Small authors are stalking you.

The thing about being a nobody writer is that in slow times, the KIndle unlimited reports occasionally imply the reading path of a single reader. It's a bit creepy in a way, but fascinating. If I am to draw the simplest conclusions based on how many pages have been read of which book, it would appear that someone in the states had a slow start to my first book,, Lifehack, but picked up speed, dong the bulk of it yesterday and the day before, them moving right on to my 2nd book, Watching Yute. Yute has A very different tone, but it has not slowed them down. (Again, I'm drawing conclusions COULD be 1000 readers each reading one page, then moving on, or 250 people reading 4 pages, etc, etc, but I think my initial conclusions are pretty likely.) I worry that Yute's vastly different (and depressing!) low-action tone would turn off people who just finished blowing up 2 cities worth of zombies, but, my new reader seems to be into it. There is an urge to lean over their shoulder and see where they are exactly, and gush. "Ooh, see that part? She was implying... oh, you got that? Good. Ooh, this next part is good, READ IT REALLY HARD! I'll hold your hand if you need support." A small writer very much appreciates support, (and good lord, a review?? That can make a month!) but the little ones are watching from the corner when you wander into their shop. They dearly hope you enjoy whatever little candy you pick up, and would treasure feedback if it was a little too sweet? Oh, you would have liked a stronger hint of raspberry? The gooey centre could have been bigger? Would that have been too overt? I don't want to diminish it by putting in too much, but Ohh yes, the middle can be... SO GOOD. Did you rush in for it? Did you savour the outer layers? They were there for your pleasure, to complete the experience.

Rubberman's Exodus is at 30%... and what's with my series' consistency?

I've been fortunate enough that the majority of reviews for my books (as few as they have been compared to many books) have been positive. By one means or another, (and/or an updated cover) my first book remains my most popular.

Among the handful of reviews that are not-so-positive, pops up a notion now and then that "It started out good, and then..."

Yeah, I get that, I can see why that can happen. Lifehack was born from a set of four not-so-short stories. In the first one, our hero is mostly alone, doing a typical survival v zombies thing.

After the first quarter of the book, (passing from story 1 to story 2) she is basically rescued, much less alone, no longer living in that oppressive claustrophobic threat that seems to be a mainstay of typical zombie fare.

Around here, there's a bit of a shift into ROMCOM territory. And people looking for a ZOMBIE BOOK... are prone to get turned off. The other side of the coin is that people not really into general zombie stuff have really enjoyed it.

I warn people as such... "If you're a big zombie book fan, this isn't it." I don't dwell on gore nearly as much. It's there, it impacts our hero, but I don't feel the need to run the readers' faces in it.

The tonal shift from the first quarter to the rest of the book comes down to the book not being grounded in one consistent theme in some ways. First-book-itis, maybe.

This inconsistent tone is also reflected in the Lifehack series as a whole. The following book, Watching Yute, is drastically different. There are some zombies in it, but they barely muster a side-story, with the nanotech aspect being the bigger threat.... and in much more subtle/tangential ways. The book is also a huge downer, on purpose. I love it, it wrecks me. But it's a HARD turn from the hijinks of LIfehck

Then the series caps off with Echeos of Erebus. The hijinks get ramped back up a bit, the depressing bits get toned down, and we end up with a sort of balance of action/drama between former 2 books, Then glaze it with extra nanites.


As a series, my first 3 books weren't planned very well. I still like the books, and the world they formed, but it didn't help foster a readership that could justifiably be off-put by the drastically shifting tone from one book to the next.

AS SUCH- the Rubberman series was planned and laid out from the start with a skeletal framework that could host several stories that felt more consistently .... related to each other. As I write book 3 of Rubberman, (Rubberman's Exodus) there is going to be a dramatic shift- but it was planned all along. I've just passed what will probably be the 1/3 mark in the book, and I'm writing the beginning of that shift.

