Tag Archives: literature

“Wild Soul – Nature, Civilization, and the Ecological Spirit” (Now Available, Just 99¢)

 

JUST 99¢!!!

My essay “WILD SOUL – Nature, Civilization, and the Ecological Spirit” is now available from Amazon as a Kindle download for 99 cents.

In the near future, it will be going up at other online venues, in other ebook formats. (If you don’t have a Kindle, you can still read Kindle books with free programs downloadable from Amazon, like Kindle for PC. I read Kindle books on my iPhone and desktop computer.)

Traditional tales across the world describe mankind’s joyful rise in a wild paradise like the Garden of Eden. But they also tell of our fall from such lives of bliss and natural grace.

Our technology, our cities, our toys, our wealth, all have done nothing to ground us as individuals or as societies. If they had, we would live in a near Utopia, rather than the reelingly chaotic and violent world-on-the-brink around us, for surely our affluence and level of comfort is greater than it has been for any people in the history of the earth.

Is Eden forever lost, or is there a way back?

Can we access that marvelous, mythic place in our souls, find a path to its joyful, natural wonders? Or have we slumbered so long in civilized ways that our vital selves are banished for the rest of time?

Can we reclaim the power of the primitive without denying ourselves the comforts and wonders of the modern world?

Exploring sources ranging from the Old Testament and Eastern mysticism, from poetry to popular fiction, from ancient fable to contemporary deep psychology, novelist Tim Byrd finds the prescription for our ills.

We need to live and love more fully, and do things that matter.

We need a renewal of a sense of sacredness towards the natural world, and intimacy with that world.

We need wild soul.

“Dead Folks” Now Available

Click To Buy!

My story “Dead Folks” is now available from Amazon as a Kindle download for 99 cents. In the near future, it will be going up at other online venues, in other ebook formats. (If you don’t have a Kindle, you can still read Kindle books with free programs downloadable from Amazon, like Kindle for PC. I read Kindle books on my iPhone and desktop computer.)

Here’s the story’s description:

What do you do when your town is suddenly inundated with pesky corpses from various historical eras?

The problem turns personal for young Johnny when he and his sister find Franklin Delano Roosevelt floating dead in the lake. Then the stakes become more dire when he discovers the plague of dead folks might just be the least of his troubles.

Tim Byrd’s clever short story spins the sort of yarn that Mark Twain and Stephen King might produce if spacetime allowed them to collaborate. Join the creepy fun, but watch where you step.

If you read it, please consider leaving a short review on Amazon. It’s new and fresh and needs all the lovin’ it can get…

Malaprop 4: Wrath of the Malapro

“Don and Katy watched hypnotically Gino place more coffees out at another table with supreme balance.”

The usual mandate of my Malaprop posts is to share bits of bad writing I gather from sources all over the place (usually the net), ranging from the rabid comments sections of the blogosphere to the esteemed pages of the New York Times. I tend also to focus mainly on instances where people misuse words or phrases, like writing “they were chomping at the bent” instead of “they were champing at the bit.” Awful spelling, grammar, and generally fucked-up writing are all too easy to find on the web, so I don’t bother calling attention to them.

I also don’t source the screw-ups, as I’m not really trying to target anybody specifically for their errors.

Today, however, we have a very special episode of Malaprop. I will be showing you the latest batch of culls, of course (including a clever use of the word “armature” I got a kick out of), but also I’d like to introduce you to our first malapro, writer Jacqueline Howett.

Ms. Howett is a human being, and obviously a very emotional one, so I’m going to try to be as kind as I can…though simply sharing any of her writing (like the tidbit atop this post) and discussing her behavior is, in itself, gonna be innately rough on her. But I think discussing her is valuable because she’s a stark object lesson for any writers out there (or, really, artists of any ilk) in how not to act. Continue reading →

Pulp Hero Spotlight: The Shadow

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men…?


Introducing My New Monthly Column on Pulp Adventure: The Pulp Pit

A Typical Pulp Hero...

As I mentioned in the Song of the Week post yesterday, I have a new monthly column over at Inveterate Media Junkies. The first installment is now live and you can read it here:

I Am Doc Savage

The column is called “The Pulp Pit,” and as you might deduce, its subject is pulp. I’ll be covering whatever pulpy topics tickle my muse (or maybe cuddle my muse, since she’s not that fond of tickling), pointing out cool pulp stuff for people to enjoy, and reviewing books, comics, movies, games, TV shows, and whatever else as appropriate.

