjusts, heals, and keeps moving toward the sunlight.

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6. Create an Image & Stick to It

Perhaps you’re really good at writing horror. Or maybe you’ve got a knack for writing killer romance scenes. Or maybe your descriptive ability is out of this world.  Cool. Now what I suggest is that you use your strengths to create an image. Mine is sort of this dark, brooding philosopher thing. Yours should be whatever you feel represents you, whether a fluffy unicorn girl, a dominatrix, a vulgar comedian, or a quiet librarian genius. Whatever. It doesn’t matter as long as it’s yours.

The point is: craft your image and use it as a presentation point to the world. Don’t be boring. Tell the world what you’re about. Speak to them as though you were your characters. It’s like this: you can either flood your social media feeds with writing memes and coffee-worship, or you can become a living, breathing avatar for your work. I’m being completely serious. I’m not suggesting you try to fake your audience out. Far from it. I’m saying to grab them by their collars. Shake them. Entertain them. Because really, what else are we here to do?

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7. Demand Honesty

This is a two-part piece of advice. First and foremost, you’ve got to be honest with yourself. Can you look at your work and say, “This is the best I can write. This book is as ready for the world as it’s gonna get.”? If you can, boom. Kudos. Publish it. If you can’t, then the honest author in you has to be ready. For more work. And lots of it.

The second part: demand honesty from those who help you. This means reviewers, editors, other authors, beta-readers, friends, and family. If they’re brave enough to read your stuff, you need to be brave enough to look them in the eyes and tell them to be utterly honest in their criticism. And you need to mean it. Really mean it. Like Brad Pitt in Fight Club, you need to hear them say it three times. (Anyone remember that scene?)

Because the only conversations in life worth having are the blunt, brutally honest kind.

Everything else is fluff.

Now get to work.

And try to have fun while you’re doing it.

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J Edward Neill

Author of 101 Questions for Humanity

Author of the Tyrants of the Dead series

Interview with the Nicest Author Ever

  By , ,

In the business of creative networking, it’s common to meet a ton of nice people. They’re everywhere, and they WAY outnumber the trolls.

But sometimes, every once in a while, you meet someone who’s nicer than nice, who’s sweet, calm, and utterly pleasant to talk with.

One such uber-nice person is Regina O’Connell. She’s the author of several books, including Wren and Saving Wihe, and she’s the subject of this week’s Tessera Guild creative interview!

* *

Without further ado…

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Hi Regina! Welcome to Tessera Guild’s latest author interview. Rumor is you’ve got a brand new book, Saving Wihe. We’re dying to know what it’s about. Give us the scoop?

Saving Wihe is the second book in the trilogy Wren’s Journey. Wren is a young Witch who is on a quest to save Wihe from the evil priest, Nye. She is joined by her grandmother, a few close friends and her wolf, Maicoh. They are on the run, planning the rescue and finding the freedom they all desire.
 

Soooo…you’re pretty popular on the web. Tell us all about yourself. Give up the goods on where you’re from and how you got into writing books:

Well I am originally from Jackson, Michigan. I have been living in Bend, Oregon for the past eleven years. I am a proud mother and grandmother! I started writing books in high school. My first was a children’s book which I also illustrated for my youngest brother. I wrote many children’s books throughout the years for my own children and now my grandchildren. I never tried to publish them though!
 

We’ve seen images for your previous book, Wren, all over the planet. Is Wren your first published piece? Tell us ALL about it!

Yes, Wren was my first! I wrote it for my son. He told me I should write a book. Initially I thought I would write about a young boy, but then I thought I’d do better writing from a girl’s perspective. But I still wanted it to mean something to my son, hence the magic singing! My son has an amazing voice!  Wren is young, a little self-absorbed and totally loyal to her family and friends. She faces loss and heartache with the help of her grandmother and friends. The book is a fast-paced adventure that I hope people will love.
Wren

As an indie author, what do you find most challenging about marketing your work?

Marketing without money!!!! I so love social media and the author friends I have met! We help each other! I don’t know what I’d do without them!

Let’s say someone wanted to get in touch with you to get a copy of Saving Wihe for reviewing purposes. Where’s the best place to reach you?

Facebook: https://facebook.com/ReginaOConnellAuthor

OR

Twitter: https://twitter.com/regina_oconnell

Check out this cover!

51jn1r3uiyL__SX331_BO1,204,203,200_

Regina

And here’s Regina mugging with her son. Look at that smile!

That’s it for this week. Be sure to give Regina’s latest book a read (and of course, a review!)

For more Tessera Guild creative interviews, follow this link.

Until next time.

J Edward Neill

There are no rules…

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Hi everyone,

We’ve got something interesting for those of you who are artists, writers, poets, and bloggers.

Dylan Kinnett, the head honcho over at Infinity’s Kitchen, just sent out a call for submissions. He’s teamed up with Ink Press Productions to bring you more off-the-grid artistic work. And we at Tessera Guild couldn’t help but support the cause.

Infinity’s Kitchen is a publication specializing in experimental literary material. What does that mean exactly? Well…it’s got off-beat poetry, digital-age wordplay, word squares, and interesting pop art. And more.  It’s not what most of you are used to. And that’s what makes it cool.

In particular, the latest submission call (Active until June 17th) seeks anything artists and writers do in multiples. Like a series of images, a group of similar poems, a line of same-thought process Tweets, or short stories in the same setting. And these are just a few examples. The most interesting part of Infinity’s Kitchen is that there are no rules. If it’s cool, if it’s mind-bending, if it’s engaging, that’s what’s cooking.

Here’s the official submission sheet:

Inf Kitchen

And here’s the scoop:

Infinity’s Kitchen & Ink Press Productions are coming together to ask: What belongs on the internet? Send us your content and we’ll make it a book.

WHAT IS IT?

tweets / screenshots / commentary / instructions / recipes / maps / memes / clickbait / spam / lists / calendars / emails / embarrassing evidence / tattoos / whatever, it’s your content/

Submissions for the latest issue: open May 1–June 17

Send your submissions to:
inkpressproductions@gmail.com

I know I’ll be submitting.

Will you?

J Edward Neill

Choose Your Own Afterlife

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In pretty much all my non-fiction work, I like to touch on the subject of the afterlife. Not in a morbid way. More of a ‘let’s think outside the box’ way.

It’s a topic I prefer to engage with questions rather than statements. After all, no one really knows what happens after death. Some people will tell you they do, but they don’t. Not even a little. Heaven, hell, reincarnation, utter destruction…all perhaps possible, but none even a little bit objectively provable. The realm of the afterlife is just another part of the human experience in which beliefs, no matter how closely held to the heart, can’t hold up the truth. And the truth is: we don’t know a damn thing about it.

About to be independance dayed

“Shit. I’m either about to be sucked up into heaven…or the aliens from Independence Day have just targeted my ass.”

Especially in this little book right here, I love to ask people to talk about their belief systems. ‘Is there an afterlife?’ I ask. ‘If so, what’s it probably like?’ ‘If there isn’t, is everything we do pointless?‘ The conversation usually goes one of two ways. People either cite religion, which I confess gets pretty boring, or they admit they don’t know, and that’s when things get interesting. In asking these questions and getting people’s answers, one can learn a ton about what makes humanity tick. Because the afterlife discussion is all hopes and fears. It’s unknowable. It’s raw. ‘What if it’s awesome?’ we wonder. ‘What if it doesn’t exist?‘ we worry. ‘Or what if it’s absolutely horrific?‘ we tremble.

