Midnight Fire

The Janus Clan - transformation and Change

2012-01-21T09:58:00.000-08:00

The moment doesn’t catch us. Pray that it does. We don’t catch the moment. Pray that we don’t.

We are the Janus Clan. We brought ourselves into the world thousands of years ago.

Each time we touch the Earth we make it shake in joy and everybody shiver in terror. We bring transformation and Change beyond recall or regret. There is no return to the life that was.

Right from the start we burned with the prophecies of the Prime, the one that in a far, far future would come and liberate us all from the confines of the horrible Machine poisoning humanity’s spirit, the Machine destroying everything making life worth living. It will crumble the nuts and bolts to dust with a single wave of Its mighty hand. The twenty-one bells are heralding Its coming, Its first and second twenty double decades, Its thousand years.

Our visions burn at our core with expectation and terror. Past, present and future, it’s all the same and it’s all now.

When the Prime, the Phoenix, the fire and shadow of existence touches the Earth, when it catches the moment nothing will remain of the old world. Flesh and blood will turn water and land red.

I dream of Its coming, of the spark igniting the world. I can dream of nothing else.

Distant butterfly wings are flapping in the air, creating the first stirrings of the coming Storm. From perceived modest beginnings can come the most powerful of expressions.

Tales of the thousand fires
Chapter 1 verses 1 to 5

Seven years

2012-01-07T16:24:00.000-08:00

I’m celebrating my seven years’ anniversary as a blogger these nights. My first article was posted January 5, 2005. Since then I’ve posted 300 entries on the Midnight Fire blog and almost thousand more other places. They cover everything of interest and passion to me, radical politics, environmental issues, transgression art/writing and similar. It’s all one to me, anyway.

It has been and is great fun and so satisfying to publish exactly what I want to publish without any kind of censorship, the censorship so prevalent in established media. I received death threats already before I started out on the internet in 1996. They have only increased in numbers and level since then, even more so after the blogging began.

«You will go to Hell and we will help you get there faster. We know you live in Bergen, Norway and we will search through every house until we find you».

Stuff like that. They «honor» me with their idiocy and intolerance and enmity, really.

I’m basically attacking the foundations for today’s oppressive society, even without trying, no matter what area I write about and pissing people off wholesale. Most people today aren’t used to have their brainwashing challenged.

People coming here are served a completely different dish than they are most other places. There are those great people that enjoy that, but most of my visitors get pissed, very pissed and incoherent.

It has been a great ride and perhaps the best is yet to come…

The bullies' ball

2012-01-03T08:30:00.000-08:00

I am a boy with a certain taste
I pump iron and strike sacks
With my sore hands and strong feet
I love seeing fear in people's eyes

I played with kittens when I was a kid
They squealed and loved it
When I burned them with cigarettes
And beat them with sticks

My first girlfriend squealed in gratitude
When I showed her who is the boss
When I beat her ass sore
When I slapped her around

I am a girl with a certain taste
I pump iron and strike sacks
With my sore hands and strong feet
I love seeing fear in people's eyes

My first boyfriend
Didn't like it when it turned rough
When i tied him up
And whipped his ass

I made him cry out in joy
I made him beg for more
And gave him everything
That has become his heart's desire

I slammed punks on the street
And foureyes in the schoolyard
Throughout my enjoyable teens
It felt good, felt so very right

I struggled with finding my place
The world didn't seem quite right
Didn't really live up to my
Expectations, you know

Today is a big day
We received our uniforms
Our blue armor
Our shields and clubs
We stand with equals
In their eyes
We see acceptance
And the thrill
Of familiarity
We have found our calling
Become police officers
Accepting the accolades
Of an admiring world

Amos Keppler
2012-01-01
With special thanks to my friend Yngve, who told me he had nothing against police officers.
And to the great Occupy-movement, the people who have most recently suffered most of the bully's stick.

My bold challenge

2012-01-01T08:59:00.000-08:00

I challenge everybody to find novels similar to mine. My claim is that they’re unique in terms of storytelling and that they don’t have their equivalent anywhere.

E-book publishing? No thanks

2011-12-29T00:54:00.000-08:00

I’ve pondered this issue for quite some time, set to write this entry, pondered it again and again and reached the same conclusion:

While I’m usually fairly quick about using new technology if I feel it can benefit me, I won’t this time. While my books will probably be published digitally eventually… it won’t be any time soon.

I feel that it is very much an inferior product. It is that simple, really.

Except for the much quicker distribution method, the reasons for staying with paper as the sole media are so much more significant. The paper book is so much better when it comes to the actual reading. My experience with proofreading has only confirmed this. It is easier spotting mistakes and the enjoyment is greater. While reading on a screen will always remain a muddled experience, at best, the words stand out clear and strong on white paper. I’m very encouraged that many teenagers have come to me and said they agree with this. Reading on a screen will always be unnatural. The paper book will always be right for reading. It doesn’t matter if you have read digitally from birth, like more and more children do. They will still feel more comfortable with a natural, «real» book.

I’m currently writing a novel set in New York City in 1979, a place I have only visited in passing. I did most of the research on the internet and did get a fairly good impression of the city, but it was when I borrowed a book from the local library that the learning process started in earnest. I read a novel digitally and didn’t like it. I reread a used, torn copy later, during a boring train journey and loved it. Suddenly, it was as if the story had been rewritten and the characters had suddenly been made interesting and inspiring.

There are several other more or less important reasons (me being disgusted with IPad, Kindle, Nook and all that shit among other things), but this is the gist of it.

Those I probably will publish digitally first are stories that are less fit to turn into real books, with a length between a short story and a novel, «novelettes», as coined by Stephen King. I have a few of those.

Or I might just publish them in an anthology, even though I usually hate those.

They say the publishing of new paper books will be a thing in the past by 2020. Goddess, I hope they’re wrong.

I should point out that until this point I’ve been at the forefront of the digital revolution. Self publishing would have been much harder, both in terms of financial and practical problems, if not for the fact that I have done everything with the books myself for ten years, content, cover and formatting, except the actual printing and inexpensive world-wide distribution handled by my printer Lighting Source. Of course that would E-book publishing take care of. That’s also why it remains tempting to me.

The day I can sell E-books directly from my computer or website without the current trappings and traps, I will probably do it, or the chances will be higher for me caving…

The day I or anybody could print inexpensive paper books in the living room would be even better. There are such machines in stores already.

It is strange. I wasn’t fully aware of how much contempt I truly felt for total digital publishing before I had written this and actually read what I had written. The intent was to write a fairly neutral piece.

I want the reading of my books to be an extraordinary experience. Only a story told on paper can make that a reality.

More about the art of a truly independent author/artist on Midnight Fire:

ShadowWalk - an alternative description
Final proof
Messy detours
Santa and his amazing helpers - nine online stories
Author's word - ShadowWalk
Author's words - Dreams Belong to the Night
Author's word - The Defenseless
True to life
For what it is worth
Poet's word
Sites supplementing my books
Making covers
True artistic freedom - Stage 1 to 4
Hysterical and fanatical grammar defenders
Doing it yourself - technical advice for self publishers
Kill the dog one of the very best advices when it comes to writing fiction...
True artistic freedom - stage 4
Author's word - Night on Earth
Author's word - The Slaves
Celebration mighty and true
Real
Author's word - Your Own Fate
True artistic freedom - stage 3
True independence
Independence
Modern slavery
The Storyteller
True Artistic Freedom (II)
Reading it again
The chores of an independent author/artist
My fifty cents
True artistic freedom
Labeling and genre writing
Alarums of reality
The difficulties in describing a complex storyline

Other links:

Firewind - my stories, art and poems on the Web
My writer «CV»
The Janus Clan

ShadowWalk - an alternative description

2011-12-26T07:38:00.000-08:00

About my novel (alternative blurb):

Jill comes from far away to seek a new life for herself. So do Stacy, Tamara, Jason, Kieron, Travis and Loeh. They all do. There is a yearning inside them, one they have suffered since the cradle, a need to understand, to know.

This is a tale about a gathering of witches, not the fluffy bunny kind, but those grounded in reality, in the real world. Magick has been lost or misplaced or dormant for years without number. Religious zealots have burned and brutalized and killed witches for centuries, but there are still more left. Witches are like the dandelion. Remove as many as you can. They will never disappear from the face of the Earth.

These are modern people. This is the twenty-first century. The young women and men meeting kindred souls in the small New England town of Northfield don’t know what they are, even though they have their suspicions. They don’t know what is lurking below the surface of their dreams and yearnings.

But they find out. They realize startled and downright stunned what they truly are under the civilized shell. The realization is slow and sudden. By the turn on a road, by the brushing aside of a veil they learn the truth about themselves and the world. As boiling passions and the townspeople’s hatred and ignorance reach a critical point, their senses open to the vast and unknown existence beyond their previous paltry knowledge.

Many centuries have passed since the last time there was such an assembly of forces on Earth. This isn’t just a gathering of witches, but the gathering, one to surpass anything before it.

Witches open up closed caskets, revealing everything locked inside. Beware everyone with a closed mind.

Spell of empowerment

2011-12-22T17:13:00.000-08:00

I Free myself from the illusion
Of light and dark, good and evil
From wretched duality
I am free to further liberate myself
To embrace the rainbow
Of Fire and Life
The Shadow that is our eternal Self

Amos Keppler 2011-12-22

A great shift in perspective

2011-12-12T18:12:00.000-08:00

When I occasionally am denied or deny myself the expression of my creativity, like most of last week all kinds of random thoughts are roaming my mind.

