Tony Noland's Blog

I'm actually sort of surprised that Smashwords lasted as long as it did before merging/folding/evolving into some other site. But now in 2024, the books I had for sale there are now available on the new digital publisher's site, Draft2Digital. Since their moment ahs come and gone and sales of these books are nonexistent, it feels a bit dopey to update the info, but nonetheless, here we are. Links to Apple, Barnes and Noble, and all your other favorite booksellers are below.

Blood Picnic and Other Stories : In this diverse collection, the versatile writer and blogger Tony Noland has gathered some of his best flash fiction and short stories. These twenty eight stories range in style from fantasy and horror to magical realism and literary fiction.

Verbosity's Vengeance : Alex Graham's genius designing video games brought him happiness and made him a fortune, but he never expected to see his work misused by military scientists. The collapse of the mysterious Project Unicorn left Alex with scars, nightmares, and strange powers unlike any other superhero. Years later, as the Grammarian, he uses the strength of supple syntax and the power of perfect punctuation to fight for justice on the mean streets of Lexicon City.

When his arch-enemy Professor Verbosity threatens with a mysterious new superweapon, only the Grammarian can stop him… just as soon as he hires a decent sidekick. Mix in the interference of the Avant Guardian (a goofy superhero wanna-be), a vicious stranger who strikes from the shadows, and a beautiful, brainy college professor with an obsession for superhero technology, and the Grammarian has his work cut out for him.

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Landless by Tony Noland. If you like the blog, try one of the books.

It was about 10 years ago that I got a complicated new job and the first of my four kids entered the teenage years. The demands of family and work meant I had to cut way back on my writing. And more or less abandon any effort to talk about my writing or engage with other writers, at any level, in any forum.

I still wrote, mostly lousy, half-baked first drafts of lousy, half-baked novels. There was the corporate thriller, the sci-fi conspiracy action book, the touching redemption story of estranged brothers, the alternate history where the Nazi scientists fled the reich early and Operation Paperclip made Argentina a third superpower....

All crap, of course, but it kept the flame alive.

Now, in 2024, career changes have put me more or less back where I was in 2013. Family-wise, we all made it through the teenage years with what feels like no more than the usual score of bruises, grudges, tears, revelations, insights, and new vistas opened before us. At least, I hope so.

The question is, what does this mean for my fiction writing? Will I pick up the pen again? I could revise and extend the drafts I wrote while wandering in the wilderness, try to make something of them. Or I could re-read them all, shudder in horrified revulsion, thank each of them for their service, and bury them all face down in an unmarked mass grave at some forgotten crossroads.

Or I could try to write something new. Ideas and snippets and stories are always floating in me. For a long time, I haven't bothered with any serious effot to capture them, since I didn't have the bandwidth to do anything with them. But now, perhaps, I do. Once again, I do. Or I might.

Or have I outgrown this? Should I redirect my energies into something else? The world doesn't need any of my writing, but in truth, the world NEVER needed my writing. I needed to write. Do I still?

Do I?

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Landless by Tony Noland. If you like the blog, try one of the books.

It's not been a great year for me, but I'm posting this here just to make sure the world knows I'm still alive.

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Landless by Tony Noland. If you like the blog, try one of the books.

Today's dose of flailing lunacy from the Mad King of Twitter:

True fact: I saved this jpg as "twitter death spiral". The whole thing has a desperate, Berlin Wall vibe about it.

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Landless by Tony Noland. If you like the blog, try one of the books.

... for now, anyway.

Since it looks like Twitter is going down the tubes now that the Worst Person In The World (Runner-Up) is running it, this is a reminder that you can find me here, like an unquiet spirit hovering over what's left of the meat puppet it used to enhabit.

TBH I'm not sure if I will continue to exist if Twitter becomes uninhabitable.

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Landless by Tony Noland. If you like the blog, try one of the books.

When you already have dozens of books on the TBR pile, ranging in difficulty from light and fluffy to seriously complicated and challenging, does it really make any sense to visit a used book store and buy yet more books to add to the pile?

Sure. Take joy where you can find it. What is a book if not hope in physical form?

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Landless by Tony Noland. If you like the blog, try one of the books.

It was on this date in 2009 that I put a tracker on this blog so that I could dig deep into Google Analytics. I could see which posts got what traffic, who was looking at my posts, from where in the world, at what times, etc. My thinking was, "you can't improve what you don't measure". I had a brilliant career as a novelist waiting right around the corner, right? I needed to get off on the right foot and build my audience right from the start.

Now, from the perspective of 2021 as I survey the withered husk of this cobwebbed wasteland, that level of literary ambition seems like escapist lunacy.

Anyway, here's a link to a popular post about what a lifecoach would tell an assassin about how to kill people better.

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Landless by Tony Noland. If you like the blog, try one of the books.

I feel as though 2020 is The Last Year.

The Last Year we shook hands instead of bumped elbows or bowed.

The Last Year we blew out candles on a birthday cake, getting all of our vaporous exhalations all over the food we then served to the friends and loved ones gathered around us.

The Last Year we had parties where friends and loved ones were gathered around us.

The Last Year we could sustain the illusion that the people in charge were competent or cared.

The Last Year for averting the coming climate crisis.

The Last Year for NATO, for Inspectors General, for ethics regulations.

But maybe, just maybe...

Also The Last Year for blind acceptance of exclusionary power structures designed by oligarchs.

Maybe.

Maybe this is The Last Year.

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Landless by Tony Noland. If you like the blog, try one of the books.

“Boomtown”: A novel about:
the world’s first antimatter factorythe quasi-governmental agency that runs itthe company town that fears/depends on itthe oil cartel that hates itand the time-traveling aliens trying to infiltrate it.

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Help keep the words flowing.
Landless by Tony Noland. If you like the blog, try one of the books.

||| Comments are welcome |||
Help keep the words flowing.
Landless by Tony Noland. If you like the blog, try one of the books.