So there you have it.  Bombs.  The cause of / and solution to all of life’s problems.

Been a while, hasn’t it?  I’ve been working on a lot of stuff.  Important stuff.  Stuff I get paid for.  So you’ll excuse me if blogging about dinosaurs and robots has taken a backseat lately.  It’s not that I don’t care.  It’s that I’ve got bills to pay.  Speaking of which, Chasing the Moon is out in some stores now.  It’s a good book, and I’m sure you’ll like it.  So go ahead and buy a copy.  I’ll thank you in advance, and you can thank me later.

The reviews have been pretty favorable so far, though they’re the typical “Another wacky Martinez book” I tend to get.  It’s my albatross to bear.  Except instead of being a curse, it means people like what I write.  So what if I don’t quite agree with the reason?  Still, I’ll admit my ego still stings a bit when any book I’ve written gets classified as fluff, brain candy, etc.

I’ve written before about how frustrating I find it that it’s assumed something must be boring / depressing to be sophisticated.  And that if something is fun and brings a smile to your face then it must be empty of anything worthwhile.  But that’s not going to change anytime soon.

It’s the same sort of assumption that says video games make you stupid.  Or that education and self-improvement is such a rigid, specific process that there’s only one way to do it.  The boring way.

I learned to catch by juggling.  It certainly wasn’t easy, but it was a fun rewarding experience.  I learned to write by playing with toys, reading comic books, and watching cartoons.  I play board and card games almost like a religion because they continue to expand and hone my mind in new and startling ways.  These things shape and influence me and make me better every day.

I’m not going to say that reading Chasing the Moon will lead to a personal epiphany on the nature of the universe.  But I do know that, on a personal level, Moon means a hell of a lot to me.  It’s enjoyable enough as a strange story about weird beasts from beyond, but I’d like to think it has more to it than that.  I doubt it’ll change the world, or even have any real impact on the way we humans look at the world.  But I’d like to believe that at least one person might read it and say, “Hey, that’s kind of a neat way of looking at things.”

It might be an absurd ambition for a story featuring a giant green monster who wants to eat the universe and a purple hedgehog that can’t stop reproducing, but where would we be if we were afraid to dream.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

First up, for those unaware, I’m participating in Borders.com Babel Clash for the next two weeks.  So drop on by and leave a comment if you feel like it.  Finding topics to post isn’t always easy, and anything that makes my job easier is always appreciated.  http://bordersblog.com/scifi/

Also, I wrote a post for http://sfsignal.com/ that will be posted in about a week or so to coincide with the release of DIVINE MISFORTUNE.  Although I’ve already seen Misfortune in stores, but this is the official release we’re talking about.  I’ll let you know when the piece is up.

Add to this my own blogging and my occasional contributions to Orbit’s website (http://www.orbitbooks.net/), I’ve been pretty damn busy lately.  Especially if we add my novelology.  That is my main job, after all, isn’t it?  But I can’t complain.  Or I could but it would be stupid to do so.  ”Woe is me.  I’m a successful writer with a growing career and an ever-expanding sphere of influence.  I’m popular, beloved, and paid to make up stories.  Oh, the troubles I got.”

Cry me a river.

So I try to avoid posting anything about politics.  There’s really no good reason why should even care what my political views are.  But sometimes, a guy has just got to speak out.

In Texas, our esteemed Board of Education has set new standards for textbooks.  I use the word “standard” in only the loosest sense.  Basically, they’ve decided to erase Thomas Jefferson while excusing Joe Mccarthy.  Now, I know that Jefferson wasn’t perfect, but the guy did write a little thing called The Declaration of Independence.  Maybe you’ve heard of it.

Meanwhile, Mccarthism is such a black eye on American history, it’s almost understandable that we want to erase it, just as we tend to overlook the founders’ flaws in favor of a mythic version of the past.  And Mccarthy, like the founders (like all of us really), was a Terran of his era.  The great communist conspiracy was a ridiculous kneejerk fear, but I try not to judge Mccarthy for it.  I do believe he thought he was doing the right thing.  And if the textbooks suggested that, I could forgive them.  But instead, they’re suggesting that the communist conspiracy was a legitimate threat.

You know there’s a problem when the government is endorsing a conspiracy theory.