I let that happen, gladly, and then, both deliberately and not I go through all my current stories in my head, expanding upon them in ways I may not usually be able to do.

It’s a great and beyond useful shift in perspective, expanding both my life and art.

A number of bad turns

2011-12-11T17:50:00.000-08:00

Anything, anything we do within the confines of civilization requires a negative shift of consciousness, diminishing the great children of the wilderness we are.

Every time I return from that vast wilderness, in its countless variations is an inevitable, major downer.

The constant and overt destruction of the human spirit reveals itself in countless smaller and bigger ways, in a pervasive oppression and lack of freedom previously unheard of.

I’m happy that my shift is virtually the abyss it is, of course. That means I’m still very much a human being, not a creature aspiring to become yet another cog in the machine currently dominating human life.

Every invention beyond the spear the last ten thousand years has done humanity a grave disservice, removing us ever further from ourselves, lessening the quality of life, not in any way truly improving it, like civilization’s propaganda claims.

Yes, technological forums, the fake lion’s dens are the perfect spot to criticize the society created by advanced technology. Where else should we find the fake lion?

Would you know more?

True life of a Human Being
Problems
Beyond insane
Destroyers (III)
Just another oil spill
The vast and obvious dangers of modern existence
What's wrong with civilization?
Tumor
Tailspin suicide run
Chemical cocktail
The World Grinder
Living in the wild
Primitivism
Tribe
The technological glorification of technology
Not fit to sustain life
Destroyers
Bulldozer
Any digging in your neighborhood?
Choices of Doom

Science as a new religion

2011-11-29T11:14:00.000-08:00

I «guess» that it was inevitable, a kind of fate…

I’m an atheist. That means I don’t believe there is a God, are any gods. I’m even a militant atheist, one convinced that the very belief in gods and existence of religion is a bad thing for humanity.

On Twitter there are quite a few other atheists from various camps and viewpoints. Some of them count among my «followers» there and I follow them.

Atheism is many things. Atheists are many things. As stated above: the only thing we have in common is that we don’t believe there is any god, are any gods. Aside from that everything is optional, which is great, really.

But not all atheists believe that. They think all atheists should sing science’s praise, science that has long since become a new religion.

It was inevitable that I would clash with that kind of atheist on Twitter, of course, since I firmly believe that science is just as bad for humanity as all the other religions.

I will do this very methodically, going through it step by step in the hope that at least some scientists will see the error of their ways. I won’t use names or even usernames. Usually I’m not holding back those, but using them in this case would clearly be counterproductive. This concerns a general wrong, and isn’t about a few deranged individuals.

Case in point #1

This time started off with a Marie Curie quote, but it could just as well have started out with anything.

«I am among those who think that science has great beauty».

I pointed out the irony in that statement and also inferred that Curie shouldn’t be the hero she is to many people.

The irony and horror, in this case is that she died of exposure to the radioactive elements of pitchblende. She literally found death in a handful of dust and also participated in the opening of a Pandora’s Box that in ever worse ways are haunting humanity. She, among others is responsible for the invasion of radioactivity in modern human life. I pointed out that her story should be a cautionary tale, not something to celebrate. To me it’s completely ridiculous and horrible that they say she has helped save lives. The usefulness of nuclear medicine is and should be questioned. Its dangers are evident. Many claim, and I agree that using radiation in treating cancer, for instance is destroying the patient instead of saving him or her, or destroying people almost as much as saving them, saving the patient by killing him, so to speak. It’s a very puzzling and dangerous and way too common modern attitude.

By her lethal discovery of radiation in pitchblende she also contributed to the development of the atomic bomb and the disastrous and extensive use of nuclear power plants we see today.

She is a perfect example of the inherent dangers of science, of uncritical pursuit of advanced technology.

None of this seems to register in those zealots of science.

And then they started ganging up on me, of course. One, very predictably thought I was being religious, even though I attacked science for being religious… Another used the well-proven tactic of telling me how amusing he thought it was that I was criticizing science from a computer. I didn’t really bother replying to the idiot, but what I usually say to people like that is this: aren’t technological platforms exactly the right place to criticize science and advanced technology? I guess they would love that I and others shouted our opinions in the wilderness, where no one can hear them…

I have retweeted quite a few of his tweets attacking religion btw, but as expected, there is a ravine between us in the way we look at reality. He and his peers should apply a true system of inquiry to their own, boxed-in beliefs.

I do. I reexamine my view on reality constantly, and I have to, anyway, since they are constantly under attack from all religions, from christianity, Islam, even from the pagan views on life believing there are gods…

And from science.

Case in point #2 - Concerning science as a religion

I should point out that I am scientifically trained and was so inclined for quite some time, until I saw «the light» and began thinking for myself.

Science isn’t at all what it’s presenting itself as, what its propaganda says. It isn’t about independent inquiry or experimentation, but about boxing in reality, serving those ruling the world. Its propaganda is just as bad as Christianity presenting itself as a gospel of love. Reality is quite different from the platitude and deception and professed ideal.

Occam’s razor is often used as a pretext to close off a discussion not palatable to accepted science. We see that in the UFO-debate, for instance, about anything paranormal. There are a few scientists investigating the paranormal with an open mind, but they are rare. And those who are, are ridiculed and harassed, like J. Allen Hynek and his anti-dogmatic UFO-research. A Norwegian scientist posted anonymously on a science board a few years ago, stating that he believed Earth was regularly visited by beings from other planets and that this had been repeatedly proven to a truly inquiring mind’s satisfaction, but if he said that without concealing his identity, his career would be over. He is far from alone.

He was harassed, of course, and called out on his «scientific credentials», but he passed all tests the «skeptics» presented to him with flying colors.

In short, virtually everything that can’t be proven in the enclosed space of a laboratory is rejected.

Science operates also with something called the «null hypothesis», a relative of the before mentioned Occam’s razor. The null hypothesis is the currently most accepted in scientific circles, on any given subject. Very blatant and obvious bias, if you ask me…

Science has, like all religions developed devious methods to make devout followers stay in the fold.

It is, all in all amazing how obvious science’s deception is, and how rarely people call scientists out on it.

Most scientists would probably not say in public that science and its current methodology is infallible, because that would expose them for the zealots they are, but they most certainly do so in private, very smug and patronizing, really.

I’ve heard it and have heard it being referred many times.

As stated, science has left the methodology of true open inquiry long ago and become yet another cult bent on defending its position and conquests.

Case in point #3 - conclusion - the obvious consequences

This is what I have written most about earlier, the entire line of catastrophic consequences of advanced technology and the religion of science.

Some claim that science is neutral, that advanced technology isn’t good or bad, but can be used for both.

I disagree completely.

When we look at the present day human society it’s quite evident what way the scales fall. It isn’t a disaster in waiting. The disaster is already here.

We have nuclear power plants, genetic engineering, pervasive use of oil, tons of cancer-inducing synthetic chemicals, to mention a few excesses of applied science. Lurking in the near future is intelligent robotics and nanotechnology. Civilization itself is clearly a cancer on nature and all life, a tailspin suicide run, a Machine destroying ever more of what we need to survive.

Take any branch of science, any applied branch and you see demonstrated a distance from nature, from life that is downright frightening. The destruction of life on Earth we see everywhere on Earth today is unprecedented in history. And the very presence of advanced technology in society is certainly one major factor to blame. Of course it is. As stated in one of the other articles with link below: technology glorifies technology, science glorifies science, religion begets religion.

Would you know more?

An amazing feat - provocation (II)
J. Allen Hynek - UFO - a documentation (I)
True life of a Human Being
Problems
Beyond insane
Destroyers (III)
Just another oil spill
The vast and obvious dangers of modern existence
What's wrong with civilization?
Tumor
Tailspin suicide run
Chemical cocktail
The World Grinder
Living in the wild
Primitivism
Tribe
The technological glorification of technology
Not fit to sustain life
Destroyers
Bulldozer
Any digging in your neighborhood?
Choices of Doom

Long overdue

2011-11-28T10:33:00.000-08:00

I’m starting on my own, personal boycott of «family friendly» TV-shows and films and books. It’s long overdue. They are such an insult to people’s intelligence. I confess I’ve been lax here, at least when it comes to science fiction and fantasy stories on the small and big screen. There aren’t too many of those, and so I’ve reluctantly also watched those with an obviously retouched view on humanity, but now I’m fed up or rather over the top fed up.

After seven episodes of Terra Nova I couldn’t take it anymore, and don’t get me started on Star Wars and ET and the «Young Adult» genre and similar.

It’s a sick world, and concealing that reality from people through art makes it even sicker.

Some call that type of fantasy a much needed escape from life’s brutal realities. I call it a glorification of denial.

And then there are the religious connotations that certainly shouldn’t be forgotten. All natural acts are frowned at. People having sex and urges are either ignored or presented in a negative light.

«Highly moral people» like the christians and every single religion under the sun have attempted to ban, to censor reality for millennia. It’s about time we strike back.

Kill the dog.

Society’s method of crushing opposition:

2011-11-22T15:35:00.000-08:00

1. isolate the radicals;

2. "cultivate" the idealists and "educate" them into becoming realists; then

3. co-opt the realists

This is, in short tyranny's ongoing divide and conquer tactic so successful through the centuries.

Many people keep missing this obvious truth and thus their conclusions are marred with mistakes. The result is pretty much that they aid the tyranny in their attack on true freedom fighters and in their own subjugation and oppression.

