Yes Virginia, There is a Sequel - The Fanny Faerie!!

Well just when you thought you got some relief, here is a sequel to the Toilet Gnome (if you haven't read this yet, please do, it will make this one all the much better) written a long time ago as well.  Let's just say, it is what it is, que serra serra, whatever will be will be.  Oh yeah, get ur minds in the gutter.

Dear Mom: I have checked far and wide, but I am sorry to say that the Toilet Gnomes have all been taken off the market since their unionization.  It was real tough around here for awhile, but now we have 2 new products that I will send you if you wish.  I have enclosed the ads here:

Do you have a hairy ass?  Do you go through tonnes of buttwipe with no end in site?  Are you tired of shaving?  If you answer yes to any one of these questions, then you need the ‘Fannie Faerie’ This marvelous little helper is guaranteed to leave your ass cleaner than when you sat down, with a minty freshness that can’t be beat

Now, for a limited time only, receive for free, the ‘Pussy Pixie’ This little gem is guaranteed to lick your pussy clean in orgasmic pleasure.  Not only will you save on buttwipe, but you will also leave with a smile on your face

By the way Mom, those pics of Suzy with my sister and her giant dildo were great.  Please send more, they love them around the office.

Your ever loving son.             

Dear son,

Please do send these 2 new products along. Your father is costing us a bundle in ass wipe and its starting to cut into my cigarette and gin budget.  And no matter how hard he cleans, your father just cannot get himself clean.  As well, enclosed in here are more pics of Suzy with your sister.  I’ll leave it at that son, as I want you to be surprised.

Love   Mom   

Dear Mom,

Thank you ever so much for the pics.  Wow is sis looking hot these days, I guess the boob job did pay off afterall.  And she looks so at home with Suzy.  I have, as you requested, sent the pussy pixie and fannie faerie to you via express post.  Please, please make sure that when you receive them, you knock on the box, as when I had sent them off, the box was a rocking and they didn’t want to be disturbed.  I did get a lot of strange looks from the post office people.  I am going to suggest to the company they send them in separate packages in the future.  Take care.

Your loving son.

Dear Son,

We received your parcel today and as you suggested, we knocked on the box.  It took about half an hour, but the faerie and pixie finally came out.  Your father was so happy to see what they looked like, that he had to go use the toilet.  Well, the faerie followed along without question.  It concerned me at first when I heard moans coming from the bathroom (I honestly haven’t heard your father moan like that in years) but it seems he got caught up on the rim somehow.  Any way to make it short, your father really liked the fannie faerie, and true to the ad, he had a minty fresh ass. 

Your sis said thanks for the compliments, and she has enclosed a few new pics for you of her and Suzy, and a video of both the pussy pixie and fannie faerie in action.    I hope you will enjoy.

Love Mom 

Dear Mom,

I am glad that dad likes the fannie faerie.  I forgot to tell you that they come in both sexes, but I see I rightfully assumed that he would enjoy the female better.  But if you want a male, let me know.  How is the pixie working out?  We’ve had a large demand for them that they are going to become a regular product for us to sell.  Seems a lot of women are really going wild for it, especially for the female version.  We are getting lots of calls from women with deep voices asking for it.  It just boggles the mind.

I showed the company president the pussy pixie and fannie faerie in action with Suzy.  They were really delighted Mom, they couldn’t believe how good a job they did, but they were a little concerned with the moaning Suzy was making.  They were afraid that the faerie and pixie were tickling her a bit much.  They also want to stress that it is not good to relieve yourself and moan at the same time with the pixie as it may frighten her.  Please make sure to warn Suzy.  The warranty on the pixie does not cover water damage.

Your loving son.

Dear Son,

This is your father writing.  I no longer have control of the bathroom.  Your mother is in there all the time.  Seems she has contracted some woman’s problem and keeps going on about some damned thing to do with bread.  Well she sent the pussie pixie in and she’s hardly been out of the can since.  All I keep hearing is ‘yes, yes, yes’.  What the hell is the pixie doing? Playing twenty questions.  It wasn’t all that bad until your mom started screaming it.  My god I ain’t heard nothing like that since Niagara Falls on our honeymoon.  So its left me with sharing the sandbox with the cat.  The cat doesn’t seem to mind so much as the fannie faerie does a good clean up job of both my and the cat’s ass.  I ain’t seen that cat so affectionate for ages.  Well son, I ain’t much for writing letters, so I’ll sign off. 

