Update on Expelled and Flores Girl: The Children God Forgot

Okay, I’m done with my anti-Intelligent Design and Expelled rants for the time being. The good news is that Expelled as a movie phenomenon has fallen on deaf ears with the American public. As of today the take was less than $3,000,000 for two weeks. Now, keep in mind the religious fundamentalists have always proclaimed that if they were given the opportunity they could create the type of entertainment Americans really wanted and not that liberal, sexually perverse humanist crap that is awash in Hollywood.

Sorry, the religious wackos were wrong on several counts. First, most Americans could give a rat’s ass about science even Intelligent Design science unless it can be used to create compelling science fiction or a new iPod. That’s just the way it is, we just want to know we have the best technology available and we don’t care how we get there. After all, we can always hire Indian engineers for that!

Secondly, I think as of the moment Americans are once again focusing on bread and butter, or should I say bread & gas issues as they begin to question the wisdom of having elected an oil and gas man for president for two consecutive terms. As gas exceeds four dollars a gallon and we hear of hedge funds managers getting a $3.5 billion dollar bonus for the year even the most optimistic among us have to feel that something stinks in Denmark or should I say in the U.S.

Americans are just beginning to realize that the past two presidents and a plethora of CEOs have sold this country for some pocket change, just think about their gold parachutes and how they have transfered an entire generation’s future jobs, pensions and pollution to the likes of India and China. In this backdrop it is hard for a debate regarding evolution and Intelligent Design, regardless of the merits of either argument, to catch fire, so expect more escapist crap entertainment in the near future.

Now speaking of escapist crap, I continue my work on the sequel to Flores Girl: The Children God Forgot. The second novel is almost 550 pages but needs a good cleanup before its release. Now that the podcast is complete I am getting significantly more downloads by listeners which is always a good sign. Since the trilogy will be basically my life’s work I am determined to get it right and continue to obsessively revisit my previous writings and the podcasts. I have already re-recorded the first two podcast chapters and I am working on third chapter as I write this. It was a necessary evil since upon my re-listening of the original podcast I have found that I recorded the narrative at the pace of a chipmunk on crack. Also, as you may have noticed the Flores Girl graphics and web site will be getting a significant face lift from me as well.

Now I should point out that this rewriting behavior is not the norm for most writers. Generally, you write your first book and you get away from the wreckage as quickly as possible in much the same fashion you would flee from a toxic waste dump. Writers, and artists in general, have a lot of self-loathing going on. In fact, most agents and publishers encourage this behavior figuring you will start getting right by your third and fourth book.

Fortunately, I can’t do this because I find that the two main characters of the novel, Sarah and Richard, to be so compelling and such great foils for making my worldly observations come to life, I feel I would be doing a disservice to my readers and missing a great opportunity if I didn’t give the trilogy my all. And frankly, I don’t have that many novels in me since I am not one to rehash the same themes over and over again (I actually have one other novel in the works and a series of short stories including an interesting take on Sarah’s life taking a different path other than the one traveled in Flores Girl).

That’s it for now and I will share with you my future marketing plans for Flores Girl in which I may undertake some real hack marketing tactics. You can almost smell the sleaze!  And speaking of sleaze the entire first Flores Girl: The Children God Forgot novel is available as a free download at WWW.A-FREE-EBOOK.COM

Fossil snake shows its leg to the Expelled Crowd

The Creationist and Intelligent design crowd has some explaining to do about this transitional missing link for snakes.  Of course this missing link, the feathered dinosaurs and  the cetacean mesonychids fossils, well let’s face it, nothing satisfies the intellectual curiosity of  this crowd… oh, never mind, I forgot “god did it”!  Still they want to teach their pseudo-scientific crap in our public schools.

But go ahead and please explain away this recent fossil discovery my creationist friends.  I love to watch you dance!:

From the BBC:

A fossil animal locked in Lebanese limestone has been shown to be an extremely precious discovery – a snake with two legs.  Scientists have only a handful of specimens that illustrate the evolutionary narrative that goes from ancient lizard to limbless modern serpent.  Researchers at the European Light Source (ESRF) in Grenoble, France, used intense X-rays to confirm that a creature imprinted on a rock, and with one visible leg, had another appendage buried just under the surface of the slab.

Here’s the link:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7339508.stm

Myabe this was the one in the Garden of Eden, you never know!