Occupy the world

2011-10-21T13:19:00.000-07:00

Artists have begun expressing their support for the Occupy movement across the world. I’m more than happy to join them.

It’s time to take the world back, from those in charge, those oppressing us, those destroying the world and all life on it.

The true alternative movement never went away after its peak in the Sixties, but it did go into hibernation, even deep hibernation. Now, for the first time in decades, really, there are clear signs of it returning.

It began with the Arab Spring, in Tunisia in January, and spread from there, to the rest of the Arab world, to Europe and eventually the United States, and the Occupy movement in the US, in turn spread to the world, currently to a thousand cities and eighty countries. Wall Street is the United States royal castle, one symbol of the prevailing inequality and injustice. There are many all over the planet, and many of them are finally attacked.

The so called austerity measures were the final straw, a straw the masses of the Earth should have reached long ago, but better late than never. The illusion of the need for rich people has fallen, or at least it is falling. The ongoing deception in the war those in charge are waging against the rest of the population is exposed.

In the eighties social aware people spoke about the 1/8 society, a negative trend, also in western countries where wealth would be held by approximately 12.5 percent of the population. Now, in these even more fucked up times that number has fallen to one - 1 - percent. Human society has been a pyramid with the few at the top and the many at the bottom for a very long time, but is now taking a turn or ten from bad to worse.

We see again demonstrated beyond doubt how the police are the willing tools of the mighty. The ongoing brutality of the uniformed bullies should convince people once and for all that their very existence is plain wrong.

We see numerous examples of how the elite are taking steps to protect their vaunted position in society, in the pyramid, the pyramid of fear. The very existence of rich people is clearly a bad thing. They will use the power their wealth and position grant them, ruining the life of the rest of us, and the very life on the planet. We see that demonstrated every day, every second of the ongoing annus horriblis we live through. When there are rich, there will always be poor, and many poor, not just a few here and there, but billions.

Yes, there are signs that humanity as a whole is waking up from its slumber. It’s about time.

Conservatives are anti-freedom

2011-10-03T19:02:00.000-07:00

Virtually every opinion they have shows that.

They support corporations and the power of money, which is clearly, obviously very oppressive.

They constantly attempt to keep people from having abortions and terrorize those who do.

They are mostly religious zealots, bent on making everybody worship their particular deity.

They defend murders, even genocide in the name of their deity or country.

They are mostly racists, with only contempt for cultures different from their own, serving eagerly the politics of hatred.

They defend eagerly capital punishment, even when the person to be executed is practically proven innocent. Troy Davies is one example of many here.

They support aggression and militarism and the police state. To them oppression is freedom.

They support Israel against the practically defenseless Palestinian people, support occupation, ethnic cleansing, oppression and genocide.

The list is long and sordid, really. This is just a taste of what they have to offer the world.

They are hypocrites and should have a foul taste in their mouth every time they speak about Freedom.

Blasphemy all year day

2011-09-30T14:22:00.000-07:00

Today is International Blasphemy Day, a great thing, even though, like many good things it should have lasted the entire year.

It’s first and foremost aimed at religion, the scourge of mankind, but also at anything limiting the freedom of expression, at all kinds of taboos that should and must be broken.

Blasphemy is, by the religious’ definition an insult to their faith, to their very self… which is perfectly fine by me. In my opinion these people and their beyond dangerous beliefs should be insulted, should be dragged through the dirt, like they have done against humanity as a whole for so long. Humanity has been held hostage to this insanity for ten thousand years.

Enough!

Final proof

2011-09-29T09:04:00.000-07:00

What I’ve been doing lately? Well, pretty much worked on the final proof of my novel ShadowWalk. I first did a three-week read-through, but wasn’t content with that and started again, on what ended up as an added five-week read-through with magnifying glass, a process made even harder because this is my most wordy story by far so far, almost twice as long as my average.

I go deep with this one, even deeper than with my other stories. As stated, it was already my most edited novel, and I still have a distance to go. I can now safely say that I am very happy that I set the publishing date at October 31st. With Dreams Belong to the Night I gave myself a way too short deadline and almost went nuts (even more than usual) in the process.

And it isn’t just the «editing» either, most definitely not. Far more important is the ambition behind the story, its vast depths and detailed descriptions of pretty much anything, raising the stakes on every level.

It was there almost from the very beginning and is certainly present now, at the end.

This is vigorous storytelling and it makes me proud beyond belief.

Once more I’m struck by the conviction that an editor wouldn’t have been able to do for me what I’ve done for myself the last two months. He or she wouldn’t have a true clue about what the story is about, really, except in a strictly superficial way. His or her «contributions» would have diminished the story, not enhanced it.

The editors that have read it were certainly clueless. While reading their comments and suggestions seventeen years ago I just sat there shaking my head. Had they read the story at all? Had they even tried?

Clueless is just the first letter here…

I really felt I was done with the wording of the story and such, but I found a few more complete paragraphs that needed changing. Here is one example of that, one illustration of the «show versus tell» debate:

As you will notice the result is over twice as long as the discarded version, yet again expanding the story, not trimming it or tightening the plot, like most editors would have suggested.

Before:

People gathered indoors, inside the tavern. Wild rumors circulated. About stories of Time and Shadow. They had been told of a story, that, if it was true, would have profound consequences on their perception of reality. A profound story, covering much of the unknown history of mankind. Virtually everybody gathered here was fully aware of how official, written history had hidden, distorted what really happened, how the victorious had chronicled events, twisted them to suit a purpose. Time itself had for a very long time been a mystery to mankind. Now, as the rumors would have it, one of the witches supposedly had access to time itself. The guests all sensed the fundamental in the coming happening. Some, incredibly enough were stupid and frightened enough to leave, but in most curiosity clearly won over fear.

After:

People gathered indoors, inside the tavern, pulled there by a seemingly irresistible force.

– You won’t believe what I’ve heard, one boy whispered to another. – What we’ll hear is, according to a friend of mine an alternative history lesson to end all alternative history lessons, profound and wild beyond belief.

– The victorious alter and author history to suit their purposes, the other shrugged. – Everybody knows that. It isn’t exactly news.

– But it’s even more than that, his buddy continued, as if the other had hardly spoken at all. – These people know what they are talking about… and they are for real. They don’t practice stage magic, but true witchcraft. They…

He stopped, holding back, shaking his head in embarrassment. The other looked indulgent at him.

– Hush, a girl hissed excited, unnecessary, without malice at them.

A man stepped forward, a dark man, dressed in cloak and hood. He appeared ancient. Everybody imagined they could hear the quiet sound of their own breath. After just a few more seconds… or rather moments silence reigned in the room, in the building and entire scenery.

– Time itself has, for a very long time been a mystery to mankind. He started right away, without introduction. – Now, tonight, my friends, you will experience something unique, a glimpse behind its curtain, its thin veil…

- He is sincere… isn’t he? The girl whispered to the two boys, having momentarily forgotten her earlier call for silence. – He truly believes what he’s saying.

There was something about the entire setting, something very, very convincing, adding to tidbits most of them had experienced since they had arrived in town. Even the professed skeptics among them stared stunned at the hooded man in their midst. All guests sensed the fundamental in the coming happening. Some, incredibly enough were stupid and frightened enough to leave, but in most curiosity clearly won over fear.

Messy detours

Santa and his amazing helpers

2011-08-18T13:50:00.000-07:00

Keppler short and shorter stories on the Web:

Santa on the prowl

Horny women for sale

Dried blood

She Who Dances in the Forest

3 minutes+

Germs

Death and The Maiden

Fire Burning in the Wind

The Hitchhiker in the Woods

For the first time gathered in one place. Read and enjoy, read and sweat.

Only the first story is about Santa, honest...

Living by the sword

2011-08-15T15:49:00.000-07:00

They say that those living by the sword will die by the sword, and there is something to that, inevitably, since the chances of dying early are certainly increasing. I’m certainly not romanticizing anything here.

But those same people don’t say much about what will happen to people not living by the sword, not wielding a sharp blade when it’s called for, when it’s desperately needed.

Today, today, it’s desperately needed, not by the meek soldier, the eager puppet of tyranny, but by the true warrior, by those using any available and unavailable weapon or given method, by those hungering for freedom beyond words, beyond reason, by those eager to experience any tyranny crumble to dust, those burning by a desire to see the entire, irredeemable current human society be washed away, until only its ashes remain.

Passion, one almost consuming you, one mostly lacking in those seeking peace no matter the price, is burning in those living and dying by the sword…

Peace is for the grave, a pipe and wrong dream, and will only rarely touch the warrior in twilight.

Somewhere, somewhen a hand shaking in fire is picking up the bloodstained blade.

Messy detours

2011-08-14T14:34:00.000-07:00

To add to my earlier thoughts concerning storytelling:

Life is disjointed, takes detours, is messy and chaotic, not very structured at all.

In other words: if you want to describe real life you should absolutely not follow the established rules of «good storytelling».

And that is only one of many reasons not to do so.

You should of course distance yourself as much as possible from what is accepted as good storytelling and the various rules and regulations of the established industry.

I do that, in big and small ways all the time.

I use the Times New Roman font, even though «all professionals use courier».

The first time I heard that rule ten years ago I spent the next ten minutes laughing. It was quite the pleasant experience, really.

Acts like that are good exercise, in order to better remove yourself from what is considered standards today.

After a while you basically ignore the imposed rules. The existing tyranny and its henchmen will keep attempting to pull you back into the fold, of course, but make an ongoing effort at ignoring them and get on with your art.

