Slide-show, and a Working Link!

I’m not going to hide from myself as Ripley King. I did good. All you have to do
is click the words next to the slide-show box, and read all the samples your big
beating heart desires!

It’s that simple! You decide. I certainly can’t twist your arm.

KindleUnlimited subscribers can download and read fifteen (15) of my books (I’m
supposed to say FOR FREE! here, but they paid for their KindleUnlimited
subscription, so . . . I paid this much per month for my subscription -  I’ve
downloaded so many books this month = cost per book. Trust me when I say
you’re getting off cheap.), no problem. Otherwise, my prices are what they are,
and are subject to change whenever I damn well please.

Here’s the kicker. I’m not ever going to rely on writing and publishing books to be
my sole source of income, not when there are so many cool hobbies I can turn into
cash. Once you realize how and where you market your various endeavors, things
get a little easier. Don’t get me wrong, it still takes money to make money, but I got
cheap on my side.

Do I Write Martian?

Can you understand my words as you see them here?

There are times when I ask myself that question. Like people can’t comprehend
what I’m saying, in print or otherwise. You wouldn’t believe how many times I
have asked a question on a message board, only to later clarify the question in the
simplest terms possible. Or have my words mistaken as an open invitation to
possibly enlist me in a flame war.

Is America becoming as stupid as Douche-bag Donald Trump? Is that it?

I won’t get overly political, but I can't stand the man. He’s a prime example, and the
truest definition I have ever encountered of a douche bag. Period, case closed,
exclamation point.

Anyway, the idea is for me to enjoy my fresh start. So, this is me letting go,
keeping to the positive, seeing how far I can go from point “A” with my eyes wide
open.

Deep, Dark, Delicious

I got a follower on Wattpad, and I became a follower. Now I’m trying to wrap my
head around the site’s quirks and etiquette. I only just found out what the little star
means.

One thing I don’t want to do is screw myself to a wall, so I’m going to go slow.
I’ve been self-publishing since 1995, and have made every mistake that could be
made online, with my books, and in dealing with other writers. Now popularity
within self-publishing comes down to how much money you can afford for your
monthly ads. Only, I’m not buying into that bullshit. For me, it still comes down to
the story.

I’m shedding my skin like a snake, becoming who I really am within the writing
world. The work is nothing. I can do the hard work.

I’ve always been a big advocate of learning from my past, and that’s where I’m
going to start. My love of the bizarre, the grotesque, and the outlandish.

At one point in time I was an avid collector of Heavy Metal magazine. I missed
the first year’s worth of issues because of my age (I was fifteen, sixteen), but
managed a small trunk full of sweet issues in the following years. It took my skills
as an illustrator up a notch or two, following artists like Enki Bilal, Philippe Caza,
Guido Crepax, Philippe Druillet, Jean-Claude Forest, Jean Giraud (aka Moebius)
and Milo Manara. The mag fed my imagination and then some, and allowed
numerous ideas to ferment into a potent mental brew.

Would hate to piss her metal ass off.

One thing, my standards will remain the same. That is to write the best story I can,
make it within a popular genre, one that I feel excited to write, and go from there.

My Introduction

The picture says it all. What I didn't realize was that sometimes . . . the darker the
better. 

"Grimdark is a sub-genre, or a way to describe the tone, style, or setting of
speculative fiction that is markedly dystopian or amoral, or particularly graphic in
its depiction of violence (and just about everything else). In most grimdark
literature the supernatural is a passive force, controlled by humans-unlike
supernatural horror where the preternatural forces are most often an active entity
with agency. Our morally ambiguous protagonists and anti-heroes light their way
with horrible decisions, and gallows humor."

I suppose I should explain myself. I've been doing grimdark for a while now,
without even realizing it. I wrote a book called Love Dark, under a failed pen
name that never managed to find its audience, and now I know why. But first, I
want to look at the story itself.