For those with possible review materials they think might be on-topic for a pulp column, please drop me a line at thepulppit at gmail.com (just connect the two parts up with an @). I’m interested in any sort of pulpish media, old or new. I don’t want people just sending me things that stack up and I never get to, as that costs you money and both of us time. So tell me what it is, and if I think it’s something I might actually make time to read/watch/play/etc., I’ll tell you how to send it to me.

Regular readers of this blog  might have noticed a recent password-protected entry titled I Am Doc Savage (Pulp Pit # 1). Two weeks after a column appears on IMJ, I’ll remove the password and make the post public, so it’s available to readers here.

Cliffhanger Music (Song of the Week, 3/21/2011)

To commemorate my new monthly column on pulp, which debuts today at Inveterate Media Junkies, here’s John Williams’s perfect cliffhanger background music from Raiders of the Lost Ark…

And as a bonus, here’s Taylor Dayne’s “Original Sin,” the Jim “I Wrote All Meat Loaf’s Best Songs” Steinman creation used for the Alec Baldwin version of The Shadow…

I Am Doc Savage (Pulp Pit # 1)

[This is a Pulp Pit column, originally published at Inveterate Media Junkies. These columns are exclusively available at their site for two weeks, then I make them available here on my blog.]

I am Doc Savage.

If you know me, you know that to the world at large, I am a strange, mysterious figure of glistening bronze skin and golden eyes. A man of superhuman strength and protean genius. My life is dedicated to the destruction of evil-doers. I am the greatest adventure hero of all time.

Now hear me out. Sure, I lack the bronze. My eyes are blue, and I tend toward what you might call an Irish tan, which is to say, freckles at best, charbroiled melanoma at worst. So, I’m not literally the original superman, standing tall with a tropic tan and eyes of swirled gold.

Nor do I live in the Empire State Building, have a team of action-packed scientist aides, or play a mean violin.

Plus, I don’t live in the early twentieth century.

So where do I get off saying that  I’m Doc Savage? Continue reading →

Mark Twain’s Prayer

An artful short film of one of Mark Twain’s short stories.

This, too, thanks to Kate for sharing…

Pulp Adventure In The Sheets [Updated]

It has been a gloriously pulpy week here in the Byrdcave. Three deliveries brought big doses of pulp adventure to add to my to-read stack. The assorted volumes can be seen here, cavorting in my bed:

First delivery brought my latest Doc Savage and Shadow reprints from Anthony Tollin’s Sanctum Books.

Second delivery brought Wayne Reinagel’s Pulp Heroes: Khan Dynasty, the prequel to his epic Pulp Heroes: More Than Mortal (which I intend to review at some point).

And finally, third delivery brought the hefty hardback B.P.R.D. Plague of Frogs, collecting lots of Mike Mignola goodness in the Hellboy universe. And, yeah, Hellboy is pulp. Hellboy is as pulp as it gets.

UPDATE: Wow, this is a pulpilicious week. The fourth delivery brought the new Spider reprints from Girasol.

Lots to look forward to.

I also received a photo of a beautiful woman with her brand new copy of Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom, all dark-eyed glee that she’s got my book.

I tell you, that does a writer good.

The Future of Publishing

This video, from DK Publishing, is genius.

It’s essential to watch the whole thing.

Doc Wilde: “A Rip-Roarin’, Action-Packed, Thrill Ride Of A Book”

 

Order Now!

I somehow missed a review of my book, Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom, by Conan Tigard at Reading Review. Now that it has come to my attention, I’ll share it with you.

The review has a detailed plot summary of the book, therefore is loaded with spoilage. But here’s the pertinent, spoiler-free part:

Doc Wilde and the Frogs of Doom is a rip-roarin’, action-packed, thrill ride of a book that will leave the reader breathless. The book starts out with a bang and never slows down until the last page has been read. This book reads like an old-fashioned dime store novel from the 1940’s. It feels like a old-time thrilling radio show from the era before there was television…

I can only hope that this new author, Tim Byrd, makes an entire series with these characters. Sure, the characters are a little unbelievable with all the cool things they can do, but I loved it anyways… It’s like having multiple versions of a young Indiana Jones in this book.

