The Gates of Hell have burst open, and the Old Gods have returned to reclaim their dominion over the world and humanity.

Only Aldo - transformed by a profane ritual and a bizarre twist of fortune into the freakish Undead Dog Boy - stands between them and their nefarious plan to enslave humanity in a world of empty bliss.

Night Song is now available in print and Kindle e-book at

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LXBPS0W.

Sunday, March 8, 2015

Mother of Science


If you only acknowledge that which is quantifiable, repeatable and demonstrable, then your reality is limited to that which is currently quantifiable, repeatable and demonstrable.

That's a problem because it makes it very difficult to move into other methods and models of quantification, and demonstration. 

Maybe it's just me, but I find it difficult to believe that we have gotten those areas of reality so completely nailed down.


Saturday, February 28, 2015

Consensual Reality



If enough people believe that something is true, it really doesn't matter whether it is true or not. The important thing is that everyone is on the same page. That's what makes everything work. Being on the same page is what keeps everybody happy, healthy and functional, and that's what's really important. In this life, it is far more important to be effective than it is to be right. And though effectiveness is often contingent on being right, more often it is not. Especially in a complicated social system, where effectiveness of an individual is tied to the effective functioning of the society as a whole, "truth" is what is true for the society as a whole.

So the functional "truth" of a thing is determined by the number of people that agree that it is "true." Likewise, a thing stops being "true" when enough people agree that it is not "true."

This is the essence of Consensual Reality. It is a set of beliefs which form the core of a society, as well as subsets of beliefs which are inferred as logical and natural implications of those core beliefs. This creates very complicated strings of perceptual relationships, and numerous disciplines arise to keep all those perceptual relationships organized, pristine and "true." Out of those disciplines, parameters of thinking and perception arise that keep everybody on the same page and espousing the same, consistent "truths."

If an inconsistent "truth" emerges, the immediate and most devastating consequence of it is the impact it has on the Consensual Reality. Far from anyone being excited about new vistas of understanding being opened up, the thing that gets everybody riled up is the extent to which the new revelation invalidates the existing belief system.

That's when the fireworks start. 

A new "truth" can't be "true" until enough people agree to accept and integrate its "truthfulness" into their system of belief, because that's what really makes it effective. Sadly though, it still doesn't matter if it's really true or not. The connection to reality is almost utterly inconsequential.

Y'see, "truth" is a valuable commodity. If you've got a corner on the "truth" market, then you've got power. You can make people that believe do just about anything to maintain validation of that belief. Politicians, terrorists, cult leaders, con men - they're all about getting a corner on the "truth" market, and they'll go to extreme lengths to leverage their position. 

That's their job. They will deceive, seduce, threaten, beat - even kill if they think it will help expand the acceptance of their "truth" and give them a larger share of the market.

When you get right down to it, it's all bullshit. Some of it works better than some other, and so the world keeps turning. 

But the real, underlying, functional "truth" is that it's all bullshit. You just need to decide which of it that you're going to call your own, and that's what life is really all about.

Monday, February 23, 2015

Influences


Okay, I admit it. I don't read very much. I don't make a serious study of authors or directors or actors. I can't quote passages, and I can't footnote and cross-reference my casual conversation. 

I'm not proud of this, and I know it often makes me seem kind of stupid and unenlightened. But there it is.

I open myself to be influenced by everything and everyone I come across. I don't really have a very sophisticated "filtering" system and that often makes me appear kind of gullible, pliable and even submissive.

Because of all of this, my internal reality is a swirling melange of ideas, perceptions and experiences that form up into little chains of consistency, and that's what comprises my intellect. But these "chains of consistency" are constantly breaking and reforming into new chains and patterns of relationship consistency. The core parameter which keeps all this conceptual chaos in check is a constant evaluation based on what works.

I am kind of proud of that particular conceptual mechanism, but I am aware that it often makes me appear shallow, waffling and somewhat bogus. 

Many times in conversation about things I really don't care about, I'll take the opposite position just to have an argument. If the conversation stays on the "high road" with valid logic, I'll generally let the other person win the argument. Sometimes, I'll turn things around so that in the end we're both saying the same thing, and actually just arguing about the words being used. As much fun as it is, I realize that it makes me look like an asshole. 

It's all good though, nobody's feelings really get hurt. I can always be dismissed as bogus, waffling, shallow, submissive, pliable or gullible.

That really doesn't bother me much because it just puts more input into my database of influence. One thing that does bother me, though, is that in this swirling melange of influence and shifting patterns of relationship consistency, I'm never sure if I'm having an original idea or not. Many times, people will credit (or accuse) me with saying something that I can't remember having actually said. By the same token, I'll come up with an idea that I think is totally original, and people will swear that they've heard it somewhere before.