Dad

Dear Son,

Your father said he sent a letter off to you yesterday.  I missed putting in a few questions for you.  One, can you send new suits for the pixie?  The current suit smells really bad and I can’t get it clean no matter what.  Second of all, can you send anymore pixies to us?

Oh almost forgot son, Suzy isn’t around anymore son.  Both her and your sister got jobs doing films.  Its kind of strange though son, they rehearsed their scenes here the other day and had their clothes off.  Please find enclosed some pics.

Love Mom.

                                                                                                                       

Dear Mom,

Once again great products are being taken off the shelves.  The video of Suzy with the pixie and faerie was shown to the big wigs here at the company.  They got so excited and red faced that they declared they must be removed from the shelves immediately.  They kept on going about this company being a family business for families.  I stressed to them that my family had lots of fun with all their latest products.  They said something like we need to be shrunk (god knows why we need to be smaller) and asked me to not come to work tomorrow, or the next day.  Its nice to have a few days off.  Well mom, tell sis and Suzy their acting is great, especially the vocalizations.  I look forward to your next letter.

Your loving son.

A Q and A with Alex Dundass - Part 2

1. So what are you favorite TV shows?

Of late I have been straying back to my childhood, watching shows like the Six Million Dollar Man, A-Team, Hawaii Five-O (the original, with the hair co-starring), the Incredible Hulk.  All of these shows have solid writing and as such, are better than most of the crap in the last 20 years (Warehouse 13, Farscape and Stargate are of course exceptions).  I do look forward to Big Bang Theory, but not as much as I used to do.  I sure those kinds of people exist out there, but I have never encountered any in the faculty that I deal with.  Throw in documentaries on various subjects, like ancient civilizations, ancient mysteries, Border Security (both Canadian and Australian versions) and Alaska State Troopers.

2. So Conquest is coming out this month, what do you want to say about it?

About damned time it is coming out.  I only wrote it 16 years ago.  But in looking overall at the book, it is dark in different ways from Desperation, more sword fights that are quite vicious, the real antagonists come onto the scene, death of a few characters, less swearing I believe (I haven't actually checked), a battle sequence seen from the cockpit of a one man fighter.

3.  Who dies?

Go read the book.

4.  Any comments from people about those two scenes in Desperation, you know, the ones that have the sexual torture?

I had one fan at FanExpo loving it, and well I had a few people I know sent me gift certificates for shrinks.  What can I say, I am getting the impression that many people are tired of this feel good shit stories, even if BBC says otherwise in an article calling for feel good sci-fi.

5.  Have we seen the end of Lons and Skardo?

From the end of Desperation onwards, you wait and see.  For past stories, no.  There is a history there and while at FanExpo I plotted out the first full Anthology of the Guardians novel describing the death of the first immortal.  His name was Thadon.  Go make the connection to the Triumvirate Chronicles.

6.  Genesis has aliens in it, why does the Triumvirate Chronicles only have humans?

Didn't you ask this once before?  That question will be answered in Book IV, so be patient.  It will be released later next year, after Book III of course, unless I decide to do something weird and release Book IV before Book III (before I release Conquest I just might change the name of the book).

7.  Yes about that, you had said there was going to be a novella released before Book II.  Why did you change your mind?

I still have the same mind, believe it or not.  No, I looked at things and decided it was best to say no to a novella in the Triumvirate Chronicles (it is bad enough I have a novel started between Desperation and Conquest, but only part of it is within the Triumvirate Chronicles, the plan is one part in the Anthology of the Guardians, and the other part in the as of yet unnamed series set in the Galactic Empire (well I have about 3 series there I am playing with alone).  But it simply came down to what was the novella, was originally part of the second book, so I put it back in, and chose a spot in Book II to cut it.  As it is, in pocket book format, it is not allowed to make a book over 760 pages on Lulu, and well it works well for me to do this.  Besides, I need to win people over, and to do that, I need to show I am in it for the long haul, and have a good pace on getting the books out.

8.  Anymore stuff coming out this year?  Conquest makes 3 items so far.

If all goes well, another installment in the Anthology of the Guardians series is coming out, called Huntercats.  It is a 4 part story focusing on the Pruchocks introduced in Genesis.  There will be other stories on the other aliens yet, just be patient.  If everything lines up right, it will be available this year.