A Mighty Wind Named Rush Backs Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

Okay, I just can’t let go of this one. The other problem with this silly pseudo-science is that Intelligent Design purports to have some great interfaith universality when in fact teaching Intelligent Design would be contrarian to many other religious beliefs as well. Many Buddhists have little need or no need for a creator/personal god guiding the direction of the universe and for a fundamentalist the god of Intelligent design would weaken the power of their personal god or their fundamental belief in a 6,000 year old earth. Intelligent design, as advocated by Expelled, is not only bad science but bad religious dogma for many people as well and is specifically a tired, rehashed Judaic/Christian fundamentalist dogma.

 

Furthermore, Intelligent Design is a belief structure that is reduced to disingenuous nitpicking at the edges of scientific theory called evolution, looking for a foothold where none is forthcoming or where the ground is forever shifting. And does anyone care the least bit that Intelligent Design actually destroys any illusion of free will? I mean when does god’s hand comes down and beginning squeezing the jaws of the chosen people so that the next generation can have one less molar? I am of course referring to the observation that our wisdom teeth have become superfluous in modern man as our jaws continued to be downsized. And if god is removing teeth as part of his great evolutionary plan what else is god mucking with? If all of this sounds rather silly as an argument well that’s because it is. Rather than being liberating like religion, Intelligent Design is a bastard child of Creationist’s convenience and is not terribly convincing even as a pseudo-science.

 

The loss of ‘free will’ is of no concern to Rush Limbaugh, after all he believes life should be scripted as per his own neo-conservative credo and no dissenter need  apply. Rush skewers the scientific community with such dismissive comments as “the condescension and the arrogance these people have, they will readily admit that Darwinism and evolution do not explain how life began.”  Hey, lard ass, it’s the theory of evolution and not the theory of creation! Jeez, can’t you follow any discriminating, structured argument? 

 

So now the great vicodin-fueled gas bag himself has added his own personal endorsement to the movie Expelled. And why not? Minimal critical thinking is required to embrace Intelligent Design and with Intelligent Design god’s chosen species is once again returned to the top of the proverbial spiritual food chain. I should point out since man made god in his own image it comes as no surprise that most fundamentalist religions make it a point to exclude women from their own theocracy. When does the madness and stupidity stop?

 

Alright, I know I said that insults have to stop but really isn’t Rush Limbaugh just an escaped caricature from some perverse adult theme park?  Al I can say is just be careful Rush or scientists will stop inventing new pain killers for you to buy from your housekeeper. And that cheesy photo of him with a cigar!  Doesn’t he know cigars go best with a tacky Hawaiian shirt!

 

 

Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed at the Movies: Where Bad Religion Doctrine Meets Bad Science

Wow! “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” the movie has made evolution chic once again. If you haven’t heard yet those wacky creationists got the bright idea to make a pro-Intelligent design movie. Unlike others that feel it is their right to comment on a movie they haven’t seen I haven’t seen this original piece of work so I will limit my comments to the central premise of the movie: Intelligent Design. You may also be wondering why the hell a blog about writing cares about Intelligent design. One of the basic themes of my novel and free speculative fiction podcast, Flores Girl:The Children God Forgot, is the individual struggle between a path of science and one’s spiritual choices. Many of the more devout podcast listeners are offended by the main character’s irreverent take on religion, after all they are biologists, and I have exchanged some interested discourses with some religious fundamentalist types.

What is interesting about the Expelled phenomenon is that the bitterness and acrimony expressed during the reviews of the movie can only be the province of true believers on both sides of the argument. Categorically, each side has rejected the other’s arguments and the personal animosity shows. Science is about the pursuit of truth but not necessarily the seeking of a final truth whereas religion is all about a final truth as accepted by the true believers. And yes, science does have its own dogma and priesthood but that doesn’t mean the pursuits of the church and science are the same. That contradiction just reflects the ture nature of man. The problem is there is no halfway solution; the two should remain irrevocably separate. To teach one as a complement to the other in some sort of bizarre ying and yang relationship does a disservice to the lucid thinking of our younger generations and confuses the choices of an individual.

