The Auction is ON

Ok, now don't get too excited, but here it is: the Official Rejected MS of JWU by Boston's own Kneerim & Williams at Fish & Richardson.
Enjoy this badboy, take it home, love it, coddle it, maybe even read it.
Rejection letter and synopsis included. Yes, friends, through the wonderful world of eBay, this gem may too be yours.

You know the proceeds will go to a good cause.

Auction Goodie

So as a result of several requests, I'm happy to be offering the infamous Grella rejected manuscript of Jack Wakes Up, complete with crap-ass rejection letter, up for sale this week on eBay. Stay tuned for more info...

This promises to be a rare, collector's edition piece that will surely appreciate in value. I fully expect it to be worth even more than someone will pay for it now some day.

Lecherous? (Bukowski)

Ken pointed out that in my reading picture below, I look ominously like this guy:



Ungh. Judge for yourself.

Virtual Reading Groupies!!

Yeah, the Second Life thing was pretty damn funny. Here's a brief rundown. I had my wife log me in 30 min before the event (I wasn't home) and then got home 10 minutes before it started to find my character (avatar) asleep on his feet in front of an audience of people. Picture a fat guy in a tuxedo standing behind two fancy writers at a conference table and he's asleep.

Then the reading started and people in the audience started falling asleep. Someone from the blog showed up as me (or the same avatar as me--lucky for the tux). Then I finally got to read, stood up to do it, and my guy fell asleep again. Good times!
During the panel discussion I learned how to do Tarzan yells and Little John "Yeah!'s. It was good. Also a lot of muscle-posing a la Hanz and Franz while we were sitting in our chairs.

Here's a pic of us up there. I'm the guy in the black tux. The guy next to me is a zombie. The woman at the end was the smart British moderator of the event, Jilly.


Here's a panned back pic of the event (notice the ALWFD sign in background and the sweet-looking crowd): (click to enlarge, I hope)


Thing about the whole thing was that as we were plugged into the audio, we could also type in chat-style snips about the event as it was going on. This proved to be a lot of fun. So you can pretty much imagine me throwing some G to the "hot" "women" in the audience. Or whatever I was doing. Anyway, they opened the bar right after and as you can imagine, the "women" were pumped to come up and talk to the big man.
Here's a photo I took with one of them:

This shit is all priceless, far as I'm concerned. Now I'll be going back in to see if I can get anything else from this small piece of "fame." And can only hope that when I get a real book published times in the real world will be like this!
(But I won't be as fat. Though, well...)

You asked for it, you got it!

Ok, so maybe some of you didn't ask for it. Maybe some of you didn't even know this existed, but nevertheless, here is my in-world character for Second Life, where I'll be reading on Saturday. Check it out: it's me, SethJ Homewood!!
(I'm flying!)


And, here's me at the convention center where I'll be reading on Saturday. Hilarious!



And, for those of you who were worried that we haven't seen any new motorcycle tags from Chris Engel, here's Sgt. Hopkins' latest plug!

Second Life Reading: Yeah!!

Yeah, homes. This is where I'll be reading this Saturday at 3PM PST. Check it out: it's the Joysco Convention Center in the Second Life world. This is the real virtual reality and I'm going in!!

Soon I'll have a picture of my in-world fatass character. More to come! Email me if you want more info or surl's. You know you're curious.

Cool.
Also, check out my new interview today at the Word Nerd blog.

Podiobooks: The Charts

Yes, you know what this means: JP2: This Is Life is now on Podiobooks.com. Feel free to get it there if you want a version without all my talking.

New Fan Art PAGE

Hey check this out: now I've put up all the fan art on one awesome (and hopefully growing) page!
http://sethharwood.com/fan-art.html

I also wanted to mention that you can read a story online now from Chabot College's student newspaper. One of my students wrote an article called "English Teacher Writes Online Novel."

Good stuff!

Awesome Fan Art and the Possible Return of Junius Ponds

Thanks to Bob from Answers For Freelancers for the Awesome Art of JP (the OTHER JP). If you haven't heard my interview over on their site, go ahead. It's a pretty funny one.

And this brings rise to the big question: is Junius Ponds alive? Sure, he showed up briefly at the start of Ep 1 to answer a question for Podshow (How they can stop sucking) but is he really around? No word yet. A few listeners seem to want him around, but this podcaster's not talking. He got killed in JWU, right?

On another note, look for the Fan Art Page coming soon with work by Bob O, Gomyo, Edward Uken, Jerry Scullion and our pal Jeff Farbman. Should be up in the next few days.

Research: the Gats

"I love gats" --Ghostface Killah

I have to tell the story of last week's research in Milpitas at the Firing Range. So wow. Of course I had to go shoot some guns to know what Jack Palms is dealing with now and I found guns and more guns at the firing range. My friend brought three guns for us to shoot: a Glock 26 9mm (smaller than the 16 Junius Ponds gives Jack in JWU), a "Baby" Desert Eagle .40S&W, and a shotgun.
Here're a few pics:




Top to bottom you have: me shooting the Glock, the Glock, me firing the shotgun, and the Desert Eagle, standard pic from their website.

