Middle-aged men seem to like my one novel, The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy. This makes sense since I’m a middle-aged (or slightly older) guy and the narrator is a middle-aged man looking back on an event from decades ago. That approach might not appeal as much to women who seem to read most romantic comedies as it does for a middle-aged man, but I understand that.
I know The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy has some appeal to middle-aged men because middle-aged men have finished reading the book and sometimes finish it kind of quickly. They’ve also been initiating conversations with me about it after they’ve read it.
Honestly, I was expecting to get no reaction from people who bought (or were given) my book. I figured most people were being polite and would just put the book someplace and let it disappear after a while.
Now that I’m sure that The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy has a target audience, I wonder how to get more middle-aged men to read the book. As much as I like my orange book cover, I can see that it might not have the greatest appeal to the average middle-aged (or slightly older) male reader.
I was thinking of maybe changing the cover illustration to a more Frank Frazetta-ish style.
Frank Frazetta was an illustrator known for his paintings of heroic fantasy images. Most of my favorite fantasy and sword & sorcery books that I bought in the 1970s and 1980s had Frank Frazetta covers. Sometimes I would knowingly buy a crappy book just because Frank Frazetta had done the cover. Most of the middle-aged (or slightly older) men who’ve read The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy know who Frank Frazetta was… but I don’t think it’s necessary information for you to know in order to enjoy reading The Sunset Rises.
Frank Frazetta died about 15 years ago, so I can’t hire him to illustrate a new version of my book cover. Even if he were still alive, I probably wouldn’t be able to afford his services. I’m doing okay financially (for now), but I’m not sure I’m doing that okay.
Even though a Frank Frazetta type cover might attract a subgroup of middle-aged men (and maybe even some young men), it would probably turn off a bunch of potential female readers. I’m not 100% sure of that, but I’m pretty close to sure. A few women have read The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy, and the response has been more mixed (a combination of no reactions, positive reactions, and a couple accusations of my being misogynistic). Since middle-aged men have been more consistent, I’m confident they could be my target audience.
Just so middle-aged male readers know, there are no explicitly sexual scenes in The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy. I’m sorry if that disappoints any potential readers. There is one ‘turn off the lights’ scene that almost gets explicit, and there are a bunch of sexual references and innuendoes, but I’ve seen worse (‘worse’ might not be the right word, but you know what I mean) in mainstream romance novels. And don’t get me started about what I’ve seen in ‘romanticies.’
I probably should have figured out my target audience before I published my book, but I do things out of order sometimes. The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy is probably the only novel that I’m going to write, so I have the rest of my life to market/sell it. It’s not like I’m moving on to another novel that I’m selling in six months. This is a one-of-a-kind book, so I can take my time.
By the way, I’m probably not going to change my book cover.
Hey middle-aged (or slightly older) men, you might like my one book, The Sunset Rises, A 1990s Romantic Comedy!
*****
A grammar-obsessed English teacher falls in ‘luuuvvv’ but discovers how chaotic and dangerous ‘luuuvvv’ can be.
The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy
Get a signed copy of my one and only novel, The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy! My handwriting is actually legible! Free delivery in the United States!
$10.00
Or you can buy a copy here on Amazon!
Not sure? Read a sample chapter of The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy.
Wednesday afternoons in 1979 were great because that was when the local convenience store would get its weekly supply of new comic books (this was before comic book stores were a thing). For a brief time in 1979, my older brother’s comic strip Calloway the Castaway also appeared in the local newspaper which also came out on Wednesdays. Even though I hated 8th grade, I always looked forward to Wednesday afternoons.
For more, go to The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 1!
And come back next week for The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 7!
As an introvert, talking to other people is exhausting for me, but it doesn’t help that most people think I’m boring. People aren’t usually bold enough to tell me to my face (only a couple individuals have ever done that), but I can tell. My voice is monotone. I can belabor a topic. When I start talking, people around me start yawning (or try to suppress the yawn).