9.  Why September 30th for Conquest?

Random date, and it so happens it is 2 days after the Vocamus Book Bash that I will be at (Sep 28 2014 at the EBar in Guelph).  There is a really good chance I will have Conquest available at that appearance, and of course anyone that knows me in real life, can probably, for an alcoholic donation, get an advance copy of the book.  I will have the Prologue and Chapter 1 available this week off of my website, but the dedication is a bit of a secret.

Ok all, that is it for Part 2, we will do a Part 3 yet, in time.

Hmmm and what do you see here??

My Writing Process - Part 5 - Now I Am Done, What's Next?

Alright, so I am done the editing part, just what in the hell comes after that?  There is quite a lot actually, and sometimes it is very challenging.  Once I do the final check over of the book 10 pages at a time with my software I use, which catches global issues, now comes the time to literally rip all the coding out of the word files and replace it with the stuff in the templates (Lulu as has templates that can be downloaded and used so that the settings are correct).  In preparing the final file, I go to the task of copying stuff out of the original file, put it into word pad so I can do some simple stuff, then back into word.  Normally this gets rids of all of the encoding issues.
But you also have to go through and line up the chapter headings to be on the same line, font size, bold or not, italics, one or two lines etc after the heading.  It is the small shit here that we get into.
Of course, it gets more involved with ebooks, as each chapter has to be set up as a heading 1 (you've seen those in word) and in 2013 I have had to alter the template for that.
This is just the text.  In the past few weeks I have been re-creating the covers for my books, and that involves using high resolution photoshop files to do the work, where in each file, I zoom into the pixel level to line things up, and it is funny how you can find you are off by an entire line of pixels.  And for me right now, making cover pages is all done on the computer as I cannot get my art skills up well enough.
I know that this all sounds short, but in the end, it can be the part of the process that takes the longest.

So you want to write - advice for young authors

Well, after a rough day at work and some gin and tonic, there is nothing better than to sit down and write, doesn't matter if it is an entry in my blog as this is, a short story, part of a novel, or just something silly like the toilet gnome.  This is what I do, and what you would do as a young author will probably be much different.  I am writing this tonight because during the last two cons I was at, I ran into a lot of young authors who were trying, but weren't sure how to do it effectively.
I started writing because I finally convinced myself that I could do it other than in the science world, and that is normally the biggest hurdle.  Having ideas, whether they float around your head for awhile, or you base it on dreams, that is normally the easier part.  It is getting it onto paper as it was when I wrote my first stuff, or now, onto a computer screen.
There are many places out there that can help you, and one of them is Nanowrimo.  Nanowrimo is something I have participated in for a few years now, and the short version is this:  you sign to write 50 000 words in the 30 days of November.  That comes down to 1667 words per day.  You don't have to hit that target everyday, you can go over, under or whatever, and if you don't write that many words in November, you at least tried.  It is a commitment.
Many young authors believe that you need to write that perfect draft the first time.  Hell no, not even close.  I often go through over 6 edits on my material, in part because the first draft gets the key points across, then as I edit, I add in the details that fill out the scenes.  Final edit for me is normally done running my stuff through software to check it for certain things such as spelling consistency, cliches, over use of words and so on.
The environment you work in is also important as it can affect your concentration.  Sometimes it is that you need the exact same environment, i.e. your room, desk, music.  For me it is environmental factors as I can write in front of the TV, at my desk on a different computer, with or without my usual gin and tonic or scotch, or even outside.  You need to discover where you are most functional for this.  And of course time of day is another factor, some of my best writing happens in the middle of the night.
One last thing I suggest, is try to find other people out there, not necessarily your friends around you, but around the country. When I started writing, I was lucky enough to meet many people out there who I am still in touch with after 16 years.  And many of us are now published.  It will often be these people that will give you support more than anything.  And I will do a shout out to all of you out there from the group I started in.
So my best suggestion for all of you is this:  find out what works and keep asking questions of those of us who are there.  I know I wish I had.

I wrote on one of these once......a long time ago.

