Max Redford's Blog: BREAKING THE DRAGON

Love that word. Really, I do. In fact, let's make it a new slang, k?

I'm gettin' unhinged up in here tonight!

No? Doesn't roll very well, does it?

Oh well. I tried.

Any of you watched that show Californication with David Duchovny? (That dude never ages!)

Hank Moody is my kinda author. And just seeing Agent Mulder let loose and party like a rockstar is worth watching the show for. I totally love a moody nihilistic cynical kinda writer -- one who drinks like a fish, beds a lotta women and loves dogs.

Seriously, if it wasn't for the bedding all the women part, I'd be a real-life Hank Moody. Right down to the part where I can't seem to get any fucking writing down.

Look at the blank screen . . . think really, really hard . . .

F - U - C - K

Ah, hell, there's a day work right there.

Writers truly and sincerely appreciate their readers. All of them do. Even the douchebag writers who just do it for the money -- cause without you buying their books they might as well be on Wattpad trying to become the year's best Watty.

Writing is a lonely hobby or profession, though, regardless of why you are doing it. It's even lonely for me and I co-author a lot of projects with my wife. If I'm not co-authoring with her then I'm world-building a new setting for her to populate with characters.
But at the end of the day -- or beginning of the morning -- we're usually both working on different projects, and we're so immersed in our own fictional universes that we've alienated ourselves from the other.

I think that's why true writers and, to a certain extent most artist, are socially awkward people 'cause we spend so much damn time in our own made-up worlds we lose connection with the real world around us.

Avid readers -- I mean real Twilight Zone, Time Enough At Last -- readers probably experience the same phenomena.


So, as a reader, what elements of a good story get you so lost in the fictional universe that you become alienated from the real world and real people around you?

I'm not sure if I've said this before, but if I have you probably didn't read it anyhow or have forgotten by now, so I'll repeat it and you can either not read it (again?) or forget it again. Hey, it happens, it's the way the world rolls, or spins, or turns . . . or whatever the heck the world does.

Confession time: I'm a writer first and foremost. A novelist to be precise. Obviously! Duh! But there's a lotta writers out there who also strut themselves out on social media like a rockstar on the stage. Chuck Wendig being the most infamous. Love the guy. Extremely repetitive, and recycles the same ol' comedic formulas over, but we all got our crutches, right? Still, guy has a sky-high personality that rockets off the cyber-pages.

There are other writers out there, too, even indies, who can light up the 'net-stage with their pyrotechno-personas.

I hate them. Seriously. They all need to be wrapped in barbed wire, doused in honey, and thrown into the swamp where the skeeters can pick the flesh off their bones.

Then, just maybe, my online presence wouldn't be so inferior.

Can y’all believe FACEBOOK unpublished my account 'cause I hadn't been active in over 30 days? What kinda sick control-freak business model are those pricks striving for?

I'm giving a lot of consideration to going back to MySpace. Remember MySpace? Custom page layouts, music on your front page? Great way to find underground music BTW. And they weren't mean asshats like the Facebutt.

I wrote this to FB:

I apologize that I did not have the time or inclination to broadcast every aspect of my life, or recycle memes, or click Like on anyone else's shit in the last 30 days. I don't know what got into me.

Please accept this heartfelt screw you!

Sincerely,
A Nameless Facebook Expatriate seeking refuse in MySpace where I won't be judged and bullied.


Truth is, I really think I suck at this social media thing. But everyone keeps tellin' me that it's the future of online platforming and if you want be anybody in this digital age then you gotta dig the social media.

Hell, is giving my spiffy wrist watch for a smart phone I constantly have to charge and ignore telemarketers on not enough for this digital age?

This is exactly why I don't even like playing MMORPGs anymore -- too many people want to like interact with me. I remember when I could play Super Mario Bros 3 (go Koopa airships!) and nobody ever wanted to join my party. Me and Mario in a raccoon suit saved the day all by ourselves.