Since I’m aware that I’m boring, I have consciously figured out ways to NOT put people to sleep. That’s an advantage I have over other boring people. A lot of boring people aren’t even aware of their dull nature. I’m not the most scintillating conversationalist, but I at least pick up on the non-verbal signals of those around me. I notice the yawns and see the glances at watches and cell phones. And I take those cues as unintended insults. So when I have to make small talk, I have four techniques that I use to try to hide the fact that I’m boring.
ASK QUESTIONS
People love talking about themselves. Whenever I see an acquaintance nodding off during a conversation, I ask a question. A question, even a stupid one, keeps people’s attention. “How are you today?” is a boring question, so I replace it with something topical like, “Did the traffic suck today, or what?” I also ask “What do you think about ____________ ?” questions. For example, I might ask:
“What do you think about that rigged NFL game last night?”
“What do you think about that new James Patterson book with the one-page chapters?”
“What do you think about that modern remake of Welcome Back, Kotter?”
That’s the good thing about questions. Once I ask a good question, I usually don’t have to say anything else. Nobody knows I’m boring.
Asking questions also makes people think that I’m interested in them. I’m not, but it helps if they think I am. People are more tolerant of a boring guy if they think the boring guy is interested in them.
KEEP IT SHORT
People have short attention spans, and it gets worse when you’re a naturally boring person.
When I start to lose somebody’s attention (and I’ve already asked my good question), I just say something like, “I’ve got to get something to drink,” and move on. That way I don’t have the chance to be boring.
Supposedly P.T. Barnum said, “Always leave them wanting more.”
P.T. Barnum wasn’t a boring guy. For me, it’s, “Leave them before they get bored.”
TALK ABOUT FOOTBALL
In school, I was a borderline social outcast until I learned to start talking about football. Once I did, I became accepted by jocks, wannabe jocks, and nerds too. Well, I was always accepted by nerds because I was one, but that’s not the point. Even though I still wasn’t invited to the cool parties, I could show up without getting kicked out… as long as I talked about football (and NOT about comic books or role playing games).
If sports aren’t your thing, you can substitute movies, television shows, or even… politics… if you want to throw a stink bomb into your social situation. But don’t talk about books. Most people think books are boring.
TELL STORIES
Even people who are bored by tedious details will listen to stories. The great orators use narratives as metaphors for the points they’re trying to make. The stories are almost always lies, but the audience usually falls for them. Before I got married and had kids, I used to tell outrageous stories about my personal life, and I was stunned by how many people actually believed my stories were true. I guess it’s tough to tell when a guy with a monotone voice is lying.
So basically, if you tell really short stories about relationships and ask a question every once in a while, then you probably won’t be boring. When I got married, I stopped telling outrageous stories about my personal life, but now that I’m on my own again, I might have go back to them.
Speaking of outrageous stories, here’s my latest.
*****
Every once in a while, I check to see if I’m still a boring guy. I deviate from my own rules and just start talking about what I want to talk about. Sure enough, within seconds people around me start yawning. I just have to accept that I’m a boring guy when I talk. The best that I can do is follow my four tips and hope that nobody realizes I’m a boring guy. I guess it’s okay to be boring as long as nobody else knows about it.
*****
Here are more Introvert’s Guides!
The Introvert’s Guide To Protesting
The Introvert’s Guide To Talking Politics
The Introvert’s Guide To Reading During The Holidays
The Introvert’s Guide To Dating
The Introvert’s Guide to Partying
The Introvert’s Guide To Saying No
*****
A grammar-obsessed English teacher falls in ‘luuuvvv’ but discovers how chaotic and dangerous ‘luuuvvv’ can be.
The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy
Get a signed copy of my one and only novel, The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy. My handwriting is actually legible, but I’m left-handed, so I might smudge my signature sometimes. Free delivery in the United States!
$20.00
Or you can buy a copy here on Amazon!
Not sure? Read a sample chapter of The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy.
My older brother was probably the biggest influence on me during my childhood in the 1970s. He collected comic books, so I started collecting comic books. He read science fiction and fantasy, so I started reading the same genres. He liked drawing, so I started drawing.
