Dispatches from the Flying M

For Davy Jones, Tomorrow Will Never Come

On September 12, 1966--five days after my birthday, in the greatest year in American pop culture history--The Monkees premiered on NBC TV. The show ran for two years, until 1968, and the four members of the band: Michael Nesmith, Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork, and Davy Jones, toured and recorded together for a couple more years, until September of 1970.

Things moved fast in pop music in those days. Looking back, it seems like a generation passed between the time The Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show (February 9, 1964), and the time The Monkees appeared on TV. It was two-and-a-half years. And also performing on Ed Sullivan that day--in his Tony-nominated role of the Artful Dodger from Oliver!, was child actor and sometime jockey Davy Jones.

By the time I met and helped interview Michael Nesmith in 1974, Nesmith had left the Monkees and, with The First National Band, released some great country-rock albums. Always the most musically talented Monkee (though Peter Tork was also skilled, and Micky and Davy were good singers and passable musicians), Nesmith also had family money, thanks to his mother's invention of Liquid Paper. He invested his Monkees money in his own record company, Pacific Arts, based in Carmel, CA. I went to Carmel with a friend who had a show on the San Jose State University radio station to meet Nesmith and his girlfriend Kathryn. We passed a pleasant afternoon wandering around that beautiful seaside city, talking about The Monkees and Nesmith's current project, The Prison, which was a book/record combination. The idea was that you should read the book while listening to the record, and let each one influence your perception of the other. Nesmith was always a pioneer in storytelling with combined music and images--The Monkees TV show itself foreshadowed rock videos, and Nesmith later earned the first Grammy Award for Video of the Year. My friend aired his recorded interview; I wrote up my own article based on the conversations, liberally sprinkled with Nesmith quotes, and that became my very first semi-pro publication, in a local music magazine called Bay Area Music, aka BAM.

In case you haven't caught on yet, I have always been a great Monkees fan, and remain one. I'm not alone, either--even John Lennon called them "the greatest comic talent since the Marx Brothers." The show was funny, the songs were written by some of the best songwriters in rock history--Harry Nilsson, Carole King, Neil Diamond, etc., as well as the Monkees themselves, and the guys really could play and sing. I even sat through their very strange movie, Head, in the theaters. And watched it again on TV.

So it was with great sorrow that I read today of Davy's death from a heart attack at the age of 66. He had a good, full life. His early jockey days apparently stuck, as he died while visiting some racehorses that he owns. He got to play a lot of wonderful music and appear before rabid fans and essentially relive, with his own group, the rock and roll magic that he had watched from the wings at the Ed Sullivan appearance.

But losing our first Monkee hurts.

Davy's job on the show was to look adorable, have a British accent, play the incurable romantic, and sing the incurably romantic ballads, like I Wanna Be Free and Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow), from which I adapted the title to this piece. In the song, Davy sings, "Oh, how I wish tomorrow would never come."

Thanks for the music, Davy. And the laughs. And showing us, in those crazy 1960s, how to be incurably, un-ironically romantic.

Digital to Print

Last year I started experimenting with self-published e-books, in part spurred by the success of friends and acquaintances like J. Carson Black, Scott Nicholson, Lee Goldberg, and the godfather of e, Joe Konrath.

My experience has not been like theirs. There are lots of possible reasons for that, one of which is that I have a lot of books out there from various publishers, most of whom put out their own e-books, priced approximately the same as their print editions. If someone is interested in my e-books and searches them out, they'll find lots many, many books, at varying prices and in different formats. It's not as easy as just looking at the list of my books and picking the self-pubbed cheap e-books (which, for the record, are the digital edition of The Slab, the short horror fiction collection Nine Frights, short story Long Road Home, and original thriller The Devil's Bait.

The purpose of posting now is to let everybody know that The Devil's Bait, which I didn't initially submit to the traditional publishers because I wanted to test the e-book waters with a new novel, as well as a reprint and a story collection, will now be joining the ranks of my print books. It's coming from a small, L.A.-based publisher called Malevolent Books. It'll make its world debut at this year's Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, and it'll be available from some bookstores (signed copies from Mysterious Galaxy) and online via Indiebound.

The cover's below. If you've been waiting because, like me, you simply prefer physical books printed on paper, wait no more. It's a nice trade paperback edition, retailing for $14.95.