10 years down the road, will I be seeing reviews saying "Huh, Exodus started OK, but..."? Well, too bad. Can't please everyone. And there HAS to be some shifts in tone. Consistency for consistency's sake would be dull. Rubberman's Citizens is a little bit of an outlier from the bulk of the series, with a handful more action, and taking place mainly in one section of the series' 'geography'.

There's a balance to be had. Will the balance I settle on please everyone?

Absolutely not.

Will my next series have a balance that pleases everyone?

 Absolutely not.

Am I going to let that keep me up at night?

Guess.

.

Contact in the dark. Rubberman's Exodus WIP fresh section

Fresh section, checking in on a couple of side-characters during the blackout. This isn't edited much, and could likely change by the final book.

---------------

“Contact?” Gabe called into Contact's dark office, “Are you here?”

“Gabe is that you?” Sounds of Contact fumbling to stand accompanied that of a cup falling to the ground, then rolling away. “Get these lights on!”

“I... I'm sure Messenger is working on it, Contact.”

“Have we asked him? Properly?”

“I'm not sure where he is. What... what do you mean by asking him properly?”

Contact scoffed. “In recent years, I've seen people addressing the Messenger with less reverence than is proper for the servant of the Great Actual. This is all a warning! A punishment! We must throw ourselves before Messenger and beg for forgiveness!”

“I'm not sure-”

“I blame that Lenth! A mere Subject, and-”

“Contact, the Messenger seems to favour Lenth well enough, if Lenth were to blame-”

“Whatever! It's not right! He's a problematic sort!”

Gabe sighed. “Contact, the reason I'm here is just to make you aware that several Subjects are out of their Units. It seems that in light of this unexpected blackout, some Managers have decided-”

“They're loose!? Subjects running around loose!?” Staggered footsteps could be heard in Contact's direction, going nowhere very quickly.

“None of them are above Manager level right now, and they're peaceful. It's only a dozen or two. It's not like Citizenry's spilled out.”

Contact let out a horrified gasp, and then a moment of silence.

“Contact? Are you a-”

“Has anyone checked that Citizenry is secure?!”

“From the Grand Elevator shaft, things seem quiet,” Gabe said.

“This is all unacceptable! Find Messenger! Politely! Now!”

Gabe sighed. Again. “All right. Stay safe here, okay, Contact? I'll... make sure I post a Provider near your door to keep problematic sorts away from you.”

“Post two!”

“Sure.”

“Four?”

“Sure.”

“And do we know where those shock-sticks are?”

“Four guards with shock-sticks. I'll see what I can do.”

“Good, good. You're a good man, Gabe.”

“Sure.”

Corvid (NOT COVID! BECAUSE!!!) total giveaway mar 19-24

Corvid (You heard me) giveaway! All my books, free for kindle users (which is a free app also) starting FRIDAY, March 19^th, though to TUESDAY March 24. (Except Rubberman's Citizens, which is only eligible for 19^th-20^th, due to a recent giveaway) -oh, and as always, they're on kindle unlimited for those who have that, and miss the giveaway, or just wanna credit me some points.. :P

https://www.amazon.com/Joseph-Picard/e/B002LPT7VA/

SO, this entails the entire Lifehack series including the short Cassidy's Ladder, the Rubberman series as it exists thus far, and The Many Grape.. glib descriptions:

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Lifehack: Girl meets nano-controlled zombies, doesn't like em. Meets another girl, other girl doesn't like HER, love, death, techno zoms. My zombie stories aren't as gory as many zombie fans might like, tastes vary, many non-zombie readers have really enjoyed Lifehack.

Watching Yute: Lifehack's world, 2 years later. Different girl, melancholy angst, finds love, and more angst, and more angst. This is not a happy book. I love it, but people who need a happily ever after story can steer clear. Contains some zombie-type content, but not much, really. I guess they were feeling too angsty.

