My first book (1991) sold 10,000 copies. I was hired to write video scripts in London. Then two prominent weekly webzines separately and independently published me above the fold, an audience of 40,000 unique page views per month. A couple years later, I won 25,000 followers at Seeking Alpha who were notified when I wrote a new financial article. My weekly columns for Alrroya were published in English and Arabic. I appeared opposite Krugman.
Consequently, I acquired the idea that I could write. Whether I could write fiction was a coin toss. Some readers said nice things about Mars, others had technical complaints, and literary agents declined it. Very few "print on demand" copies sold. There was equal disinterest in a paperback pairing a hot female cop and a handsome plutocrat. The work of creating Harry and Laura, followed by Janet and Archie, distilled and precipitated a commitment to romance as the overwhelmingly dominant factor in psychological life, especially during our 30s and 40s when careers are made or ruined, risky gambles taken, passionate love and electrifying eros the result of sudden thermonuclear chemistry. No one expects romance to happen.
Romance in the wider sense is a heightened adventure that presents difficult and dangerous choices, horsewhipped in my longform debut Mars Shall Thunder, more comically but equally grim in The Good Walk Alone. Life and health are risked universally a thousand times a day, in traffic, at a fast food restaurant or school cafeteria, at a gay nightclub or at home. It happens to everyone. We age and die. Vital young adults in their 30s are eager and beautiful, at the summit of physical strength. Murderous conspiracies challenged Harry and Laura on Mars and likewise Janet and Archie in Atlantis to respond, wielding official government powers.
The next thing to do as a novelist was to delete official government powers, make it private wildcat power, totally anarchist and indifferent to money, an independent Chris and Peachy. They kept me busy two years. I had some nice reviews, enough to persuade me that I was on the right track and should continue writing fiction. That's easier said than done. After a major project involving characters I care about, I always had to detach and bang out some nonfiction gumph, a quart of creative Drano. Readers avoided my nonfiction without fail, and reviewers deigned to throw spitballs. Unfortunately, in the course of not writing novels, I hit a couple home runs in the philosophy of law, important work that needs to be seen and studied.
I'm unable to do anything to promote readership, and I've stopped writing. Book sales have flatlined after single digits last year. I'm satisfied that 'Partners' was a masterwork (the whole extent to which I possess any talent) and 'Executive Branch' sharpened matters. I'm done.
Why I'm shunned and ignored, I dunno. Nothing I can do about it. It might be a social disease. The political conspiracy against Trump is congruent with a boycott of action adventure stories involving a powerful white guy and an equally courageous white superbabe. I assert that such people exist in reality. I've met them. Chris and Peachy are a little more active, a little sexier than most, but not so different than hard combat vets and the hot females who want them.
Let's be honest about it. A straight white hero, armed and dangerous? And worse than that, indifferent to people of color and liberal government, a blur in the rear view mirror. Chris and Peachy were pampered sprigs of wealthy clans in control of institutional power -- a pair of ruling class black sheep. What they do as often as possible is to celebrate a red hot sexual attraction that can't be delegated or saved. It ought to be obvious. There is a cohort of white male warriors, ex-Marine Corps "devil dogs" with superior fighting skills. If threatened, they attack. Their women are likewise armed, dangerous, devoted, and unafraid.
Chris and Peachy -- an irresistible, unending, permanent romantic union. Polygamy doesn't change anything. They were bonded by physical and mental chemistry that no complication can bend or distort, destined to cleave closer in four wild action adventure novels.
Whether it was a long, lonely multi-year folly or a milestone reached and won, the intimate saga of Chris and Peachy freed me to show and tell what I knew about life. 'Partners' was a personal retrospective of how life used to be in the simpler 1970s, when ordinary men and women needed and defended each other and accepted the truth of life on life's terms.
Baffles me how anyone can believe the absurdity of immaculate conception and virgin birth, resurrection of a dead man, and retail immortality bestowed by faith. It also troubles me that I outlived Paul Tweeten. I think Paul gave up. It's a heavy burden to fail as a filmmaker.
Tough that I, too, failed as a film director, but it escapes me why I've been blackballed as an novelist. Straight white people don't read any more? There's been a flood of self-published indie authors, a vast clutter of dsyfunctional chick lit, vampires, and LGBT fantasies.
A handful of positive reviews kept me going.