And just as a reminder, here are excerpts some of its reviews:

"I’m not much into the banking world, no matter that I have a degree in Business Management and have taken lots of Accounting courses, I still don’t get stocks, bonds, etc… No worries, The Devil’s Bait isn’t “stuffy”. It is a fast paced, exciting, funny, suspenseful read!" and "With a not seen coming turn of events closing the book out, The Devil’s Bait is a thriller that will not disappoint.  I can’t wait to read this novel again, I enjoyed it that much!!"  --Jennifer at Can't Put it Down!

"The entire book was intense.  I felt scared for Jessie because she was forced to hide.  She was on her own.  She had no one to trust.  She had to hide from her life, her job, the government, and everything important to her.  Her bosses, the government, and Richard Steele were all after her, they wanted her dead.  She had to rely on herself to find safety.  This book reminds me that evil does not win.  If you like mystery and suspense, you will enjoy The Devil’s Bait."  --Stephanie at BeautyBrite.

And the first review was from regular blog reader and commenter Randy Johnson--thanks, Randy!--who wrote in part: "What we have here is a fast-paced thriller. Jessie, while unused to violence, is a capable young woman in the world of banking. She’s willing to learn though. Her mercenary handles that end for awhile. The pair decide to take a pro-active approach to dealing with Steele and his hired killers. You get a lot of exotic locals as they move around, one step, though not always, ahead of an army of Steele’s killers, working Jessie’s magic in finance.

"All she wants is her normal life back.

"Nice, tight thriller, with several twists thrown in along the way. One perhaps I should have figured, though Mariotte disguised it nicely as the story flows along. I was surprised and pleased with this one."

The e-book will remain available, too, at its regular low, low price. So if you haven't read it, order yourself an e-book, a paperback, or both. Tell a friend. Write a review at whatever bookstore site you bought it. Spread the word!

Because, really, some authors are getting rich. Wouldn't it be nice if I was, too?

 

Arizona at 100, John Severin at 90

 

Years before I moved to southeastern Arizona, I set a western/horror comic book miniseries called Desperadoes: Quiet of the Grave there. The characters in the Desperadoes series had come together in New Mexico, but they were on the run and moved around a lot. In an Arizona town called Luttrell, on the Mexican border, they found peace for a little while. Luttrell was a real place, though it only had that name for a while and was more commonly known as Lochiel. Now it’s a ghost town, and Lochiel is still the name on the maps. During the course of Quiet of the Grave, some of the characters travel from Luttrell to the town (also a ghost town, now) of Shakespeare, New Mexico. I didn’t know then that one of the routes they might take to get to Shakespeare would lead them right past our beloved Flying M.

Quiet of the Grave was illustrated by an artist named John Severin, back in 2002—shortly after his 80^th birthday. His work was stunning: gorgeously drawn, incredibly detailed, with exquisite craftsmanship and storytelling. He had been drawing westerns (and other genres, including war comics, humor, and fantasy) since the 1940s. Still, he did the research he needed to do, and he was sufficiently detail-oriented that he once asked if it was okay if he gave one of the characters a different gun than a previous artist had used, because it suited the character better.

The way it came about was this. For around 20 years, John (who was one of the original artists on MAD Magazine) had been doing humor art for a MAD-type magazine called Cracked. During that time, he had pretty much quit the mainstream comics business. But one day he was on the phone with an editor at WildStorm Productions named Scott Dunbier, and he said he’d like to get back into doing comic book work. I happened to pass by Scott’s office around the time he finished the call, and Scott told me the gist of the conversation. By then, WildStorm imprint Homage Comics had published a 5-issue Desperadoes miniseries and a 44-page one-shot, and I said something like, “Wouldn’t it be cool to have a Desperadoes story by Severin?” To which Scott’s reply was something like, “That’s what I was thinking.”

We had to act quickly, because if John was coming back onto the market, he would surely have some offers soon. We overnighted him the existing Desperadoes stories. I went home that night, plotted a 4-issue miniseries, and wrote it up. The next day, we faxed that document to John. He read through the outline and the comics and said yes.

I was, can I just say, over the moon. John Severin had been a lifelong favorite. Because he’d been out of the business, I never thought there was a ghost of a chance of working with him. Suddenly, it all came together, and every six weeks, he delivered a full issue, penciled and inked, as good as anything he had ever done. Simply beautiful comic book art.