But after all the ‘I know’ or ‘I don’t knows,’ I like to take the conversation somewhere fun. I mean…since no one has a clue about the afterlife, why not enjoy the discussion?

And so the question becomes:

“If the afterlife were whatever you want it to be, what would it be?”

Now, perhaps through some crazy quantum mechanics, it’s possible in the afterlife (if there is one) we actually do get to decide what it’s like. Probably not, but you never know. I guess what I’m saying is…let’s run with that. Let’s embrace ‘I don’t know.’ Let’s forget about our preconceived notions. Let’s talk less about what we believe the afterlife is like, and let’s talk about what we want it to be like.

And I’m serious.

I want to know your answers.

Here’s the exercise:

You’re sitting before a blank sheet of paper. You’ve got a pen, and you’ve got all the time in the world. Your belief system, your religion (or lack thereof,) and your scientific knowledge have all fallen out the window.

What do you want to happen after you die?

Nothing? Just wanna nap forever?

Do you want to be alone? Or can other people join your afterlife beach party?

Want a heaven? Sitting on a cloud, eating chocolate, soaking up starlight for all eternity?

A more specific heaven? As in, you’re some kind of spirit worshipping a deity in the ether? Cool. Tell us about this deity. How do you battle the boredom?

If you want heaven, do you punish ‘bad’ people with some kind of hell? If so, what’s the hell like? Who exactly goes there? Go ahead. Set the rules.

No heaven or hell? Ok. You’d prefer to join the world-building spirit army who runs the universe behind the curtain? You want to be part of the machine beneath it all? Cool. What’s your plan for the next 500,000,000 years or so?

Or maybe reincarnation? You want another shot or ten at earthbound life? As an animal? A human again? Does this process repeat itself indefinitely?

Or maybe you’d like to be a ghost? A spirit wandering the ethereal plane, watching over humanity, helping people out when you can?

Or maybe you have a darker vision. You want to F with things. You wouldn’t mind being a naughty ghost, a boogey man under the bed, or even some kind of demon.

Clouds

Happy cloud paradise? Or inbound ethereal storm from the nether world?

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You see where I’m going?

French scholar and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once posited that since we don’t really know much about the why and how of our reality, we’re free to create our own. It’s a bit idealistic, but perhaps he’s got a point. Just make stuff up and roll with it. Since we might never know the truth, it might be fine just to imagine everything.

Sounds fun, right?

Try it, and share your answers with the world.

J Edward Neill

Asker of too many questions

Author of Matrix-like sci-fi

The Best of Mean Tweets

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First, allow me to give you a primer on ‘Mean Tweets.’

Perhaps not everyone has heard of Jimmy Kimmel’s infamous segment. For those not in the loop, Jimmy frequently invites celebrities and athletes on his show, and asks them to read aloud funny (and usually pretty nasty) tweets directed toward the celeb.

Past ‘Mean Tweet’ readers have included Steph Curry, Lebron James, Matt Damon, and even Barack Obama.

th

Most of the tweets are rude.

Others are ironic.

Still others are vulgar and borderline stalker-ish.

In any event, they’re usually hilarious.

And these are some of the best:

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Michael Strahan

*MTI4ODIyMzI5OTUzMjg0MDY2

Selena Gomez

Selena

Iggy Azalea

Iggy

 

Stephan Curry

Steph Curry

Kevin James

33792143

Larry King

Larry

John Goodman

Goodman

Kristen Stewart

1a83d35e167020d56145de5f0a756a49f382323f253b023b4842d925067a9c68_1

Britney Spears

020315_britmeantweetsvidfeat-600x450

Tony Parker

Tony

Sarah Silverman

Sarah

Kid Rock

Kid Rock

Jason Biggs

Jason

Adam Sandler

adam-sandler-mean-tweet

And finally…

Barack Obama

269751F700000578-2992711-Thanks_Obama_The_mean_tweets_were_mostly_lighthearted_but_the_pr-m-16_1426221752473

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Have a great day, m*therf**kers!

J Edward Neill

Author of funny stuff

And deadly serious things

Little Mia Doesn’t Stand a Chance

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In the old world city of Ellerae, one person goes missing every day.
Poor little Mia doesn’t stand a chance.
Or does she?
One dead. Every night. Forever…  

Let the Bodies

A terrifying follow-up to the short story Old Man of Tessera.

FREE for the weekend.

LettheBodies_BlogLg

Let the Bodies is one of four short stories appearing the novella, The Hecatomb.

TheHecatombWeb

As ever, I appreciate your reviews.

Love,

J Edward Neill

Searching for the Nothing

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First, to set the tone, a few pictures:

sea road imagesYT53MQB8Ice city

And now, words:

Look, before we get started, there’s something you should know. I’m not depressed. In a world where everyone I know has anxiety, clinical depression, bipolar disorder, or just simply dry, cold malaise, I am free. I have no sadness, no anger. Nothing makes me nervous. I’m not on any medications and never have been. My senses are sharp, my mind the razor I need it to be.

Even so…

A while back I wrote about longing for rain. It reflected my status as an official lifelong wanderer. But this isn’t that, not quite. This is something else. Something deeper.

Last week a friend looked me in the eyes and said, “There’s no hope for you.”

And she meant it.

Now, she didn’t mean it in a cruel sense. She said it as if it were as real as gravity, as if everyone on the planet knew it the same as they know the sun comes up every morning. At first I brushed it off like I brush everything off. There’s not a bird in the world with feathers as oiled as mine. And yet, many days later, a part of me remembered what she’d said. And I thought about it. And I put some music on in the background. And I sat on my patio with the rain pounding the earth.

And I wondered whether she was right.

As an aside, the rain just started to fall. Just now. I opened up my windows. It’s pretty much the best sensation in the world. You should try it sometime.

Anyway. Where was I? Oh. Hope, and not relying on it. You see, I have this theory. It’s not really mine, but I claim it all the same. Hope is a mistake, it goes. Sounds depressing, right? It’s not. Not even a little. It’s simply a notion that hoping for something isn’t the same as moving toward it. That wanting something isn’t enough. That in order to earn your trophy in this life, you have to open your claws and snatch it from the void. And no, it doesn’t matter whether this existence has any meaning, any grand purpose. It’s what we have. It’s ALL we have. You either snare it by the throat, or you wash away with the flood.

So why did what this girl said matter to me? Why, when nothing else registers, did I keep it on my mind? I’m not sure. But what I do know is that it reminded me of something I hadn’t felt in ages. And when I say ages, I mean decades. Because you see, there was this dream. I used to have it nightly, like seriously every night, for years. I must’ve wandered through it a thousand times. And later, when the dream stopped, I daydreamed it. I’d take walks in the woods and dwell on it. I’d be in the middle of conversations with friends, and it’d steal my mind away. (Sorry, friends. You deserve better.)

The dream went a little something like this:

I’m the only person on Earth. Not the last person, but the only one who ever lived here. It’s raining. It’s twilight, and I can see the sun smoldering behind the storm clouds. I’m walking on a street between buildings that don’t exist. No one built this street; it’s just there. And then I’m walking on a shore beneath impossibly bright stars. And then I’m driving at night through a city no one lives in. No one made my car. It’s just there. After all of this, I take a journey. Down the street, across the ocean shore, toward a nameless place in my car. I travel into oblivion.  I wander into nothing.