The Glock and the Eagle both had a good amount of kick. For a while I was having trouble with the Eagle b/c my hand was too big to pull the trigger without hitting the release button for the clip. This was bad, but then we figured out that it was a broken clip, not me. The Glock has a pop to it and with a pointed tip bullet, made a tear through the paper target. With the Eagle's .40S&W bullet's flat front, it made a simple circle through the paper, just punched it out of the way. The shotgun, as you'd guess, made a big hole in the paper with all its 500 pellets per shot. (The gun held 5 cartridges, if you wondered.) Each of the handguns has a ten shot clip, as California law demands.

And how did I do shooting wise? With the targets? Not too bad, actually. I guess my year of doing archery and the winter months in Lexington, MA shooting BB rifles at targets in 6th grade paid off.
Here's a target:

Not too bad. I could use some practice. So the two handguns had a loud pop that's scary at first, but then isn't too bad (with the big cups on your ears). The recoil from both of these was manageable. Loading the clips was a bit of work, but not bad. If you're interested, between the two of us, we shot about 400 rounds in an hour and a half, or so. So that's a fair amount of loading. The only thing that hurt was the recoil of the shotgun, and this is because I had it pressed against my shoulder. If I was firing the shotgun movie-style, at the hip, I'm guessing it wouldn't have been bad at all. But then, how do you aim it that way? Ummm... anyway, I'll get to that when Jack starts making movies or going duck hunting, I guess.



Here's the author photo for Jack Palms #7:


Send in any questions that you have about any of this. I'll be glad to fill in what I know.
Note: Do not read any of this as an endorsement of guns, gun violence, or the NRA. I am simply a writer doing research. For all I know Ghostface Killah is crazy.

Featured Website of the Month

Hey! Not only are Shannon Clute and Richard Edwards the best noir and crime interviewers around, but they've chosen ME as their featured website of the month. OK, so I asked them to do it... but they did it!

First of all, you should definitely go check out both of their shows: Out of the Past and Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed. Both are available at noircast.net and while you're there, check the excellent Featured Website there you'll see links to my books, my page, and about the best intro a writer like me could hope for.

You'll have to go over, if only to read the superlatives Shannon Clute throws around! Really, this is one site NOT to be missed.

So I'm choosing them as MY Featured Website of the Month. I'll be featuring them on JP2 episodes all this month. Behind the Black Mask has definitely become one of my favorite podcasts. Every month they interview contemporary crime writers and get about the best out of them every time. If you want info on good crime writing, this is your source.

Check out their Noircast Special #2 to hear Tee Morris and myself get interviewed, along with Kevin Burton Smith of Thrilling Detective Website!

Glock World Part II

Tonight I'm going to shoot some guns. I'll be at a real firing range, don't worry. But I'll be there with a Glock, a shotgun and something else. Yow. It's all for the research.

More tomorrow when I've done it.

Also: all three podcasts in the itunes top 100 today!! And JP2's at the head of the three, in at 54. But who's counting?

Now I'm on TWITTER!

So the world needs to wait no longer: I am now on Twitter and Twittering away. This is like some new junk that's really a mini-blog. If you want to know when I brushed my teeth. This is the place for you. Not that I'd really write that...

Check it out.
You can even friend me or "follow" me on there.

New Development: Top 60!

OK. Already things are happening. On today's podcast, just a few hours ago, I said JWU never makes it into the itunes top 100 for literary podcasts. Well guess what? I just went back and checked and look at this:




YEAH!! And I just went back and saw JWU at 51!! Now I just have to fix the link so JP2 is actually listed on there. Yeah, I just broke that a couple days ago. Should be fixed soon. This is awesome!!

Palms Sunday (it's finally here!)

Last night: it was good. We pubbed, we crawled, and we drank. Thanks go out to those of you who made it and to PJ for coming up with the idea in the first place. If you want to see some of what you missed, go here. Next month we take over the East Bay and dominate mid-July in my town, the Big Berkeley. It should be noted, by the way, that San Francisco was not represented last night. So next time we bring the party to you, east-siders.

And today: yes, I finally came up with a good name for it and it couldn't have come later (well, I guess it could have). In any case, here we are on Palms Sunday. Jack Palms is back, THIS IS LIFE is off to a real, official start, and I'm going back to bed. More later.

One Day to Go!!

This is it, kiddies. One day to go until the launch of JP2. And tonight's also the first Sigler/Harwood Beer/Bar Night. If you're in the Bay Area, even on the West Coast,
get yourself to House of Shields tonight for a podcasting good time. (Closest BART is Montgomery.)

Are you counting the hours? I'm not. (OK, almost.)

2 Days to Go: Blog This Site!

Yow!! You bet I'm excited.

Twists and turns, and they're all going to come from the fiction!
Bring it on, I say!
You have a NEW MISSION: If you’ve got a blog, a website, a piece of paper that you tack to the bulletin board at your local laundromat, whatever, post a plug about JP2 and its release this weekend or next week.
You can take the html off my Missions page to get a cool link/picture like this:



and copy it right into your blog to get a picture and the link.
Also, if you feel like it, add the NEW promo I’ve got linked here and talk me up, baby! Take any text I’ve got on the site. It’s our world guys, and those other podcast releases are just living in it!