"A master of sly observations, of the truths hidden in words, echoes to the time when men were men, and writers weren't afraid to tell stories."
"The combination of courage, tenderness, integrity, brains and raw sensuality is way out of the ordinary. Alternately growls, whimpers and seduces."
"The truth is often dark and brilliant at once. DeVoon is great with description."
"Gripping, marvellously portrayed."
Hmph. Flowers that bloomed a few days like dogwood. Easily the prettiest tree in the forest, a spectacular herald of Spring, bare again in a blink. Puzzles me that my intellectual work was quoted by a constitutional scholar in Kathmandu, totally ignored in America.
I recorded a series of videos, put up a web page to archive my stuff for posterity. I expect to be erased from Google, banned by Amazon, and buried in an unmarked grave, no obiturary. The future belongs to legislators, school teachers, Jews, and people of color. I'm not angry about it, but it worries me that inertia should squash everything else, zero interest in liberty or private heroism, hand on heart fealty to religion and a show of hands, fascist government by morons and ugly manipulators incapable of producing or preserving anything of value.
As a pauper, it's a struggle to find 1000 calories a day. Prices matter. I ate ultracheap canned mackerel imported from China, until I noticed the label warning about cadmium and lead. If this is my last year, always a threat, it was worth every hardship that I endured as a creative explorer, and I have no regrets. Embarrassment wasn't much of a deterrent or penalty.
www.wolfdevoon.net
.
Sunday, April 21, 2019
Friday, April 12, 2019
Sunday, March 31, 2019
Poop
Well, it had to end some time, right? Long illness left me dry. I can neither read nor write. My body of work became uninteresting and inert. It used to be a sparky adventure, always eager to stand taller and straighter, better magic to gamble and triumph again.
All gone. Whatever I achieved, so be it.
If it matters, or if anyone cares, the Playboy centerfold twins were real. The vacation house in Holland and the snowbound Belgian chateau were real. Assaulting the Dept of Energy and the rest of First Feature were real events. The Last Book was real, and Dreamland was 7/8 factual. I carried a gun and fired it. When Chris Cable went to prison I was writing from experience.
Obviously, I never went to Mars, but the characters were real people I encountered. Cocktail happens in the real world, people and places I knew, and it addressed an uncomfortable fact of life. Sexuality trumps everything else. Private actors do what government cannot do. They can't be stopped by religion or laws or common sense or physical danger if they fall in love.
It's hard to name the story I liked best, but Charity was closest to the truth of life, Partners my finest saga of raw courage, and The Executive Branch a fair guess of what's likely to happen in reality when things fall apart.
.
All gone. Whatever I achieved, so be it.
If it matters, or if anyone cares, the Playboy centerfold twins were real. The vacation house in Holland and the snowbound Belgian chateau were real. Assaulting the Dept of Energy and the rest of First Feature were real events. The Last Book was real, and Dreamland was 7/8 factual. I carried a gun and fired it. When Chris Cable went to prison I was writing from experience.
Obviously, I never went to Mars, but the characters were real people I encountered. Cocktail happens in the real world, people and places I knew, and it addressed an uncomfortable fact of life. Sexuality trumps everything else. Private actors do what government cannot do. They can't be stopped by religion or laws or common sense or physical danger if they fall in love.
It's hard to name the story I liked best, but Charity was closest to the truth of life, Partners my finest saga of raw courage, and The Executive Branch a fair guess of what's likely to happen in reality when things fall apart.
.
Tuesday, March 19, 2019
Weak and very ill
I wish there was more to say. Let me look. There may be something in the files.
I guess it was 1990. The managing director had arranged an afternoon seminar for the sales people, and he wanted me to say a few words about what writers did. Not being innately clever, I said what I knew about it: "Writers go naked in public." Got a big laugh.
There are other consequences, of course. Wrecked marriages, credit card debt, inability to hold a job, paying assholes to write terrible 3-star reviews, and being ignored and dissed for decades are relatively small potatoes. Truly awful consequences are in the work itself. For instance, once glimpsed a story must be told convincingly in its entirety. The language has to be original. It has to sing and frighten and dazzle in believable grit and grandeur. Events in the third act have to be foreshadowed on Page One.