Moreover, while the knowledge of god is liberating to a pious person, to a scientist the heavy hand of god is extremely confining. There is not much a scientist can do with the theory that “god did it” or that “god will do it” and that in essence is the guiding insight of Intelligent design. Okay, they say Intelligent guidance rather than the almighty but wink, wink we all know they are talking about god, and in fact a Christian god. And if you believe in the doctrine of Intelligent design at what exact point in the science do you throw up your hands and acknowledge the handiwork of that god? That’s not as easy a decision as you might think if you think rationally and scientifically.

Today, physicists struggle to throw off the self-imposed shackles of their own Big Bang theory by embracing string and brane theory so unwilling are they to acknowledge the imposition of a god at a given starting point or singularity in the universe. And I say good for them, stretching the imagination is prerequisite for science and being timid has no place in science. Scientific theory has an entire thought and review process that is alien to religious practice and rather than fostering blind leaps of faith, science is forever skeptically questioning what we know. Rather than seeing the scientific process of question and debate as strength the very scientific process emboldens the ignorant. Asking why five fingers, two eyes and a single anus is de rigeur for a scientist rather than the blind belief that we are made in god’s image. I don’t know why we are what we are but saying god did it is not going to get us any closer to the truth; it just makes it easier for the vast majority of us to excuse ourselves for being intellectually lazy.

Getting back to my comment that there can be no middle solution with teaching evolution and creationism, excuse me Intelligent design, that would be analogous to a person asking to become a priest without believing in God on the pretense that he wants to serve mankind. No sane Church would have him as a member of t he clergy no matter how good his intentions. He would be kindly reminded that there are other, more appropriate venues for him to demonstrate his innate humanitarianism.

Now to the flip side of the coin as they say. The true believer on the side of science has a considerable personal investment in their own personal struggle to free themselves from the yoke of religious instruction and oppression. Men railing against one another about the existence of God and his/her manifestations in the world, each claiming to have greater insights as to the truth is a common artifact of this individual’s spiritual struggle. For the atheist and agnostic alike religion smells of man and not god and consequently they are reduced to ineffectual displays of rebellion à la Sinead o Connor as she ripped up photos of the Pope on stage. And yet they forget that straining against the religious ties that bind often constricts you more. I know that because I have been in that bitter mode before. So for my evolutionary friends I say use a little less venom, fewer insults and add a little more understanding as to why men (word used deliberately) clutch to their seemingly irrational beliefs. They are not all morons and face it, it is a basic biologically urge to seek the ultimate alpha male in god!

More to follow!

Seven Golden Rules for Effective Fiction Podcasting

So have gotten through this podcasting exercise I came up with seven golden rules for podcasting fiction that I have learned from my own speculative fiction podcast, Flores Girl:The Children God Forgot -

1. Do complete your novel before recording the podcast and do not write as you go. Making it up as you go along may have worked for Indiana Jones but for a podcast that is a recipe for certain failure. It very easy to go down a rat hole in a story and with it so go your listeners.
2. Seriously consider culling your written work so as to make the podcast more manageable in overall length. By the way, I did not listen to my own advice.
3. Do invest in the proper audio equipment for your recording. There are some good discussions at the Podiobooks community site about this issue. You will also need the right software to edit your podcast and yes, we do get into the stupid PC-Mac holy wars as well.
4. Practice, listen and then practice some more.
5. And then edit and re-edit your results like a demon. Listen several times and then asks others to listen as well. One of the Podiobooks writers complained that he recorded a flatulent moment during one of his podcasts and unfortunately he doesn’t use side effects. I can’t say I have recorded a sound artifart but I have occasionally recorded a family argument or two by accident. I have also missed an edit and recorded the same sentence several times.
6. Don’t do accents or change sex during a podcast unless you are a marvelous actor or a very talented hermaphrodite.
7. Once completed marketed the hell out of your podcast. Just because you recorded it that doesn’t mean the listeners will automatically flock to it.

By the way I really do enjoy working with the people at Podiobooks, including Evo Terra and Chris Miller but maybe you have had good experiences with other sites and communities. Please share!

Reflections on completing the Flores Girl Podcast.

I have conflicting emotions about the completion of my speculative fiction thriller Flores Girl: The Children God Forgot Podcast at Podiobooks. First, I’m glad to be done with the podcast since it has been hanging over my head for over a year and a half. I was about a third through the podcast when the sirens call of family responsibility took precedence over my writing muse. I assumed a position of responsibility with a large Fortune 100 company and to say that my time has been limited is an understatement. So the podcast was basically relegated to a weekend ritual at the end of my fifty to sixty hour week.