When my brother became fascinated with the four-panel comic strip, however, I just kept on drawing other stuff like superhero poses and miniature comic books. I liked four-panel comic strips. I read them every day in the newspaper, and I bought the occasional Peanuts paperback or B.C collection. But I never tried drawing four-panel comic strips.
When he was 20, my brother drew a comic strip for our local weekly newspaper. Even though I thought it was cool, I never tried to do my own comic strip. Coming up with a four-panel joke/story was too complicated for me. But that’s for another blog post.
Come back next week for The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 6.
For more “Calloway the Castaway,” go to The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 1!
I don’t condone Artificial fiction, but if I did (and I don’t), I’d like to see what A.I. could do with the works of 1930s pulp fiction writer Robert E. Howard.
Robert E. Howard was hitting his stride (in my opinion) as a writer when he died in 1936 at the age of 30 (and I’ll leave it at that). Reading his stories can be frustrating because readers can see flaws in his writing but a lot of potential, and we wonder what he would have accomplished if he had lived ten or twenty or thirty (you get the idea) years longer.
Robert E. Howard’s most famous character is Conan the barbarian (or Conan the Cimmerian), and over the last several decades, many authors who are not Robert E. Howard have tried writing their own Conan stories. Some of these stories aren’t necessarily bad, but any Conan story that isn’t written by Robert E. Howard is just about some other barbarian who happens to also be named Conan. Even the Conan in comic books isn’t quite the same as Robert E. Howard Conan.
Robert E. Howard wrote some decent adventure stories and horror stories and boxing stories and even some westerns. My favorites, though, are his sword & sorcery stories. Very few authors can get the right combination of adventure, battle, horror, and magic/sorcery (and sometimes sexuality) necessary in a good sword & sorcery story (I think Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane stories come the closest).
I’m not saying A.I. would do a good job with Robert E. Howard. I’m betting the A.I stories would be a mess. To be fair, many of Robert E. Howard’s stories were messy, written more like rough drafts than final copies, but they were still definitely Robert E. Howard, and the stories were still entertaining.
I’m not sure there’s any other story quite like “Red Nails.” The same goes for other Robert E. Howard Conan stories like “Beyond the Black River” or maybe even “The People of the Black Circle.” Even some of his non-Conan stories are unique (as far as I know). I don’t think there’s anything else quite like “Kings of the Night” or “Worms of the Earth.” I’d be interested to see what A. I. could come up with if it spun together a new Conan story or even a new mash up of all of Robert E. Howard’s genres.
Of course, it would be a mess. But I’d still like to read it.
As I’ve stated earlier, I’m not a fan of Artificial Intelligence being used in fiction. I don’t want A. I. to steal from current authors because they (and their corporate publishers) should benefit from the authors’ hard work. But dead authors whose copyrights have expired or whose rights are owned by corporations that had nothing to do with the original work? Let’s see what happens! It could be kind of fun.
For more about Robert E. Howard and/or sword & sorcery see…
The Famous Author Who Thought His Stories Were Junk
Robert E. Howard’s Letter to Two Nerds in the 1930s
What was the deal with…? Bloodstone by Karl Edward Wagner
****
Was my novel A. I. generated, or did I write it myself? There’s only one way for you to figure that out.
*****
A grammar-obsessed English teacher falls in ‘luuuvvv’ but discovers how chaotic and dangerous ‘luuuvvv’ can be.
The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy
Get a signed copy of my one and only novel, The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy. Free delivery in the United States!
$20.00
Or you can buy a copy here on Amazon!
Not sure? Read a sample chapter of The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy.
When my older brother found the original artwork from his 1979 comic strip “Calloway the Castaway,” a few of the originals were missing. Fortunately, my brother had clipped out his comic strips from the local weekly newspaper back then and made a mini-scrapbook of them, which he also boxed with the originals. Without this scrapbook, we would be missing key episodes in his short comic strip run.
