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Furies Launch

By July 29, 2019No Comments

Coming September 1st… but first, an accidental rant

Furies Launch

I am over la lune to announce that THE FURIES will be released on September 1st via Amazon on e-book and soft cover. It is a much different book than COWARD: A NOVEL and I can promise you a few things about it.

Before I get in to that, the plan with this book, actually being on schedule and vetted with the swiftness that comes with experience, is to launch a slightly more aggressive campaign on social media. I know, I know, fuck me right? I hate that shit. I don’t abhor self promotion. I abhor me doing it. It takes time away from my babies. (Though, Scumbag Rehab is finished! First of a series and next year we’ll get to see how that goes. It’s pretty intense.) But, I am planning to post a lot more in August for the lead-up and trying to brain-tempest some contests for a free copy of Furies. I have a couple of ideas and they should be coming out in the next month. I apologize for running the risk of posting too much and being in yo faces, but I have to. I gosta sell them shits so I can put out more.

Also, I am immensely proud of Furies. Y’all should know that Papa puts his heart in everything he do, and if you haven’t had the chance, hit up the sites and leave me a review. Apparently I need those. Furies goes back to my child/teen hood. I ain’t saying nothing, other than it’s a crazy ride. It is tight narrative and edited super well. I am mega happy with how it turned out. Shout out to Syd and Spank as usual. My dogs.

Anyways, on we go…

One of the critiques that I received about the book (Coward) was the language. I will be the first to admit that I took some liberties with excessive purp and pomp through the mouth of one character in particular. Albeit, he was designed for such a purpose, but I digress: it can be a challenging read.

Alls I can say is, you should have read that son of a bitch before the hundreds of edits and test-reads. Woof.

Furies is told through the lens of different characters with equally diverse backgrounds and emotional and mental states of being. It is one of the reasons I started FPP; editors for publishers that I had spoken to and submitted some samples were reticent to sign any types of contracts because of how different these (and the first novel I wrote and which will release next) works are from each other.

You see…

I had to learn that publishers like (or have) to pigeon-hole a writer, creator or artist to create works that adhere to a linear scope in which they can market to a specific audience. I get that. It makes sense. If you know which part of the lake reside the trout that like your worm, dangle away, kiddo.

My issue was that I have never really, or it had never occurred to me, to write in the same style twice. I have a diverse palate when we’re talking artistic consumption, which informs the similarly diverse palette with which I paint from. We’re talking about my favourite music as a sapling being Wu Tang and Beatles and favourite movies, to date, being Godfather pt. 1 and Dumb and Dumber. I just write what comes to my mind and my only wish is that I have more time. I want to tell great and captivating stories and I use the split personalities in my head to inform which direction they will go.

If I was only interested in say, science fiction or political satire, it would go another way. But you get a little bit of a lotta stuff when you read my books. The shorts are a damn good example. But Coward and Furies couldn’t be more dissimilar. Subsequent novels I have in the chamber are equally unique.

I can’t control it. It’s just how I see things in my head. Like those actors that act the role when they are at home and get divorced and pay millions in alimony because they mailed dead fish to their co-stars to fuck with them and at home they make the baby cry with scary accents and spoil friendships and ruin their careers based on a role in a movie about a comedian that wasn’t even that funny I mean he had his moments but most were essentially mean-spirited pranks on people almost bully-like and left the audience just watching a mentally ill person fuck with fans and contemporaries for reasons that only he in his twisted mind and debatable sense of humour thought were epic and then a quasi-sane guy who made super funny movies when I was a young blood portrays the mentally ill guy who I should point out was only famous from his self-hating casting in a tv show called taxi pretty much destroy his remaining sanity and torpedo a decent career as a twenty million dollar man for what? Art, that’s why. And it mattered to him. Because we do things we want, as creators, if we think they are worth it or powerful to us.

I feel that many of us have these multiple headed dragons that live inside of us and each have different tastes for what is laid at their jaws. One may turn its snout at a biscuit, while the other gobbles it up entirely and leaves not a crumb in order to dignify its satisfaction at the dish.

I don’t want to bang a dead horse about the reasoning of why Fly Pelican exists, only to promote the idea that diversity is in all of our make-ups. It’s something that we learn about ourselves as new experiences ripen our interests. Tastes change over time. The more we try and open ourselves up to, the more we are willing to accept and appreciate the artistic value behind something, and give us the informed and enculturated opinions to decide whether we like it or hate it, agree or disagree.

Most of us.