And I love it. Utterly.

I suppose some people might call it a nightmare. The loneliness of it all, the shadowed atmosphere, the destination of nothingness. Nah. It’s not a nightmare. It’s just a feeling that I, and I bet most people alive, carry with us. You want something, only you don’t know what it is or where to find it. I say want. I mean need. We need to find this nameless thing, whatever it is, and yet there’s no way to catch it. There’s nothing. It’s like a video game quest for which there’s no solution. I mean, just imagine you’re playing The Legend of Zelda, but instead of needing to find eight pieces of Triforce, you need to find infinite pieces. You’ll play the game your whole life, but you still won’t know what you’re looking for.

If I’ve lost you, I’m sorry. I’m deep in my cups. And there’s a chocolate cupcake on the counter, waiting for me to finish this article.

In ‘longing for rain,’ I talk about how people spend their lives searching for a place, a moment, or a state of mind. It’s an ideal, so to speak, of where we want our lives to go. We know in our hearts what or where it is, and we gravitate toward it. But this is different. Maybe you know what I’m talking about. I hope you do. If you’re like me, you’ve dreamed of a place that doesn’t exist, but you still want to go there. You’ve constructed a small hope in the back of your mind, and yet you’re without a means to fulfill it. Even so, you want it. A part of you thinks you can get it. Maybe you can. But wait…no you can’t. Because you can’t catch nothing. You can only catch something.

Am I making any sense?

…

J Edward Neill

Author of deep, dark thoughts.

And of extreme human dilemmas.

Nostradamus was wrong. The world ends TODAY…

  By , , ,

You heard, right?

101 Questions for the End of the World is here

 

It has questions. Tons of questions.

But instead of ice-breaking, improve your love life-type questions, it’s full of deadly serious inquiries.

Think Socrates meets Stephen Hawking, Plato meets Carl Sagan, and that’s kinda sorta what it’s like.

It’s for science buffs, outer space lovers, old world philosophy fans, and serious truth seekers. In it, I ask readers about all of life’s greatest mysteries.

Look…

101 Qs for the End of the World Front Cover

The e-version. Send your Kindle into a black hole.

101 Qs for the End of the World Front Cover

The softcover. Dress up your coffee table like no one’s business.

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A preview and three sample questions are here.

J Edward Neill

…who also writes deep, dark fiction.

 

 

 

Movie Casting for A Door Never Dreamed Of

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Not all that long ago, I dreamed up a book.

And then I wrote it.

And loved every moment of its creation.

When it hit Amazon, the reactions were pretty much identical. “Make this into a movie,” my readers suggested. “Now!”

Gosh, I’d love to, I thought. A Door Never Dreamed Of might make an even better film than this and this. We’ve got opportunities for epic-scale fights and small, quiet moments of reflection. We’ve got beautiful women and huge, scary dudes. As long as we keep Michael Bay at…well…bay, it could be a sci-fi tale for the ages.

Ok. Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself.

Maybe.

No matter. Here’s my dream cast for A Door Never Dreamed Of:

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Moz

 

Michael B. Jordan (Mozelle) – Every story worth its salt needs a hero. And who better than Creed’s shredded, skillful M.B.J. to play Moz. He’s exiled to a far-off space station. He’s millions of miles from Earth, which he dreams of every night. He’s ready for the Door to open and the war to begin. Suit up, M.B.J.. Time to fight!

 

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Anjel Chloe Grace Moretz

 

Chloe Grace Moretz (Anjel) – Gosh, Chloe grew up fast. Her Kick Ass roots revealed not only her acting ability, but her confidence and badass-ness. Therefore she’s perfect for Moz’s love interest, Anjel. She’s also an exile, but she’s definitely not as ready for war as her lover. Brains over brawn, people. Remember…

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Kodi-Smit McPhee Rafe

 

Kodi-Smit McPhee (Rafe) – You remember him as Nightcrawler from the X-Men movies. But in A Door Never Dreamed Of, he’ll play the unlucky Rafe. Awakened from his perfect, plugged-In world, he’ll have to face off against impossible odds, with nothing other than the fate of the world in the balance. Get some, Kodi.

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Absinthe

 

Margot Robbie (Absinthe) – What kind of villain is worse than a maniacal, evil tyrant? A cold, calculating woman, that’s what kind. She’s stunning. She’s smarter than everyone. She has plans that stretch well beyond Earth. I’m confident Margot has the looks and the chops to pull of the cunning, sneaky Absinthe, whose plots know no boundaries.

 

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Gerrard Gerard Butler General

 

Gerard Butler (General Gerrard) – The name similarity is a coincidence. Despite his flop in Gods of Egypt, Gerard’s been awesome in pretty much everything else he’s been in. And as General Gerrard, he’ll get to set the stage for humanity’s biggest conflict. Ins versus Outs. Jacked-In dreamers versus exiles. When he makes plans, you’d best worry.

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Bautista Zamo Kosi Dalip Singh

Dave Bautista (Zamo) and Dalip Singh (Kosi) – As mentors to Mozelle and badasses in their own right, these two behemoths get to suit up and wage war alone against entire jacked-In cities. I wouldn’t want to fight either one, but especially not if they were wearing battle suits that make them weigh 10,000 kilos. Would you?

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Frigg Idris Elba

 

Idris Elba (Frigg) – Idris has some serious acting chops. This we know. He’s also got a commanding voice (Jungle Book – Shere Khan) which he’ll need in order to become Frigg, commander of the Achilles space station, and Mozelle’s big, bad boss.

 

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Yeo Gary Oldman

 

Gary Oldman (Yeori) – Is there a movie Gary shouldn’t be cast in? I mean really? Ever since Dracula, he’s been my personal favorite actor. Here he’ll get to play the cantankerous old warrior, Yeo. He’ll have to adopt a weird accept (not a problem) and he’ll get to blow up Paris. All by himself. Sound fun, Gary? Bring it.

 

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Emperor Gad Hassan

 

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Gad Hassan (Emperor) – A small role, to be sure. But as Emperor, the cranky, ambitious In scholar, Gad will fall in nicely. He’ll get to poke lots of fun at Margot Robbie. Brave, indeed. Or foolish…

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Kate Beckinsale Silk the Scientist

 

Kate Beckinsale (Silk) – Perhaps no one has more sympathy for our lead character than the jacked-In Silk. We’ll nerd up Kate with glasses and an ugly, post-modern dress, and she’ll fill in nicely as one of few people who really gives a rip about anything happening on Earth.

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Judi Dench Old Woman Krubera

 

Judi Dench (The Old Woman of Krubera) – Wise and benevolent. Fair and calm in the face of any storm, Judi Dench will greet all comers with her wit and utter wisdom. She doesn’t even get a name. It won’t matter. She’ll have a crucial role in all things to come, and she’ll do it all so very quietly.

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The screenplay is in the works. The book is done.

WebImageFront

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J Edward Neill

Author of the Tyrants of the Dead trilogy

Creator of the Coffee Table Philosophy series

Preparing You For the End of the World

  By , , ,

Event Horizon

A part of me is ever optimistic.