As I’ve written a lot about earlier: the established publishers and the entire system surrounding them are anathema to good storytelling and true creative freedom.

It should be rejected and ignored, like the garbage heap it is.

Whether you write stories, make music, films or some other form of art that should be your leading star, or at least one of them, not the false and destructive wisdom of what was and never should have been.

More about storytelling on Midnight Fire:

Author's word - ShadowWalk
Author's words - Dreams Belong to the Night
Author's word - The Defenseless
True to life
For what it is worth
Poet's word
Sites supplementing my books
Making covers
True artistic freedom - Stage 1 to 4
Hysterical and fanatical grammar defenders
Doing it yourself - technical advice for self publishers
Kill the dog one of the very best advices when it comes to writing fiction...
True artistic freedom - stage 4
Author's word - Night on Earth
Author's word - The Slaves
Celebration mighty and true
Real
Author's word - Your Own Fate
True artistic freedom - stage 3
True independence
Independence
Modern slavery
The Storyteller
True Artistic Freedom (II)
Reading it again
The chores of an independent author/artist
My fifty cents
True artistic freedom
Labeling and genre writing
Alarums of reality
The difficulties in describing a complex storyline

Other links:

Firewind - my stories, art and poems on the Web
My writer «CV»
The Janus Clan

The current UK «riots» - the sheep fooled again

2011-08-09T10:40:00.000-07:00

We see it every time there are protests. Established media spout the propaganda of the establishment and most people buy it hook, line and sinker, without hardly any effort at thinking at all.

The totally justified protests against poverty, oppression and inequality the tyrants and the tyrants’ tame dogs turn into a matter of riots and looting.

Reducing rebellion to thuggery is a tyranny's usual defense mechanism.

The true thugs are the police, of course. They are, have always been and will always be the tyrants’ eager and willing tools against people craving justice and equality.

If you want freedom to kill and maim people, without risk of being charged with anything become a cop. There have been 334 deaths in police custody in London since 1998, but not one conviction. The IPCC & the courts are protecting the police, not the people. That fact should be clear to everybody. Amazingly it isn't...

London is «my» city. I’ve visited many times and also lived there for years at the time. During a period of thirty years I’ve witnessed how social conditions, how poverty have grown from bad to worse to dismal. It was bad under Labour and has turned even worse under ConDems. All these political parties are an integrated part of the system and should certainly be abandoned in droves by justified dissatisfied voters.

But one thing is the various administrations, the government apparatus and the clubs the rich and the elite put up, another is all the people blindly supporting the establishment and its works. The tape recorders, as I call them, people mindlessly repeating the words and actions of others are almost worse. Counted among these are also many people calling themselves radicals. But they are clearly nothing more than more mindless sheep.

They serve tea to police officers, show up with brooms and support the insanity, the tailspin suicide run that is the modern society with every single piece of their brainwashed self.

Life isn’t being ruined by the «riots». Life has been ruined for a very long time and is ruined constantly and that is why we have the vast and great and wonderful protests, the emerging world wide Intifada.

People are frustrated, angry and enraged. The police killing one more human being in a long row is «only» the igniting spark, the trigger making it all go boom.

We live in a thoroughly unjust and unequal society. The establishment’s men and women have no desire to change that, of course. People must change it and the first step is to ignore the Law and Order and propaganda of that thoroughly unjust and unequal and oppressive society.

Tottenham Riots:- “The Language of the Unheard"

«Steal a little and they throw you in jail. Steal a lot and they make you king». - Bob Dylan

Author’s word - ShadowWalk

2011-08-04T11:11:00.000-07:00

«ShadowWalk is a powerful tale of magick and empowerment which manages not to sound like a mind-body-spirit-self-obsessed-hippie book. This is full-on reality. Blood and sweat and shit - nothing's toned down or dulled. The intensity of life comes through strong and meaty. Real life bursting off the pages».

Review in Green Anarchist (the original and best) No. 68/69 Summer 2003.

Trim the story, tighten the plot, that was usually what I was told to do by potential editors, and only when their response to my writing was somewhat coherent and made sense at all.

I disagreed, of course, and told them so, and they drew a blank. It seemed like they hadn’t even heard of vigorous storytelling, a sneaking suspicion that was indeed confirmed later. They just weren’t used to people disagreeing with them. They wanted all young, hopeful authors to stand there with the hat in their hands and beg for favors. I am and was fortunately made of different material.

ShadowWalk began, at least in part as a sort of excess product of what was discarded from my writing on Dreams Belong to the Night. At first I put everything that didn’t fit in Dreams there, but eventually it grew, branched out from there to encompass many directions and dynamics. I wrote the books practically simultaneously. SW was a story I didn’t choose, and that I initially didn’t see as terribly important compared to what I saw as the main story, but one that gained its own importance as I wrote it. Roughly stated, Dreams is about politics, while SW is about religion, and the upcoming, still to be completed Phoenix Green Earth is about both.

The completed story in Norwegian, what I out of old habit sent around to established publishers in 1993 and 1994 was about 200 000 words, and that was what they told me to trim and tighten.

I had really decided to abandon any contact with established publishers after their treatment of Dreams in 1991, but as stated, out of habit I decided to give them one more change…

It was yet another bust, yet another bad experience, yet another show of their completely fucked up priorities.

One said I should keep the first chapter and start over. This as one example of the quality of their «advice».

A few years later, in 1997, when I started translating SW I found that there was stuff there I wasn’t pleased with, but my take on it was quite different from the editors employed by the established publishers…

I translated, rewrote and expanded what I now see as the first draft, and ended up with a slightly different story, carefully, cautiously polished here and there, but still the same. I expanded it from 200 000 words to 300 000… and all the new strange twists and turns made it an even better tale.

The editors wanted me to trim it with fifty percent. I ended up expanding it with fifty percent, a very pleasing result.

Another great irony here is that this is one of my most edited books.

Here is one reader’s reaction that I can totally relate to:

«SW may break all the rules of novel writing, but it works.

And it makes sense if you aren't too brainwashed to understand and experience it. I never found it jumpy or disjointed. And I believe that it flows quite nicely and seems effortlessly elegant in the way it works.

When a stream flows around rocks in a very not straight line, we still find it beautiful. It will be full of back eddies and undercurrents and twist and turns. But it is still flowing. It is making sense within its own environment.

And just because it doesn't flow at one speed in one direction, you can't say that's wrong. What the stream does is right for the stream. What SW does is right for SW».

I didn’t set out to break all rules of storytelling, but realized quickly that was what I was doing, and once I did I set out to break them all the more. During the rewriting/translation/expansion I most certainly did. I followed one - 1- advice given me by the various editors and ignored/discarded the rest and removed myself and the story further from their vision (or lack of it), doing what felt natural and right.

It was really funny when I met one of them by chance several years later and told him about it. I could see that he wanted to murder me on the spot. No bull! These people, generally speaking are so set in their ways that they see any opposition to their sacred texts as an affront to their sanctity, and that is why authors should avoid them completely.

This is a story about witches written after I realized I was one myself, a fact making a considerable difference, of course. True witches are, inevitably Agents of Change, a threat to any establishment, any imposed reality. It’s about special people, about the paranormal and its place in a society denying its very existence.

Like many of my stories the events described are practically autobiographical. Almost everything has really happened, one way or another.

One more thing to note about SW and Dreams is the high number of females and/or people with a darker skin hue. I got sick and tired of the one female, one Asian/African-American/European quota in films/novels and decided to go completely overboard in order to distance myself from it.

It felt perfectly natural.

Oh, yeah, this is my least violent book, I guess, at least in terms of showing physical violence. There are no guns, except in the hands of not very present military personnel.

It’s just as controversial as the rest, though. A reader wondered why I left out homosexuality when it was so filled with other controversial issues. I replied that it was partly a coincidence and partly that I didn’t truly see homosexuality as a controversial issue, anyway, and then I asked him to read Dreams Belong to the Night when it was published in English. Well, man, it has been a fairly long wait, but now you can finally enjoy that one, too…

This is basically the same book that was first published as a paperback in 2003, with corrections and minor changes. There are only 446 pages, with smaller fonts to not make it too expensive.

It’s a book about young adults, but isn’t a Young Adult book…

Certainly not!

«Before I read ShadowWalk I thought the advertising was overblown to say it was "one of the most controversial novels ever written". Then I read it and found that to just be fact».

The book is for sale at Amazon and AmazonUK and Barnes & Noble and basically all over the world.

The prodding and encouragement of the human depths

2011-08-02T09:15:00.000-07:00

I have exchanged thoughts and emails with a reader taking on my novel Your Own Fate recently, a thoroughly satisfying and encouraging experience.

It makes him think, he says, makes him ponder things he never even considered before. He admits with a grin on his face that reading the book is a learning process to him and suggests offhand that it should be a part of the curriculum at all school levels.

I admit willingly that this brings a huge smile to my face. It feels a bit surprising, though, since the inclusion of philosophical subjects and encouragement of thought and empowerment are obvious to me, an obvious inclusion in my stories. I just hadn’t consciously considered it, at least not in a while.

He says that other books he has read is like consuming overcooked French Fries and unhealthy grocery store items, while mine are a smorgasbord of independent thought and creativity.

And my smile widens to an uncanny degree. I fear I will get breadcrumbs in my ears.

The conservative hate machine strikes again

2011-07-24T02:54:00.000-07:00

I believe that people are ultimately responsible for their own actions.

