Unveiling of my new book

Hey people, look!  I wrote a book!

You see that cover?  I designed that cover myself.  In MS paint, like a boss.  Using a free typefont from the internet called Press Start 2P.  It's really cool.  

So the cover was inspired by the "press start" screens of old 8-bit video game consoles, obviously.  Like this one.  

And this one.  

Isn't it cool?  I'm a writer now!  A real novelist!  Ha!  Do you see where it says "a novel?"  I have no idea why that is always there, but it's true!  It's cool!  Books! 

I haven't published it yet (on kindle, duh) because I want to make sure it's as professional as possible.  I want to start an ad campaign.  I want to promote it seriously.  I want people to read it because I think it's cool.  And I wrote it.  And I want to affect people.  

Affect?  Effect?  Both?

According to this image I found on google,

Both.  I'm going to take both.  

And get a green pill.

But that's beside the point.  The point is, I wrote a book!  Actually, it's my fourth.  But It's a book!  My fourth book in like, four months.  I type fast.  

Ultimate powers, engage!  

That's actually Andrew Hussie.  Author of homestuck.  In case you didn't know.  

And if you didn't, go read homestuck.  It's great.  It's about homes.  And stuck.  And intergalactic xenoromantic drama.  

So, what should you do?

Well, you should get my book on kindle, of course!  Once it's published.  You can get it then.  Maybe you'll see one of my ads.  'Cuz I am gonna get seribra.  

Serious, bra.  

People want disaster.

So I've discovered something.  Something amazing.  Something that will blow your mind.  Probably.  You know what, it might not.  In fact, it's pretty much common sense.

When people read, they want disaster.  Lots, and lots, of disaster.

They want death, destruction, pain, sadness, regret, loss, irreparable nerve damage.  

If you've noticed, you get the most involved in stories where bad things happen.  You are most tense when something is seriously at stake.  When disaster lingers over every corner.  When people shatter.  Buildings crash.  Things explode.  Plans unravel at their seams.  You want bad things to happen.  

Do you remember the last part of the Mockingjay, in the hunger games?  

Do you remember how intense it was?  How putting it down right after-

 Finnick dies was almost inconceivable?  How, after that one girl gets her face melted off, that no one could have gotten you to put the book down?  

You know how, in All Quiet on the Western Front, you come out with an almost shell-shocked sense of reality?  How you can't put it down because so many damn bad things happen?

In case you're wondering, my theory is that people like to experience bad things in book because it's a safe way for them to internalize solutions to deadly problems that other people have experienced, and I think it's an evolutionary adaptation that allows for intuitive internalization of lessons that others have learned though situations that would be terrible to put ourselves through.  In short, we like to learn how to survive in situations we might encounter in the future, however remote they might be.  Even if it means watching the death of that character.  We think "this is what I would have done to avoid this."  We simulate ourselves in the situations that the characters experience.  And thus, the book draws us in.  It is effective in its narrative. Not because of good character development.  Not because of good overall story arcs.  But because people are in danger and die.

And as such, as a writer, I will provide.  I will rip out your guts with my storytelling, so that you don't have to experience them ripped out of your body in real life.  I will kill people to show you how it's done.  

Here's my story idea.  

Zombies.

Air raids.

The Johnestown flood.

Fire.

A nuclear meltdown.

All in a single day, in a single chain of unfortunate events.  One after the other.  They all go down.  And everybody experiences it.  People will die.  Some might get torn apart by zombies.  Some might perish in the military bombing campaign.  Some might drown beneath a sixty-meter high wall of rushing water out of a broken dam.  Some might burn to a crisp in the oil-fed fires that coat the top of the water.  Some might die from radiation burns.  

And some might survive.  But they will never be the same.

It will be epic.  

What the toast, man?

Or woman?  Or any other of the bazillion gender types that are recognized in California?  What the actual buttered toast?  Look at this.
Just look at it.  No, no, to the right.

There, RIGHT THERE

Who are you?  Who is you?  Who am you?  Are you me?  No, you can't be, because I disabled the counting of my own views. 

I've come up with three possibilities, regarding who you are.  

Number one:  A heartless anti-copyright machine.

Watching me right now so that I don't copy the text of the entire Harry Potter series into this blog and claim it as my own.  

I can do it with some modifications, right?  Right, Hal?  I can--

Number two:  A crazy mind-blowing virus that I accidentally installed when I downloaded my child p--paintings that I drew way back in elementary school and were put up on the school website.  Look, they're right here.  Aren't I a good artist?