But . . . I'm going to try really, really hard to play nice and get myself a nice, nifty, shiny new blog and hope I can make some new friends.

Say, anybody want to play a Super Mario Bros. 3 marathon this weekend?

http://dl.bookfunnel.com/ep8z0b7doz
It's the moment you've all been waiting for ever since you finished reading this opening sentence . . .

*long suspenseful drum roll*

And now folks, without any further delays! What you've all been waiting for . . .

Umm . . . wait . . . pay attention! I already posted the link to the Beta/ARC copy of RECKONING OF THE BEAST at the top of this post, so like why are you guys still reading this nonsensical drivel? Seriously, I got shit to do so stop reading this . . . okay, if you keep reading this then I have to keep writing it.

But wouldn't you rather I be working on ASYLUM?! Paladins Cycle #3!

More doom, gloom, laughs, cries, fights, and freaky-reaky squirmy outta-this-world things straight from my head and into yours -- don't worry, i'm totally safe for psionic transmissions, so no need for your local psychic (who may or may not live in a trailer) to give you a psionic-transmitted disease test. Seriously, it's a rip-off, don't do it!

Instead, save your money for ASYLUM!

Oh, and tell all your friends about NUMBER and RECKONING!*


*The authors are not liable for any loss of friends or being written out of any family wills, or divorces, future or current drug abuse, lost car keys, or loss jobs, migraines, unusual scarring, bleeding, and excessive salivation during sleep.

Play it again, God!

http://dl.bookfunnel.com/ep8z0b7doz

We’re born, we live a miserable life, and we die of cancer.

Some of us fortunate ones actually have people show up at our funeral. They cry and they leave flowers and then someone or several someones get up behind the pulpit in some church that most of the attendees have never been to before and tell stories about the deceased.

Most times if the deceased was still alive they’d argue that the story didn’t really go that way.

But funerals are really for the living more than the dead.

So when a loved one dies and you can’t make the funeral for whatever reason don’t feel any guilt - even if your relatives demand it.

Because funerals are for the living to gather and make each other feel okay that a loved one is dead.

The dead don’t care.

This is coming from someone who had to go to therapy in the 5th grade when my grandpa died and I couldn’t deal.

Yeah, death, or any permanent loss of anything is foreign for a kid under the age of . . . like 25? I’m thirty and still trying to cope with my loss of a 21-year old liver.

Okay, granted, when my grandpa died I was also going through my second bout of childhood cancer. Maybe that had some effect on my undeveloped brain.

Fuck.

I still don’t want to talk about that shit.

To know me is to know that I don’t relate to most people in this world and I don’t pretend to either.

I am who I am, whether it’s “right” or “wrong” ‘cause personally I only see the world in grays and if you disagree with my philosophies then I am both willing to listen to your arguments and learn from them.

I am also bold enough to stand my ground and tell you to go fuck yourself - cause there are no “rules”.

I’m not perfect. I’m not better than anyone. I’m just trying to make the best of what life has dealt me.

But I won’t go into the darkness blindly.

My wife listens to pop music. That song “Thrift Shop” and “Say Something I’m Letting Go”. Tune into any pop-station.

I love her. I love her with a passion. And so that’s why I tolerate the pop music. Sometimes I even bob my head to it.

But when we write I always plug into my own music.

I listen to death metal, doom metal, gothic, gothabilliy, and punk music. Some of my favorites are: Cannibal Corpse, Slayer, Fields Of Nephilim, Zombie Ghost Train, The Misfits, Calabrese, Biohazard, Raymones . . .

But like I said, I still love her . . .

Somehow we combine together as husband and wife and co-author books together. I bring a lot of extreme content to the mix and she tells me when I need to go sit in the corner while she does damage control.

She told me once, “You’re the artist. I’m just tagging along.” But she’s contributed a lot of the ideas to our stories. I like to think of it as me pushing the envelope and Lita licking it closed.

That’s why we make such a great pair - as husband and wife and as co-authors.