Overall, Doc Wilde and the Frogs of Doom is an excellent story that will keep a young reader, and even an older one like me, reading this book far past their bedtime. So, grab your flashlight, boys, tell your parents you are going to bed, and stay up all night reading this adventure under your sheets, so your parents cannot see the light. You will love it.

I rated this book a 9 out of 10.

The full review is here, but remember, it’s full of spoilers…

Ken Hite on DOC WILDE: Tim Byrd has “the keen eye for the plausible impossibility shared by many of the pulp greats”

 

Buy Now!

Kenneth Hite is a smart man.

He’s a writer of various things, particularly in the roleplaying game field. He’s a true polymath, carrying vast stores of knowledge about a vast array of topics around in his brain. He’s one of the few human beings I have ever met who makes me feel kind of dumb.

He’s also a scholar of pulp fiction, particularly the works of H.P. Lovecraft. So it thrills me to share with you his review of my first book, Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom, which is of course an homage to both the pulp heroes of the 1930s and ’40s and to H.P. Lovecraft’s unspeakable horror tales. It’s my first review by someone I’m not only sure gets everything I tried to do in the book, but who I suspect gets stuff I don’t even realize is in there.

Here’s a taste; the rest is here.

Despite our young heroes’ impressive abilities, the threat of the Frog God Frogon builds to a genuinely scary level by the end, with a properly Lovecraftian threat to the universe (and to one of Doc’s sidekicks, a burly Irishman named Declan mac Coul) waiting in the depths of a South American cave inhabited by the titular Frogs of Doom. Byrd plays with amphibian biology, and with plenty of other sciences from nanotech to aerodynamics, with the keen eye for the plausible impossibility shared by Dent, Lovecraft, and many of the pulp greats.

I suspect that readers out of middle school will appreciate Byrd’s tribute first and foremost as a tribute — spotting the references and shout-outs is our own little adventure mystery — but it will surprise you by engaging you with its youthful characters as well…the words themselves reel out at pulp speed, and tickle two kinds of nostalgia at once: nostalgia for reading Doc Savage, and for reading Doc Savage for the first time, when you were eleven and hadn’t yet talked yourself into being tired of heroes.

You can get the book here.

Malaprop 2: The Reckoning

NO! NO! PLEASE...PLEASE WRITE CORRECTLY!!!

Go to  Malaprop 1.

Last week, I shared some of my collection of malaprops, little bits of communications gone awry. I’ve been gathering this material for a while and am sharing it in doses so as not to fry too many of your brain cells all at once.

Time for some more.

One note: I had someone call me out on the tone of the first post, and upon reflection I overplayed the whole “idiot” thing. Some of these errors are from idiots, I’m sure, but many of them are not. They’re just mistakes in language perfectly intelligent folks have picked up without realizing. My rhetoric was meant in fun more than it was meant to antagonize or belittle.

Except when it comes to the real idiots. Screw them.

Now on with the show… Continue reading →

Malaprop

I enjoy idiots, up to a point. Watching something like Fox & Friends can be as humorous as watching an old Three Stooges short, if less intellectually stimulating. But only up to a point.

(Hilariously, as I started writing this, Green Day’s song “American Idiot” started up on the random playlist I’m listening to).

But I wish the idiots weren’t so prevalent, particularly at the voting booth, but also on the Internet. As a writer, a reader, a person who values clear thought and knowledge, and an educated guy, I’m often appalled at what I see passing for communication among my fellow citizens.

A while back, I started collecting bits of idiocy I came across online. Now, I’m not talking about net-speak or texting shortcuts, or even persistent spelling stupidities like using “villian” instead of “villain.” I’m talking about people using words and phrases that don’t work the way they think they do.

I haven’t bothered sourcing these. My intent isn’t to embarrass anyone specifically. But my sources range from comments left on blog posts here and there all the way up to the Gray Lady herself, The New York Times.

I haven’t bothered with anything from the brain of George W. Bush, as the only torture he practiced that was more egregious than that he practiced on human beings was that he practiced on language. He’s in a class all by himself.

