What I’m Working on in 2024

I already feel like a jerk. The only thing that is going to keep me from being selfish and single-minded here in 2024 is if I need surgery or get diagnosed with cancer or just don’t wake up some morning. A solid, working draft of my third novel for The Story Plant is due in December of 2024. The title we’re operating with right now is Notes on the Golden Country. I spent much of 2023 doing research and making notes for this year’s efforts. By late August I had started up on a first draft. As 2024 gets uncaged, I am about 120 pages in to Part I of three parts. I’m going to be a selfish jerk the rest of this year until I’m done. Meaning, I don’t want to come over to your house, go on a long walk, or anything else that will muddle my focus on writing this very odd story.

If you’re wondering what it’s about, the plan is to call into question every fundamental belief America has about itself, and piss off every tribe and faction that thinks it knows what’s right for this land of righteous indignant, rationalizers, and cheaters when no one’s paying attention. (not writing about you, though. Promise!).

There’s also a lot in the story on pioneer-frontier Middle America that you likely don’t know about–the Old Northwest Territory. Likewise I’m going all in on the nature of utopian societies, idealistic thinking, and how easy it actually could be for us to get beyond this shit world we’re stuck in right now where most everyone has an excuse for everything messed up that they do. There’s a sweet love story built in as well.

Production is Already Underway

A draft of the first 17,000 words was sent to my publishers for review last week. I’m off to a good start and am fairly happy with what I turned in. Hopefully they will also be fairly happy. If all goes well, Notes on the Golden Country will be published in late 2025.

I can’t tell if I’m just a mixed up old codger who primarily wears corduroys and sweatshirts but is now missing the point of everything, or if I’m an extension of the old-school social crusader who reads a lot and writes a lot and has seen far too much dumb-evil coupled with the occasional good-hearted incompetent and that I’ve simply lost patience with it all. Certainly, both of those view points are lodged in the back of my mind when I write fiction. (Changed my mind. I am writing about you. Can’t help it).

But Wait, There’s More

Besides Notes on the Golden Country, my science fiction Sound Effect Infinity is finally coming out early this spring. It was supposed to arrive in bookstores everywhere (on- and off-line) just before Thanksgiving 2023. They’ve changed the release date several times now. My fingers are crossed for March 25, 2024. The Story Plant is going through some big changes that should all be for the best soon. In the meantime you can read an excerpt from Sound Effect Infinity here:

By the time the boy came through the rear fire exit, Stein’s Tavern had been worked to its typical peak ruckus. Men and women pounded through cans of Miller, Pabst, and Busch like they were scratching at places they hoped would never leave. 

Go to The Story Plant website for more

Sound Effect Infinity is a literary sort of science fiction about music and sound and our search for answers to paranormal and altered state realities. It’s also a tribute to my generation that grew up waiting on and anticipating new projects from Elvis, John, Paul, George, Ringo, Jimi, Janis, MJ, The Doors, Zeppelin, Allman Brothers, The Rolling Stones and so many more. It’s also about the new world that yet may come whether we like it or not, the Middle Lands. You might find as well the answer to the question: “Is everything really connected?” Better put: “Can you, dear reader, still see that everything is connected?”

I had the main ideas for Sound Effect Infinity way back in 1975. I first tried to write it all out in the 1990s, but didn’t have the chops to follow my vision properly. If you run aimlessly around the internet long enough, you’ll find references to a self-published attempt at that story. Used copies of that book will be collector’s items in about a year. Mega-thanks to Lou Aronica and his team at The Story Plant! My final try of Sound Effect Infinity is better than anything I ever imagined (although still not perfect).

I will likely be posting a good amount here at this blog in 2024 on the mystery and power of music. Also, you can track my constant ever-growing thoughts about altered states and paranormal psychology. It’s likely not one is something you’ve heard before, so read with caution.

I did a crap load of research over a 40 year period of time for Sound Effect Infinity. Way too much field research as well in the beginning there in the 1970s, if truth be told. Since then I’ve done lots and lots of reading about the CIA and DOD connections to psychedelics, psiotics, remote viewing, and mind control. An enormous amount of information from that world was buried and/or destroyed back when intelligence agencies knew they were about to be found out. Agents of the United States government were doing some insanely sick shit for years after World War II. They honestly thought they needed to compete with the Soviets and the People’s Republic of China in psychological warfare–the same desperate level they were competing on with advanced weaponry and nuclear destructive technologies. All the psiotic shenanigans they were up to established the groundwork for a huge swath of mysteries and puzzles about human consciousness that we’re still trying to unravel.

Sound Effect Infinity should get lots of folks wondering a bit more about all those issues. I will be posting interesting stuff here to titillate and make you salivate … hopefully get you to buy the book as well. It’s a twiisted tale, and hopefully meaningful to everyone who loves music.

A Guitar Army of One

In closing, I’ve managed to return to songwriting and playing guitar daily. That’s how I maintain my sanity while trying to juggle a 500-page novel and at the same time promote a 350-page science fiction.

I’d stopped playing guitar regularly once I became a father (1988). But I used my meager book advances to add to my guitar collection these past few years. I also bought two bedroom-scale Fender guitar amps to join my old Peavey Chorus 70. I’m still trying to save for that all too elusive Gibson ES-335. My theory is that once I have an ultimate guitar, I will stop being addicted to Instagram and Internet guitar enticements.

I turn 66 in February and am nearly satisfied to be moderately competent as a storyteller and to publish novels. But I’ll never be a good enough guitarist to play outside of our bedroom studio. That don’t matter though. There is so much good music out there. I love it all (from Kamasi Washington and Matthew Halsall to Toshiki Soejima and Mary Meyer). That said, I have never been more made wondrous by the noise I make on my Telecaster, ASAT Bluesboy, Strat, and Ibanez. It is such a pleasure, after nearly 50 years, to be smitten by the sound of my own guitars. (Is that a weird thing to admit to?)

I’ll close here with my first bumper sticker idea for 2024. It should be a postscript for Sound Effect Infinity. If you don’t know, now you know:

Give me Fender reverb or give me death.