I start some weird shit and and she tries her damn best at making sense of it before releasing it to the public.

Seriously. Don’t even try. Fish. That’s right. I said dog! You heard me correctly.

People - and by people I mean the purple ghost in my head - keep telling me that I’m not doing this social-media thing right, or for that matter, I’m not doing the entire social thing right.

I keep telling myself it’s just gas and I should get that checked out. I mean it’s not normal to have a purple ghost in your head singing ‘Talk Dirty To Me’ . . . is it?

But then there’s that other creepy house inside my head that no matter how hard I try to stay away from I always end up in the flooded cellar.

Flooded? Yes, it’s flooded with the protoplasmic goo of all the fucked up shit that crawls into my mind and rots, ferments until it’s stuck there like that black mold on the shower walls - you know that gunk you can’t get off without a bucket of bleach and steel wool . . . and while you scrub you hear the Ghostbuster’s theme song.

Yeah, that’s what’s inside my brain . Black slimy gunk. And no matter how many times I use an eyedropper full of Clorox in my ear I just can’t get that rotten shit out of the crevices of my brain.

So I finally said, ‘fuck it’. No really! I was standing in the kitchen naked one morning holding an eyedropper and my wife asked if I’d taken my meds - she was concered ‘cause she cares 'bout me - I remember it clearly . . . I said, “Fuck it!”

The moral of this post: If you got black mold on your brain you might as well say ‘fuck it’.

MAX’S LOVE POTIONS #9

Disclaimer!!!: Max’s Love Potions do NOT come in a ‘One Size Fit All’.

First and foremost, I am originally from the South - made in the U.S.A, baby!

As a bonus I was raised Pentecostal - for those not aware, Pentecostal is one light bulb and a four-door sedan away from being Amish - lets add that I was raised on a “cow farm” (not a ‘cattle farm’)

So you might guess I've got a lot of respect for women. And that’s a damn good assessment!

I’m 100% pure free of misogynistic tendencies; I’m also not racist! Funny how stereotypes come about - yet I do dig some Charlie Daniels and even some David Allan Coe. (My hypocrisy only goes so far!) << God, that might be wrong right there . . .

But let me be serious for a moment(ALERT: I’m infamous for tongue-in-cheek commentary!)

As some of you may know by now I and my wife LITA STONE are both authors. We met through our mutual interest of the art of the craft, fell in love with one another’s personality and have been married for going on three years.

Not only do we discuss writing on a daily basis, but we near about discuss romance and love on an equal basis, too.

And I swear on my grandmother’s grave we’ve got a love thicker than Bonnie & Clyde.

And I personally want to share my philosophies on why I think our marriage is still as romantic and sensual as it was the first time we met each other in a cheap motel (I’m not making this up, folks!)

Thus, MAX’S LOVE POTION series:

MAX’S LOVE POTION #9 (because 9 seemed like a neat number at the time of writing this)

First off, to young married (or otherwise) lovers: Arguments are a mainstay! You will disagree with your significant other. Sometimes it will be over big issues and some times it will be over small issues. But it doesn’t matter ‘cause you LOVE that person and you want to overcome any issues in life with them.

This is stated in extremely generic terms because life itself is so unpredictable, so think of it in this way: Imagine the most horrific thing that could happen to you in your life then think of the second and third most horrific thing that could happen to you in your life: You have to declare bankruptcy a week after the doctor tells you that you have to start chemotherapy in the same week that your son totaled a brand new car . . .

Can you honestly say you’d rely on your significant other to get you through this hardship?

Because that’s life. And life doesn’t exclude the ‘happily married couple’. In fact, Life doesn’t even acknowledge that you’re married. It just happens.

But if your love for that special person is strong enough then it will triumph over those hardships with vigor and come out even stronger on the other side.

Love is one of the most enduring emotions there is and if you truly love someone then nothing will completely tear down that emotion - it might get shaken up here and there but true love shouldn’t crumble under pressure from life’s weight.