Fast forward. We moved to southeastern Arizona and discovered that the places I had been writing about were now the place we lived. John went on to do more great work, including a terrific Bat Lash miniseries written by my compadre Peter Brandvold.

Fast forward again. Today, February 14, 2012, is the 100^th birthday of our adopted state. How often in a lifetime does one get to experience his or her state’s Centennial? Here’s a hint—if you haven’t done it yet, move to Alaska or Hawaii before 2059, because those will be your last chances.

Yes, yes, it’s also Valentine’s Day. But that comes every year. So does Statehood Day. But the Centennial? Once. Only once.

Only, on top of that joy comes heartbreak, because word came today that John Severin has died, at the age of 90, surrounded by his family.

John was one of the best the medium has ever known, with an immediately identifiable style and a work ethic that never wavered. His work was, to the very end, an example of how good comics can be.

Working with John was the thrill of a lifetime, an experience that will never be matched or forgotten. I have rarely been so proud. But today, today...

The state I have come to love is 100, and congratulations to it, and to us. Arizona made 100, and goes on.

John only made 90, but his art will live forever.

The Confluences of Creativity

So, yesterday I went to see new movie The Grey, largely because I wanted to see how closely its story veered to the plot of a horror novel that I recently pitched (with a positive response from an editor at a very cool house) that also happens to include wolves as a major element. My story is one I've been kicking around for years and years--it originally began as a comic book pitch, but eventually I decided that it would work better as a novel. Now--in the next few weeks--I will finally begin writing it.

And of course, that's when a studio finally releases a wolf-oriented horror movie.

Sometimes, that's just how it goes. Ideas float out there in the ether, and eventually they're picked up and developed, and it doesn't mean anybody stole anything from anybody else. It just happens that way.

Which makes it doubly strange that, at The Grey, I saw a preview for something called Lockout.

Now, backtrack to 2002. I was asked to contibute a novella to a Star Trek e-book line called Starfleet Corps of Engineers (SCE). This was the first project I wrote as an original e-book, and it was later collected in a paperback with some other tales (and named after my novella: Star Trek SCE: No Surrender). In the novella, the crew of the SCE ship Da Vinci is sent to deal with a situation on an orbital prison, which has come loose of its moorings and appears to be dropping toward the planet below. At the same time, a team of Federation diplomats, and the daughter of a convicted terrorist (who was once a close friend of Da Vinci captain David Gold--in fact, he was the daughter's godfather) are visiting the prison. And the prisoners have escaped their cells and taken over the orbital platform.

Here's IMDB's brief plot synopsis of Lockout: "A man wrongly convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage against the U.S. is offered his freedom if he can rescue the president's daughter from an outer space prison taken over by violent inmates."

There are definite similarities, judging by the trailer. There's an innocent daughter on board an orbital prison that has been taken over by its inmates. The prison appears to be dropping toward the nearest planet. The solution is to send in someone from outside, who first has to figure out how to get past a highly secure prison's defenses, then to try to rescue the innocent. Of course, there are also obvious similarities to Escape from New York, etc.

I'm not saying someone in Hollywood read No Surrender and decided to adapt it into a movie, without paying for it (and of course, it belongs to Paramount, so even if they had paid for it I wouldn't necessarily know). I think that happens far less often than what I described above--similar ideas, floating about (or suspended on those theoretical strings of string theory fame). When my novel comes out, it won't have stolen from The Grey. Lockout didn't steal from me. Ideas happen, and convergence happens.

Plus, in the Lockout preview, somebody literally says, "He's the best there is. But he's a loose cannon."

I would never write such a cliched line. And even if I had, I wouldn't put it in the trailer. That's where you want your best stuff!

 

All You Need to Know About Jan Brewer

Arizona's governor, Jan Brewer, has been in the headlines a lot lately, because of a picture circulating through the media showing her blatantly disrespecting the President of the United States, and the office of the presidency.

This happened, apparently, because Brewer had a meeting with the president a while back, which, when it happened, she described as "very cordial." Then, when she decided to "write" a book--and quotations are used because anyone who's listened to Brewer speak for more than two minutes knows that she and the English language are not on amicable terms--she changed her tune, describing the president as "condescending" and "patronizing." According to her version of events, she met him on the airport tarmac when he arrived in Arizona recently, to give him a hand-written letter inviting him to go to the border with her, and he jumped all over her about the description of their meeting in her book. Or she asked him if he read it--her version of events changed multiple times during her subsequent retellings of it. Which is pretty much the point of this post--to introduce her fact-free reign to those who might not be fortunate enough to live in Arizona and have only seen her from a distance.

