Month: October 2019

Nightmare in the Country

I had a long weekend with the magical girl, and one of the things we did while she was visiting was go to the Nightmare in the Country Scream Park, an annual attraction near Woodward, Oklahoma.

We had a lengthy drive to get to the place. I’d never been before and neither had she, so we didn’t know what to expect. In the end, I think it was more elaborate and impressive than we anticipated.

Nightmare in the Country is one of those haunted house walk-throughs in which people in makeup and costume jump out and try to startle you. I’ve been to some of these before and even participated in one once, but Nightmare in the Country is the most elaborate I’ve ever seen. It is constructed on a farm and opens annually for a few days in October. It has grown both in size and in popularity over the last few years. The creators promised that this year was much more elaborate than the years previous, and much more immersive.

Continue reading “Nightmare in the Country”

Amazon Censors ‘Rag & Muffin’

I’m just about finished with the current round of edits on Rag & Muffin. I’m currently on a long weekend from work, during which I’m entertaining my smol Asian gf. But I’m grabbing a few minutes here and there to put the polish on my manuscript.

Now about this post’s sensationalized headline: Amazon has come out with new “rules” that they will not allow book covers in which guns are firing, pointed at the viewer, or held by a minor.

That pretty much makes any conceivable cover art for Rag & Muffin impossible, since the book’s concept can’t be conveyed visually without an image of a minor holding guns. This is Minors Holding Guns: The Book.

And you can bet that Amazon will not be applying this rule to any big publishers. They won’t be banning manga. In fact, images of minors holding or firing guns are still easy to find on the platform:

Art from Gunslinger Girl depicting a young girl firing a submachine gun.
Still on Amazon.

This is obviously an excuse to crack down on indies and is likely a precursor to more aggressive censorship.

It’s worth testing how consistently Amazon can apply this rule, so I’d like to attempt to upload Rag & Muffin with relevant cover art. If the book gets rejected, my plan is to suggest to my publisher that we produce an image that says “BANNED BY AMAZON” in big letters, and put right in the book’s description that the content of the novel is too hot for Amazon to handle. Anyone who buys the book, either in print or digitally, will of course get the actual cover art.

Rag & Muffin
Phase:Proofing
Due:4 years ago
80%

‘Rag & Muffin’ Progress Update

I am currently finishing up Rag & Muffin, having received the initial comments from my editor. This is in a sense my “first novel,” which is why it has taken longer, and been more painful, to complete than Jake and the Dynamo was.

Even my editor found this project somewhat painful. As she told me when she sent her initial edits, the story is “unrelentingly dark,” though she also stated that “the mood and the background and the eeriness and the culture are all supremely well done.”

I can’t describe openly on the internet all the difficulty I went through to produce this manuscript, but I can say that it was a long, hard road, and I am glad to be nearly done with it.

I can’t give a release date for this, but I expect my final edits and submission to be done probably by the end of the month.

Rag & Muffin
Phase:Proofing
Due:4 years ago
50%

#Memes