fiction

“The Ass Hole Club” : an excerpt from a novel-in-progress

~ davidbiddle ~ Leave a comment
This excerpt is getting a major facelift today. It will self-destruct into a few truncated sample paragraphs very soon, so read up now. Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section…

He discovers two bananas, soft to the eye, still stem connected, blacking. He thinks about the heat they must be giving off along with their smell. These fermenting fruits can only partially be seen under a flattened, plastic half-and-half bottle lying on its side and an old pack of birthday invitations with a “Where’s Waldo?” motif, never used. An empty clay flowerpot growing a bit of dark green mold is on the corner of the sideboard. He wonders what might have happened if he had just kept everything clean on his own. That sideboard Continue reading →

Ralph Ellison and the Floating Self

~ davidbiddle ~ 5 Comments
A Young Ralph Waldo Ellison

No one is really sure, but March 1 was either Ralph Waldo Ellison’s 99th or 100th birthday. We have at least three copies of Invisible Man floating around our house. More than likely, if you ask, all three of my sons will tell you that was their favorite book from high school. In addition, my bookshelf holds a hardback edition of his collected essays as well as his story collection Flying Home and his under-appreciated 1101-page unfinished novel, Three Days Before the Shooting…. I posted the very short essay, below, on my first blog 8 years ago. I offer it again in appreciation and honor of this master and genius of American Letters.

Ralph Ellison and the Floating Self

It seems to me that Ralph Ellison may be this country’s most important writer. Not so much for his production or even his style, but because of his deep wisdom and his remarkable understanding of the links between literature, politics, and our national struggle with the culture of Continue reading →

Smashwords Rocks: My Books at Your Price and the Philosophy of Modern Fiction

~ davidbiddle ~ Leave a comment

A few days ago I posted my novel Beyond the Will of God to Smashwords.com as my first experience with the book distribution upstart. Yesterday I posted both of my story collections, Trying to Care: A Story Collection and Implosions of America: Nine Stories.

It’s a bit of a chore formatting your work to run through the Smashwords meatgrinder (why don’t they call it a wordgrinder?), but once you succeed the website is a very writer and reader friendly place. I strongly urge you to go there and buy all of my books as soon as you finish this brief post. Two of the three are set up with the “You Set the Price” payment option. Implosions is still being sold at a premium of $5.99. It will always be sold at that price. Why? Because it’s a collection of damn fine stories that rival any you will find anywhere. See it featured at Short Fiction Spotlight here or check out the 5-Star (★★★★★) review at the Kindle Magazine El Dink here. Continue reading →

This is a Place I Don’t Feel Alone: Work-in-Progress

~ davidbiddle ~ 6 Comments
Casual Friday
Casual Friday: double glasses and someone’s underwear

I spent far too much time in 2012 sitting in a little room by myself trying to get people to pay attention to my books and far too little time writing and editing. I had a lot to learn about being an independent writer and publisher. That time was necessary, but it still makes me feel so far behind the eight-ball. It’s a lonely thing, sitting in a little room trying to get people to pay attention to your work.

As last year began, I knew I wanted to publish two sets of stories and my first novel, Beyond the Will of God. I accomplished those goals. The story sets, Trying to Care and Implosions of America, lay out the beginnings of what my true Continue reading →

Origins of a Psychedelic Novel: The Backstory on Beyond the Will of God

~ davidbiddle ~ 4 Comments
[Added note, 6/15/14: you can download “Beyond the Will of God” at NoiseTrade.com as a digital book for free right now…hurry because the offer will close soon…this was originally posted at the website Behind Blue Eyes, as noted at the end here, but the deals for digital downloads no longer apply. Still, go to NoiseTrade and it’s all free]
 
Jimi Hendrix (figure@Strobist #2)
Jimi Hendrix (figure@Strobist #2) (Photo credit: Jen Son)

It has to be admitted upfront that I was in an altered state of mind when I first came up with the idea for Beyond the Will of God. It was 1975. I was 17 and had just discovered the raw power of crazed electric guitar (Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Hot Tuna, and Jefferson Airplane to be precise—all night long). Until that weird autumn evening I had no idea how far the mind could go into the soul…and all just through letting loud guitar music take you over.

The next morning I was listening to Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland. The song “1983…(a Merman I Should Turn to Be)” came on. The best way to describe what Continue reading →

Holidays and Your Writer: Advice to Readers, Families, and Friends

~ David Biddle ~ 5 Comments

kindle-christmas

This is a repost from earlier in December. 

Indie authors are setting up shop in bedrooms and dining rooms and kitchen tables on every street in every neighborhood from Staten Island to Oahu. In 2005 about 300,000 new book titles hit the shelves of bookstores and the pages of Amazon. In 2012 I’ve read estimates of over 1,000,000 titles — just for this year alone!

It used to be when I told people I was working on a book, they would look at me like I was some cute, exotic monkey creature with bucked teeth and big brown eyes. Now they say, “Oh, do you know Ed Jones or Continue reading →

Wanted: Reviewers and Book Bloggers

~ David Biddle ~ Leave a comment
Photo image for the story “Fishing for Success”

Implosions of America: Nine Stories will be released Friday morning on Amazon as an ebook. You can already get it as a paperback at CreateSpace. The paperback will be available through Amazon before the weekend is over. I’m still thinking about whether I want to go through a shark jumping exercise and post to other sites like Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, etc. For now Amazon and CreateSpace are your best bets.

For what it’s worth, independent publishing is hard enough, what I’m doing with Implosions is close to insane. The Amazon-Indie system is astoundingly good for genre and pulp fiction — whether you’re talking romance, mystery, thriller, YA, or sci-fi. Historical fiction and non-fiction are also pretty well served. Throughout the Internet over the past several years large networks have been established for genre fiction. Book bloggers specializing in specific types of story are common. So are niche FaceBook sites, genre communities, Continue reading →

Story Excerpt from the Collection Implosions of America

~ David Biddle ~ Leave a comment
Final cover front & back

THE CHOICE GAME

(a 2,400 word excerpt)

The eclipsing sun pierced my right pupil for just a split second as the moon slid into place and Bailey’s Beads began to spin. Bailey’s Beads are little solar flames of prismed ruby light bouncing off the valleys of a black moon. I just needed a glimpse of that one eclipse with my naked eye. Just one tiny split of a moment. That took place up in the Cascade mountains in 1979, more than thirty years ago. I’m sure this is the cause of my vision troubles today.

Dr. Davis has been after me for several years now to visit an ophthalmologist. I used to love the way Continue reading →

The Bone and the Flower: New Frontiers of Literature or Sexual Fantasy?

~ David Biddle ~ 1 Comment

Guernica, which is one of the best online culture magazines out there today, just posted their November 1 edition, and it’s quite a compendium of stories, interviews, essays, art, and poetry. They offer a pretty insightful interview with Junot Diaz that gets old JD to let his hair down quite a lot about his alter ego Yunior de la Casa.

I can also very strongly recommend reading Frank Cassese’s essay, “It Doesn’t Mean We’re Wasting Our Time,” a poignant and quite insightful story about the meaning of a postcard he received from the late, great, and beloved writer, David Foster Wallace. For every writer out there on all levels, this essay is a must. And, to be honest, I think people who just love to read books as well as people who love writers (that is, sleep with them and commit loving but, hopefully, sweetly salacious acts with them) should also read this piece. Cassese gets at the heart of the question: Why the hell do we do this to ourselves? It’s a great essay. Guernica should be proud of themselves for getting this out to the rest of us. Continue reading →