That being said Anders Behring Breivik, the Oslo bomber and Utøya shooter, like Timothy McVeigh, Jared Lee Loughner and others are clearly a product of the conservative hate-machine, the Politics of Hatred.

The Norwegian «Progress Party» (and like minded parties and individuals all over the world), an extreme and popular right wing, anti-immigration racist party has hammered their hate against dark-skinned immigrants and asylum seekers the last thirty years. An ill wind blowing across Europe and the United States has taken a turn for the worse the last ten years.

They and others have used every single opportunity to spew their hate. Anders Behring Breivik, former member of the party was only a child when its members started their racist crusade against change and foreign cultures thirty years ago. During later elections they’ve reached more than twenty percent of the popular vote and they have been the third and even second biggest party in Norway for a long time.

Words, especially hateful words aren’t spoken in a vacuum. Words and also attitudes have consequences. When they are repeated on television and in established media virtually every single day and on websites dedicated to hate even more so.

Most other established parties also have what is very much a brown leaning. They have never properly rejected the conservative hate machine’s abysmal view on mankind. Oh, they have done so in words now and then, in party speeches, but they have pretty much adopted the racist’s policies on immigration, scared to death of what their more or less racist constituency might do.

So even if Breivik acted alone, he must share the blame with quite a few people. The sad and horrible fact was that over half of the Norwegian people shared the Progress Party’s view on immigration. Hopefully they will now reconsider and condemn them completely and openly in all possible ways and totally reject their beyond horrible «philosophy». All parts of the conservative hate machine, in all countries should be condemned and their views ridiculed and rejected.

It’s about time, way beyond time.

More elsewhere:

how Islamophobia turned deadly in Norway

Horny women for sale

2011-07-07T10:22:00.000-07:00

The man stands outside the public marriage office and holds up a poster. A text is inscribed on it with large, black letters:

HORNY WOMEN FOR SALE

People glare at him as they pass by, as they walk into the judge’s office in their wedding dress and suit. They stare at him with condemning eyes, but he ignores them and stares indifferent straight ahead.

- What is your PROBLEM? A man in a suit shouts.

The man holding the poster doesn’t react in any visible way. The bride grabs her husband to be and whisper calming words in his ears. They both move on. Most people hurry on with flickering eyes.

The following Sunday there is another wedding in the local church. The man in question stands outside with the same revealing poster in his hands. The letters and the poster itself have obviously been through a somewhat rough treatment. The man’s face isn’t exactly untouched either.

The church bells toll. The man waves his poster. One of the late wedding guests, a gusset of a man goes for the man fond of posters and hammers him brutally. Blood and teeth jump everywhere as the poor man is struck repeatedly and also kicked after he falls to the ground. The poster is smashed to pieces.

The wedding ceremony is done. People depart the church in a good mood. The man stands there on shaky legs, holding the repaired poster in shaking hands. The big, black letters are still very much visible. The bride stares at him with haunted eyes. She throws away the flowers in her hands before she hurries into the waiting car. She and the groom drive away in a dust cloud and accompanied by the clatter of empty soup cans.

The next wedding starts half an hour later. The man with the poster is still there. He has a large bandage around his head. There is blood on it. People glare at him with murder on their mind. He stands there smiling and laughing, as if he’s having a conversation with someone. Two men glance at each other, nod and approach the man with a very decisive expression painted on their faces. They grab him, lift him up and carry him off, all the way to the gate down the road. They throw him on the ground, brushing themselves and rejoin the happy event.

Everybody goes inside and lock the door behind them. The wedding commences and the wedding march is played. Everyone smiles and laughs. The mood visibly improves.

The music stops. The bride and groom stand before the priest and he’s about to begin his deed.

A loud applause from the gallery interrupts the proceedings. Everybody stares incredulous at the man with the poster. He shouts with his loud, forceful voice.

HORNY WOMEN FOR SALE

The gathering moves like one being. With the priest spearheading the assault they charge upstairs and attack the unruly visitor. They drag him back down and out in the yard.

- Find a rope, a woman shouts. – FIND A SOLID ROPE!

They drag the man to an old tree, throw the rope over a thick branch and tighten a loop around the man’s neck.

- God have mercy with you, the priest says unctuously. – I can’t.

The man’s face is so bruised that it’s just a singular mass, without distinct features. The priest nods and everybody present pulls the rope. The man is strung up. His legs wiggle, wiggle a lot and for a long time. There doesn’t seem to be an end to wiggling. People eventually glance anxiously at the priest.

- Stay on course, he admonishes his flock. – Have faith.

People have trouble breathing and turn blue in the face, but hold on to the rope.

Something snaps and the legs finally stop moving. The stubborn unwelcome visitor hangs still. Cheers rise from the church choir.

- We have a wedding to complete, the priest grins wickedly. – Let neither God nor Satan keep us from our sacred duty.

They return to the church. The ceremony continues. The wedding march is repeated and the priest declares that the man and the woman are joined in holy matrimony, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

- You may kiss the bride, he tells the hesitant groom.

The man and the woman embrace and kiss wild and uninhibited. He tears off her dress and when she stands nude before him he throws her on the altar and fucks her mind out. She howls in joy and mindless lust.

After having fucked her at least five times he carries her to the car and they drive off on whining tires, accompanied by the clatter of empty soup cans.

The next wedding is at the peace officer office the next day. There is a relieved mood all over town. People smile and laugh. The good mood has returned after a hard time. The wedding procession moves up the stairs in a light haze, laughing and smiling.

The sound of the accordion makes them frown. Several of those present at yesterday’s happy wedding frown deeper.

There, waiting at the top of the stairs is the man with the poster, a new and shiny poster. He’s singing and laughing with a wide and sick grin, and a loud and clear voice.

HORNY WOMEN FOR SALE

The members of the assembly glance at each other with weary eyes. The future looks very bleak indeed.

Thy true will

2011-07-02T18:12:00.000-07:00

Do thy true will, not the one imposed on you, but the one growing from your center. Find your center and you find your true desires, find everything important.

Out there

2011-07-01T15:56:00.000-07:00

On the night they threw Henry David Thoreau in jail for civil disobedience, a friend came to see him, saying:

- Henry, what are you doing in here?

Thoreau said:

- No, the question is, what are you doing out there?

A laughing matter

2011-06-28T15:54:00.000-07:00

It’s completely ridiculous when a christian criticizes islam, of course. That cracks me up every time.

They keep pointing at islam as the worst belief system in the world, but that just isn’t so. That honor goes to christianity itself and its more or less insane proponents.

I dislike all religion. I am convinced it is inherently bad, that it is a pox on mankind, but christianity takes the prize. There is no competition, really. No matter how many times christians make the claim that islam has the worst zealots it doesn’t ring true. It’s just more of the same of the general deceit they are so good at.

A few examples of beyond insane christian zealots:

We have the Lord’s Resistance Army in Central Africa. They work from Uganda and several other countries, raping and killing children wholesale and making the rest into soldiers. We have the people blowing up United States’ abortion clinics, killing and terrorizing people working there. There is the general treatment of everybody they don’t see as part of «God’s plan», among them homosexuals and atheists. We have the countless past and present genocide of various primitive tribes by missionaries and their henchmen.

Then we have perhaps the very worst: What goes on in daily, regular life, how they set out to destroy children, all children, including their own, by doing their best to hammer into them christian narrow perception of «morality». It’s pretty much a pervasive, organized insanity beating any other in human history. Identifying oneself as a christian is pretty much on par by admitting to be a part of any of the worst cults in existence.

In other words: Yes, every single christian is responsible for all its atrocities. Its crimes are so pervasive and prevailing and so well known that guilt by association is valid in this case.

Christianity does nothing good to anybody, and it would serve mankind great if all shreds of it vanished from the face of the Earth.

The magnificent seven

2011-06-27T16:50:00.000-07:00

I and hundreds of Norwegians volunteered to travel with the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza. Two main reasons made us unable to send more than seven.

One was financial and the other was the fact that the israeli government has used and use every single method in and out of the book, short of open assassination to stop the ships from sailing, which in turn makes those financial difficulties even more pronounced. Intimidation and sabotage against individuals, the various Ship to Gaza groups and by the aid of their thug, their tame dog the United States a massive pressure against Greek and other governments in their pockets and under their thumb, like the Norwegian and most Western nations show the importance Israel place on this, on upholding their Hasbara, their propaganda.

So, we had to settle for seven to join the 350 from all over the world. We drew straws for the remaining seats.

I was disappointed when I was told I couldn’t go, but I quickly shook it off, since this isn’t about me.

All of us travel with the seven, the 350. We all agree that just the fact that the Flotilla is sailing is a victory in itself. It’s a win/win situation. Either the Flotilla will reach Gaza, which will be great beyond words, or israeli troops will attack again, and once more be revealed as the thugs and tyrants they are. That, too, will be «good», in a backwards sort of way.

We are all worried about those onboard the ships. We know that Israeli forces are capable of anything, because they know that they will practically get away with anything. At least that’s how it has been so far. This is a long struggle and we might just be at its beginning, or at least be fairly far from its end.

Israel seems to hold all the cards, military, financial and the blind support of important governments.

Gaza and Palestine and we activists have «only» each other. For sixty years the various Israeli administration have been allowed to do just about anything, been allowed to go from bad to worse in their warfare against children and the what is basically a «helpless» population.

No more! We speak for ourselves and we shout enough to what is still a more or less indifferent world population.

The slow, painful genocide of the Palestinian people reflects poorly on us all.