Just for the record, not all of us Texans are this loonie.  Sure, plenty of us love our guns.  Plenty of us are right wing.  Plenty of us love Jesus.  I have friends on the right, left, and everywhere in-between, and if you get into it, they’re all decent people living their lives and trying to make the world a better place.  While I’ve never actually quizzed any of my right wing friends on whether or not they think Jefferson should be included in American history, I doubt they’d suggest he shouldn’t be.

And this is the people that we’ve decided to trust with our educational standards?

It’s embarrassing.  I can’t excuse it.  I can only hope that the actions of a handful of extremists doesn’t make all of Texas seem like a vast, cultural wasteland where people are only too happy to rewrite history for politics.  I could get into the way that, ironically, our information age has managed to transform facts into points of debate, how so many folks are willing to ignore truths and embrace falsehoods in the name of their own ideology.  But this is so obviously wrong, so absurd, that there’s just no need to say anything else.  Oh, well, one more thing needs to be said.

JEFFERSON WROTE THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE!

sigh.

Still, I’m behind, and I really shouldn’t be wasting much time blogging when I have actual work to do.

So I bought Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs on DVD and watched it again.  Perhaps I’m sounding like a broken record, but damn if that isn’t a great movie.  The spaghetti tornado alone is worth the price.  Highly recommended.  And I’ll try not to mention it again.

Even before I was a writer, I was a writer.  All that novelology entails is creating a story via imagination and conjecture.  I have this game I play sometimes.  When I see someone on a cell phone, I’ll imagine that through a quirk of fate, they picked up the wrong signal.  The voice on the other end of the line says a meteor is heading for Earth, and, long story short, you’ll be dead by the end of the hour.  Then I ask myself, what would this person do with that time?

Try it sometime.  It’s a great way to flex your novelologist’s talents.  Even if you aren’t a professional story maker-upper like me, you can still have fun with it.

Okay.  This was a short post.  Just checking in.  Now back to work.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

This post is just a test.  Nothing really important to say right now.  As if I have anything important to say most of the time.

Truthfully, this blogging takes time.  And it can be a distraction from my real job.  I do it because I’m supposed to, and because I know you all live for these nuggets of wisdom I offer.  But I gotta earn a living so you’ll excuse me if I cut back a little in the near future.  At least until I feel like my newest manuscript is back on track.

So The FInal Destination came out and was #1 at the box office.  I could say something about how depressing I find this.  Not because The Final Destination is necessarily a bad movie, but because there’s nothing new to be done with the final destination franchise.  And the trailers gave away all the deaths, so what’s the point in going to see it other than that’s what we do.  We go see things that are familiar and reliable and give us exactly what we want.

At this point, I’ll say something like “And there’s nothing really wrong with that”, but no, not this time.  This time, I’m just going to call it like I see it.

It think it sucks.

A while ago, I posted a blog about my own struggles with artistic integrity and financial success.  It was long and thoughtful and I think it did a good job of questioning whether I’m willing to “sell out” or if I even think “selling out” is a bad thing.  The internet faeries ate it.  I don’t know what that says, but I do know that I’m getting pretty tired of this balancing act.

When did we stop caring about being challenged, even in the most rudimentary fashion?  When did we decide that we needed 3 versions of Law and Order, 3 versions of CSI, 2 versions of NCIS, 4 Final Destination films, a direct-to-video sequel for any moderately successful movie (Van Wilder 3?  Really?), and Broadway musicals based on books based on films based on books?

It’s no wonder people are surprised I don’t write sequels yet.  Apparently, that’s the only goal of our society, to just wander around on automatic pilot and take what we’re given, not expecting anything but safety and repetition.  That thing I said about zombies a few posts ago?  Take that and apply it to 95 percent of everything around us.

95 percent of everything has always been crap.  I admit this.  But at least it was trying to be original crap.  At least it wasn’t just a rehash of something already done-to-death.  Or at least it tried to hide it.  Now, instead of being embarrassed to be the same old thing over and over again, it’s deliberately designed as such.

And that sucks.  Yeah, I’m repeating myself.  I don’t know what else to say.

I have a reputation for being contrary, for having unusual opinions.  But I can’t be the only one who sees this and finds it tremendously disappointing.  Disappointing in a soul-crushing kind of way.

Well, that’s that, I guess.  Kind of an obnoxious rant for my last post for a while.  Try not to hold it against me.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee