Misery and Imagination on Amazon.

Yeesh, that was fast -- I just received my box o' 50 copies of Tales of Misery and Imagination yesterday, and the book is already listed on Amazon.com. You can actually buy it directly from me via Amazon, too -- just go to this page and order from seller "Daily-Despair." I'll still take orders through Paypal but I'd encourage you to order through Amazon because it'll kick up the book's sales ranking, and I'll still see a reasonable chunk of money from each sale (if you order from me, that is).

And of course, if you buy the book, please take the time to review it on Amazon once you've read it. Every little bit helps!

The future is wild.

Received the proof copy of Tales of Misery and Imagination today. I've gone over it about a million times and it looks good, so I approved it with Lightning Source and ordered my first case o' copies. I expect them to arrive in about a week, so I'm gonna go ahead and start taking pre-orders. Obviously, it'll be available on Amazon.com and other online retailers soon, but if you'd like your very own copy of Tales of Misery and Imagination as soon as possible, you can get it by making a payment to my email address via PayPal. Here's how it'll work:

1. Go to PayPal.com (duh).

2. For orders in the US, make a payment of $13.00 ($10.00 plus $3.00 s/h) to edpscott at gmail dot com (of course, you'll replace "at" with @ and "dot" with .). For orders outside the US, it's $15.00. As soon as my copies arrive, yours will be shipped out in a swell padded envelope.

3. Please be sure to let me know if you want it signed.

4. If for some crazy reason you'd like to buy multiple copies (they make great gifts, after all), add an additional buck shipping for each additional copy (example, 3 copies within the US would be $35 total).

Since you'd probably like to know a little more about the book, here's the back cover copy and some delightful blurbs from other authors:

Seven stories leap forth from an untamed wilderness of pop culture, insecurity, lust, monsters and misadventure: a disillusioned man is tormented by not-so-random acts of vandalism, sideshow performers ponder their future, confidence is found in the strangest of insults, a shy teenage boy journeys into the undiscovered country of a car full of girls, an embittered boy-band veteran spills his secrets, a quest for Bigfoot goes awry, and heavy rains bring something toothier than flowers into bloom.

"If you were to triangulate between funny, creepy and melancholy, you would find Scott Phillips there, waiting for a bus." -- Nathan Long, author of the Blackhearts series

"With his goofball characters, ear for quirky dialogue, and always-colorful turns of phrase, Scott Phillips is like a modern beat writer -- tempered with postmodern sensibilities and a generous dash of observational comedy... But that's just an erudite, flashy way of saying that no one makes me laugh louder or harder than Scott Phillips." -- Brian Jay Jones, author of Washington Irving

"Oddball, funny, poignant -- all descriptions of stories from the delightfully twisted mind of Scott Phillips." -- Robert E. Vardeman, author of Burn the Sky

"Scott can write. His narrative blasts and rattles down the road, chasing rabbits and stray chickens out of its path, while his dialogue sprays the countryside like full-automatic fire." -- Victor Milan, from his Introduction

Tales of Misery and Imagination is 156 pages, perfect bound.

So there you have it. Now you can be one of the first humans on the planet to own a copy of this book, and your patronage will be greatly appreciated.

I tell you, the future is indeed wild. I think it was sometime in March that I had lunch with Vic Milan and the subject of self-publishing came up. Here it is just a couple months later and I'm holding a copy of Tales of Misery and Imagination in my hands -- and the damn thing looks like a book. I think I'm gonna sleep with it under my pillow tonight.

Update of Misery and Imagination.

That proof copy of Tales of Misery and Imagination is being printed as I type this. Should be here within the next few days.

Since I'm not sure how long it'll be before the book is available via Amazon and other sources, I'll probably make some copies available myself once I've got 'em in hand. It'll be a PayPal thing, where folks what wants it can make a payment to my email address. If the proof copy is mistake-free, I anticipate having actual copies of the book very soon.

And of course, if you order them directly from me then a much bigger chunk of the money goes into my pocket. My pockets love bigger chunks of the money.

Nearing actual book-ness!

I'm absolutely certain that I've done something wrong somewhere in the process, but as of a few minutes ago, the cover and interior of Tales of Misery and Imagination was uploaded to Lightning Source, the POD service I'm using for the book. I ordered a proof, which should be here soon, just because ya gotta give the whole shebang one last once-over in printed form before you commit, right?

So big thanks to Keith Rainville for putting the book together, to Victor Milan for writing a cool introduction, and to Nathan Long, Bob Vardeman and Brian Jay Jones for providing incredibly kind cover blurbs (Brian's ended up inside the book because he's really long-winded). Now I just hope the folks will dig the read.

Speaking of that cover, I wanted to talk a little about the decision-making process involved there: Keith came up with several different ideas for the cover, from which I selected my three favorites. Keith -- who is significantly smarter (or at least more wily) than I am -- pointed out that he had approached the design process with the notion that most people would be seeing the book via online retailers, rather than sitting on store shelves, and with that in mind he came up with designs that would stand out when reduced down to the size of a normal image on the average Amazon page. After I made my three choices, he mocked up Amazon pages using those designs, and the one I posted a few days ago just popped like crazy. And what the hell, I'm gonna post it again, with the back cover included this time:

I'll let you know how the proof copy looks. If it's good to go, then I should have copies of the book in hand within a couple weeks. Not sure how long it'll take to show up on Amazon and other online sources, but rest assured, you'll hear about it when it happens.

Dog day.

In a Victor Milan-like move, Jen and I took the dogs -- Casey, Decker, and Pat and Scott's dog Einstein -- on a walk along the irrigation ditches today. Decker (the Chihuahua) got pooped out and jumped in the ditch to cool off, so we got to see her swim around a little. Jen estimates the walk at a hair under 4 miles, which is pretty major for a little Chihuahua, but Decker kept up with the big dogs for the most part -- she had one moment where she just flopped on the ground and looked at me like "Man, we could've been sitting on the couch!"

Anyway -- the walk jarred loose a couple ideas for the new book I started writing last week. I ain't saying what it is just yet, other than that it's kind of a departure for me. I think it's gonna be pretty funny, though.

Meanwhile, Keith Rainville reports that he'll be sending me the complete interior pages for Tales of Misery and Imagination within the next few days. Once that's been proofread, we'll be very close to going to print.

Not dead.

Sorry about not posting for what, over a month now? I'll just say there's been a shift in the ol' paradigm or some goddamn thing over here and leave it at that.

Meanwhile, here's some news:

Tales of Misery and Imagination: The collection of short stories is coming along nicely. Keith Rainville is doing a terrific job of putting the thing together. And just for the heck of it, here's an advance look at the cover:

Not exactly sure when the book will be available, but I'm guessing it'll be before the end of June.

Kamen Rider Dragon Knight: The CW Network is re-running the first 15 episodes now. When they hit #16, it'll be a straight shot all the way through episode 40. The toys hit store shelves soon!

And just for an added bonus (and because Bob Vardeman suggested it), how about a review from my book Unsafe On Any Screen? If you like it, there's plenty more where it came from and all you've gotta do is head over to Amazon.com and order a copy of the book (there's even a handy link over there on the right).

THE CURIOUS DR. HUMPP (1967)

If you like naked women with your monsters (and who doesn't?), then this oddball Argentinean flick is just what the... well, what the doctor ordered. In a montage of horror (or something kind of like it), we see a creepy monster chloroform a pair of young lovers, who are then stuffed into the back of a station wagon by a bunch of guys in funny hoods (who strangely resemble Russian helicopter pilots). Then we’re treated to some funky four-way action, which includes a healthy dose of lesbianism (along with some seriously out-of-control pubic hair). These freethinking kids become the next victims of the clunky creature. The beast then turns its attentions to a lonely gal who is caught jiggling her giggler whilst perusing her collection of guy-porn. Next on the agenda is a saucy stripper at a popular club, where the monster actually takes a seat at a table and waits for the girl to shuck before running off with her!

A reporter visits the puzzled cops, offering his theory that the kidnappings are the work of a mad scientist who "was seeking a way by sex to improve our species." We then meet Dr. Humpp himself, who looks like he’s waiting for the next party at the Playboy Mansion. Looking in on the kidnap victims, he gives his hot nurse orders on their care: "the new arrivals -– the hippies. Put 'em together in one room and let them keep their grass." Humpp's plan is to turn humans into "veritable screwing machines" with the help of his guitar-strumming, googly-eyed monster henchman, who wears metal shoes and a nerdy sweater.

Aided by the bartender from the strip club, the reporter and the cops finally make some headway in the case, mostly by hanging around drugstores and waiting for Humpp and the monster to buy aphrodisiacs. An Italian brain in a jar offers advice to Humpp, who ignores most of it and simply does things his way, which of course leads to his downfall. Chock full of nudity and filth and seemingly edited by a one-eyed monkey with a roll of scotch tape, The Curious Dr. Humpp is a fine way to spend an evening.

Apes: *** Bourbon: *****

"Three Masters spawned from one Hellish seed..."

The long-awaited Don Dohler documentary Blood, Boobs & Beast is finally on its way from Netflix. You know what I'm doing this weekend.

Everything is moving steadily along on Tales of Misery and Imagination. The stories are in the hands of Keith Rainville, and I also delivered my dorky foreword for the book. Working on a couple other things and waiting on Victor Milan to deliver his introduction (I swear that's not a hint, Vic!). I'm supposed to talk to Keith this weekend to hash out some of the details, but everything looks good at the moment.

Meanwhile, I've been working on the never-ending task of straightening up my office. One of the things I have to do before I can make any further progress is sort and file all of my old writing stuff -- and believe me, there are boxes and boxes of it, dating back to the early 1980s. I'm astonished how many treatments, pitches and full-blown scripts I've written over the years, and the best part is that some of it is pretty dang good. There are things in there I completely forgot about, like the treatments written when I worked at Full Moon Entertainment in 1999 (those don't really fall into the "pretty dang good" category, however). I even found the nonsensical narration I was asked to write for the flashback/stock-footage-from-The-Vikings sequence in Totem -- where the ridiculous title of this post comes from. I've only skimmed the surface of going through all this junk, and it's a pretty time-consuming task, so I don't expect to be finished with it anytime soon.

In fact, I'd better get back to it.