There has been one Freedom Flotilla. The second is about to sail. Let’s be prepared to send hundreds or thousands, whatever it takes to Free Gaza and Palestine and free ourselves from the shame and horror the forces behind the Israeli government have brought on all mankind.

More links and articles about Palestine on Midnight Fire:

The invisible Palestinian struggle

The joy of rebellion

2011-06-17T14:41:00.000-07:00

Rebellion is always valuable, even in the best of societies, to keep everybody sharp. It should be alive and present against anything smacking of being an imposed reality.

Today, in a totally fucked up world, where tyranny is virtually anywhere it is crucial, beyond necessary. There is no country on Earth today where freedom reigns, but only tiny pockets of it here and there, and in people’s dreams and longings.

Many tell me that rebellion isn’t for them. It’s too much hassle, the risks are too great and it’s very disruptive to a somewhat orderly existence. My response is this:

Yes, there are risks, but what is life without risks? Those never taking risks aren’t really doing anything and have never truly lived. The biggest risk of all, in my eyes is to never take a risk at all. And what is so great with an orderly existence? Are life mere drawers to put your little bits and pieces in?

What I most of all do my utmost to convey to them is how great it feels to stand up for yourself as a human being, to release yourself from the shackles keeping everybody accepting the prevalent and enduring tyranny down in their private gutter, how it feels to feel the blood boil in your veins. Average people live only half lives and hardly even that. The sad truth is that we today, in all countries have a choice between insanity & less insanity, while life on Earth is fading. I believe in confrontation, in a confrontational approach to life. Accepting what you detest isn’t compromise but appeasement.

There is that, the sheer necessity of it all, and then, as stated there is the pure pleasure of feeling yourself waking up from a walking nightmare, to make yourself aware, to pull your spirit from its murky depths, to discover what it means to be human.

Dried blood

2011-06-16T16:45:00.000-07:00

I woke up in the morning with the familiar sweet scent in my nostrils. It is a warm, dark summer day where no birds are tweeting and everything is silent. I rise from the bed and walk nude across the floor. Semen drips from my half erect cock. I look out of the window. A long, long row of bloody corpses hang outside. Birds with bloody beaks serve themselves from the bountiful table. I glance back at the bed. The bird still slumbers in her beauty sleep. She is a cold botch. Nothing can disturb her rest. I stumble into the hallway. There is a lot of shit on the floor, dried blood and lots of stuff blocking my way and make my walk more like navigation than anything else. My feet keep hitting something. Several severed heads have been dumped into a corner. I ignore their watery, accusing eyes.

The kitchen is generally speaking very dirty. There are lots of hair and pieces of skin everywhere. I finally find a table that is somewhat clean and sit down. The food is still on the table and is still warm. It was warm last night and is still warm, now. I wolf it all down. It tastes like heaven. Eggs, bread and ham are all first class. The hot juice sates my thirst in a way I hadn’t dreamed possible. The hotel is quiet. I can’t hear a single sound anywhere. Both guests and employees seem to have abandoned the place. Or they’re still sleep, like the hot cunt I spent the night with. Some people can sleep through anything, I guess.

I return to my room, pick up my jacket and the little suitcase and continue my wandering. The bodies are still dripping blood. They hang in two rows, on both sides of the little alley of tall trees. The branches bend slightly and make the stiffs dip up and down, up and down, and the quirts of blood to reach a little farther than they should have, logically speaking. The birds stare at me with their cold eyes and I enjoy lovely trickles down my spine. I pull the camera from the suitcase and snap many pictures. There are fabulous opportunities for excellent composition here and I apply every single one. I imagine how the photographs will look after a stint of two in the electronic darkroom, in Photoshop and others, and I almost jerk off on the spot. I’ve used a pirated copy of Photoshop for ten years, now, and I am quite pleased with it.

The photos practically snap themselves, like they did during my first session last night. I’ve got many Gigabytes of storage on hand, but everything sadly comes to an end. I put my stolen SLR camera and equipment away, and make a final content sweep at the many works of art surrounding me, before I carry on on my eternal walk.

The sun is rising slowly above the horizon. This will be yet another beautiful day.

I see red

2011-06-16T13:37:00.000-07:00

Censorship has always made me see red, always offended me and it always will.

There are blatant and subtle censorship and both are equally wrong.

The Friday Flash initiative on Twitter and on Internet certainly becomes very wrong because of this.

Here is what the organizer says in the guidelines:

«Please, no explicit erotica or gratuitous graphic violence. You can post them, but they will drive readers away and will not be included in the weekly wrap».

He evidently wants timid and sexually and morally inhibited readers. I, myself, and others fortunately set higher standards.

During my editing of my novel Dreams Belong to the Night I got lots of creative energy released and started writing short stories on an assembly line, and the Friday Flash seemed, at first glance to be a suitable arena for them. That was what I figured… until I read the before mentioned misguided guidelines.

I write all kind of stories and don’t have to write «gratuitous violence» or erotica, even though that part of my creativity is stimulated every time I come across shit like this. I know all the arguments people like the organizer are using and they’re all wrong or irrelevant and dangerous. Dadaism and Transgression and similar have been my guidelines since I started making art.

People usually ask me questions like these on these occasions: «It’s his thing. Shouldn’t he be allowed to decide the rules»? «Why don’t you let this one go quietly and go elsewhere»?

And similar stupidity.

The answer is simple and obvious:

No, we shouldn’t leave censorship in peace. Never! We do not live in a vacuum, in our own self-contained world. Censorship in one place supports it everywhere.

Freedom of expression should be total, everywhere, of course. Anything contributing to diminishing that, contributes to diminishing life itself. Censorship is very common today. That doesn’t make it right, but even more wrong.

Any artist not seeing the crucial value of free expression isn't much of an artist, or much of a reader, for that matter.

I will call my stories «My Thursday short stories» instead. Having your own blog and your own countless ways of expressing yourself freely is a great thing about Internet and the digital revolution. I and others may come back to you with some sort of collective platform here.

I have unfollowed the before mentioned organizer on Twitter, of course. I kept using the Friday Flash «logo» for a while, as an added protest, but not anymore.

Translation

2011-06-15T22:36:00.000-07:00

An editor I worked briefly with didn’t have much good to say about one of my novels. I will relate one of his objections as an example of their quality.

«The women in the story are so dangerous that they scare the hell out of the men».

Translation: The women scared the hell out of him.

I just looked at him, and in that look was everything I didn’t need to say. He understood my look perfectly, understood that at least. I was really amazed, though (in my youth and naiveté), that he was there, in that position at all. He wasn’t old either, but rather young, in his late twenties or so.

It wasn’t the first or the last time this or similar crackpot objections have been voiced to me. After some brief deliberation the following reasoning presents itself: Women weren’t really that strong and independent and should certainly not be presented as such in books or films. And if they were, it shouldn’t be done by a male author. I think he saw me as a traitor to my sex or something… if there was any reason behind his reasoning at all…

The fact that I dared question his holy judgment didn’t help me any either.

When I think about how he and others like him have fucked with young, hopeful authors and blocked countless great stories from getting published I get very, very pissed (again). The sad and horrible truth of the matter is that this is the typical editor and gatekeeper in various art director jobs at established publishing houses and movie producers and record companies and any similar position.

Ten days in and outside Nottingham - first report

2011-06-13T14:57:00.000-07:00

I write the words as they come, as the thoughts and impressions keep rushing through my mind. Sunday October 9th there was a major protest in Hyde Park. On Wednesday 19th people gathered outside the parliament against the new legislation debated inside, the Criminal Justice Bill.

I haven’t all the details yet, but the law seems first and foremost to be against squatters, protesters in general and people protesting against fox hunting (Hunt Saboteurs) in particular and in favor of nobles, fox hunters, property speculators and factory owners. For instance, walkers in the wilderness and elsewhere can, according to the proposal be arrested for being in a given place. The right to roam is drastically reduced. And you will no longer benefit from staying silent after being arrested. It can, on the contrary be used against you.

That I came to find myself at Parliament Square this hot afternoon was a bit of a coincidence. I was told the conference had started early and felt very uplifted.

The ruckus started almost before I arrived. It was a strange experience. I’ve never experienced it quite like that before. Time seemed to be crawling (even though I didn’t look at my watch, not once). I saw everything in an eerie slow motion, and I felt my blood boil.

The attack started imperceptibly. Then they came like a tsunami, the police, in full body armor, and started beating up on us. I saw blood flow from skulls, saw people crouch on the ground and scream in pain, and I wondered when the same would happen to me.

I was hardly more than a step away when a police club hit an arm. I heard the bone break. There was hardly a conscious thought in my head when I ran and ducked and howled in savage rage.

Some claim that what happened in Hyde Park was worse. That is hard to imagine. Raw, brutal memories keep flowing through my mind. I don’t know how many we were, but we were many. In spite of this, the cops, the «anti-terror» cops quickly gained the advantage, or rather kept the advantage they had from the start. They have the power and the armament on their side. We fled to all sides. After an indescribable run I jumped off a tall wall and down to the Embankment somewhere and I saw only a few others around me. I was limping a bit after the rough landing. Except from that I had escaped without a scratch.

Words… fail me even more than usual. Everything feels like finding yourself above a ravine. You’ve already jumped form one side and don’t know if you will reach the other.

I heard later on the radio that the police, after having removed «the worst troublemakers» gave those remaining an ultimatum. They asked people to «clear the area» and those still there complied. At ten o’clock there were only cops left. What an anticlimax.