That can be very disconcerting, and I end up wishing I could make a serious study of authors, directors and actors, and quote passages and footnote and cross-reference my casual conversation.

But I can't, I don't and I won't.  

But what I will do is offer this partial list of names of famous people which have had more than a casual influence on my basic patterns of relationship consistency. H.P. Lovecraft, Martin Luther King, Aleister Crowley, Madam Blavatsky, Papa Doc Duvalier, Jim Jones, Charles Manson, Mother Theresa, Cotton Mather, Tomás de Torquemada, Heinrich Himmler, Simon Wiesenthal, Robert Silverberg, Richard Matheson, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ozzy Osbourne, Albert Einstein, and the guy with the hair from "Ancient Aliens."

But these people are just footnotes. My real influences are the people I've met, loved, fought with and ultimately pissed off. I carry all of them with me all the time. There's the weird kid who picked on me (and everybody else) in kindergarten, then disappeared. There are the kids who lived at the top of the hill, and taught me how to shop-lift and tried to teach me how to fight. There's the kid that lived down the road and tried to teach me how to play baseball and football. There's the mean little girl who always wanted to play doctor or teacher. There was the fat kid that nobody liked who ended up getting run over by a piece of heavy farm equipment (a disc for those of you who are in the know about such things). 

Those are just from the first ten years. I could go on for page after page, cataloguing almost every person I ever met and the little slivers of life I got, and keep, from every one of them. 

Kind of creepy when you think about it. 



Wednesday, February 18, 2015

The Night Song Promotional Video

Click to view video


The last few months have been pretty rough. In fact, things have been so unusually difficult and phenomenally bad since I published Night Song, that I was starting to think that it might be cursed. But in conversation with other people who have had absolutely no connection with Night Song, I've found that it isn't just me. Lots of people has been having exceptionally bad luck for an especially long time.

At any rate, I haven't been able to do much on the blog, as there's just been too much death, disease and depravity swirling all around me. It's been an ongoing process of dealing with one catastrophe, and then immediately getting slammed with another one. But things seem to be settling down a bit now. That's not to say that the troubles have abated, any - quite the contrary. But I seem to be getting used to it, so upward and onward.

But even though I haven't been keeping up with the blog, I've not been idle. In the midst of all the mayhem, I've been putting together a promotional video for Night Song. It's a fun, little 2 minute animation that kind of conveys the gist of what the story is all about. I had actually planned to be finished with it before Christmas, but things didn't quite work out. Instead of it taking 6 weeks to complete, it took more like 16. 

But better late than never, I guess. Here's the link.


Also, I'm pleased to report that Dave Patten gave Night Song a great (and totally honest) review on amazon.com. Thanks Dave!

You can read the review and add one of your own (if you're so inclined) at 


Friday, October 31, 2014

Happy Halloween



Granted, in the world of Night Song, every day is Halloween, but the Machrai stands out as being especially "Halloweenish."

In the pantheon of nasties that populate Night Song, the Machrai falls into the category of Radical or Demon. It is a little more than a Radical (a Wraith that has escaped the Barrier) but is not quite a Demon ( A Radical who possesses the physical body of a human being). 

The Machrai is a special case because it attains objective existence in the "earth plane" by capturing and enslaving the souls of the recently deceased. So it kind of maintains a dual existence in both the Barrier and the earth-plane. On the earth-plane, it is usually a dark specter, but can manifest as an especially loathsome looking creature. It spends most of its time skulking in the shadows of cemeteries and mortuaries, searching for souls to harvest. 

Within the Dream Land of the Barrier, however, the Machrai can take on any form and create the appearance of any kind of world. It does this purely to trick the newly deceased into not moving on into the Barrier. If the Machrai can keep a spirit earthbound for ten days, then it can "claim" the spirit as its own, and gain total control over the will and existence of the spirit. The more spirits the Machrai has under its control, the greater the power and influence it can exert within the earth-plane. 

With enough power, the Machrai can gain influence over the living, and bring on all manner of noxious maladies and manifestations - all in an effort to keep an individual in a state of hysteria. This hysteria is like a power supply that feeds the Machrai, and enables it to exert even greater influence and more pronounced manifestations. The ultimate goal, of course is to wear down an individual's will to live. If the Machrai succeeds in getting the individual to die, it is almost sure to get the soul because it has already gained control of the person's reality. 

The scariest part, though, is that if a Machrai hangs around long enough, gets enough souls under its control and gains enough power, it can achieve a full-fledged objective existence within the earth-plane as a solid, flesh and blood entity. 

At this point, the Machrai usually metamorphoses into a politician. 