I’m going to break my collection up into serialized posts. I’m posting this stuff for two reasons: one, to laugh at the gaffes of those who can’t be bothered to make sure they’re saying what they think they’re saying, and two, to encourage anyone reading to please bother to make sure. Especially if you’re presenting your work as even semi-professional, much less professional, writing.

Now, onward to the flubs and gaffes. Can you identify them all? Continue reading →

Good Memories of 2010, Day 4: MR. SHIVERS

By the time the number nineteen crossed the Missouri state line the sun had crawled low in the sky and afternoon was fading into evening. The train had built up a wild head of steam over the last few miles. As Tennessee fell behind it began picking up speed, the wheels chanting and chuckling, the fields blurring into jaundice-yellow streaks by the track. A fresh gout of black smoke unfurled from the train’s crown and folded back to clutch the cars like a great black cloak.

I met Robert Jackson Bennett briefly at SIBA (Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance) in September 2009. When I did my signing for Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom, he was signing at the next table, and we chatted briefly (I recall telling him his title was cool) and exchanged inscribed copies of our books.

Here’s his inscription:

Know what? When I finally picked the book up months later, I did enjoy it. A hell of a lot. Continue reading →

Good Memories of 2010, Day 3: The Black Widow

Fifteen or more years back, some friends and I were talking and the question arose, “If you could write and direct a movie about any Marvel Comics character, who would it be?”

I didn’t even think about it. “The Black Widow.”

It wasn’t an answer I’d have predicted. I wasn’t an enormous Black Widow fan, and hadn’t really given her much consideration in any way when I wasn’t reading about her or admiring some George Perez portraiture. But when the question appeared, my mind was on the case, and the sultry sexiness, mystery, and espionage background of the heroine offered up exactly the sort of cool superheroic options I was in the mood for.

And there’s just never enough hot femme fatales in catsuits on the screen. Continue reading →

Want To Enjoy A Sacred, Raunchy Holiday Season?

‘Tis the season to remind folks of a holiday staple around the Byrdcave, the Santa books of Robert Devereaux. These incredible works of fantasy are both moving and filthy, sacred and profane, and guaranteed to awaken parts of your brain you might not even be aware of.

The first, Santa Steps Out, has been out of print lo these many years, but Devereaux recently regained the rights and has made it available as a Kindle download at Amazon. The second, Santa Claus Conquers the Homophobes, is available in paperback and Kindle format.

I reviewed both here, and you can read the entries at:

Santa Steps Out

Santa Claus Conquers the Homophobes

An evil elf also recently told me there’s a third Santa book on the way, and a likely hardcopy set of all three by next Christmas.

Kicking Amphibian Butt: One Of My Favorite Doc Wilde Reviews

A Great Christmas Gift! Buy Now!

One of the most thorough and thoughtful reviews of my book, Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom, came from writer/librarian Werner A. Lind, who posted it on Goodreads around the time the Pulp Magazine Authors and Literature Fans group discussed the book.

The review is below, but first a couple of points…

First, you may note there’s a discrepancy between the 4 star rating shown above the review and Werner’s statement grading it with three stars in the initial paragraph. Werner explained in a comment during the group discussion:

I hope you noticed that I later added a comment to say that honestly, on reflection, I’d give it four stars based on my own enjoyment of it, not just that of a hypothetical younger reader. (Sometimes it gets tiring to always have to wear the mantle of a sober academic critic. :-)) And I want you to know that once Doc Wilde and the Mad Skull is published, it’s definitely going on my to-read shelf!

The other thing is that he, like quite a few others I think, found the kids’ ability to use echolocation to navigate darkness a bit too over-the-top and unrealistic. The truth is, human echolocation is real, and it’s fascinating. Look it up on Wikipedia.

And now, take it away, Werner… Continue reading →

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Writer

As of today, I am one year late on delivery of my second book.

I’ve been writing lately about my depression and its roots, and about the past year being really rough. Like hanging off the edge of a giant razor blade by your fingers rough.

The manuscript I’m so long overdue on is no great massive volume. I’ve not floundered halfway through my War and Peace. It’s just the second Doc Wilde book, which at editorial decree is to be about the same length as the first, #30-40,000 words. I should’ve been able to write it in a couple of months. That was, indeed, the plan that led to the original deadline.

But, depression. And some major health issues related to it. Continue reading →