Ignore the signature in the corner, that is my pen name.  

So what does this virus want?  Does it want my sanity?  Does it want my money?  Well you can't have my money.  And I don't have any sanity to give, thank you very much.  Unless your concept of sane is different.  In which case, have away, I have plenty and to spare.  You evil, evil teasing virus that makes me think that I am important when I really am important.  I swear, I am.  I'm the secret king of the universe.  

Who only has one view on his blog pages.  I'm a sad secret king of the universe. 

Sitting up in my lonely chair being all sad.  

Number 3: A real, live breathing, living, eating, growing, excreting, breathing, seeing, thinking, excreting, I think I've run out of fingers to count on human.

In which case, hello.  My name is The Writer.  I'm a dingus.  Nice to meet you.  

After we shake hands, be sure to wash yours.  You never know where that guy's hand has been.  He's not me.  He's just a google stock photograph.  He's a human.  I'm a dingus.  The un-classifiable, unknown, totally mysterious lesser cousin of the Australian dingo.  Here's a dingo.  

He's not a dingus.  My really annoying aunt is his mother.  

So now that we've made our introductions, I'd like you to introduce yourself.  Who are you?  What do you want from me?  I'll never let you take me alive!  Mwahahaha. Ha.  

I am a very sad individual.  

I'm thinking about ...

Story ideas.  They're really kind of ...

Crazy.  Disjointed.  In that sort of place of your mind where anything and everything can happen, anywhere at all.  But at the same time, story ideas that pop into my head have reason.  They have source.  For example, I will watch

One morning, and read

(And hate on

because god, it was a horrible adaptation.  Why am I doing all of this in the morning?  I don't know.)

And my brain will be full of stuff about zombies.  And then, I'll read

and listen to

And then I will think, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if ..."  

Let's be honest here.  It would be cool.  So, in this universe, what would happen?  Who would be our protagonist?  What would our problem be?  Would it be like

Fighting

on 

?

Or would it be like 

and 

at the same time and

would have to save them all?

I'll go with the first one.  Vocaloids, they sing, right?  Well, what if, they're like they are in their own world, they're robots produced to sing, and then, because they're fully functional androids, they get drafted into the militia to fight the zombie virus that's sweeping the galaxy.  So these vocaloids don't want to fight, all they want to do is sing, but the galaxy is at stake.  The zombies--let's make them traditional zombies, that spread through infected ship hulls--are everywhere.  But the vocaloids are androids, so they're immune.  And so they're put into a special task force that extricates people from planets all around.  No, they'd be part of a shock force.  An army.  An army of re-purposed androids to liberate the planet under quarantine.  

Now, let's twist it.  They're re purposed androids of all kinds.  Burger flippers, schoolteachers, vocaloids, all of them form the core of the army.  They've been drafted because the galaxy is in peril.  There is no economy.  All of the major cities on all of the major planets have been infected.  Only one little moon is left for humans to make their stand on. 

So our main character is a vocaloid, yes.  But she has comrades that are of all types.  They don't want to do this job at first.  They do it so that they won't get scrapped, because they have no other use in a war-time economy.  They're reluctant, zombie-immune soldiers that are tasked with the assistance of the main human liberation force.  All they want to do is survive.  

Our character.  Let's call her Rain.  What happens to keep her from her goal of survival?  

She gets trapped.  She makes a dead drop, into a backwoods part of the planet--an old prison, occupied by a motley crew of distrustful survivors.  At first, they want to kill her.  When they realize she is an android, they want to scrap her.  

She fights them.  She beats them to a stalemate.  The zombies push on the outside.  They're coming.  In the distance, the liberation is happening.  

But oh no.  The liberation fails.  The humans are wiped out.  In an act of desperation, the commander of the orbital fleet commands the destruction of the entire world.  All of its cities will be glassed.  He sends the message out on a universal channel that Rain picks up.  

Loud and clear.  Right where the survivors can hear her.  

There is a spaceport one hundred miles away, through most of the downtown city.  The bombardment will start at sundown.  At sunrise, it will reach them.  They are running out of time.  Rain is their only hope.  They have a million zombies of an infected city between them, and life.  

Shit is going to go down.

Afterthought:  this is a pretty cool idea.  If someone doesn't write it out soon, I will.  It goes on the rack.

And that, is how I come up with stories.  Pretty crazy, huh?