So, Happy Halloween, and don't forget to vote! 

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

The Myth of Cosmogony


The fundamental, underlying principle of the Night Song world is this: The objective truth of the subjective universe is that the subjective universe is silly putty.

We have an objective truth which transcends a plastic and pliable subjective universe. 

We, as sentient beings, seek to approach that objective truth through the subjective universe because that's the only option that's open to us. We can only perceive and process as what our "physical state" allows. We're only aware of the colors that our eyes see. We can only taste and smell what our noses and mouths permit. We can only process information that our brains are equipped to process. We realize this, and we are constantly trying to expand the limits of our comprehension and ability through technology, science and philosophy. As a result of these efforts, our subjective universe changes, flexes and grows. 

Fair enough, right?

The thing is, nobody really knows what the objective truth really is, but the general consensus seems to be that it must have something to do with a governing principle of some sort. The belief is that if we can grasp something of this governing principle, we may truly gain some understanding about what's really going on and thus gain some power or at least some leverage over the forces that affect our lives. 

We approach this governing principle in several ways - divine intelligence, metaphysical checks and balances, mathematics and physical laws. Most people merge all of these things together in varying proportions to come up with some approach to living that seems to work most of the time. If it can be shown to work, then it must contain something of the objective truth. For instance, believing that the tides are caused by the swishing of the tail of a giant fish works just fine for giving  you an idea of the cyclic nature of the tides. But if you decide to go looking for the fish, then the whole world view falls apart - yet the tides still continue. 

Do you see where I'm going with this? No matter, that's not really what I want to talk about.

What I really want to point out is that once some idea of the governing principle is grasped, part of making it work is to put it into the largest context possible. Once you have some revelation about how something is, then you have to explain how it got to be that way. By doing that, you can show how everything fits together into a system and form a complete world view.

The best way to create such a context is to work backwards to the very beginning of everything. When you do this, you arrive at a cosmogony myth. 

The Big Bang is a cosmogony myth that's currently stylish, but it comes and goes. Genesis is a cosmogony myth. The tale of the Titans was a cosmogony myth. There are literally thousands of cosmogony myths floating around out there - and they're all equally valid because they are all speculative, and they all work on some level for some world view. And until a particular world view is crushed by some other world view, it is, for all practical purposes, true.

Okay, that opens up another can of worms that I don't want to pursue right now. 

What I really want to do is present the cosmogony myth upon which the Night Song world is based. And here it is.

The Nothing was. It was veritable Nothing and Will to Nothing, and thus Infinite in its Nothingness. But in that Nothingness, by virtue of its sheer Perfection, the Will to Nothingness became Imperfect in that the Perfect Will to Nothing became Something. And when the Will to Nothing became Something, then Nothing was nothing no longer. 

And the Something became Pure Will, and existed apart from the Nothing. This Pure Will became the Pure Will of Being and became the Primordial I. This Pure Will of the Primordial I coalesced into a singular point of Something within the Nothing, and thus the Nothing became Infinite no longer. 

The border of the Something became the boundary of the Nothing.

And the Nothing pressed against the boundary to reestablish its Purity and its Perfection - because such is the nature of Nothing when confronted with Something. As the Nothing pushed in, the Pure Will of the Primordial I pushed out against the Nothing, and it thus became the Pure Will To Be of I AM. 

And at the borders of Nothing and Something, that Will To Be was challenged the most. As it resisted the pressure of the Nothing, the Will To Be was split at the border, much like a prism splits white light into component colors such that the border between Something and Nothing became a swirling, chaotic mix of variations and aspects of Pure Will To Be.

And out of that pulsing chaos came the Will To Be…Something as the I AM…SOMETHING.

Within that chaos is the existence of all time, all space, all dimensions, all thought, all dreams, all deeds  - all swirling in one magnificent Eternal Moment.


This is not to say that "will," as we understand it, is the governing principle of the megaverse (if you will). Rather, it is to say that the closest thing to the governing principle that our minds can grasp is something akin to our concept of will. 

I know that this is bothersome to some people because they think of "will" as something inherent in "mind." That's okay. You just have to differentiate the experience of the thing from the thing itself.  For human beings the "will" that we have is a pale reflection of the "Will" that we are.

There's more to be said about all that, but it's not really the point of the story. The thing we want to think about here is that border land between the Nothing and the Something. That's the real beginning - a swirling mix of variations and aspects of Pure Will To Be.

Yeah. 



Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Check Out Emily Skinner's Books



If you need a break from the madness of Night Song, you should check out the books by Emily Skinner. 


She writes with heart, but she also has an edge that can reach out and smack you when you're not really expecting it.

Her work is great fun to read.