It's Here!!!

I highly suggest that you buy several thousand copies.

It's the prudent thing to do.

To My Readers . . and Then The Story Continues

First off, thank you all for sticking with me. :)

So yes! The book will, in the very near future, be available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.

Did I plug that enough?

However, I'm going to continue to serialize the book on the blog. Eventually I'll put the first 3 chapters available for download from this site.

Why? Because I hate a 'bait and switch'. As a reader this would, to put it in the common, piss me off to no end were I following an author's work only to have them stop part of the way through and say 'Oh hey, you want to read the rest of the story you're gonna have to buy the book'.

So, starting today I will get back to my regular nonsense and keep posting to the end.

Enjoy!

Oh yeah . . . and buy my book when it comes out. :)

David

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Now, if you'll remember, we were sitting exhausted, wet, cranky and panicked high in the Canadian Rockies with a Grizzly behind us and a moose that was blocking our way to the Lodge.

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*** continued from previous post ***

So we sit there, two idiots on a touring bike in the middle of the Canadian Rockies, with the day dying around us, bookended by an insane killing machine dressed in a bear costume and a moose with a bad attitude. Prisoners awaiting execution have been less nervous. The moments tick by. The gloom deepens. It becomes readily apparent that Mrs. Moose, (It could be a Mr., but for the sake of the story let’s assume it's a female.), is in no particular hurry. Visions of us sitting in the dark, awaiting our death, come to mind.

"Hey, do you have cell phone reception here?", I ask, clinging to some futile hope.

"And just how is that going to help? You want to call the kids and say our last good-byes?"

"Good point."

Mom sighs, "We can't just sit here. This isn't good."

I honk the horn. I rev the engine. I hurl moosey-taunts into the evening air.

"Moose's scientific name is an echo! Alces alces? I've heard better names for Naked Mole Rats!" I squeal. "Moose so stupid she thinks the interwebs are a series of tubes!"

Zip reaction.

"Moose so stupid, they think . . . umm . . .", my mind draws a blank. I need a dynamite ending, and I'm reaching for air. "Umm . . . so stupid they can't use 'self-check' at the grocery store!"

Ha! Recover from that one, oh tall, brown, and lanky one!

"Do you really think that's going to help?"

"I have no idea."

Mom looks up the road, "Well it didn't. So, I ask again, what are we going to do?"

My mind races. "Okay, cross your arms, take my hands, and on the count of 3 throw them up in the air and clap against my palms while we shout, and this has to be in unison, we shout, 'Wonder Twins power activate! Form of a giant sloth!'”

Mom took a long time to answer.

"Did you ever go outside as a child, read a book, play a game, or did you live in front of the TV eating a steady diet of mental drek?"

"Drek? Drek? The Super Friends were, and are, not drek. As to my emotional and mental growth, and general well-being . . . well, that's a debate for another day, my dear. Right now, in case you haven't noticed, we are in, what the professionals like to call, 'a bit of a tight spot'."

"What 'professionals'?", Mom asks with what I thought was more than a bit of sarcasm.

"What?" I reply.

"You said 'professionals'. What kind of professionals would call this 'a bit of a tight spot'?"

Oh . . . now it made sense. It was clear your Mother, bless her little pea-pickin' heart, had been driven to insanity and I knew I had only myself to blame.

I slumped over the console, head to the side, revving the engine, honking the horn, flashing the lights. It was not my finest moment. Perhaps this display of patheticism would prompt the moose to find pity in its big, moosey heart and move on.

The moose looked at us and yawned.

*** the journey continues ***

Interview: J.C. Hutchins. Author, blogger, podcaster.

Today, I'm pleased to present a brief interview with J.C. Hutchins, author and podcaster. Mr. Hutchins is the author and narrator of the 7th Son trilogy of podcast novels, the first of which is due out in bookstores Fall of 2009, and of the podcast novella, Personal Effects: Sword of Blood. Sword of Blood is the precursor to J.C.'s current novel, Personal Effects: Dark Art, currently available in book stores and online since June of this year.

Personal Effects: Dark Art brings a new dimension to the standard printed book. In addition to the actual paper novel, the reader is also able to dive deeper into J.C.'s universe and into the story and characters' lives by way of telephone and online interaction with characters, computer accounts, information and with actual hard copies of certain swag from the story. It's quite unique and makes for a very enjoyable out-of-book experience. J.C. also has a fictional character who posts on the Suicide Girls 'blog... something that caused quite a stir in the 'blogging community.

All this extra-book interactivity is great, but at its core the story is gripping, well written and the characters are very, very well fleshed out. I never find myself wondering what the characters would "really" do in given situations. I believe in J.C.'s characters; I accept them. They don't feel made up or hastily crafted. Personally, I've enjoyed his works of fiction very much, and look forward to more of his books finding permanent places on my bookshelves, right alongside my growing set of Sigler and Lafferty novels.


Q: J.C., Thanks for taking the time to be a part of the Motorcycle Manifesto, and for being our first celebrity interview. I'm very excited. I'll try not to gush.