Cassidy's Ladder: A short story, with zero sci-fi, and zero zombies, that focuses on the main character dealing with all that sticky angst she was left with. For those who realllly need that happy ending. -although this can be read and make sense even if you haven't read Watching Yute

Echoes of Erebus: Last book in the Lifehack world. Another 2 years later. Different girl, who technically isn't a girl, trying to figure out what that means, and what to make of the fact that her dad/creator LIVES IN A CORNER OF HER BRAIN, and was responsible for all the zombie fun from Lifehack. And she's made largely from reconstituted fish bits. Zombie content: Notable. But moreso for zombie-related abomination thingies. May contain a talking lizard.

All of the above constitutes the entire Lifehack series. They can all be read independently and they make sense. On to the Rubberman series-

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Rubberman's Cage: Boy grew up in an environment about the size of a house with 3 Brothers and a guy in a rubber suit in his ceiling who controls their daily routine. And that was all he knew to exist. A couple of people die, hero goes exploring through what turns out to be a 40 story deep facility that's been running independently for generations, resulting in fractured sub-cultures that all hold dear to their own versions of ignorance as to what's actually going on. And our hero learns about such crazy things like... like papayas, and elevators, and these lumpy men called …. wo-men. And somehow a tree is going to eat his Brother, but that's hard for him to get his head around.

Rubberman's Citizens: One of the areas in the Facility is the Citizenry. They were once the luckiest around, but over time, they've degraded into a brutal little society where systematic abuse is inescapable and expected. They used to lock everyone else in the facility out. Now everyone in the facility keeps them locked in. -but seeds of rebellion were bound to take root eventually. Leena leads against an increasingly insane local dictator, but keeping her friends and loved ones safe as the next dictatorship begins in the wake of the last one- will take some out-of-the-box thinking.

Rubberman's Exodus- SHUT UP, It's not done yet!

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Also in the giveaway is The Many Grape. It's really better in paper form, due to being made more than 50% of illustrations, but it's still readable if you click and zoom and all that junk as you go along. So what is it? I've been fOrTuNaTe enough to have done many a month of time in the hospital. Meals come on a tray, and on the tray is a packing slip. These packing slips are often worded in odd ways, such informing me I was getting ONE GRAPES. Or HALF BANANA. Not half A banana... but HALF BANANA. Begging the question, half banana and half WHAT? In response, I began doodling stupid little things on the packing slips to amuse myself in the short time between finishing the meal and the tray getting picked up. Th staff liked them, so... BOOK. In contains pictures of the packing slips and their defacement by me, and some kind of comment about it, and/or hospital life. It's a goofy little thing.

Rubberman's Exodus- the blackout falls upon Citizenry

First draft of the section where the inevitable blackout strikes, and the Citizenry section has to deal with it...
--------------------

Shrieks flooded the air in Citizenry. They knew the lights would dim, except those for the gardens, not now, gardens and all, darkness reigned.

"Cody?" Leena called out to her favourite, who she knew was still in the room.

"Leena, you okay?"

"Yeah. Must be everywhere, I hear a fuss out in commons."

"Bet some of those idiots are thinking this is the wrath of the Great Actual," Cody said, remembering the past rashes of zealotry that plagued Citizenry.

"Oh, no doubt he's involved in some way," Leena said, "but we don't need people freaking out over it."

"Yeah well, a bit of freaking out is maybe called for," Cody said with a hint of a tremble in his voice. "It wasn't supposed to be like this!" Indeed, the Citizens had never known such complete darkness. Yelling could be heard, though it sounded to be mostly confused yelling. People calling out to each other. So far nothing too horrible sounding.

Leena had found her way over to Cody, and gave him a hug. "I'm gonna go be leadrly or something. If you hear me hit a wall, try not to laugh too loudly."

"You're go...? Leena, the walkway is a heck of a drop to the Commons floor!"

"There's a railing. I'm only going that far."

Already, a couple of people could be heard walking up the walkway ramp to come see Leena, but she made it to her destination before they got to her. She faced out into the vast darkness, facing out across Commons, and called out, "Hey Citizens! It's Leena! How's it going?"