Another part of me…not so much.

I’ve always hoped for more out of the universe. And what I mean by more is that I want a greater meaning. A deeper understanding. The ability to one day, even if after my own death, to pull back the curtain and see what’s really going on.

I want to know.

Let’s clarify.

I want to know everything.

So do you.

Probably.

And that’s the problem, isn’t it? For though we may spend our entire lives learning, relearning, and discovering, we’ll never know it all. Even our greatest scientists and philosophers won’t ever be able to sit back with a comfortably complete understanding of reality. Not even close. And odds are, no matter how much some of us pine for a divine afterlife, it’s neither probable nor scientifically likely we’ll get one. I admit; I could be wrong about that. I hope I’m wrong. I’d love to sit on a cloud eating chocolate and strumming a harp.

But to be pragmatic, hope is a mistake.

Which means most of us will have about eighty years to learn as much as we possibly can. About life. About the world. About the entire universe. If we’re wise, we’ll cram those eighty years like it’s the night before a big exam. Because we’re going to encounter a ton more questions than answers. And we’re going to dream far more than we’re able to do.

And then, at the end, our knowledge and wisdom will leave us.

Probably.

And that’s ok.

Sort of.

If this is it, if our lives are to remain full of questions and theories and small discoveries followed by more questions, so be it. Maybe it really is all about the journey, and not all about how things begin or end.

Maybe.

Someday, a hundred-thousand generations from now, the accumulation of human knowledge and wisdom might reach a critical mass. We might grasp the nature of everything, and we might render conversations like this  obsolete. Wondering might no longer be a thing. Questions might go extinct.

But it’s not happening soon.

And certainly not during my lifetime.

In reading books from my Coffee Table Philosophy series, one might be tempted to assume a certain arrogance on my part. It might appear as though I think I’ve got the right answers, and that I’m asking questions from an attempted position of know-it-all.

Rest assured.

I’m not.

My view is and always has been that I don’t know anything. I dead serious. Beliefs and opinions and theories are swell things to have, I guess. It’s human nature to possess them, to use them in conversations, and sometimes even to employ them as weapons.

But not for me.

Not ever.

I guess what I’m saying is: even though hope is a mistake J, I hope the fact that you’re here means you subscribe to a similar philosophy.

The philosophy of:

It’s ok not to know.

It’s ok to admit ignorance.

It’s perfectly acceptable to ask questions for which there are no knowable answers.

In fact, it’s almost criminal not to.

Right?

* * *

So anyway, I guess what I’m getting at is…

…in a few days I’m releasing the final book in the Coffee Table Philosophy series.

It’s titled 101 Questions for the End of the World. And it’s not really like the other nine books in the series. You can Preorder it right here.

I mean…it has questions, but instead of ice-breaking, take to a party full of tipsy people, improve your love life-type questions, it’s full of deadly serious inquiries. Think Socrates meets Stephen Hawking, Plato meets Carl Sagan, and that’s kinda sorta what End of the World is like. It’s for science buffs, outer space lovers, old world philosophy fans, and serious truth seekers. In this book, I ask readers about all of life’s greatest mysteries, and I await your answers.

Look…instead of trying to explain it all, I’ll just give you three sample questions.

Go nuts:

* * *

Izms

 From the following, choose which one(s) you associate with your personal philosophy of life:

Cynicism – The purpose of life is to live with virtue and in harmony with nature (not what you thought it meant, is it?)

Agnosticism – Humanity knows nothing beyond that which it can touch

Pragmatism – The most valuable things are tangible and practical

Hedonism – Life’s purpose is to pursue pleasure

Capitalism – Life’s purpose is accumulate wealth for the benefit of yourself and your family

Theocentrism – God is a central fact of our existence

Nihilism – Life is without objective meaning, purpose, or value

Existentialism – The universe is unknowable, yet humans still have individual purpose and responsibility

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Butterflies

The Butterfly Effect is defined as:

The phenomenon whereby a small change within a complex system can have large effects elsewhere.

In other words, a butterfly making the smallest alteration in the wind might set off a chain reaction that causes a hurricane two weeks later on the opposite side of the world.

Or something like that.

Think of an important event that has taken place during your life or the life of someone you know.

Now think about how that event came to be.

What was the butterfly?

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Cartesian

 “If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.” ~ Rene Descartes

It’s a pretty powerful statement.

Do you agree with it?

Why or why not?

* * *

So there you have it. I hope you’ll dive deep into this new book. I hope it educates and entertains you. And I hope, when you’re done, you review the hell out of it on Amazon.

101 Qs for the End of the World Front Cover

Pre-order me. Right. F’n. Now.

 

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Get ready to science the shit out of yourself.

J Edward Neill

Oh, and I also wrote a ton of fiction books.

Co-Author Throwdown – J & Jaylene’s Favorite Things

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Today at Tessera Guild, authors J Edward Neill and Jaylene Jacobus go head-to-head in their first ever e-interview.

Unlike most of our super friendly interviews, this one got a little colorful.  🙂

The blow-by-blow is right…here:

* * *

J EDWARD NEILL: Today’s creative interview is with Seattle author Jaylene Jacobus. Hello Jaylene, and welcome to Tessera!

JAYLENE JACOBUS: Hi J! It’s great to join you here.

J: You just published your debut novel, The Midnight Circle. Tell us about it.

JAYLENE: Hold up, J. I thought we were being interviewed. As in, you and me. Together. Cowriters. Partners in crime. East Coast Hustler and West Coast Enchantress. Internet besties.

J: Nope. None of that. I’m interviewing you.

JAYLENE: Why do you get to ask all the questions?

J: Because I’m good at it. It’s my thing.

JAYLENE: True statement! I love all your Coffee Table Philosophy books. You’ve written hundreds of thought-provoking questions, which makes you inquisitive, analytical, and investigative. But when you ask all the questions all the time, you become…

J: What?

JAYLENE: An askhole. 🙁

J: An askhole? 🙂

JAYLENE: Fear not. I’m good at asking questions, too. And I’ve softened your image. You know, with that book we wrote together.

J: 101 Questions for Single People! That was a lot of fun. Let me just say that writing a book for singles kept my image fully intact. I’m all about dating…as many women as possible. At once.

101-Q-for-S-P-Image

JAYLENE: Good times, indeed! But I wasn’t referring to that book. I was referring to our other book. 101 Questions for Couples! I’m all about romance and true love. Together forever.

101 Qs for Couples

J: In all honesty, I enjoyed writing about couples. Almost as much as writing about singles.

JAYLENE: And I enjoyed writing about singles. Almost as much as writing about couples.

J: One thing’s for sure. They were both a blast to write.

JAYLENE: The funny thing about both books is that our readers can’t always figure out which questions I wrote versus which questions you wrote. I can see why. We’re practically the same person. Except I’m the girl version of you.

J: Wait. Wouldn’t that make us opposites?

JAYLENE: Potato, Potahto. Tomato, tomahto. Let’s prove how similar we really are.

J: Or dissimilar. How?

JAYLENE: By answering questions about…

A FEW OF OUR FAVORITE THINGS

1) INDOOR HOBBY

J: Sex

JAYLENE: Reading. But I read this. So we’re one for one.

2) SUPERHERO

JAYLENE: Captain America. He’s the quintessential hero.

