Charles Martin's Blog

Running through Friday September 2, How To Control Gravity And Other Stories is available for free on the Amazon Kindle. You can also download the Kindle app on your smart phone, tablet, or desktop computer. Read, review, help make my collection of science fiction stories the hottest thing since (INSERT RELEVANT POP CULTURE REFERENCE). Here’s the blurb:

This is a book about heartbreak. Following my divorce, I considered about my rough reentry into the dating world. I wrote a bunch of science fiction stories instead. But in these tales of a Martian invasion, an interstellar world-destroyer, and an artificial god in a bottle, you’ll still sense the smoke trails of lost loves and the aching whimper of a poorly guarded heart. No matter how hard I’ve tried to hide it, you will still see my life in this book. Perhaps, in these extended metaphors, you’ll see me even clearer.

 

OUTNUMBERED w/ Jack Fowler, Romy Owens, Adam Lanman, Ebony Iman Dallas, Hugh Meade and Don Rosencrans.

Opening 6-10pm Friday, September 2

The Paseo Plunge

3010 Paseo in Oklahoma City

paseoplunge.com

Like most states in the Bible Belt, our cultural hubs are flashes of blue-state politics amid a sea of red. Progressive values common among the art community being overwhelmed by a statewide conservative constituency is the subject of OUTNUMBERED, a curated art show featuring artists who’ve worn their contrary politics proudly, but also want to work with, not against the perceived political majority.

Conceived and curated by Jack Fowler, this show is an artistic response to the realization that the tone of political conversation is much different outside the metro bubble(loosely defined as being between 10th to 36th and I-235 to Lake Hefner Parkway.) Though it seems progressives are making gains neighborhood by neighborhood, we are still the only state to not have a single district swing to Obama in either presidential election and our state government continues pushing some of the most conservative legislation in the nation.

OUTNUMBERED is a response to that community isolation as well as how to work through it. Check out this great write-up by the Oklahoma Gazette for more.

We got in a small batch of Heathen Volume 1! We may be reordering again, but for now this will be spread out among some of our favorite local stores and we will be taking it to Lexicon at the Stillwater Public Library this Saturday. If you are in the area, come check us out along with all the other vendors at this cool annual event.

*Editor’s Note: Serious investment inquiries into Mr. Jonathan Hubbell’s vision for this television series can be sent through Literati Press Comics & Novels addressed as “Let’s Make So Much Art Money!”

from THE ROSE OF FREEDOM, A FLOWER grows

Episode 1:  a daughter’s gift

 

It was a day with a butt-load of heat, as the sun scorched the harsh, tuneless Sahara deserts of Pakistan.

A soldier from the U.S. Army Military Complex stood perched on a sand dune.  “Abedubudallalahalululu-allalubaafullalalla-alla-talii-lualibarn,” he yelled with a sophisticated accent.  It was a subtle holler to act as a feeler for hidden fucks that may be lurking – a respected gesture he learned in Language Arts.

No reply.  That could be good or bad.  & fuck if it ain’t bad most of the time.

“Jesus,” he thought, “it’s hotter than fuck.  And this language barrier is ‘for the birds’”.

Just as he said that, a middle-eastern bird squawked handsomely.  A heavy feather fell off his gorgeous face that had a beak on it as well.  The lone soldier shot his gun (it was a handgun) at the feather and he hit the feather.

The soldier laughed.  He said aloud to (what he thought and what you still think at this point) nobody, “Jesus, that bird sounds gayer than sergeant colonel during an air raid.”  He adjusted himself and then chuckled out:  “ROFL.”  Mr. soldier tried to text that to himself so he could remember how he phrased it, but the service out there was just west of bullshit.

Suddenly, his radio lit up.  “Jesus,” he said in response at first because it scared him it was kind of scary the way it was static-y.  Then the radio said, “If I’m gay, then you’re the biggest fag in cuntsville, private.”