Hours and weeks and months fly by. In the old days, there were piles of balled paper and spent typewriter ribbons on the floor of an office that doubled as a bedroom, back rent due. Nowadays computers hide how many ideas and sentences get junked. I miss physical paper, never had to worry about software crashes or lightning strikes. I use a USB drive for back-up when I get close to the end of a chapter, a frantic procedure when I'm nearing a complete final draft, re-reading the whole thing six or seven times to fix a single comma, or alarmed at repetitive use of a word, an emergency to conceive a substitute. Professional writers use a thesaurus. I think it's cheating. I did it once in 1997 and regretted it. Felt phony.
Worse, finished work is finished work. It would be treason not to publish it. After a while the business of life recedes in importance, can't matter and doesn't matter. I could be taken any second, and it wouldn't matter. Stories matter. Nothing else.
I guess it was 1990. The managing director had arranged an afternoon seminar for the sales people, and he wanted me to say a few words about what writers did. Not being innately clever, I said what I knew about it: "Writers go naked in public." Got a big laugh.
There are other consequences, of course. Wrecked marriages, credit card debt, inability to hold a job, paying assholes to write terrible 3-star reviews, and being ignored and dissed for decades are relatively small potatoes. Truly awful consequences are in the work itself. For instance, once glimpsed a story must be told convincingly in its entirety. The language has to be original. It has to sing and frighten and dazzle in believable grit and grandeur. Events in the third act have to be foreshadowed on Page One.
Hours and weeks and months fly by. In the old days, there were piles of balled paper and spent typewriter ribbons on the floor of an office that doubled as a bedroom, back rent due. Nowadays computers hide how many ideas and sentences get junked. I miss physical paper, never had to worry about software crashes or lightning strikes. I use a USB drive for back-up when I get close to the end of a chapter, a frantic procedure when I'm nearing a complete final draft, re-reading the whole thing six or seven times to fix a single comma, or alarmed at repetitive use of a word, an emergency to conceive a substitute. Professional writers use a thesaurus. I think it's cheating. I did it once in 1997 and regretted it. Felt phony.
Worse, finished work is finished work. It would be treason not to publish it. After a while the business of life recedes in importance, can't matter and doesn't matter. I could be taken any second, and it wouldn't matter. Stories matter. Nothing else.
Friday, March 8, 2019
Sunday, January 13, 2019
Dear Rush
I think you're capable of understanding, so I'll lay it out in simple terms. There is no divine right of incorporation. Voting doesn't change that. Exhorting folks to vote differently will not change it. People always vote their wallets. Fifty percent of workers are directly or indirectly employed by Federal, state, local, utility and school district governments -- all of which are "fictitious legal persons," no different than corporations. The unemployed get free food and medicine from government. Social Security and Medicare recipients are paid far more than they paid in. Medicaid is a free ride for every wetback and anchor baby, every heroin addict, meth head, gang banger, and their SNAP sucking extended families, who are motivated to vote more unearned "rights" supported by taxation -- free lawyers, frivolous appeals, prison doctors, food, exercise, education, charity, and parole supervision, unless they're deported at taxpayer expense to repeat the whole idiotic cycle of catch and release again.
U.S. military veterans atone for killing foreigners by milking us twice, lifetime benefits and public salutes. Remind me, please, what's the purpose of exploring Jupiter's moons, landing another robot on Mars, or flying past Pluto? How many millions of children get free breakfast, lunch, and dinner served by schools that do not and cannot discipline or educate them?
There's no easier path to power than being born black, becoming a community organizer, a teacher, a pro athlete, a must-hire academic, a paper pusher enforcing affirmative action, or an ugly thug chanting rap. Jews don't have the problem of community organizing. Jews own you, them, and us. Jews don't worry about skyrocketing drug deaths, homelessness, suicides, migrant caravans, pot consumption, gaming, pornography, binge viewing, or social media -- fatal goy dissipations that are cash flow positive for Jewish bankers and media barons.