J: Yawn. Don’t like ’em.

3) VILLAIN

J: Dracula

JAYLENE: Dracula!

4) DINNER

J: Steak and potatoes

JAYLENE: Tofu and kale

5) WEATHER

J: Cold rain on a warm evening. Such that the steam rises from the still-warm grass.

JAYLENE: Cold rain on a humid day. Such that perfumed steam rises from still-warm magnolias.

6) SPORT

J: Baseball

JAYLENE: Ballet

7) NEO-NOIR PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER

J: Se7en

JAYLENE: We’re Se7en for Se7en!

8) BROADWAY MUSICAL

J: None of them

JAYLENE: All of them

9) TV SHOW

J: Nada

JAYLENE: None

10) COLOR

J: Black

JAYLENE: White

11) ADVENTURE NOVEL

JAYLENE: The Count of Monte Cristo

J: The Count of Monte Cristo

12) SEASON

JAYLENE: Winter

J: Summer

13) HOLIDAY

J: Halloween

JAYLENE: Halloween!

14) OUTDOOR HOBBY

J: Running, alone, in the wilderness

JAYLENE: Walking, in good company, through the forest

15) POET

JAYLENE: Edgar Allan Poe

J: Poe

 16) SPORTS TEAM

J: Chicago Cubs

JAYLENE: Whoever the Seattle team is

17) BAND

J: Danzig

JAYLENE: Danzig!

18) ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE

J: Balvenie 17 Doublewood with a single oversized ice cube

JAYLENE: Probably what J said. But I don’t drink, so I don’t know.

19) ROMANTIC COMEDY

JAYLENE: Breakfast at Tiffany’s

J: Terminator

20) FINAL QUESTION. THE GLASS: HALF-EMPTY OR HALF-FULL?

J: There is no glass; therefore it’s neither half-empty nor half-full.

JAYLENE: There is no half; therefore my glass is always brimming full.

 

 

JAYLENE:  Well, J, I think we just proved how similar we are.

J: Actually, Jaylene, I think we just proved how dissimilar we are. Half of our answers didn’t match.

JAYLENE: Which means half of our answers did match. But weren’t you listening to me? There is no half, and if you don’t have a glass, take mine. It’s brimming full with Balvenie 17 Doublewood.

J: I’ll drink to that…

J

JAYLENE: Ok, J. The party’s over. Let’s get back to work.  We have more books to write. Together and singularly. Rumor has it, you’re plotting to end the world…

Jaylene xoxo

J: And rumor has it, you’re plotting to save it.

JAYLENE: In other words, we make a great team.

J: I’ll drink to that as well…

Drinking Wine

 

* * *

Fin

The Loss of Things

  By

No talk of books today.

No new treacherously dark paintings.

And no extreme sarcasm.

I promise.

Today I summon you, internet, to be my catharsis. To hear my wailing. To soak up my rare bout of sorrow and listen to the tale of how I lost (gave away) my house. And to know why I’ll probably always be a little bummed about it.

So…

It all began in April 2014. After a few months of shoebox apartment life, I got it in my head to buy a house for me and my son (The G Man) to live in. And it wouldn’t do to just be any house. It had to be a new house in a part of town I’d always wanted to live in. Suburban, but not quite rural. Near the lake, but not on it. I wasn’t gonna compromise, not on this. I wanted what I wanted.

I was deadly serious.

Within a week of deciding, I gathered my funds, secured an agent, and started the long journey of building my future home. It wasn’t painless, by any stretch of the imagination. My lender put me through systematic torture, requiring an endless stream of documentation and re-documentation. My spotless credit and financial reserves didn’t really matter. If I wanted the bank to invest in my house, in me, I had to suffer through their endless inquiries with a smile. Anyone who’s ever bought property knows what I’m talking about. You play the bank’s game, or you walk.

And so I played.

Hard.

Because I wanted it that badly.

In June, they broke ground on a small piece of land in Sugar Hill, GA. Mine was to be the first house erected in the cul-de-sac, which meant I knew from the beginning the first several months of my living there would be to the tune of other houses being hammered into place. That was fine. The prospects of noise, nail guns, and concrete trucks didn’t bother me. Like I said, I wanted what I wanted.

House almost done

Yep. There it was. This pic is from the first time I took the G Man to see our house-in-the-works. We explored the skeletal insides, stomped through the surrounding woods, and tracked mud all over the place. Despite my usual self, I allowed myself to feel just a little bit excited. Not everyone is lucky enough to build their own home. I knew that, and I still know it now. When the G Man and I glimpsed the epic-huge living room, the giant shower, and the grill-tastic backyard, we hi-fived each other. This is gonna kick ass, we knew. We’ll live here for F’n ever.

Weeks went by.

They felt like years.

Neighbors’ houses started to spring up, and while theirs had all kinds of problems (floods, cracked concrete, crappy grading) our house suffered no delays. Even so, it was a hard wait. Every day of waiting for the builders to finish and the bank to sign the final paperwork was a small eternity.

And then, on August 1st, 2014, the moment of glory was at hand.

House Finished

Finished. Day one.

The G Man and I moved from our humble little 700 square foot apartment into our new home, which felt like a mansion. We didn’t have much stuff, which was fine. The big, open spaces were perfect for us. All we needed was our grill, our bean-bag chairs, and some sunshine.

Within a few months, we’d made ourselves perfectly at home:

Living Room

Our living room. Complete with swords on the walls and a giant tapestry.

Painting Room

The painting room. With perfect sunlight in the morning and perfect gloom in the evenings.

Writing Room

Our writing and gaming room. In other words, our Heaven.

From that moment, we were in love. Weekends formerly spent cramped in a shoebox were suddenly glorious events that never seemed to end. We watched movies at top volume. We cranked up our guitars…and no one complained. We grilled all day and sometimes all night. We met our neighbors and we loved them. Somehow, after all the turmoil of the previous years, the G Man and I had found our sanctuary.

A year went by, and I can honestly say it was among the best years of my life. You see, when you have a place you can call home, a place you know and love, the rest of the world’s troubles begin to fade away. A hard day’s stressful work can be overcome with just two steps into your home. A rainy afternoon becomes a reason to open the curtains and watch the dark clouds stream by. A frigid winter’s eve is just an excuse to roast some marshmallows and curl up on the couch with hot cocoa in hand.

I slept better than ever.

The G Man sprinted to our door ever single time he came over.

We swam an entire summer away in the neighborhood pool.

It was a good time.

And yet…

Like all good times…

It ended too soon.

After about eighteen months in lovely little Sugar Hill, several hard truths hit me:

Living so far from the city, I was driving at least two and a half hours every day.

Property taxes were rocketing skyward

HOA fees and insurance were gobbling all my savings.

And as an extreme extrovert, dating and making new friends in ‘burbs was no picnic. Actually, it was almost impossible.

Now, to be clear, I still loved my house. I mean…really loved it. But as the months rolled by, I was spending not nearly enough time there. If I wanted to do anything (shop, dine out, go on a date) it was a two-hour driving commitment. Harder yet, the town of Sugar Hill was growing fast, meaning taxes were tending toward the absurd. Road projects sprang up all over the place, adding insidious delays to my commute. And with the neighborhood filling up, swimming in the pool became like swimming in a bathtub with seven-hundred toddlers.