The army man replied, “Hol-y-shit: Am I glad to hear your faggot ass.”

As he said this, sergeant colonel landed a badass plane right in front of him, blowing tan sand into the soft eyes of the horizon.  “Jesus,” the (formerly) lone soldier said aloud and then he even laughed a little.

On the side of the aircraft there was a beautiful portrait of Bill Paxton painted – the result of one mysterious evening when sergeant tripped on drugs with the native Sherpas.  “Hallelujah,” they had all screamed when the masterpiece was completed after 4 days/nights without sleep or sex.

The guy stepped out of his airplane and the other guy goes, “Jesus.”

Suddenly, a single gay guy who was on the arab team and hiding behind a bunch of nature shit fired upon U.S. Army.  It is hard to describe this sequence but you can imagine it.

After the dust cleared, sergeant threw a grenade at the gay guy and he blew up everywhere.  A photo of his wife and some kid wafted down from the air on fire because he too was human and had had a life somewhere rugged that no one will ever know.

Basically then the first soldier lay dying because the bad/gay guy had shot him a shit ton of times.  The fallen soldier realized that he had his superior officer leaning powerfully over him and they both wept and the soldier simply uttered: “permission to die, guy?”

The good guy colonel soldier replied, “permission granted, guy.”

Suddenly, the dying soldier said, “Wait, give this gift to my daughter – it is the largest treasure in the world.”

The good colonel’s eyes widened as death soldier pulled out a single grain of rice.  Then, death guy flipped the sergeant (the good guy) a limited edition coin and said, “here’s looking at you it’s for luck here’s lookin’ at you.  It’s for luck” (because he was having brain issues).

Then, the newly-dead soldier died big time which was clear when he let out a seven-minute death fart while the colonel screamed why(!) MY GAWD!

As the death fart occurred, a montage washed across both of the soldiers’ faces:  it was like a plane crashing into one of the towers, then a visual of Muslim in the desert being ridiculous, then a scene of a fire-person crying as a painting of pearn harbor and the lousiana purchase gradually faded over his face, then a clip from the movie Apollo 13 then a cowboy petting one of those goats.  There was also a cgi of hitler being killed by an American and then the success of the global Olympics, but that got cut because they had mostly lost interest by then.

As if all of that wasn’t amazing enough, zoom out and it was all in sergeant colone’s pupil.

But that grain of rice grew into the biggest rice tree of the desert and fed over a 8 billion people until, of course, the great summoning 3 years later.

The edn?

I celebrated my fortieth birthday without actually celebrating. I appreciated the somber aura of this new decade, but didn’t feel a need to dress the day up as an occasion worthy of much more than the annual bombardment of my social media accounts by well-wishers. Parties are for manic energy and day-glow party favors and blue jean pockets bulging from two week’s allowance blown on arcade tokens. I preferred contemplation and the quiet satisfaction that a younger me would be proud of my progress but ready to get on with it already.

And that is why I like entering my forties. The decade of the scholar. Of the survivor. Of the learned. Of the battered, but resolute. I’ve longed for this era of my life as if it was a distant, columned cathedral slowly rising from the chaos of youth and offering a refuge where I no longer just endured. Instead, I could thrive. Turning forty was taking my first steps into a great, marble-adorned lobby of adulthood. You see, nothing before really felt like adulthood. It felt like coping. Wrangling children, sealing gaps in the walls, nudging rusted buckets beneath the glistening ceiling beams weeping at the roof’s failure to keep out the storm.

But there are fewer cracks now, fewer bugs skittering along the kitchen counters, and the children are now young men who only bear my DNA and a portion of my life-view. They have shed my influence and are determining their own way of defeating life. I will always be their father, but I am no longer their overlord.

