Castle Paradox

[Pepsi Ranger]

After several years of dabbling, and two years of blitzing, I finally got my backlog of conceptualized short stories and whatnot caught up (minus the three novellas I'll be working on this year, sometime).

What does this mean, exactly? Will I be more involved with the community again? Probably not--at least not until I start making $30,000 a year or better. It does mean, however, that I've released a new book.

Many of you know I've been adding stuff to these collections for years. But you didn't know that much of what I've added had existed in some form or another since the '90s. The first two books were finished (though finished badly) since 2000, but never made it to paperback until just a couple years ago (after extensive editing). The third book, however, was still in early development starting as far back as the year 2001. And with the combination of doing stuff for this community and plain old burnout, the development ran slowly. And then came the opportunity to redo my first two books for paperback sale, which meant more delays for the third. But by 2005, the excuses ran out (except for that five-month period when I was writing my novel). Now, after a year-and-a-half of blood, sweat and tears, the trilogy is complete: Seven-Sided Dice: The Collection of Junk Volume 3 is now released.

"What? Another Collection of Junk book? Will you ever change the title to something less self-depreciating?"

No, it's just a title. Chill out. It's not called The Collection of Crap or The Collection of Garbage. It's just a medley of things that fit into several categories, that have yet to be produced. "Junk," though not the most glorifying of word choices, captures the humor of the works better than "Genres" or "Writings" does. So once again, don't get hung up by the title. It's what's inside that counts.

Having said that, what will you find in this new edition, exactly? How about:

9 Short Stories
11 Flash Fiction Stories
18 Poems
11 Nonfiction Essays
and
12 Other Bonuses (including a bunch of uncategorized material unique only to this volume)

You will also find:
Introductions
Commentaries
Pictures of my cats
A picture of my feet
and
A new round of fake praise for the book on the back cover

So if you want to laugh, or cry, or do a little bit of both; if you want to read stories about Jet Skiers stranded on a highway, or oil tycoons getting the third degree from militant newswomen, or college students playing upon callers' gullibility through the Psychic Friends Network; or perhaps delight in the rhythms of a new crop of poetry; or find out exactly what happened to my cellphone this summer, then pick up your copy of Seven-Sided Dice today and help your starving writer friend get a step closer to reaching his goal of moving to Tampa this year. It's truly the best of the bunch.

So, without further ado, check it out at:

www.cafepress.com/zippywings3

You can also pick up the older collections at:

www.cafepress.com/zippywings
and
www.cafepress.com/zippywings2
respectively.

Feel free to tell me what you think if you decide to pick up a copy.

You can also read some flash fiction samples from the latest book in the Story Time forum under the title "Flash Fiction Medley," to give you an idea what you might find.
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Progress Report:

The Adventures of Powerstick Man: Extended Edition

Currently Updating: General sweep of the game world and dialogue boxes. Adding extended maps.

Tightfloss Maiden

Currently Updating: Chapter 2

[LeRoy_Leo]

You are a very busy writer, Pepsi. I appreciate and respect that. I know some day it will pay off and you'll land that 30,000 dollar year job.
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Planning Project Blood Summons, an MMORPG which will incinerate all of the others with it's sheer brilliance...

---msw188 ---
"Seriously James, you keep rolling out the awesome like gingerbread men on a horror-movie assembly line. "

[Bob the Hamster]

Congratulations. I admire how prolific your writing is. Last january, I had resolved to do enough writing this year to publish a second collection, but as of december, I have about 1 and 3/16ths stories finished.

Also, although reformatting to 8x5 is a pain, it is really worth it to be able to print/bind on lulu.com instead of cafepress.com

Within the past month or two, Lulu added a new cheap USPS shipping option that makes them vastly cheaper rather than slightly cheaper than Cafepress

[Pepsi Ranger]

Wow, I just saw your price comparisons--I knew lulu was cheaper, but gosh, that's like half price.

Well, I do have plans to make some lulu conversions, but not before I trim the first two down a bit. I also like having my 5x8 versions, so there's a lot of fanboy issues I have to overcome first. Someday I'll re-release them on the cheaper site. I might even manage to sell a couple of them by then.
_________________
Progress Report:

The Adventures of Powerstick Man: Extended Edition

Currently Updating: General sweep of the game world and dialogue boxes. Adding extended maps.

Tightfloss Maiden

Currently Updating: Chapter 2