Love Dark starts in a post-apocalyptic world, where you discover just how south
things can go. The Earth itself went tits-up a while back, and humanity was the
reason. Mother Mary explains it like this:

"You want to know why they died? Fine. Grand Central Station, where you met
the old man, used to have tens of thousands of people moving in and out of it each
day and night, like maggots through stinky dead flesh. Greater New York once had
eighteen million men, women and children in it, with their piss and sugar attitudes;
the crime, grime, wildlife and nightlife, competing for the same space at times, and
all of it is gone. That's the shame of it, child.

"I doubt if Momma Cola knew the real reasons. She only saw what was left after
the worst was over. The world and those in it could be absolutely heartless at
times, but that would have been indicative of a symptom. The world didn't die
from pestilence, even though drugs acted as a qualifier. Not from war, either,
although small skirmishes were fought every day for every dimwitted reason you
could think of. Death, he liked to vacation New York at one time, early in the fall
months, falling in love with the ambience of Central Park in the late twentieth
century, but he couldn't stop the inevitable. Earth's leaders spent too much time
frigging their privates instead of solving the problems the people faced.
Industrialists in charge of the only force in the universe more powerful than God
herself-greed-kept doing what they did best to keep the gold rolling in, and the rest
of the planet be damned. Ignorance destroyed it all, child. Ignorance. All of us
should have fought to keep our world alive. We should have given our lives to see
to it that it stayed that way. . . "

https://www.amazon.com/Love-Dark-Ripley-King-ebook/dp/B00A0XQG1Y/#navbar

Pap, my protagonist, is young and dumb, and immensely powerful. Thing is, at
first, he doesn't have clue one. He gets thrown into a set of circumstances that
leaves him with no choice but to survive it all, if he wants to achieve his goal.

The story is deep, it's dark, it's delicious. It meets all the requirements for
grimdark. And it failed.

It seems I've been running around in all the wrong circles, but what can I say, I'm
old, and it's hard to keep up with all the changes within the publishing industry.
Love Dark has more than a few strikes against it.

First, it's a standalone novel in a world where a series, three to five books or more,
seems to be worth it's weight in gold.

There's nothing wrong with writing a standalone novel, people. A good story is
still a good story.

Second, it's deep, where the old crowd wanted shallow. Imagine paragraphs and
chapters that can convey so much information with so few carefully chosen words.
But then again, I did give you a tiny taste of that with Mother Mary's words. Me, I
come from a place in time where books did just that, all the time. A book told a
story, and the story was everything. It had to be sophisticated, layered, richly
described. The book would end when the story was told. The reader either enjoyed
themselves, lost in the world the book created, or they didn't.

People like different genres. I'm not a huge romance fan. I've read some, just like
I've read mysteries, true crime, science fiction, horror, and more. What sticks with
me, is the quality of the story. Certain writers do what they do better than others. I
like deep, dark, and delicious.

I'm about to retire the old me in favor of the new.

So, what is grimdark?

I provided what could be called the standard definition. Everybody knows
Warhammer 40,000 is where this sub-genre got its name. "In the grim darkness of
the far future, there is only war." Yet, dark fiction has been around for a long time.
These roots are based in science fiction, yet grimdark is more identifiable with
epic fantasy. However, I think the definition has been expanded upon just by
existing, and I'm just here to spread the good news.

"Grimdark is a sub-genre, or a way to describe the tone, style, or setting of
speculative fiction that is markedly dystopian or amoral, or particularly graphic in
its depiction of violence (and just about everything else). In most grimdark
literature the supernatural is a passive force, controlled by humans-unlike
supernatural horror where the preternatural forces are most often an active entity
with agency. Our morally ambiguous protagonists and anti-heroes light their way
with horrible decisions, and gallows humor."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucker_Punch_(2011_film)

This movie, to me, is quintessentially grimdark, no matter how it's labeled by
Wikipedia. What is the fifth item Babydoll needs? Hit the above link and find out.
You can find examples of excellent grimdark in television, graphic novels, manga
and anime, and everywhere fine imaginations are nurtured, and allowed to spew
their results for public consumption.

This is my first post, but not my last. I gots me a lot of work to do.