The Trouble with Media Today

The writers in media today are fucking morons, and that is being quite nice to them.  In the past week, the idiots over in the middle east have been doing the good old beheading trick, and like lambs to the slaughter, the idiot media people have rushed to publish all this shit that is going on, which leads to the world actually supporting these assholes who are doing this beheading.
A long time ago in life, I learned that it is often best to ignore people who decide they want to be bullies, as often that takes away their power.  As more and more media sites (hey CNN, you are one of the worst, but then when dealing with the dunderheads you are, we really can't expect more) publish images, even just before the actual act of beheading occurs, we are just feeding into what these killers want:  that everyone is looking at the video and doing their usual Oh my god, look at what they did, which at that point, just enables these idiots further.
Case in point, yes they have more people that are going to be beheaded, and yes it is newsworthy, but for crying out loud you morons, learn some goddamned discretion about reporting this.  It of course doesn't help that the so-called world superpower the US is sitting around with its thumbs up it collective asses, crying foul but not doing anything. C'mon Obama, send in the Seals and Rangers and hunt these idiots into extinction. 
But let's make this clear folks:  everything you click on a story to read about any of the beheadings, are just supporting the terrorists.  So do the world a favor and say no to clicking on these stories and teach the media morons with the single digit IQs to stop supporting terrorism.

FanExpo 2014 in Toronto

Hi all I've been mostly quiet the past 4 days because I was at FanExpo in Toronto with Ellie Di Julio.   FanExpo was quite the experience from move in until move out.  The first day I unloaded at the loading dock, a monstrosity of a tunnel that traversed 8 storeys underground to a fully enclosed docking area that said if the alarm goes off, better fucking run.  Good old car and truck exhaust.
The setup was pretty quick and easy, and then it was 4 days of trying to sell books.  I did fine, breaking even by the end of it. But as many of the veteran exhibitors pointed out, people just weren't buying this year.  I certainly did come home with less stock though.
The people themselves were very interesting at FanExpo, and often I hear of them referred to as nerds.  Sure there are some there that fit the stereotype, but in seeing the costumes I saw, you could see many put many hours into making the costumes, and the skills behind what they did create are amazing to say the least.  As a scientist in real life, I often do not get to interact with people in thid environment, but I was quite impressed by the costumes.  And many of these people are normal like the rest of us (that is, if you can define normal).  In many ways, the Big Bang Theory has missed the boat on this culture and well I can tell you, not one of those characters on that show would ever be hired on as faculty anywhere, and if they did, the door would be hitting their asses on the way out in a matter of months.  It makes me want to review whether or not I should watch the Big Bang Theory, but then many shows really do not depict scientists quite right either.
In terms of exhibitors around us, we had the best neighbours two rookies at this could ever have. We all had a lot of fun, especially on Saturday as it was pretty much batten down the hatches and don't leave the booth. We were all trading food back and forth, cooling our drinks in one of the coolers that one of the others brought.  I am going to give a shout out to the neighbors, so here goes.
Captain Sam Engstrom held the fort down at the end booth.  She is an artist and illustrator, and her art really did blow me away.  There is a picture she had that I never got a chance to get a copy, so I hope to run into her soon and see if she will do a trade.  Sam was always happy, willing to trade her items for cards (she went home with a good many!!).
Then there was Kurtis Cooper, who was with Altered Earth, which I believe is the name of his series.  Him and his friends were just awesome, and he even let me steel some electrons from him to charge my phone (by the way Kurtis, I saw the reference BoJangles on TV, the one about the three piles of shit, laughed my head off).
Next to Ellie and I was Catherinette Rings, a jeweler who hand makes steam punk jewellery.  It is well made, I even bought a piece for my wife.  There were other exhibitors doing steam punk stuff, but it was all the cheap, import shit that just falls apart.  If you want quality steampunk jewellery, then check him out.  Daniel was a ball as well, with a sense of humour that is in my neighborhood.  Both he and his wife, Catherine, are from Montreal.
Highlights of the show:  I got to tell someone that Darth Vader would shit his pants if he took on my guys, another exhibitor who bought my book on the first day came back all excited about what I wrote.  I was stunned to say the least, to see someone so enthusiastic about what I have written.  I just hope future volumes do not disappoint. 
Finally, this one is for you Kurtis, I told you about a show that you can only watch one episode at a time, otherwise you get a headache.  Here it is man.

Link to video

And finally, but not least at all, a grand thanks to another author who is really great to work with, Ellie Di Julio.  You are an awesome person to share a booth with.  And I cannot forget Megan Fair for helping both of us whenever she can, whether it was passing out cards or standing at our booth attracting visitors. 

Click on the video link and you will understand...maybe