How is it our permanent duty to guarantee the security of Israel? Japan? Korea? We support dictators and Islamic honor killing in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan and Afghanistan, throw big bucks at corrupt Haiti, Iraq, Columbia, Mexico, Uganda, and South Sudan. We have troops in 120 countries, 3.4 billion square feet of Federal government structures, plus 230,000 state and local offices, schools, hospitals, jails, and higher ed lecture halls. Total national public debt is never discussed. States, localities, and their utilities owe nearly as much as the Federal folly, measured in tens of trillions, with hundreds of trillions in unfunded obligations. If interest rates were allowed to float to an historic average, say 4%, it would kill leveraged con artists from sea to shining sea, halt shale drilling, mortgage lending and construction. We're paying farmers not to farm, bureaucrats to party in Vegas, students to stop free speech, and TSA to paw infants, cute chicks, and frail white grandmothers. FBI field agents reported that Saudi diplomats financed Saudi commandos who trained to fly jets in Florida, and did nothing to stop them. Russia warned the FBI about the Tsarnaev brothers. They were interviewed and cleared, no different than the Orlando gay nightclub jihadi. Comey and Mueller had much more important work to do, protecting the Clintons and investigating Trump.
Face it. All of it, every bit of it, was the handiwork of democracy. There was no definition of justice provided in our allegedly sacred corporate charter repeatedly amended by legislation and judicial fiat. In the Legal Tender Cases over a century ago, common law was burned and buried, so that legislators could do whatever they pleased, and they were pleased to rob their neighbors' purses, to hand out loot that they did not earn, and to pledge more theft in the future to satisfy foreign lenders and future entitlement beneficiaries, perpetuating a preposterous ponzi racket, stage managed by Goldman alumni and K Street lobbyists.
There is no divine right of incorporation, certainly not as a carnival sideshow led by crooks and liars. If I was Donald Trump, I'd say to hell with it and quit. I'll ghostwrite a resignation tweet: "It was stupid to reelect evil rats like Pelosi and Schumer. You're fired, America."
I appreciate that you've achieved a lot. I listened to your radio show since the 80s, watched your short-lived TV show, and I'm okay with your trademark bombast about "talent on loan from God" and "excellence in broadcasting." Arguably, the Tea Party could not have come into being without dittoheads, although it was Rick Santori who kicked it off. A lot of folks were prominent players, especially Roger Ailes, right?
Too little, too late. We went to hell on 9/11.
Big surprise, huh? Cantor Fitzgerald was targeted. Nobody asked why. The secret Cheney Energy Commission had already chosen Iraq as a strategic plum, and it was easy to convince dumbshit George W. to blame Saddam, a former ally given battlefield chemical weapons. Mossad ginned up "evidence" of yellowcake and aluminum tubes. No curiosity why Exxon and Halliburton needed Iraqi oil, or why Saddam had invaded Kuwait because they were drilling horizontally, or why Arab clerics led commandos to attack Cantor Fitzgerald twice, starting with the garage bombing in 1993, payback for Harry Truman's creation of Israel and deployment of American power to defend legally indefensible Zionist conquest of Palestine. The successful Islamic revolution led by Khomeni proved that American oil companies could be ejected and CIA "royal" pawns dethroned.
Look, I understand entertainment, especially comedy. You had a winning package, hilarity and jingoism, snarky sarcasm and triumphal flag-waving patriotism. It made you rich and famous, an asset to the entrenched ruling class in Houston. Swell for you, sewing together evangelical Born Again boobs and easily-led boomers who wanted government off their backs and out of their bedrooms. Care to explain how Obama won two terms and killed the health insurance industry, ignited race riots, and launched a murderous Arab Spring?
You, more than anyone else, were personally responsible for the murder of millions, waste of trillions in Iraq and Afghanistan, chaotic tomfoolery that destroyed the Republican Party, and the meteoric rise of populist savior Donald Trump. Happy about that, are you? It's about to explode, another Limbaugh laugh riot gone rotten, excellence in cheap entertainment, playing pattycake with a frightened, angry middle class who think that a bankrupt sovereign corporation and comedy will make them prosperous and safe again. It won't and can't.
.
U.S. military veterans atone for killing foreigners by milking us twice, lifetime benefits and public salutes. Remind me, please, what's the purpose of exploring Jupiter's moons, landing another robot on Mars, or flying past Pluto? How many millions of children get free breakfast, lunch, and dinner served by schools that do not and cannot discipline or educate them?
There's no easier path to power than being born black, becoming a community organizer, a teacher, a pro athlete, a must-hire academic, a paper pusher enforcing affirmative action, or an ugly thug chanting rap. Jews don't have the problem of community organizing. Jews own you, them, and us. Jews don't worry about skyrocketing drug deaths, homelessness, suicides, migrant caravans, pot consumption, gaming, pornography, binge viewing, or social media -- fatal goy dissipations that are cash flow positive for Jewish bankers and media barons.