It still blows my pesh off at times, being older now and able to look at people as a detached and exotic organism, how much we still want to be like the next-man. I guess I never really stopped to think about how we are programmed to fall-in-line; to be and do, or dress, or to speak the same all those around us. Perhaps it is to achieve a familiarity with a sense of mechanical solidarity; to melt into a homogeneous blob that is: everyone around us. I see this predominantly with style, with aesthetic and fashion.

I maintain that all people look alike, unless they don’t. Doesn’t matter the race, because I think all white people look alike. Get at me.

Something that strays from this platform, a song or an article of clothing that goes against the grain of the usually anticipated matrices of a person’s habitual style or preferences has always been referred to as a guilty pleasure. I’m not telling any school-yard tales. We all know this.

I wager two things that are revolutionary in today’s age.

One, being that because of the dialectic (re)cycling of trying to be innovative and fresh by digging in the crates for inspiration, we are somehow at a point where diversity, as an object, is immediately copied and imitated as if by formula through hyper-commodification. This means that, to me at least, that the more different and unique something is, the quicker it is co-opted and made part of the contemporary arsenal. In essence, the reality of being different (largely in appearance) is short lasting, as it becomes absorbed in to the mainstream appeal, given the right marketing and influencer affiliation.

The second is, and this is more to the point and less of a velvet-tipped rebuke, is that guilt should not accompany the enjoyment of art. At the charge of being found in-pleasure of art, you are always guilty.

I think that this is already happening. We are, on the face of visible efforts, trying to make the western cultures more inclusive of every-fucking-thing. Dress how you want. Listen and read to what you want. Don’t call anyone anything disparaging ever. The last tidbit, being the social fetters that used to keep us older cats from stepping too far out of line in terms of what to wear (when I was young in was tight-ass pants) and what to listen to (Air Supply bangers), is diminishing. There is rarely a presence that admonishes and reprimands people, unless they are being what is seen as bigoted. (I ain’t gonna start on that. That is the crux of a lot of my writing. Y’all pay for that shit.)

Personally, I ain’t never let the invisible borders of those fences cloister me in; to only like or feel a certain thing. I also, especially as I ascended to adulthood, pushed away from trends and hot-new flavours of media drive hype-beast bullshit. I always just been me. I like what I like, and that’s usually more of the underground variety. Now, I don’t know what’s underground because my head is buried or in the clouds; too busy to try and be cool.

The weird thing is that all those forces are catching up with how I’ve always felt. Authenticity is not a flash in the pan. A part of me misses the cudgeling that kept a motherfucker out of my way and forced them back into their lane; back into the little box that their brittle spirit and feeble mind had designed for them. I like being away from them.

Ego: what a bastard. In Guardians Vol. 2, and in my own brain-space.

But, if a kid can one day dress like a goth, the next a 90’s Zach Morris throwback, the next a bowtie and still round out the week in joggers like a Chav; whatever, that is progress. If you don’t try all the flavours, how will you know what you really like?

If we can build the depth our taste buds earlier and accept a foray in to otherwise murky waters to find some beautiful treasure beneath the rusted suckers of a giant squids girthy tentacles, then cool. Like what you like. Love what you love.

I suppose the point is, don’t let this diversity of mind and the burgeoning universal acceptance of alternative forms of art, cool and uncool, change. Permit schizoid fucks like me to drop the bucket deep into the well of their swirly, neon thoughts and pull up a few litres questionable drinkable material. It’s only by accepting the varied form of art can we give ourselves the permission to think for ourselves. “What do I really like?” “Is this really me?”

What I thinkI’m really be afraid of is a high-schoolization of us grown-ass motherfuckers. Where everyone, allowed at this point in our urban cultures (not everywhere, I feel like I should point this out) to really think and do anything, remains on a narrow gang-plank of what is, in the end, actually acceptable. Hopefully that open-minded appreciation of diversity then leaks to the places where freedom of this nature is less tolerant. That lack of diversity can happen as soon as a few blocks over, remember; some places tighten their protocol while others loosen.

Think for yourself, because if you let others do it for you, you might as well glom into that oblongish parade of commercially induced mediocrity that made people ignore the diamonds of previous generations until it was too late to shake their hands and say: “Good job Herman! Sorry you died in poverty without knowing that your book inspired almost every single tale of personal struggle thereafter.”

I didn’t intend to launch in to an on-the-spot conceptualization of style in 2019. That was weird. Oh well, it’s done and you know this section is fairly raw.

Independent as fuck really comes through on these motherfuckers, don’t they? How many ways can I say be yourself, hm? Guess I believe that shit.

Cop Furies September 1st. If you haven’t read Coward, I dunno what to tell you, it’s dope. Review it if you can. Tell your friends, because we can always use more support here in my living room. Stay tuned (and follow) on Book Face and Instagram for other updates.

Sorry for cussin,

Papa