Basically, Jan Brewer is a seemingly pathological liar, the kind who won't tell the truth even if it serves her best to do so. Nor can she admit to her lies, so she always sends staff out to "explain" what she really mean.

About the tarmac incident, Brewer said that she felt "threatened," and that the president walked away while she was in the middle of a sentence. Now, I've seen her leave gaps in the middle of her sentences that stretch on unbearably, so that doesn't seem too unreasonable. But in fact, there were two other people present at the scene, the Republican mayor of Mesa and the Democratic mayor of Phoenix, and they both say it didn't happen that way. According to Talking Points Memo.com:

"'There was no sense that he was running to or from anything,' Smith [Mayor Scott Smith of Mesa] told TPM. In fact, he said, the president stayed and had a pleasant conversation with Smith, who’s a Republican, and Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton, a Democrat."

Brewer said the president was "tense to say the least." But Greg Stanton says, "He wasn’t tense at all. The guy’s a pro.”

The interviews she gave did wonders for her book sales, though. And apparently that's very important to her. So important, in fact, that last October she formed a PAC, which she said would raise money to battle illegal immigration, and to take on other causes she believes in. So far, according to the PAC's financial statements, she's raised about $22,000, and all she has done with the money is buy her own book from Amazon (not even from local bookstores, which would keep her money and taxes in her own state). She also made a trip to Florida, and spent $624 for a single night in a swank hotel room, in a city that she spells as "Orlanda."

There are plenty of little lies in Brewer's recent history. She cynically uses the border issue for political purposes, claiming that people near the border live in fear (I live near the border, and that's flatly not true), making dishonest claims of "headless bodies" being discovered in Arizona's deserts (in her words, "Our law enforcement agencies have found bodies in the desert, either buried or just lying out there, that have been beheaded.”) and using the murder of a local rancher--probably by drug smugglers, but almost certainly not by random border crossers, since after the murder the killer raced right back across the border) to push for votes for her signature legislation, SB1070, a bill written by the private prison industry to benefit the private prison industry (who just happen to be major Brewer backers and associates). She fired the "independent" head of Arizona's redistricting commission because she didn't like the results that were coming from the commission--and when asked about it, couldn't even come up with a single reason for the firing. "I wish I had the letter I wrote," she said--because, since someone else no doubt wrote it, she could have checked it for reasons that were, at least, in English if not sensible. At any rate, the courts quickly decided the firing had no basis whatsoever and was illegal, and the commissioner was restored to her post.

But her most egregious lie to date has to be her disgusting use of her own father's death to support her political goals. After she signed SB1070, protestors sometimes compared her to a Nazi. That's unpleasant rhetoric, but since the bill basically requires law enforcement to round up people because of suspicions about their national origins, it's not that far from the mark. But Brewer objected to the characterization, saying, "The Nazi comments . . . they are awful. Knowing that my father died fighting the Nazi regime in Germany, that I lost him when I was 11 because of that . . . and then to have them call me Hitler's daughter. It hurts. It's ugliness beyond anything I've ever experienced."

In fact, her father died in 1955, in California, of a lung disease. Sent out to explain this most horrible of lies, her staff explained that she believes he developed the lung disease while working at a munitions depot during the war. Which is, you know, exactly the same thing as dying while fighting Nazis in Germany.

So, lying about murdering, beheading hordes of illegal immigrants, about the President of the United States, about how she'll spend her own PAC money--not to mention all the policy issues she's forced on Arizona while telling us it's for our own good, like slashing public education and colleges--aren't enough for her, but this woman will actually lie about her own father's death if she can score a momentary political point.

Her term as governer ends in 2014, which is a long time to wait.With luck, she'll never run for another political office as long as she lives. Any vote for her is a vote in favor of blatant dishonesty and the most repulsive and cycnical revulsion to the facts. Not to mention plain, old-fashioned idiocy.

Please...can't someone make her retire? She could "write" some more books and become fabulously wealthy, and stop destroying our state from within!