How is it our permanent duty to guarantee the security of Israel? Japan? Korea? We support dictators and Islamic honor killing in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan and Afghanistan, throw big bucks at corrupt Haiti, Iraq, Columbia, Mexico, Uganda, and South Sudan. We have troops in 120 countries, 3.4 billion square feet of Federal government structures, plus 230,000 state and local offices, schools, hospitals, jails, and higher ed lecture halls. Total national public debt is never discussed. States, localities, and their utilities owe nearly as much as the Federal folly, measured in tens of trillions, with hundreds of trillions in unfunded obligations. If interest rates were allowed to float to an historic average, say 4%, it would kill leveraged con artists from sea to shining sea, halt shale drilling, mortgage lending and construction. We're paying farmers not to farm, bureaucrats to party in Vegas, students to stop free speech, and TSA to paw infants, cute chicks, and frail white grandmothers. FBI field agents reported that Saudi diplomats financed Saudi commandos who trained to fly jets in Florida, and did nothing to stop them. Russia warned the FBI about the Tsarnaev brothers. They were interviewed and cleared, no different than the Orlando gay nightclub jihadi. Comey and Mueller had much more important work to do, protecting the Clintons and investigating Trump.
Face it. All of it, every bit of it, was the handiwork of democracy. There was no definition of justice provided in our allegedly sacred corporate charter repeatedly amended by legislation and judicial fiat. In the Legal Tender Cases over a century ago, common law was burned and buried, so that legislators could do whatever they pleased, and they were pleased to rob their neighbors' purses, to hand out loot that they did not earn, and to pledge more theft in the future to satisfy foreign lenders and future entitlement beneficiaries, perpetuating a preposterous ponzi racket, stage managed by Goldman alumni and K Street lobbyists.
There is no divine right of incorporation, certainly not as a carnival sideshow led by crooks and liars. If I was Donald Trump, I'd say to hell with it and quit. I'll ghostwrite a resignation tweet: "It was stupid to reelect evil rats like Pelosi and Schumer. You're fired, America."
I appreciate that you've achieved a lot. I listened to your radio show since the 80s, watched your short-lived TV show, and I'm okay with your trademark bombast about "talent on loan from God" and "excellence in broadcasting." Arguably, the Tea Party could not have come into being without dittoheads, although it was Rick Santori who kicked it off. A lot of folks were prominent players, especially Roger Ailes, right?
Too little, too late. We went to hell on 9/11.
Big surprise, huh? Cantor Fitzgerald was targeted. Nobody asked why. The secret Cheney Energy Commission had already chosen Iraq as a strategic plum, and it was easy to convince dumbshit George W. to blame Saddam, a former ally given battlefield chemical weapons. Mossad ginned up "evidence" of yellowcake and aluminum tubes. No curiosity why Exxon and Halliburton needed Iraqi oil, or why Saddam had invaded Kuwait because they were drilling horizontally, or why Arab clerics led commandos to attack Cantor Fitzgerald twice, starting with the garage bombing in 1993, payback for Harry Truman's creation of Israel and deployment of American power to defend legally indefensible Zionist conquest of Palestine. The successful Islamic revolution led by Khomeni proved that American oil companies could be ejected and CIA "royal" pawns dethroned.
Look, I understand entertainment, especially comedy. You had a winning package, hilarity and jingoism, snarky sarcasm and triumphal flag-waving patriotism. It made you rich and famous, an asset to the entrenched ruling class in Houston. Swell for you, sewing together evangelical Born Again boobs and easily-led boomers who wanted government off their backs and out of their bedrooms. Care to explain how Obama won two terms and killed the health insurance industry, ignited race riots, and launched a murderous Arab Spring?
You, more than anyone else, were personally responsible for the murder of millions, waste of trillions in Iraq and Afghanistan, chaotic tomfoolery that destroyed the Republican Party, and the meteoric rise of populist savior Donald Trump. Happy about that, are you? It's about to explode, another Limbaugh laugh riot gone rotten, excellence in cheap entertainment, playing pattycake with a frightened, angry middle class who think that a bankrupt sovereign corporation and comedy will make them prosperous and safe again. It won't and can't.
.
Brother can you spare a half a million?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)