The struggle was real.

And my savings, hard built over the last ten years, were dwindling.

Now, as an aside, I feel the need to disclaim that I’m not a materialist. Things and possessions are not what makes life good. Moreover, I realize my good fortune in being able to build a house. How many people get to do that in life? Not many, I wager. As long as I live, I’ll never overlook the fact that I’ve been damn lucky, and that most of my struggles are what you’d call first world problems.

Even so…

In February 2016, when I made the decision to put our house on the market, it was the hardest thing I’d ever done. Harder than taking ten years to write a book. Harder than divorce. Harder than anything. It felt like a betrayal of all I’d worked for. It felt like pulling the rug out from under the G Man. It felt a little…like death.

It sucked.

And sitting in the lawyer’s office, signing papers that would release my house to someone else (she was a nice lady, at least) I felt the only real thing I’d ever wanted for myself slipping away. Sure, it refilled my coffers somewhat. And sure, my daily driving would go from 150 minutes down to 25 minutes. But I knew at that moment I’d probably never again fire up my grill while surrounded by trees I’d planted. I’d never stand in the moonlight filtering through my windows and paint fearsome art. I’d never sit in my writing chair, windows open to the owls and crickets, and write in the starlight. I mean…I might do all these things again someday, but not in the same context. Not in that exact moonlight. Not with the same owls and crickets. And most importantly, not with the same sense of peace washing over me.

I say never.

But even as I’m writing this, even as I hurt with the subtle pangs of losing my house, I’m plotting.

I’ll find someplace new. It may be smaller and closer to the clamor of the city, but I’ll find it.

It just won’t be the same.

Thanks, house in Sugar Hill. I’ll always remember ya.

* * *

J Edward Neill

Hard, dark author and painter of deep shadows (most of the time)

 

The Empire is HOLLOW

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This Friday the 13th…

Curl up with shadowy medieval tale, Hollow Empire – Night of Knives

Once, the empire of Vhur was the world’s most powerful. But that was before the Lichy plague. Now, twenty years and millions of dead later, only a few cities remain. The survivors walk a fine line between life and the grave.
And come the Night of Knives, even these last few might perish.

Episode Two is free for the next five days!

And Episode One is always free!!

HollowEmpireEP2

If you prefer the feel of cold, dead trees beneath your fingers, the complete paperback edition (Episodes 1-6) is here.

J Edward Neill

Author of sci-fi hit A Door Never Dreamed Of

And creator of the Coffee Table Philosophy series

Books for your Brrrrrrrains!

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The rumors are true…

In the Coffee Table Philosophy series, you’ll find something for everyone.

Girls. Guys. Party-throwers. Lonely philosophers. Optimists. Pessimists. Conversation-starters. And deep, dark thinkers.

It’s all here. A book for every coffee table in the world.

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10 books.

10 different types of questions.

Let’s have a look:

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101 Questions for Humanity

101 Questions for Humanity is the original book in the Coffee Table Philosophy series. The questions are short, direct, and easy to grasp. It’s ideal for starting conversations during parties (and it served the author well in breaking the ice with people at the local tavern.) Here’s a sample.

101 Deeper Darker Cover

Next up is 101 Deeper, Darker Questions for Humanity, which took the concepts of the original book and added a layer of complexity. Generally speaking, the questions in this book are longer and more in-depth. Here’s a deep, dark sample. 🙂

101 Questions for Women Cover 101 Questions for Men Front Cover

After the original coffee table book came two specially-tailored editions, 101 Questions for Women and 101 Questions for Men. It’s true; readers of both sexes will find enjoyment in either book. For most of the questions, you can substitute ‘man’ for ‘woman’ and vise versa. The Women’s book focuses on love, relationships, and children, but also flips the script and discusses a few darker topics. Men get a focus on war, politics, and sex. Sample questions for the Women’s book are here.

101 Questions for Midnight Front Cover

When originally written, 101 Questions for Midnight was planned as the final book in the series. It’s chock full of questions about sex, life and death, good versus evil, and other topics. The questions are generally dark and adult-themed. A sample arrived in the popular blog 10 Things to ask yourself Tonight.

444 Questions for the Universe

After the author thought he maybe, might have, possibly concluded the Coffee Table series, he released this compendium, 444 Questions for the Universe. It includes the entire first four books in the series (Humanity, Midnight, Men, and Women) and adds in 40 bonus Questions from Beyond. It’s a mega-bargain, having four and a half books worth of questions for the price of only one and a half of the original tomes. It looks super sharp on any table, containing more than enough questions to keep parties going for hours.

101 xxxy Questions Front Cover

After the original series ended, 101 Sex Questions arrived on the scene. The title says it all. Geared for adults (and especially couples) this book is full of games, quizzes, and challenges to ramp things up above and in-between the sheets. While not super-graphic, it pulls no punches. Definitely for the 18+ crowd. Just read the samples to find out for yourself.

101 Questions for Single People Front

After 101 Sex Questions, the direction of the series became obvious. Inspired by too many nights out at the club (and too many lost phone numbers) 101 Questions for Single People teamed up J Edward Neill and Jaylene Jacobus for a look at single life from both sides of the modern battlefield. A tiny sample of what you’ll find in this book is right here.

101 Qs for Couples Front Cover

And of course it’s only fair that if you’re going to do a book about Singles, you have to do one for Couples. This book is definitely the most bubby, cheerful, and light-hearted in the entire series. It’s meant for couples to take on vacations, road-trips, or pretty much anywhere lovers might have a few moments alone. Get to know your partner better with 101 Questions for Couples! (Sample questions here and here.)

101 Qs for the End of the World Front Cover

Possibly the final Coffee Table Philosophy volume, J Edward’s 101 Questions for the End of the World has finally arrived. It’s far different than the previous entries in the series, with questions focused on science, astrophysics, theory, religion, and old-world philosophy. Think Stephen Hawking mixed with Aristotle. The questions are  2 – 3 times longer than ever before, and they’re deadly serious. So put your thinking cap on and get ready to science the shit out of yourself.

🙂

J Edward Neill

Oh, and he doesn’t just write non-fiction.

Why I don’t write negative reviews.

  By , , , ,

People who know me will say I’m cynical.

They’ll note my lack of optimism, my occasional indifference, and my somewhat dark view of humanity’s intentions. These observations are completely my fault. I’ve worked a bit too hard to earn a ‘cold’ reputation, and now I’ve got to live with it.

But…

Despite this image I’ve cultivated, there are traits neither my friends nor foes will ever observe in me. Things like anger, entitlement, a sense of vengeance, or a tendency to be judgmental. I’ve my share of failings, but these are not among them. I lack the genetic disposition to hate, to scorn, and to demand retribution. I just can’t do it. It’s not in me.

amazon-consumer-reviews

I will never be this guy.

So…

Like any American, I buy my share of stuff. Some of it is awesome stuff, like my writing chair, my epic-level pancake griddle, and the billion books I’ve collected for my son. Likewise, some of my stuff sucks. Like the patio umbrella I bought that rotted within a month or the DVD copy of Devil’s Advocate which turned out to be a blank CD (serves me right for getting excited about a $0.99 DVD.) In each of these cases, I spent money. Hard-earned money. And in each case I took my new possession home and installed it into my life.