"How's it going?" Cody critiqued quietly.

"Can't see!" came a reply from a voice further down the ramp.

"It's dark!" came a voice from below.

"Ev... everyone remain calm!" Leena called out. Hearing the voices from unknown people that she couldn't track made her realize how vulnerable she was in the dark. If darkness like this had happened in more dangerous times in Citizenry, it would have been very, very bad. If any Citizens were inclined to behave very badly... this was the time to do it. "Citizens together!" she screamed out an old rallying cry.

"Citizens together!" Came a reply from the dark, then another.

Leena screamed out again, as she began carefully walking down the ramp. Replies of "Citizens together" came back in greater and greater numbers. On her way down the ramp, she pumped into a few people, and gently nudged them to come with her.

Before long, Leena was at the bottom of the ramp, with Cody by her side, and an unseen mass of rallied Citizens around her. The chant had fallen apart as the people down closer together talked in more normal volumes.

"People?" Leena called out. They knew her, and gradually hushed to hear better. "Kay, first of all, I love you people. Everyone safe?"

Agreeable mumbles came from every direction, punctuated by a "What's going on?" from someone.

"Don't know!" Leena said, "I guess the dimming thing went a bit extreme. I gotta talk to Messenger, which means I gotta get to the communication device which is in the the Grand Elevator loading bay."

A flurry of questions without answers came to Leena, to which she answered "I don't know yet" and variations thereof, which pretty much continued all the way to the Grand Elevator. Actually navigating there was an exercise of bumping into people, people's shacks, and a big garden box or two. A few surprised yelps from smacking into things, and Leena began to sense when she was close to something big. Things just sounded a little different. The ambient sound of Commons and its people were blocked, or reflected in ways she could navigate if she took things slow.

When she got to the loading bay, she found the communication box easily enough, careful not to change any of the knobs that she wouldn't be able to see to re-tune. A careful hand found the power switch and click! The unit's little lights came to life. Static began monitoring for Messenger. She got the handset, hit the button, and called, "Messenger, this is Citizenry. It's Leena. We're all kind of... a little freaked out right now. Everything went dark. You said dim. This is totally dark other than the communication box's lights." She let the button do the allow the static to resume, and give Messenger a chance to reply.

None came.

"Messenger?" She tried again. Murmurs of worried Citizens around her surged a little. "Shh," Leena requested of them.

"Messenger. Talk to me."

Silence.

"Lenth? You out there?"

Silence.

"Actual?”

Grease

The following micro-short was inspired partly by the youtube vid: https://youtu.be/_Axa2YXonYM - the graphic on it, largely. I wrote this as I listened to the music.

------------------------------

She stood on the rooftop, sucking back on an e-ciggy as I approached. “We're just grease,” she said. She was looking out to the horizon, and given her sunglasses, I barely knew she realized I was there.

“Grease?” I asked.

She stomped on the roof. “Building owned by millionaires.” She took her e-cig out of her mouth and held it up. “Sold to me by millionaires.” She took her sunglasses off and held them up. “Millionaires? Billionaires? It's sick.”

“Capitalism got ya down?” I chuckle.

She shook the e-cig and fiddled with it. “Piece of shit.” She tossed it down and ground it into the roof as if it were a normal cigarette. “And now I have to get another, pay my tribute to the gods of money, so I can get my next fix. And to give tribute to one millionaire, I need to work for another, doing work as a disposable, interchangeable commodity, like a can of spray grease.”

I looked her up and down. She stood like someone on a 15 minute break does. Tired, but 'active'. Still 'on', but aching to be 'off'.

“You're not disposable grease to me,” I offer.

She smirked, still facing the horizon. “We can be greasy together, and that makes it alright, huh?”

“It's something.”

“Until one of us gets sick.”

“I... we could manage easily enough.”

“But what if it's really sick?”

“We'll find a-”

“We're disposable, we're dime a dozen.”