In an unknown, dank apartment later that night:

I try to sleep. It isn’t easy. I don’t know where I am and don’t care. What matters is this evening, this night, how excited it has made me. There are others here as well, other strangers. Their eyes twinkle like mine. Their blood is boiling like mine. I feel sleep come in the tiny apartment, but I am more awake than ever. I am, and they are, too. We chuckle in our ecstasy and compare ourselves with sardines in a box, but we feel like eagles.

I don’t think it has dawned on me yet how big this is. It’s Friday morning and the first meeting starts 7.30 tonight. This has already surpassed what I dared hope for in advance. Doubt sinks in, if it’s the right thing to do to go deeper into this cauldron of rebellion and fire. Well, the warrior poet shouts, it might not be wise… but it is right.

Not for other’s sake, not even for the sake of the planet.

For my sake.

Amos Keppler

London October 21, 1994

Arrived yesterday.

Looking forward to live today and tomorrow…

If tomorrow comes.

This is a translated version of an article first appearing in the Norwegian magazine Nemesis in 1994.

It is my first account of several, old and new from the «Ten days that shook the world» an anarchist conference of workshops and protests all over London.

A record speaking for itself

1984

An amazing feat - Provocation (II)

2011-06-10T16:08:00.000-07:00

I find it amazing that I’ve managed to get and hold on to over 2000 followers on Twitter. As I’ve pointed out earlier I will sooner or later piss off (almost) everybody without even trying. I don’t need to do anything but to express my opinions. Since I detest virtually everything about the current human society very few will agree with me in any given case, and if you combine my views on various issues there will be even fewer agreeing with me, of course.

The cumulative effect of that, if you ponder it is quite staggering.

Some may agree with me on my strong environmental stance, but be very set against my anti-Zionist and Pro-Palestinian view, or the other way around. One environmental activist may be set against Big Oil, while another, for some incredible reason may support Big Nuclear.

I’m firmly set against both.

I’m a militant atheist and anti-religious, but contrary to many atheists and anti-religious I am also a pagan witch and shaman and very much certain, by experience and conviction that the paranormal presence in the Universe is proven, proven scientifically beyond doubt.

And so it goes. I could have gone on for quite a while. My radicalism reveals itself in all areas because it reveals itself holistically, in the big picture. I don’t pick and choose from present day human society, but reject all of it, even though I may engage in the smaller truth as well, now and then. There is way too little protest in this tailspin suicide run of insane priorities we find ourselves. My dominant view on society and mankind and life on Earth in general is inherently controversial.

I believe in confrontation, in a confrontational approach to life. Accepting what you detest isn’t compromise but appeasement.

Not all 2000 pay attention, of course. Those doing that regularly evidently appreciate me for who I am and even share some of my views, or/and main outlook.

And then those not paying attention suddenly do, drawn in by a specific case or by coincidence, and then it’s often goodbye @HoodedMan…

Again: I don’t have to provoke deliberately. My very existence and I expressing my views do that, a fact making me very proud. Most people today, once anyone moves beyond their comfort zone are easily provoked.

Today’s society is a very bad place, with very few redeeming qualities, with none if you look at the big picture, and I believe strongly that we should all do that. A more or less dormant population should be rocked to their core. I do that, do that at every turn, by my very nature and most fundamental convictions. Some people grow more conservative, more set in their mold as they grow older. I continue to reach out and seek what is misplaced, fighting to reawaken pieces of humanity’s lost «treasures». During discussions and even casual conversation with most people I’m reminded of the deep philosophical differences between them and myself. What is important to them isn’t important to me and the other way around. Name any major building block of civilization and I want it gone. Mention many components in almost forgotten human life you want gone and I will savor and cherish it.

This is no whim, no result of casual thought. I'm very confident in my position. It's one I've reached after many years of contemplation and seeking alternative thinking and action, something I will continue to do for as long as I draw breath. Being arrested for participating in an illegal protest will be a great way to celebrate my 90th birthday. Rebellion is necessary, but also very satisfying on many levels, filled with joy and many a great moment as it is.

So, for all these reasons and more I appreciate those not being put off, including those hardly sharing my views at all, but that still accept me and value my input. It’s a great thing that humanity is so diverse, so vastly different from each other. We should be far more so. My favorite, currently non-existing society isn’t one where everybody shares my views, but one where everybody is truly independent and fairly self confident and living without the kind of fear eating us up from inside, one that encourages diversity and not does everything in its power to strangle it at its inception.

Fire boils inside me, fueling everything worth burning for.

She who Dances in the Forest

2011-06-09T10:36:00.000-07:00

She Who Dances in the forest pauses for a moment in her dance and looks at a bunch of old, worn photographs and newspaper clippings. There’s one of a man with a gun in a dank room, one of many taking her breath away, making the catching in her throat grow. One single drop falls from the corner of her eye and hits the images like a waterfall, making them all fade away like tears in the rain.

Author’s word - Dreams Belong to the Night

2011-06-06T13:53:00.000-07:00

During 1987 I started musing over a story I initially called, with heavy emphasis on irony The Great European Novel. It was only a working title, of course. I never intended to actually call it that, even though I played with the idea. It would have been even more beautiful irony and even sarcasm (and it was).

I was writing on another novel at the time, of course, and knew I wouldn’t start on The Great European Novel for at least a year, so I had quite a lot of time when it came to developing this one.

In those nights I didn’t write on a thousand projects simultaneously.

There were just a few phrases and disconnected ideas. Sometimes I get almost the entire story in a flash. This wasn’t one of those times.

I got the pieces one by one, really. It felt amazing as it happened and even more so in hindsight. I knew, as the months and years passed by that I wanted to do something More with this one, raising the stakes and do an Encompassing Everything story.

In September 1988 I moved to London, and stayed there for five years. Ironically (again) it was on one of my trips back to Norway a few months later a friend of mine asked me to join him on a trip to Copenhagen. He was chasing a girl, and the girl wanted to go with him, but she wanted to have her girlfriend with her, so he wanted to have me as a balance, I guess. I was amused, but intrigued, and we Went.

It soon came apparent to me that his efforts were quite hopeless, even though the reality of the matter didn’t seem to get through to him. You see, the two girls were lesbians and clearly intimate, and just weren’t interested in becoming romantically involved with a male at all.

To make a longer history shorter we ended up at a gay bar called Pan in the Copenhagen entertainment district. While he attempted all night to get in the pants of the girl, I sat there and studied my surroundings. It was my first time in a gay bar and it was quite a revelation. Everything looked very similar to an «ordinary» bar, except that the couples dancing together and having intimate conversation at the tables were of the same sex. Everything felt casual, so perfectly natural. The place had a great mood and was a fantastic setting in many ways, very inspiring. It did feel slightly awkward when males checked me out, but I just smiled and shook my head. It just was no big deal. Any preconception or bias I might have had about homosexuality faded away that night, and with less prejudice my mind opened further to new possibilities.

The book would have been a lot different if not for that brief trip to Copenhagen. It’s hard for me, in hindsight to even measure how different. I realized that I had never touched the subject of homosexuality before and that I wanted to. Homosexuality isn’t really a main subject in the story, though. Some of the characters just happen to be homosexuals and bisexuals, no big deal, really, except for those haters who want to make it one.

But with that visit to Pan and the two days and nights in the city came something more, the scenery and setting I had consciously and subconsciously been searching for. Copenhagen had been one of «my» cities for a few years, since I had first visited it as an adult in 1985, and I knew its streets and back alleys well. There was the entertainment district, there were its wide avenues… and there was Liberty City.

BANG, the stage was set.

I joined the Green Party in April 1989, first the Norwegian branch and then, later the British. Both were nascent organizations, given birth and momentum by the relative parliamentary success of the German sister party. I began writing Dreams Belong to the Night on March 1. Right from the start I wanted to make the book a kind of documentation of the process.

You see, I was already well aware of the pitfalls of a political party when I joined, against my better judgment, but hope against hope, and yearning for Change in a totally oppressive and destructive society made me join anyway. During the next thirty months I had the pleasure of having illustrated the truth of Ibsen’s word on the matter almost constantly:

«A party is like a meat grinder. It grinds all the brains into one stew».

At first it was quite fun, or the fun lessened the aggravation. A lot of different people joined, everything from anarchists to true greens, like me, from people being in favor of legalizing all drugs to syndicalists. It was in many ways amazing, really, those first few months. As I shared my time between London and Bergen things proceeded in an amazingly similar manner.

In the novel I wrote about how it should have been, while struggling to deal with the very disappointing reality. To make the story shorter again: The good people, as they deserve to be called either quit in frustration or were driven out. It happened quickly, during just six months or so. I held out the longest, in thirty ever longer months. It was an ordeal, at least the Norwegian chapter. Things were slightly more open and tolerant in London, of course.

But my main lesson during my time as a politician was a confirmation of what I already knew: that the parliamentary system is an integrated part of the tyranny and can never be reformed, only destroyed. Democracy is the slickest tyranny in history, because it gives people the illusion of participation, on them being the part of the decision-making. If I hadn’t spent months away from the circus I would surely have turned insane.

I started doing my street theater thing with a bunch of like-minded people, in and around London, and in Europe, and I wrote Dreams on the derelict old typewriter I dragged with me everywhere. The script was in stark danger many times, in many a squatted house, but survived.