This explains the yellowish color of the next couple episodes.
For more “Calloway the Castaway,” go to The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 1!
And come back next week for The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 5!
Whenever anybody asks me about what kind of books I like, I say, “Good books.”
That might sound like a cop-out, but it isn’t. Instead of being stuck on one genre, I’d rather rather read the best books of every genre. But where do you start with that? A few years ago, I started rating books by genre with Best Books Ever by Genre!!! Part 1, but I never started Best Books by Genre!!! Part 2.
No list of genres in America is complete without the western. A common complaint about westerns is that so many of them are so similar, but that complaint works for just about any genre. That’s why I don’t stick to one genre when I read, I guess: once you’ve read a few books in one genre, you’ve read them all. Still, I needed a criteria with which to judge westerns if I’m going to complete my best book by genre list. And so I started with actor John Wayne.
John Wayne says Hondo by Louis L’Amour is the best western that he has ever read. If anybody knows westerns, it’s John Wayne. He’s kind of biased, though. John Wayne starred in Hondo the movie, so John Wayne had better have liked the book. It’s possible that John Wayne lied about having read Hondo (people lie about the books they’ve read all the time), but in this case I’ll take his word for it.
Then there’s Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. Lonesome Dove won (I mean, ‘was awarded’) the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1986, so the book has to be pretty good in some way. Yeah, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winners can be kind of questionable (that’s for another blog post), but at the very least, a novel that has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction has some literary value.
The western is a tough genre for me to rate because I haven’t read many of them, so whose opinion should I value more when it comes to novels in the western genre, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction or John Wayne’s?
Books that win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction tend to be pretty good. I’m not sure that books recommended by John Wayne are rated quite so highly. I’ve never seen John Wayne’s Reading List. Maybe he was a voracious reader, and I just don’t know it. Either way, I’m not going to argue with him about what a good western is. If he says Hondo is the best western he’s ever read, I’m going to believe that Hondo is at least pretty good.
*****
Two Dysfunctional Book Reviews for the price of one:
Lonesome Dove is a Pulitzer Prize winning version of a western. It’s long, almost a thousand pages, and I was bored a few times but not very often. Most of the characters, plots, and subplots are interesting. My only real complaint is that the author gets a little condescending with his characters (almost like he’s winking to reader about how dumb a few of them are), but that obviously didn’t bother the Pulitzer voters.
Hondo is a pretty good book. I finished it quickly. I didn’t get bored. The characters faced several interesting moral dilemmas, especially in the last third of the book. I’d recommend it as a quick read.
I’m not a fan of the western as a genre, but I liked these two books. As far as I’m concerned, both John Wayne and the Pulitzer Prize committee did okay with these choices. Still, if I had to choose, I’d go with Hondo. It’s a western’s western, as opposed to being a western written for readers who don’t like westerns. Plus, John Wayne liked it.
*****
Read more Literary Combat:
Ender’s Game vs. The Hunger Games vs. A Game of Thrones
Dr. Seuss vs. Stephen King! The Battle of the Self-Banned Books
A Time To Kill vs. To Kill A Mockingbird
*****
I’m pretty sure that neither John Wayne nor any Pulitzer Prize for Fiction voters have read my book.
A grammar-obsessed English teacher falls in ‘luuuvvv’ but discovers how chaotic and dangerous ‘luuuvvv’ can be.
The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy
Get a signed copy of my one and only novel, The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy. My handwriting is actually legible, but I’m left-handed, so I might smudge my signature sometimes. Free delivery in the United States!
$20.00
Or you can buy a copy here on Amazon!
Not sure? Read a sample chapter of The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy.
When my brother was 20 in 1979, he drew a four-panel comic strip for our weekly, local newspaper. After decades of being lost (‘lost’ as in stored in a box buried in a pile of boxes in a garage) for decades, the original artwork of these comic strips has finally been found.
I’m getting a kick out of putting these on my own blog. I’m just hoping that the local, weekly newspaper doesn’t try to hunt me down and collect a fee. I’m not even sure that the local, weekly newspaper even exists anymore.