So, I can look away from the day-to-day and gaze into the horizons. This is why I am certain I am entering my peak as a writer. This is not aggrandizement, so much as acknowledging that if I am to do something great, I have twenty more comfortable years to do it. If I am fortunate, I will have thirty years. If I am blessed, I will have forty years. Another lifetime. It is like being born again, but this time armed with some context to the mysterious sights and sounds of Earth. True, I’ve grown numb to a degree, grown weary to a degree, but I’ve also grown emboldened by the fact that I don’t fail all of the time.

Let’s be optimistic and say I have forty more years to write before age finally hobbles my creativity. How many books will I read in that time? How many teachers will gift me with insight as I sit cross-legged and wiggle-worm in my eagerness for enlightenment and affirmation? How many years of my second lifetime will be wasted?

I feel I’ve built a sound foundation. I still grasp and stumble more often than I would like, but less and less each year. To be a great writer, I need a great voice, a great idea, and a great editor. I can purchase only one of these things, but I can continue to work on the other two. I may never write anything that will be perceived as culturally significant, but I have a few decades to find out for sure. This has been my only goal as an adult, and here I am, matriculated into adulthood, wandering the pristine hallways, name tag that still smells of Sharpie and new plastic, sensible shoes lightly crunching down on the freshly-cleaned carpeting. Yes, the white halls are a bit too institutional, but that is how it is to work in the industry of adulthood. Even in the creative field, we aren’t here to play or to survive anymore. We are here to do the work while we still have time and energy.

What is the significance of forty? Couldn’t I have started this phase at nineteen or thirty-two or twenty-six?

No.

Humans like landmarks and numbers that correspond to our fingers. I can flash both hands out in front of me, every finger spread out wide, my smile proud and knowing. Then I can curl those fingers into fists before flashing them out wide again. If I do this four times, I will have shown you the equivalent of forty fingers. That seemed like a lot when I was a child and just beginning to test out my skills as a storyteller. At that age, I believed writers must be old. They must be emboldened and nourished by time. I was not a prodigy nor did I see much appeal. I wanted to play the long game. The twisted, agonized, and romantic game. Ignore me, ignore me, ignore me. Now, revel in me and the years that I wear like  gleaming armor that makes my art impervious and undeniable.

Yes, that is silly thinking, but I was in the fourth grade and in rapture as my teacher read my story to the class. She fumbled over the names and held for laughter. Not all the moments hit like I’d hoped, but enough did. One student asked to read it afterwords, to soak in the words scratched out in my untamed cursive. I’d written a new mythology based on the Greek’s diorama of meddling and imperfect gods and goddesses. I even named one of the gods after Garfield The Cat but I’ve since forgiven myself.

This was not the birth of my audacity, though. The birth came when I committed myself to a new way by writing down the story rather than just speaking it, as was my childhood normal. I tossed away the freedom of the oral tradition for the permanence of literature. It was an act of devotion more significant than anything I’d ever attempted in our neighborhood church. Handing that double-sided, eraser-smudged paper to my teacher was when that audacity was grafted to my self-worth. Shortly after, I decided that forty was a number that implied reason, worldliness, and a voice as sharp and sturdy as a sword fired and hammered and fired and hammered and fired and hammered. It was also the age of my father who would forever serve as my own yardstick for adulthood and self-worth.

I am sometimes delighted by my own writing. I am sometimes horrified. I hope this is healthy but even if it is not, it is still my way and it’s brought me along this far. The last book I wrote is the best book I’ve ever written. This is the goal for the next twenty, thirty, and forty years of my life. This is my purpose for entering the industry of adulthood. I have a second lifetime to reward the faith I placed in that forth-grader who thought he could write a better mythology than the great storytellers whose words had traversed over two thousand years. I believed my words could do the same.

And I still do.

Forty. The decade of actionable delusion. I am so happy to be here.

We are debuting Natasaha Alterici’s Dinosaur Project this Saturday at  New World Comicon from 10am-7pm at the Oklahoma State Fairgrounds. The charming collection of progressive-minded, all ages dino tales will also be on sale at The Paseo Plunge at 3010 Paseo in Oklahoma City. We will start disseminating to other stores in the very near future. To buy online, go HERE!