“Hon... are you... sick?”

She crumbled into herself, shuddering, and went down the stairs. “...grease.”

Rubberman's Exodus- WIP excerpt

Third, and likely last book in the Rubberman series (previously known as Rubberman's Blackout) is coming along. Characters sometimes surprise a writer, and do- or become- things not originally intended. Sasha was intended to be an assistant to Tara, a lover, but not too deep... then I found out she was severely agoraphobic. That's already complicating things...

---------------------------------

That dark void stared back at Sasha as she forced herself to edge towards Tara. The sound of Tara striking with the pickaxe seemed distant. That void just seemed to go on forever. The light specks shimmered, some brighter, some darker, seemly swallowed into the nothing. Glittering as they tried to escape, but getting nowhere.

Dozens of them. Hundreds? Thousands?

How hungry was the void?

Sasha felt light-headed. The void seemed bigger and bigger the closer she got to the threshold. If she went much further, it would surround her. It would consume her, just like the glittering flecks up there. How long were they up there? Would they ever fall? Or be sucked away? Would the void bring her up there, and people would look up and see a fleck that once was Sasha? It all began to melt in her mind. She could feel cold on her cheeks where her tears had been falling.

"Sash!" And suddenly, she was safe, she was held. She surrendered to it, and gasped, only now realizing that she hadn't been breathing. The breathing came back riding trembling sobs.

"Sasha, let's get you out of here." Being guided by Tara's arm around her, Sasha turned to face away from the void, looking back across the storage bay. That much already helped immensely, but she knew that the void was right behind her.

"I didn't throw up." Sasha muttered. When did the drop that bucket, anyway? If she didn't notice that, maybe she threw up and didn't notice. She looked down on herself. Clean. She found her hands clasped together, with Tara's hand over them. "My hero," Sasha said meekly, disdain in her voice meant for herself.

"Sasha, Shush. Let's go find you a place to sit down."

"Did you finish the hole?"

"Pretty much."

"I was useless."

"Liar," Tara said.

Sasha was quick to respond, "Less than useless, I'm a burden."

"Shut up."

"I am."

"Stupid bitch," Tara said affectionately as she pulled Sasha closer for a squeeze, "Never a burden."

"Liar," Sasha echoed to Tara softly. She squeezed back hard, but over Tara's shoulder, that endless empty stared back at her. She forced herself not to sob harder, but her sharp inhalation gave Tara a clue to keep them moving. Away from the void of the big room.

"Break time," Tara declared. "Let's go lie down."

In a fairly large room Sasha hadn't seen yet, between the hallways toward Actual's rooms, and the big room, they found a sort of sofa Sasha could lie down on. There wasn't room for Tara, but she sat on the floor next to Sasha and leaned her head against Sasha's shoulder. "Should I get that bucket?"

"No, tummy's fine." Sasha reached out to find Tara's hand. "Well, that big void doesn't seem to bother you much," Sasha said. It was only now that Sasha noticed that this room had a big rolling door that looked suspiciously a lot like the one to the big room. The big room was so big, that this door almost certainly led to it as well.

"The 'big room' certainly is disconcerting," Tara said.

Sasha scoffed a small chuckle. "Disconcerting." She wanted to ask Tara how that endlessness didn't feel like it was trying to crush her. How the strange things in the ceiling that wasn't there didn't terrify her. How the looming return of that Enemy didn't make her want to take the Grand Elevator back to the bottom and hide under the bed. But she said none of it, and just squeezed Tara's hand. Tara brought Sasha's hand to her lips, and just rested them on the back of her hand. "Hon, hon, hon. Been a long day."

"Fuck yes," Sasha said in little more than a sigh.

Tara just kept her lips on Sasha's hand. They sat in silence and Sasha found herself melting into Tara's warm breath. It wasn't long before sleep found Sasha. Tara gently placed Sasha's hand up onto her, and stood. As she went into the central room again, Actual was nearby with a concerned expression. "She... is she all right?"