Here is Episode 3 of The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway”:
To start at the beginning, go to The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 1.
And come back next week for The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 4!
When I began reading Murderers’ Row by Donald Hamilton, I wasn’t expecting the highest quality espionage literature of the 1960s. In fact, I was pretty sure that I was in for some low quality writing. But I wasn’t expecting a rape joke.
And I wasn’t expecting a rape joke directed at a female character.
And I wasn’t expecting the female character to like the rape joke.
Of course, I should have known better. Murderers’ Row came out in 1962. I’ve read (and written about)several books from that time period and some of the… questionable stuff… that happened. Here are a couple examples:
Bad Lessons in Famous Books: The Carpetbaggers by Harold Robbins
The Golden Hawk by Frank Yerby- Uh,… isn’t that rape?
Now we have Murderers’ Row starring Matt Helm. Matt Helm was the cheap American knock off of James Bond in the early 1960s. Matt Helm books were quick, action-packed, and didn’t bother with stuff like descriptions of exotic cars, exotic places, and exotic women. The best part about Matt Helm books, though, is that he doesn’t play cards. I don’t know how many James Bond novels I stopped reading because I got tired of reading multiple pages of card game ‘action’ sequences.
The plot in this Matt Helm book Murderers Row isn’t really worth describing (and it would probably make the book worse if I tried). In the scene posted below, Helm has been captured by the femme fatale who had slipped a mickey into Helm’s drink. That by itself shows what a lousy spy Matt Helm is: he fell for the mickey in his drink. I’m the most gullible guy around, and even I know not to accept a drink from the femme fatale. I don’t even try to slip a mickey into the femme fatale’s drink because I know she’s slick enough to switch drinks on me when she displays her… aw, never mind.
Let’s just say I never would have made a good spy.
Anyway, in this scene Helm is stuck with a damsel in distress and trying to figure a way out:
*****
“I-I’ll always be grateful. If- if we get out of this, I’ll show you how grateful I am,” she murmured, clinging to my arm.
“Cut it out,” I said. “Don’t strain my self-control. I might get ideas and rape you right now.”
That brought a startled little giggle from her. After a moment, she said, “Well, go ahead. There isn’t much else to do in this dismal box of a cabin…”
*****
And just in case you don’t believe me…
I wasn’t alive yet in 1962. Maybe the word ‘rape’ had a playful connotation to it that I don’t know about. Words sometimes change meaning over time, and maybe ‘rape’ is one of those words. I admit, I have astonishing gaps in my knowledge, and this could be one of those examples. I could be the only book blogger who doesn’t know that ‘rape’ once had a playful connotation to it. But I don’t think that’s the case.
People my age often gripe about how ‘soft’ younger generations are and how younger folk are too sensitive and are too easily offended. I kind of agree with that sentiment sometimes, but then I’ll read an excerpt from an old book or see a scene from a decades old movie, and I’ll think, “Yeah, that kind of attitude maybe needed to go.”
*****
My own book might have a couple insensitive moments, but there aren’t any rape jokes.
*****
A grammar-obsessed English teacher falls in ‘luuuvvv’ but discovers how chaotic and dangerous ‘luuuvvv’ can be.
The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy
Get a signed copy of my one and only novel, The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy. My handwriting is actually legible, but I’m left-handed, so I might smudge my signature sometimes. Free delivery in the United States!
$20.00
Or you can buy a copy here on Amazon!
Not sure? Read a sample chapter of The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy.
When my older brother was 20, he drew a four-panel comic strip for our local weekly newspaper. He’s always downplayed it, but I thought it was pretty cool. For years, he thought he had lost the originals to his comic strip, but he recently found them buried in a stack of boxes in his garage. I think I was more thankful than he was; I’ve been wanting to read these again for decades.
Here’s Week 2 of “Calloway the Castaway,” the long lost comic strip from 1979!
For more, go to The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 1!
And come back next week for The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 3.
Dysfunctional Literacy 