JC: Thanks for the opportunity! I'm thrilled to be here.


Q: Let's get right into it. I believe you spent some time as a journalist or reporter; do you find that training and experience helped or hindered you with writing something so techinically-detailed and involved as the science fiction based 7th Son, or the supernatural thriller Dark Art?

JC: That's right. I discovered journalism in high school, writing for the student newspaper ... and then went to college to study print journalism for a career. I really enjoyed writing personality profiles and feature stories -- the longer and more colorful, the better. After school, I moved from my home state of Kentucky to Florida, and worked on the Features desk at a great South Florida paper. But I left the biz in 2002 because I could see that it was becoming a troubled industry. I wish I hadn't been right about that.

An important thing my journalism experience taught me, however, was the importance of research. How can a story be convincing if it didn't *sound* convincing, you know? But the most important lesson I took away from features reporting was focusing on people and their surroundings. What does this person sound like, or look like? What's in their office, or living room? What do the pictures on the mantle mean to this person? Does he ride a Harley, a crotch rocket, or something else? Those are all peeks into the character of a person, and provide realistic and sympathetic "anchors" that make them come alive in a newspaper story.

The same goes for fiction: the more "real" you can make your characters and their surroundings in the story, the more a reader is likely to identify with him.


Q: Dark Art is very different from the hard-science and science fiction based universe we came to understand in the 7th Son stories. Speaking chiefly about Dark Art, but also about your books others, too, can you tell us, what was the inspiration for the story?

JC: The inspiration for Dark Art came in large part by Jordan Weisman, my co-author and creator of the Personal Effects series. When we began chatting about the project, he'd already created some of its foundations: a talented art therapist working in a mental hospital ... the therapist uses his patients' personal effects to unlock their psychoses ... etc. He'd even presented a story idea -- just a sentence or two -- about the strange case of Martin Grace, a psychosomatically blind serial killer. It was up to me to flesh out that world, working closely with Jordan to make sure his vision was realized on the page.

For Dark Art, I wanted to capture the vibe of some of my favorite TV shows, like the X-Files. That show really did a great job of walking the tightrope between fantasy and reality -- you were never quite sure if the phenomenon Mulder and Scully were pursuing was supernatural, or something more mundane.

The supernatural creature seen in Dark Art -- The Dark Man -- was mostly inspired by my own slight fear of the dark. I think we all can identify with that fear, or can remember having that kind of fear. What if there was something so unholy, it lived only in the darkness? What if it were a beast that had lived for centuries, brought forth to punish the guilty in a kind of supernatural "street justice"? And what if this living darkness hunted our novel's hero? It was a blast to write those scenes in particular, because I love writing twisted shit ... but rarely have the opportunity to do so.

I wanted to scare folks, but not in a horrific way. Dark Art is more about the psychological aspect of fear; it's more about what you don't see. I'm a big fan of that kind of storytelling. It's like the movie "Jaws" ... the shark is way scarier when you simply see the fin on the water.


Q: Since this is a motorcycle-oriented 'blog, I have to ask: Are you a motorcyclist? If so, can you tell us what you ride, what bikes you've owned over the years? Or, if not, can you tell us how you, as a non-rider, feel about motorcyclists, motorcycles and how "we" interact with the world around us in your eyes? Be as candid as you like... we're all well aware that sometimes we're not painted in the best light, often by some of our own community members. Thank you.

JC: I'm not a rider, though I've written characters who are -- so I get to live vicariously through them. I've got a lot of admiration for most motorcyclists, and I like to romanticize the hobby and lifestyle in my mind. I think of riders as Wild West cowboys, on mechanical horses, taking advantage of the speed and -- most important -- the freedom the motorcycle provides. It looks like hella fun.

I also swoon, without fail, whenever I see a female rider on the road. Call me a sexist, but a woman on a bike is *hot*.

I know it can be a touchy subject, but I do wish more motorcyclists would wear helmets and protective gear when they ride. I'm not a worrier by nature, but when I see a helmet-less, shorts-wearing kid on a Kawasaki roar past me on the road, I cringe. I'm certain these riders have absolute faith in their abilities, but all it takes is a slight miscalculation to wind up tumbling off a bike ... and then your limbs are hamburger, and your ribs are snapping like celery sticks, and your head's a broken watermelon, and you're deader than disco. I liken helmets and leathers to car seatbelts: they exist for those impossible-to-calculate odds when shit just goes wrong.

But I'm a "live and let live" kind of guy. Pursue your happiness however you like, as long as you're not hurting anyone else.


Q: And to wrap up, is there anything you would like to say? Pimp yourself? Tell us how you can be reached, and where people can learn more about the Personal Effects and 7th Son stories.

JC: Sure! If your readers are interested in learning more about me and my work, they can visit www.JCHutchins.net.


Q: Thanks again for taking the time, and I hope you can virtually visit us again in the near future.

JC: Thanks for having me, and for all the support!