But…

No matter whether my purchase turned out amazing or shitty, I didn’t let it affect my emotional state. Meaning; my pancakes were amazing, but not life-altering. My writing chair is so very comfy, but I don’t plan on living in it. And my Devil’s Advocate DVD is…well…still blank. I figure, no matter how great or terrible my purchases are, it’s not worth getting ecstatic or depressed about stuff. Because it’s just stuff, right? So even when my umbrella fell to pieces and my Xbox told me to F off when I slid Keanu Reeves and Charlize Theron inside, I didn’t get pissed. I didn’t rush to the complaint dept. And I definitely did not write any scathing reviews.

Ok.

There was one exception.

It’s story time.

Very recently, I moved. It wasn’t a fun move. I had to leave a dream home I loved for a third-story apartment in a complex with about two-square feet total of green-space. It took two weeks to complete the move. It sucked. Hell, it still sucks. But the worst part was my experience with a not-to-be-named moving company. Two guys showed up to help me carry all my aforementioned stuff out of my beloved house and into a cramped, third-story shoebox. And to be honest, these guys sucked worse than leaving my dream home. One of them quit in the middle of his shift. I’m serious. He looked at me and said, “I’m done.” The other guy was slow. As in slooowwwwwwwww. In the end, I ended up carrying way more of my stuff than both guys combined. It was amusing…in a way. If you think paying someone else money while you perform hard labor is funny.

A few days later, the moving company sent me a review request.

Oh, was I ever tempted. I could’ve crushed these guys. In the big blank thousand-character space requesting ‘customer comments,’ I could’ve named names and drilled these guys seventeen new holes in their asses. I could’ve told them everything they did wrong, and I could’ve clicked ‘No’ in the big fat box labeled ‘Would You Recommend Our Service?’

And so I did. I killed them. I slew them. The fires of their failure are still smoldering. Their manager has called me…oh…a dozen times to apologize. And I’ve ignored him. Utterly.

a-bad-craigslist-mover

It felt a little bit like this.

bad-moving-company280

…and a LOT like this.

But there’s two differences between reviewing a moving company and reviewing art, books, and movies.

1. I reviewed the moving company privately. For their benefit alone. No public slander. No single-star rating on Yelp.

2. There’s no opinion involved in reviewing someone’s skill at box-lifting. There’s tons of opinions involved in reviewing film, paint, and words.

Which brings me here…to Tessera Guild…and to my personal website, Down the Dark Path.

From time to time I write reviews. Movie reviews especially, like this one and this one, and a recent review of Neil deGrasse Tyson throwing down some science in Atlanta. If you’ve ever read my reviews, and you should; trust me :), you’ll notice one thing they have in common: they’re ALL positive. Not positive in a blow-sunshine-up-your-ass way. Positive in a I-want-to-share-something-amazing kind of way. I review stuff I love because to me that’s the only stuff worth reviewing. Sure, I pick at a few small failures, but overall my comments on other people’s creative work are glowing. Because I want to spread the love, not stifle it. Because my opinions are better served helping people than shitting on other artists’ efforts. And because, let’s face it, the world and everything in it has plenty of bad reviews already.

A few observations:

A great review of an awesome piece of creative work will do hundred times more cultural good than a horrific review of something shitty.

When I see extremely negative reviews of movies, art, or books, I find it hard not to yawn.

I have better things to do (and so do you, probably) than sling stones at other artists and writers.

Opinions of art, movies, and books are rarely objective.

* * *

Look, I get it. If you spent $12 to watch a movie you hated, you’re entitled to vent about it. If you paid $9.99 for a crap novel on Amazon, you’ve every right to give it negative 47 stars. And if your umbrella rots while your lazy movers are carrying it, go nuts and complain to everyone. Scream into the heavens. Slap the cashier in the mouth. Burn down your local Wal-Mart. You’re allowed to do all of this.

But not me. I’m not allowed. I’ve banned myself from bitching. I’ve closed off the part of my mind that wants to nerd-rage about how such-and-such movie is awesome, but another one is trash. If I want bad reviews on stuff, I’ll just visit Rotten Tomatoes or post my selfies to Tinder. Sure, it’s fun to read a good rant, but it really doesn’t entertain me as much as it used to.

So if you see a movie review, a book review, or a commentary on a piece of art, and if you see I’m the one who wrote it, maybe you don’t have to read the review at all. You’ll know it’s positive when you see my name.

Unless you work for the moving company.

Then you’re screwed.

J Edward Neill

Author of A Door Never Dreamed Of

Creator of the Coffee Table Philosophy series

101 Questions for Couples!

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On a road trip together.

During a romantic dinner at home.

Holding hands on a park bench.

After twenty years of marriage.

Read a few of these to the special person in your life.

And thank us later.

*

101 Questions for Couples

The new book by J Edward Neill and Jaylene Jacobus

101 Qs for Couples Front Cover

It’s 101 pages.

With 101 questions meant to be shared between lovers, new and old.

Take it anywhere.

And capture your partner’s heart all over again.

Try some sample questions right here!

* *

J Edward Neill & Jaylene Jacobus

Oh…we’ve also got a book for single people. Right here!

50 Ways to Live a Little Differently

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FittyI’m not sayin’…

…but I might be sayin‘.

* * *

At bars and restaurants, be the best tipper around.

Selfie sticks should be used to start swordfights, not to take actual selfies with.

Stairs should be climbed, not avoided. And whenever possible, take them two at a time.

The first pancake is usually the worst. Give it to your dog. Or your cat.

Limit your usage of ‘lol‘ when texting. Or when emailing. Or always.

Your icemaker line will eventually break and flood your kitchen. Buy some ice-cube trays before it happens.

Shrug off small inconveniences. Also…the big ones.

Conservative and Liberal aren’t the only two choices. And not everything falls on the spectrum between these two.

Reserve your highest expectations for yourself. (i.e.; demand greatness from you and no one else.)

If a child asks you a question, consider answering with a kindly, “What do you think?”

Remember: your perspective is just one of billions.

 At the grocery store, insist on using paper bags instead of plastic.

Never greet friends or lovers with complaints.

The only purpose of TV is to keep your ass on the couch…watching more TV.

Be the person who pushes your shopping cart back into the store, not the one who shoves it in the corral a hundred yards away.

Nobody likes a one-upper. Listen to your friends’ stories and shut up. 🙂

Avoid huge charities. Give your money, donations, and time directly to those in need.

These days, nerds can be jocks, and vise-versa.

When picking fights, don’t.

And when you feel the instinct to judge, don’t.

Consider leaving your cell phone behind. Often.

No matter how hard you believe in something, it’ll never trump the truth.

And your beliefs should never control another human being.

Unexpected gifts are the best.

Except for Valentines Day. You’d better deliver for that one. 🙂

As for compliments, smile and accept them. And then forget they ever happened.

Try being a third (or fifth) wheel during a night out. It’s more fun than you think.

Politicians want you to be angry about stuff. Resist it.

Somebody probably already thought of the awesome meme you’re about to post. 🙁

Extreme independence is a heavy cross to bear.

Think about changing your religion to humanity.

Buy a tongue brush. Use it.

Avoid the parking spots closest to the store. Park in the farthest spot imaginable. (Doubly true for parking at the gym.)

If you have kids, remember that life’s problems should go up, not down. For an explanation, watch Saving Private Ryan.