Because I didn’t have the foresight to cull the novel from the start, it is over 550 pages, I ended up recording 26 chapters for the podcast. Reading my novel aloud was an interesting exercise because it made it easy to spot glaring weaknesses in my narrative and prose. Yes, after my readings I did rewrite entire sections of the novel. That was the exception to the rule but tweaks to the story and rewriting were the norm as I recorded the podcast. Monotonous dialog tags that could be skipped as you read became a drone during the spoken narrative of the podcast. I learned a lot as I made way from podcast to podcast. Oh, did I mention that I began writing the sequel to the first novel about the same time? That added another layer of complexity to the process because it did kinda of make sense make the narrative consistent between the two novels. Plus I started the third and final novel as I gathered more ideas to complete the further adventures of the two pains in the butt I called Sarah and Richard.

I dutifully went through this exercise every weekend, taking hours to record the narrative and then I spent hours adding sound effects and music. And of course there was the requisite audio equipment failure that cost me a month of my time as the mike input on my trusted laptop decided to crap out altogether. What a pain in the ass!

Then there was the readers, I mean listeners to deal with. They keep harping about what was taking so long. Jeez, as if a month between podcasts is too long to wait? Well, of course they were right and then came the inevitable criticisms of the podcast. You talk too fast, you have a funny accent (what the hell do you expect, I’m from New Yawk), the volume is too low and so on. At first, you might be inclined to make a comment about you get what you pay for but the listeners are making a considerable investment, that is, in terms of their time. In my case they were listening to over 15 hours of podcast recordings. So think thick skin like a rhinoceros and you will be fine, otherwise watch out.

More to follow on the Podcast Experience.

The Improbable, Writing and Playing with House Money

The improbable happened during this past Super Bowl with a decided underdog winning over the perfect team. But it wasn’t as improbable as you might think and no, I am not a big Giants fan. Basically, the Patriots were playing for destiny but the Giants were playing with house money. That is players playing with house money are not constrained by expectations. They are unexpectedly ahead so what the hell, why not keep pressing the envelope by continuing to play? In sports there is an end to a season but in Vegas they build empires counting on that singular human behavior and realize most players, i.e. gamblers, play until they lose.

So what does this have to do with writing? Writing should be of a similar bent. How often do we hear that reality is often stranger than fiction? As writers, do we as a community play it safe when we write because we are constrained by the parameters and norms of society? The greatest writers are not constrained by the norms of society or the media because they listen to their own inner voice. They are playing with house money because they have nothing to lose and at some point in their careers they came to that realization and found it liberating. That’s both the goal and the struggle for any author; to learn how to play with house money. By the way if you think sports has nothing to do with writing you never read “A Fan’s Notes” by Frederick Exley, 1972. Highly recommended.

The Expectations of Genre Definition: Speculative Fiction

Speculative fiction is not fantasy fiction, as it rules out the use of anything as material which violates established scientific fact, laws of nature, call it what you will, i.e., it must [be] possible to the universe as we know it. – Robert A. Heinlein

One of the worst aspects of publishing work in a Web 2.0 world is the myriad tasks the author must undertake. Besides writing the crap the writer must undertake numerous sleazy marketing efforts. In the past that been relegated to the obligatory series of interviews and book signing, assuming that is if the author was lucky enough in his career or her to get to that point.

Today the challenges are different and far more varied. Most of the work still revolves around the writing, editing and marketing of the work. However the marketing piece of the puzzle is a bit of a quandary and requires the greatest flexibility on the part of the fledgling writer. Worse, it is also damn time consuming.

If you go the route of podcasting, which has its myriad appeals and challenges, it requires the author to do production work and possibly the biggest challenge of all: narrating the work. The web work can involve a site or minimally a blog for the author’s various fans to turn into. Besides words, structures these endeavors typically require some type of graphics, Search engine optimization and knowledge of key words; all daunting challenges for the uninitiated. If you have money you could have somebody else do it but you still must manage the ongoing mess.

The biggest marketing challenge could be the designation of your work into one of the existing genres. Why? That’s because the genre designation ultimately determines your readers and finally your choices among agents and publishers.