For those of you who have read NUMBER OF THE BEAST it might be of interest to you that Shane is loosely based on me. And I think most people can agree that he’s a hard guy to love . . . in some ways. (Trivia: A bit of Birch and Scooter is also based on me.)

So for this dose of Love Potion I want to tell you guys and gals that you need to stick close to your lover when life gets all tough and up in your face - or otherwise you’ll be going up against life all alone.

Here’s Some Tips:

Kiss your Lover every morning before you go to work.

Try if possible to have breakfast, coffee, or a short dialogue with your Lover every morning.

Whenever possible shower together and talk while you wash up - talk about whatever is on your mind and/or whatever is bothering you.


If you have kids, discuss your kids, both positive and negative. Let me say that it’s completely healthy and okay to share criticize about your children with one another in an effort to come to a better parenting method dealing with their weird behaviors.

Go on a date! Even if you’ve been together or even married for years. Go out for a nice meal with your Lover at least twice a month and make eye contact with one another while you enjoy your meal. Translation: Put away the smartphone!

Remember to continue to share common interests with one another. You don’t always have to like the same movies or music (I like South Park, and The Simpsons, and death metal which I cannot do any of in front of my wife . . .)

!!DO NOT!! Under any circumstance ever try to control your Lover’s natural behavior or try to turn them into the person you think they need to be. This is probably the most detrimental thing anyone could do in a romantic relationship. If you are trying to mold the other person then obviously that person’s base personality isn’t what you wanted out of a significant other.

Take Love Potion #9 and see me again for the next dose.

Way back, when I first started getting the idea that I could write stories, I began with some short stories like most writers do. I popped out a few shorts here and there, but nothing much of worth until I wrote THREE-HEAD FULL FISH TANK back in 2004. That story appeared in an obscure anthology called Chimeraworld #3. My first paid gig. I'm on the road to success! Cha-ching.

Well, it turns out I was never meant to be a short story writer. I get carried away too easily and too fast - imagine that! - and so every time I sit down to even attempt a short story it explodes. Four hours later I have an entire social structure, multiple warring religions, and cults, and I need a wiki to keep track of the bestiary . . . it's total flickin' chaos, man!

So I banished that ghost a long time ago and only stick to longer works of fiction now. Novellas are the shortest I can go. My wife, Lita Stone, says I've got a natural knack for novellas. Problem is with that is the follow-through.

See, here's what the layman doesn't know about storytelling (Okay, there's volumes and volumes of books on what the layman doesn't know, but stick with me here, 'kay? Great!)

Anybody can come up with a groovy idea, or premise for a story; and anybody can pop a character or two out of their head, or envision a sprawling urban or wasteland setting.

The creative portion of writing is the awesome fun part! It's why so many people want to jump into this pool, 'cause they think it's easy to make a big ol' SPLASH!

But what many avid readers have figured out by now is that most indie writing is terrible! Badly executed, formatted, edited . . . no offense to any indies - I'm one myself - but we got to recognize that we've got a lot of bad apples making the whole bushel have this weird fetid odor that reminds you of your eight year old's dirty socks after a July day in Texas. (Yep, some of you know EXACTLY what smell I'm talking about.)

I'm no Stephen King, or Koontz, or Barker, or Spector, or or Laymon etc.

But here's the value of an indie author: It's like listening to punk music - if you're not a fan of punk music listen to some Hank Williams III's Putting The Cunt Back Into Country for a down home comparison.

Nashville and Hollywood and big NYC publishers aren't evil, and you won't hear me making that argument either. I like some big commercial stuff. But personally, I prefer to dance in the Fringe Zone (not the Fringe group mind you, that's all a buncha melodrama.)

Anyways, Indies are like punk music, right? There's bad punk music, and there's good punk music, and there's all sorts of subgenres of punk music, but what real punk aesthetics likes to promise is fun, uncensored good times.

That's what indie authors can offer: raw, uncensored writing that has't been surgically altered by commercially-oriented houses whose primary goal is return on investment. Indies get to cut loose and see where the chainsaw drags them.