Natasha Alterici specializes in targeting true human emotion and pulling it out of tight, energetic stories that are grounded in genre tropes, but transcends through her nuanced understanding of how the heart, the mind, and society works.

In short, she is as fun, challenging, and rewarding as any other comic writer that I’ve read. That I am lucky enough to publish her makes me giddy.

Heathen is quickly making Natasha a star, but in the meantime she is releasing the Dinosaur Project as an all ages title approachable for younger and older readers. Anyone can pull meaning from these stories in the same way that Pixar can resonate across age and cultural boundaries. Like Shel Siverstein, these are the sorts of stories that are fun, but also can spur conversations between parents and children about difficult, yet important topics like sexism and an increasingly impersonal, digital-obsessed culture.

And, most importantly, it offers plenty of chances to giggle and feel warm. We all need a bit more of that in our lives.

124 pages of full color stories and art. A bargain at $20 and copies begin shipping on July 23. Buy directly from us HERE or via Storenvy HERE.

Keep it classy, people. Yes, Kevin Durant exiting OKC is a tough blow for even the most pedestrian Thunder fan, but getting catty only does three things:

Destroys a pretty important friendship,
Shows that they had the leverage in the relationship all along,
Makes future prospects a little wary of tying themselves down with us because we came off a little unstable in the breakup.

It’s okay to bitch to your friends and have them reassure us that we can do better. It’s okay to fall for the first sharp shooting small forward that crosses our path, just as long as we are honest with that person about how we aren’t emotionally ready for a seven-year, $100 million dollar commitment. They’ll understand. They may be disappointed, but they’ll appreciate our candor.

Remember what Lebron James did to Cleveland when he took his talents to South Beach? Durant could have done that to us. Instead, he kept his flirtations with other teams quick and whirlwind, then penned an emotional goodbye to our fair city:

I’m from Washington, D.C. originally, but Oklahoma City truly raised me. It taught me so much about family as well as what it means to be a man.

So, let him go seek his happiness and we’ll spend a little time day-drinking and swiping through the NBA front office version of Tinder. Some slashing, lengthy, offensive juggernaut will come along one day and help Russell Westbrook claim the throne as the undisputed alpha of the Thunder and one of the top players in the league.

Then Russell may leave and that’ll be okay too. They’ve done a lot for our city, both with charity and building our ego. We should want good things for them and one day we will earnestly believe that. Until then, smile, say “it was great but our clock just ran out. I hope he is happy. I still see him around and it’s cool.”

Yes, we want revenge. We want to rant and rail, we want to punish him for making us hurt. Fortunately, this is sports and we can do just that by sweeping the Warriors in the 2017 Western Conference Finals.

Native Pop!

July1-30

Opening First Friday, 6-10pm

The Paseo Plunge

3010 Paseo in Oklahoma City

“We still exist,” is a fascinating statement. I don’t know that I’ve ever actually heard anyone say it until we began prepping for the Native Pop exhibit. Since, I’ve heard it from a few different artists involved in the show as a way to declare their relevance in modern art, rather than trapped within styles and techniques traditionally perceived and accepted as “Native American Art”.

“We still exist” is a simple statement that transcends art into a declaration about an entire people who’ve faced attempted extermination and systematic marginalization for hundreds of years. A concept entirely foreign to my own understanding of the world.

We still exist. Damn.

Brent Learned has curated one hell of a show. Vibrant, ambitious, and loaded with defiance. This show deserves your eyes and the eyes of many, many more as it travels across the country. Learned has assembled some heavy-hitters in pop art and they’ve delivered with striking images using cultural touchstones like historical heroes, war paint, and appropriation to display the Native American plight in the country that has so ill-treated them.

Nationalism vs. Globalism.

Closed Society vs. Open Society.

What world do we want to give our children? One where we yield a measure of control, tolerate cultures and ideologies foreign to our own, but use the knitting of our communities to sustain a peaceful world?