My problem was what the hell do you call Flores Girl: The Children God Forgot? An adventure story sort of describes it but there were some science fiction elements as well to the story. After all the core of the story is about the survival of Homo floresiensis on a small tropical island and that is speculative at best. In actuality these small three-foot tall hominids died out 12,000 years ago or maybe as recently as 400 years ago based on some early historical accounts. In any case, nobody expects them to be found alive and well today, at least not with the way China is clear cutting the forests of Southeast Asia. To call it science fiction would really disappoint the hardcore science fiction fans; you know not enough hardware and overall fantasy elements to keep them enthralled to quite honest with you. I mean if you can’t have sex with an alien then why bother calling it science fiction?

Then I came across the term speculative fiction and the Robert Heinlein definition. The definition seems appropriate fro my book but its usage and acceptance as part of the vernacular is no where near as universally accepted as science fiction. As a measure of popularity I did a search fro speculative fiction and turned up only a couple of million hits in Google. Compare that with science fiction with nearly 140 million hits and you have yourself a huge disparity in overall acceptance. So which sandbox do you want to play in, the larger one where you won’t get noticed or the smaller one with a much smaller audience? I’ll go with the one that is a better fit, thank you, speculative fiction. It maybe a smaller audience but in the long run hopefully it is the right one. I’ll let you know.

Why National Novel Writing Month and a Million Penguins Sucks!

I given some thought to the whole idea of National Novel Writing Month. It’s a stupid endeavor to encourage people to write 50,000 words or 175 pages during November. This folly that flies under the guise of encouraging a herd of fledgling writers to write their first novel is wrongheaded in so many ways. First, this volume approach encourages the equivalent of mental diarrhea. Face it that many words is basically a mental dump and I don’t know about you but I don’t associate the word dump with anything that is worth reading. You might say that 2000 words in a day is not really a dump but few people can pace themselves accordingly so in the end it does become a dump. For many of these writers most of the words will be written during one particularly long and bitter weekend.

Furthermore and come on let’s be honest, some of the people writing can barely hold a crayon never mind undertake the writing of a complete novel. So you can anticipate a lot more crap to be hitting the Internet in the weeks ahead. Hell, I know that’s true because some of the crap is of my own volition.

This reminds me of the group effort to write a collaborative wiki-novel called a Million Penguins. Yuk, a group of anonymous writers gets together to write a crappy novel that nobody has a vested personal interest in and they expect somebody to actually read it? Isn’t that what we call a television script? Actually, I read a small piece of it and it’s basically a disjointed mess that you can’t follow. Trust me; don’t waste your time on it until they clean it up a bit.

So does that mean you shouldn’t write or participate in NaNoWriMo? Hell no, this is a democracy and I say go for it. Come on, your crap can’t be any worse that what’s out there already, including mine, right? Some of the most fun I had in life was when I went through a similar exercise two years ago and I wrote 400 pages of my first novel during a one month period in early spring. It was an exhilarating ride I’ll never forget as the ideas poured from my brain in a verbal torrent. Was it any good? Of course not, to this day I’m still cleaning the mess up but the ride was worth it. So give it a shot, you have a right to suck with the rest of us.

NaNoWriMo and the NanoMonkey 2007 Podcast or what the hell?

Yes, it is that time of the year for the annual National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo for short. What the hell is that you ask? Basically it is a gimmick to get you wannabe novelists writing or should I say impetus to write that Great American cliché. You know you always had that great idea for a book and you fancy yourself as to having some rudimentary writing skills but you just never found the time or place to getting started. Well, wait no more since the goal is during the month of November to write 50,000 words or 175 pages in an effort to get a jump start on that novel. Kind of a misery loves company for writers endeavor that allows us to commiserate on the various manifestations of our writer’s block.

My contribution to this fool hardiness is assisting Chris Miller from Podiobooks with the Nanomonkey podcast or “Shouldn’t you be writing faster?” Chris works with P.G. HolyField and Kris Johnson on this podcast to give stymied writer tips on how to reach the exulted goal of 50,000 words during the month of November. Some are common sense writing tips, other are lifestyle recommendations. Yes, alcohol and drugs are discussed, not necessarily recommended but hey, if you got a dream go for it. Then there are my suggestions. I actually contributed two podcasts which I will discuss later and that are probably of limited value to any normal person. Fortunate for me, most writers don’t tend to be normal people.

So go ahead and write that novel, misery loves company.