That's why I dig hardcore horror, too. Splatterpunk, grindhouse, gorror. That ain't all I'm about, though, so don't peg me as one of those cheap shock-jock writers who can only make you feel the emotional equivalent of a chicken with malaria.

Slow crawling horror is some beautiful stuff, too. It's all beautiful. The ghosts and the witches and the serial killers, and the mutants, and Satan, and rabid animals, dark cellars, cobweb infested attics, and deep dark caves, and uncharted waters, Gothic mansions, mist-shrouded graveyards, and funeral homes where Angus Scrimm drinks nasty ichor from hypodermic needles . . .

Beautiful stuff, man.

I get myself into a bit trouble all over the place - online and offline - cause I got this speech impediment problem called a reduced filter which allows crazy thoughts from my head to just slip right outta my mouth. Well, sometimes it's not ideal to express out loud certain thoughts you are having inside your little fantasy world - in my case, the Maxtopia.

So it's kinda tricky-dicky, right? See, I can pretty much write anything I want in a story and that's cool 'cause that's all fabrication, and it's the character(s) opinions, not the author's. That's right, the characters aren't the author. Okay, they kind of are the author since the author does create them . . . for the love of the flying cat god do not give me that stale argument about 'my characters take on a life of their own and I don't tell them what to do - 'cause that's just writerly romanticism. I love my characters, even the bad ones, but I know they're always under my thumb. They're like actors and actresses that I hired and I'm the director. They jump when I say jump and they strip when I say strip. Fortunately they don't have contracts so they can't refuse anything I tell them to do. I say, "You gotta get in a shower scene and realize something alien is growing out of your anus" and they gotta say, "Hand me the Ivory soap."

Oh, and swearing in fiction? That's a debate I grew tired of having years ago back in my critique group. There's an audience out their for anything - read enough and you'd know that, and wouldn't bother arguing with people 'cause you'd just read on the side of the fence you prefer and let the other side be. Enough of this Hatfield and McCoy bullshit, okay? My writing ain't clean by a long shot, but even if I took out all the potty language it would still be considered filthy under most people's standards due to the graphic nature of the content. I'll beat this nail on the head some more in the future, but for now just a quick tap-tap with the mallet: I was raised in the south (USA) and like most folk there I got respect and manners whipped into me at a young age, from parents, grandparents, and Pentecostal Sunday school teachers. I walked the straight and narrow.

But then shit happened to me. Bad shit. Toughened me up in that School Of Hard Knocks, and I got jaded. I got dragged into some dark places, too, mostly personal Hells.

So when I write I write raw, no holds barred, balls to the wall 'cause for me it's all or nothing; I don't like to use rose-colored shades and hand out puppies and kitty cats (although puppies and kitty cats are fucking cool!)

There's that crowd out there that weigh in on this ad nauseam debate with something like: good writers can write without relying on four-letter words.

Yeah, that's true. There's also good writers who can make an art out of four-letter words. To each their own, different strokes for different folks - and that's the greatest beauty of this world is everyone can choose what they prefer and not have to be like everyone else.

To the readers out there and potential fans: I'm known amongst many of my peers to frequently go off on rantng tangents like the one above, and that these are most often stream of conscious with no filtering. They are meant purely for entertainment and oddity. I could do like most other writers do and talk non-stop about how to write and how to get published or interview other writers that no one but other authors will care to read about - even then, those authors don't really care but just go through the motions of social expected niceties; because let's all face it, most of us lack the insight to achieve self-awareness.

But that's a massive bore! Why not make my blog a party in the cellar for the crazy kids who like to play with homebrewed Ouija boards while watching '80s slasher flicks while we all wear zombie make-up and drink like our livers are made of iron.

(As a precautionary statement: Please drink responsibly - and by that I mean get the 30 beers instead of 18 so you don't have to drive back to the station drunk at 7 in the evening.)

Okay then, I guess I'm all done now.