Wolfie

See this? This is a wolf spider. Don’t kill these. They eat other spiders. Put a glass cup over it, slide a piece a paper underneath, and hurl it outside.

Escalators are not meant to stand on. You’re supposed to walk up them just like stairs.

Consider never allowing your emotions to be someone else’s burden.

Crisp cold mountain water isn’t as safe to drink as you might think. 🙁

If you work in an office, get up and walk to the printer. Don’t keep one in the room with you.

 If someone asks to borrow money, think about just giving it to them.

Don’t underestimate the effect your words have on other people.

And don’t overestimate it either.

Think twice before tattooing someone else’s name on your skin. Get a tribal or something.

When dating, approach a new person without expectations.

But do approach with wine. 🙂

Shitty grammar is ok among friends, but will undermine you among colleagues.

If you don’t like to run or jog, try walking. It’s just as good for your body.

Consider that 95% of all statistics on the internet are probably bullshit. 🙂

And also consider that 95% of your problems can be solved with pizza and/or beer.

* * *

Here’s the original 50 Things You Should Probably Think About.

And here are 444 things you should definitely think about.

🙂

J Edward Neill

5 Little Questions for Couples :)

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You probably knew this was coming.

In the wake of this and this, we just had to do a book for lovers.

So grab your partner and ask ’em to indulge you.

Here’s five little questions for couples!!

* * *

One-Word Knockouts

 Use one word to describe each of the following things:

 The way your lover kisses you

The way you feel when you see them after a long day

Where you want to take them on vacation

Where you want to live with them

What you’ll do the next time you’re alone together

Your favorite part of their personality

*

Robin Hood

 Suppose you could take any one thing away from your lover.

Any burden.

Any health issue.

Any bad feeling they’re stuck with.

Anything.

So go ahead. Swoop in and save the day. What one thing are you taking away from them that they’ll never have to deal with again?

*

It’s Not What You Think. It’s Worse

 First, read these non-dictionary definitions, which are based on things women sometimes say:

“Fine” – The argument is over. You lost. She won.

“Nothing” – Something is wrong. You’d better guess what it is

“Go ahead” – The opposite of permission. More like a dare

“Whatever” – You’re in trouble. Big trouble

 Now…

 Ladies: are these true?

Gentlemen: are these acceptable?

*

Fantasia

 Imagine tomorrow you and your lover wake up on a warm, sunny day.

  • You find a million dollars on the foot of your bed
  • If you have kids, they’ve graduated college and moved out
  • Your job called and said you’ve got two months of paid leave, starting immediately

So…

Where are you two going and what are you doing there?

*

Hang the Moon

 Imagine you have the power to give your lover a gift.

Just one gift.

It can be anything.

Something physical.

Something emotional.

Or something completely unrealistic.

It doesn’t matter. There are no boundaries.

 What one gift do you give them?

* * *

101 Qs for Couples Front Cover

101 Questions for Couples, by Jaylene Jacobus and J Edward Neill, is now available.

Get ready to fall in love all over again.

🙂

The Hecatomb – ‘heka’tom/ – An extensive loss of life

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Hecatomb – ‘heka’tom/ (noun) – An extensive loss of life for some cause.

or…

The name of J Edward Neill’s terrifying new novella, NOW available.

In a drowned village, on a dark shore, in a city of white stones, an ancient evil stalks.
It has no name, no face, and no desire but to see the death of everything…
…and everyone.
Down through the ages it exists, sleepless and void, a relic from the world before humanity.
One dead. Every night. Forever.
Until nothing remains.

Painting with Darkness – Part IX

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Maybe more than all my previous Painting with Darkness articles, this one has special meaning.

It’s the only piece I’ve done in the last three years that I didn’t work on in my epic painting studio.

And it’s the first I finished in my little shoebox apartment.

No matter…

Presenting my walkthrough of ‘Ghostscape.’

* * *

Ghostscape 1

I hope you’ve got your reading glasses on. This is the soft pencil work I put on the canvas before a single drop of paint ever touched it. I’m not gonna lie; the geometry was challenging. See that circle in the center? It’s dead-on in the middle down to the millimeter. What’s special about it? To trace the circle I used the 60-year old mixer bowl my grandmother many times used to make my pancakes.

Ghostscape 2

Begin the darkness: First I swirled watercolor blacks and sepia tones in the background. Then I used a hard straight-edge to paint in the black ‘towers’ jutting out of the sphere. And then…I added even more sepia and filled in the center sphere to give it depth.

Ghostscape 3

More towers were needed. I realized I hadn’t added enough. Also, I darkened the center sphere. Also also also…I used pale watercolor blacks to slice in distant towers behind the hard, sharp foreground towers.

Ghostscape 4

What can I say? I wanted even MORE towers. In this shot, although it’s hard to see, I used whites to give the towers a reflective quality. Like they’re made out of polished obsidian or some hard, dark otherworldly metal.

Ghostscape 5

Now began the hard part. And by hard I mean TEDIOUS. Using a tiny brush and some titanium white paint, I started adding windows and doors to the towers. I imagined a ghost behind each window…and NOT a friendly one. At the time this picture was taken, I’d spent two hours just dotting in windows and adding texture to the towers.

Ghostscape 6

Ghostscape – the final image. I like how the ring of lower tower lights frames the center of the sphere. It’s kind of a never ending city swirling around a tiny, terrifying planet. So…anyone up for a vacation?

Now…the only question is:

Which way to hang it?

In other words, which towers should point up, and which should point down?

Hmmmmm…

* * *

The original canvas of Ghostscape – Approx 24″ x 24″ – is available for sale for $300.00.  Reach out to me at JEdwardNeill@DownTheDarkPath.com if you’re an interested buyer.

Love,

J Edward Neill

Author of novels A Door Never Dreamed Of and The Hecatomb

Extreme Sci-Fi – A Door Never Dreamed Of

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JupiterEventTeaser1

A few days ago, a friend asked me which of my books I’d most want to make into a movie.

‘This one,” I answered. “A Door Never Dreamed Of.”

It goes a little something like:

A thousand years from today, nearly all of humanity is jacked-In.
We sleep, connected to machines, dreaming our lives away.
For most people, it’s the perfect life.
But for the few who never jacked-In, it’s exile.
Abandoned, persecuted, and betrayed, the Outs plot their vengeance across the centuries.
And when they open the Door, only one way of life will survive…

DoorNeverDreamedPaperback1

Get your copy today, and open the Door.

Your reviews are appreciated.

J Edward Neill

Author of the darkest dark fantasy series ever

And creator of the Coffee Table Philosophy series

The Midnight Circle

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Announcing:

The Midnight Circle

A dark lovers’ tale by Jaylene Jacobus

Clara Winters, a non-practicing witch, has been living the life of an old woman in the body of a twenty-two-year-old ever since fated to everlasting life in 1919. With the unexpected death of her beloved aunt, the easy life on her southern plantation is over. Grief awakens hiding ghosts—in the form of age-old magic and thirsty vampires.

The Midnight Circle is available for download on Amazon.

Tap into it right here:

TMC-smallest

If you pick up The Midnight Circle, please leave an Amazon review. Authors love those. 🙂

Also…

Visit Jaylene Jacobus’s website.

And follow her sharp Seattle humor on Twitter.