Or…

Do we embellish division and march to war so that our values, religions, and politics are not tainted?

Purity vs. Heterogeneity?

That is the question of the 21st Century as our borders fade, the internet builds highways that cross over our national divides, and regional traditions are adopted into the global lexicon.

The UK’s decision to leave the European Union(known as the Brexit) is being correctly labeled as a referendum on globalism. The breakdown of the voters who decided to abandon the EU is fascinating and reminiscent of the demographic that pushed Donald Trump from fringe candidate to Republican Presidential Nominee. The Little Trumps popping up around Europe are emulating Trump’s brash, nationalistic bravado and are gaining ground by attracting emotionally-driven, disenfranchised voting blocks who fear the disappearance of their cultural identity into the outside world that seems to encroach further into their lives by the day.

A Trump/Brexit supporter recently proclaimed that “I will sacrifice everything and anything to protect my liberty.” But this was an older voter, meaning that he would not be sacrificing anything aside from his grandchildren who would be thrown into the hungry maw of war should a military standoff with the rest of the world ensue. This is an ancient tradition. The old men rail about the world needing to be saved from itself, but it is the blood of the youth that is spilled on the battlefields.

The catastrophe of the Brexit is quickly becoming evident and is proving to be as bad, if not worse than predicted by swarms of experts whose opinions were dismissed in our baffling, global fetish for anti-intellectualism. The silver lining is Americans are getting a glimpse into the future of a Trump presidency. The implosion of the British stock market and damaged relationship with Europe has Scotland and Northern Ireland grumbling about a potential break with the UK. Meanwhile, xenophobic groups are emboldened and using renewed nationalism as a blunt instrument to batter anyone unlucky enough to appear foreign, even if they were born just a few streets away from their attackers.

Emotion vs. Pragmatism.

Globalism isn’t a perfect option. There are legitimate concerns about the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other agreements of the like, but this era of closer economic, political, and philosophical ties between nations has ushered in the most peaceful era of human history. Our world is moving toward a time where corporations fight for market share instead of armies fighting for geography. And this is a good thing, or at least a better thing than mass graves and cities reduced to rubble.

Nationalism, regionalism, and tribalism all source from the same core emotion, and that emotion has been the root of every war. Even before we began drawing formal borders around our farmlands, we were still seeking to destroy our neighbors for any number of arbitrary reasons that all boil down to a resistance to change and diplomacy.

Nationalism has not served the USA well. Nationalism abhors progress and immigration. Nationalism hasn’t the patience for negotiation and yearns to sacrifice blood to protect customs and sovereignty, especially when that blood belongs to someone else. We did win the revolution, but tried again with the Civil War and it crippled the country. The first attempt at a World War was awful, but the second had just enough glory to let us believe that we were the global liberators. Every other major military adventure has been a tragedy. The Korean War created a totalitarian state that sustains to this day. Vietnam proved that technological prowess cannot defeat an idea. Iraq and Afghanistan destabilized an entire region and served as an incubator/promotional tool for the most frightening extremist army in the Middle East.

Our victories have come years after the last bullet was fired. We lost in Cuba during the Bay of Pigs, but are about to win it back with globalism and tourist dollars. The same is true of Vietnam and Russia and China. Iran may be the next former enemy to open their borders to us. We didn’t win over those nations with our military strength, but through diplomacy (both hard and soft) and the sharing of wealth and ideas. In the war of globalism versus nationalism, shiny corporate franchises are the secret agents that destabilize fascists. Art, music, and culture battle on the front lines and have done far more for the cause of democracy and civil rights than any other weapon we’ve ever wielded.

So, when Election Day arrives, the presidential ballot will be a referendum on how we want the United States of America to approach the rest of the world. Do we embrace globalism with all of its warts in exchange for peace or do we fall into a bout of angry, fearful nationalism? Vote carefully, because our children’s lives depend on it.