My time with the Greens ended pretty much in September 1991. The novel, my Great European Novel and party diary was complete in August… When I returned to Europe and London in late September I felt totally wasted, used up, drained of energy. I felt like I was awakening from a nightmare, as I slowly realized that I had truly lived one. The members of the Norwegian Green Party were more like tea drinkers, doing their «rebellion» when they didn’t have anything important to do, and they grew angry when someone, like me reminded them of that fact. They didn’t want to change the world, but were perfectly happy with things like they were. They were small people, thinking small. Their British counterparts less so, but I pretty much drifted away from them, too, upon my return to the City of Cities, seeing the same horrible lack of desire for Change there. They were more red than green, stuck in a past that was never much to write home about. My life as a «politician» was over, and I rejoiced.

All this, a thorough documentation of «failure» is in the novel, albeit mostly in the first hundred pages or so (or perhaps in the hundred, mostly untold pages before the Copenhagen part of the story begins), before taking off in a completely different direction. The book is from the start a rejection of established truths, a story about true fighting spirit in a world society almost devoid of it, about seeing through illusions in a world filled with them, about leaving those illusions in shambles, as the shambles they are, leaving them broken, without possibility of repair. It’s a guide for advanced rebels, for those who have rejected the deception and illusions of modern life and are ready to take the next step.

Judith Breen, the main protagonist in the book is part myself, part Ulrike Meinhof and part anyone who has ever stood up and fought with razor-sharp claws and fangs against oppression, and totally rejected the «values» and validity of the established society.

Put a bit simplistic Dreams is about politics, about radical politics and rebellion, while ShadowWalk, written practically simultaneously is about religion (and its vast antithesis rebellion and truly free and independent thinking), and the yet to be completed Phoenix Green Earth, the last book in the Janus Clan series… is about both.

I saw Dreams pretty much as my masterpiece, because it is a self-contained piece «with everything in it», just like I intended. It took years before I believed I could ever write something that great again. It was the first time I felt that I was competing with myself, a strange notion many artists experience eventually.

I saw flashes of young boys and girls being initiated into the mysteries and joy of rebellion. I watched them cleaning their guns, saw them take their first nascent steps in a Norwegian forest and also in the streets and rebellious venues of Copenhagen, and I saw them as vastly different from a bunch of tea drinkers with delusions of grandeur, as people liberating themselves from all confines, confronting head on the vast corrupt forces ruling this world.

This is a story for rebels, warriors in all forms. The proud leaders of our society and Joe Public and others «enjoying» average books will in all likelihood puke if they read it. It’s a kind of alternative history of the late Eighties and the Nineties, a parallel reality where scores of aware and passionate and truly rebellious activists and Human Beings are running around destabilizing and creating havoc in the ever more modern day oppressive society. It’s what should have been real, should be real.

One more thing to note about SW and Dreams is the high number of females and/or people with a darker hue of skin. I got sick and tired of the one female, one Asian/African-American/European quota in films/novels and decided to go completely overboard in order to distance myself from it.

It felt perfectly natural.

And yeah, the following is one reason why I feel grateful for the censorship of the established publishers. If my first three novels, the first three books in the Janus Clan series hadn’t been rejected, I would probably never have written Dreams Belong to the Night, and not taken yet another step forward as an author and Human Being…

That was me being ironic and even sarcastic.

With the rejection of the first three I saw no reason to start on the fourth, though, not then, or for a long time. So I started writing one book, self contained stories, and that brought me eventually to the circumstances described in this article.

The reason I grew, also in this matter was because of my inborn stubbornness, not because I was encouraged to do so, in any way, except in the backward way it happened.

This is basically a translated, corrected and revised edition of the Norwegian edition, published in 2002. It’s a strange thing to work on a novel I was very pleased with when I published it and see the need for improvements, now. During those nine years I’ve clearly grown further as an author and the demands I place on myself have grown subsequently. It is the same story, but those having read the original will notice the changes, and might also find them interesting.

So, after an evolution spanning twenty years, this is the ultimate and final version of the book.

The exterior and interior of the Gothenburg shopping mall Nordstan, with surroundings is described exactly like it was, June 6, 1997. I was there, that very day, and made extensive notes.

Except for this and other markers of time, names and events linking the story to the Nineties, it’s really a timeless tale.

3 minutes+

2011-06-02T20:00:00.001-07:00

Three years in a bind, three minutes in a rush. She glanced at her watch again and once more feared it had stopped working. Her pacing picked up speed. She stood still in the silence of the quiet rain. A shadow moved away from the window at the top of the tall building in front of her.

She pushed a button. Her watch showed 03.00, and then not long afterwards 02.59, 02.58 and counting backwards. She pushed her dark glasses back up her nose and unbuttoned her coat with slow, deliberate moves.

A man and a girl walked down the sidewalk on the other side of the street. The man pulled the girl with him, ignoring the girl’s simpering protest. The bloody face of the girl glared at her.

The woman ignored them, not allowing herself to be distracted, but they never truly left the edge of her eye, of her attention.

Her watch showed 02.00 and for a long, long time the numbers didn’t change, didn’t change at all, and when they did, they were just a blur, and she was unable to actually read them.

A man walked past her. She more than sensed the draft when he did. The rain hit his umbrella in an even stream. The drops weren’t drops but a waterfall of ice-cold fluid. The man walking past her wore dark, round John Lennon glasses, a funny hat and a gray coat with a missing button. The edge of the coat was soaked in water and the fabric there looked more black than gray.

Her watch showed 01.00, 00.59, 00.58, picking up speed as her heart slowed to a crawl.

The man and the girl had disappeared. She recalled that the girl had a ponytail, a red shirt and a green skirt. The woman also saw a pair of pink shoes before her inner eye, but wrote that off as a part of her overactive imagination. The square glasses and the pale skin seemed spot on to her, though. The girl wore a deep red, red coat. The bloody visage of the pale face stared at her with its dead eyes. All their dead eyes did.

The man, for some reason had a number of faces and she couldn’t decide which one was the right one. She made the exercise in her head, calming down, and his face, a detailed painting, appeared slowly in her mind.

Her watch showed 00.10, 00.09, 00.05 and she stopped watching it and her inner clock counted down the last few seconds on her own.

A taxi stopped in front of the main entrance. A man walked through the sliding door, tensing, preparing to cross the broad sidewalk in a rush to avoid most of the pouring rain.

The woman wearing glasses and a trenchcoat drew the gun with the silencer from its hiding place in the exact moment the car door opened and the man charged the taxi. She shot him twice in the chest. He yelped, but didn’t scream. He fell and hit the ground. She stepped close to him and shot him twice in the head. He rested unmoving on the wet sidewalk.

She walked away with fast, measured steps. The taxi door remained open. In a few seconds the driver would realize something was amiss and he would turn his attention from the front of the car to the open door and after a few uncertain glances discover the still body bathing in the gray and red pool.

But by then she would be far gone.

One year

2011-06-02T10:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I paid the $10 for the second year for The Defenseless’ presence in the Lightning Source’ digital library and then it struck me. It has now been about a year since I started my new publishing initiative in earnest.

The year has been so satisfying in so many ways. I’ve finally found an outlet for thoughts and desires grinding through my head and self for decades, a method of presenting it all to the world, to humanity at large.

The Lighting Source digital catalogue makes my books available all over the world, to anyone who would want to sell or buy them. Ten books are $100 a year. It is almost too good to be true, but it is true. During 365 nights I haven’t found any major wrongs with this setup, and I am always looking for such babies by default.

There are frustrations, too, both inside and outside the world of publishing, and there will always be, I guess, but they are less, now.

I’ve learned so much, and keep learning. It seems like each new twilight brings new insight and skills these nights. My life has been like that for at least twenty-five years, but now that effect has multiplied even further.

It’s also very satisfying to me that I’ve been able to do it with small means, means I quickly regained by selling quite a few copies anyway. I had expected and actually been somewhat comfortable with the thought that I would need to lose quite a lot of money to do this, but I discovered to my joy that there was no need for that. I’ve even earned money on it, more than enough to keep publishing. Win win, which it was from the start anyway, so win win win would be a better description.

I’ve earned several new internet stalkers this year, a fact I’m quite pleased with. Two of them claim to be employed by established publishers. They have provided great exercise for future dealings with the establishment of publishing. Because this tiny ripple in the pond of vicious attacks is just a firecracker compared to the atom bomb if I should ever become a better known, infamous writer and artist, as I keep telling the world what a bunch of worthless assholes established publishers are.

I can honestly say I would have kept writing, no matter what, since Storyteller is something I am, not something I do. I would have done it, even if I had never been able to publish my stories, but now I am.

It feels great celebrating this with the release of the Hardcover version of Dreams Belong to the Night.

Amos Keppler has had a good year.

On final editing

2011-05-27T20:27:00.000-07:00

You should order a proof copy, a printed book to read through before publishing your book. I always do that and see it as a necessity, really, whether you’re self-publishing or doing it through an established publisher.

I have gained a lot of experience, also on this and will claim that I know all the tricks in and outside the book when it comes to catching the last few errors and doing much needed last-minute corrections. Before sending the text-file off to the printer I print out the story on A4 sheets, I change font size, read everything out loud and a dozen other methods, but I still find lots of necessary corrections when I start on the proof copy. Finding the last few errors is, as stated only half of it and hardly even that. Much more important is spotting wrong phrasing, words used wrong, wrong names and just about every fucking mistake in (and outside) the book.

This has once again been aptly demonstrated during my final reading of my upcoming release Dreams Belong to the Night. The last two weeks I’ve banged my head at the wall countless times and cried out in frustration:

HOW COULD I DO THAT???
HOW COULD I DO THAT???
HOW COULD I DO THAT???
HOW COULD I DO THAT???
HOW COULD I DO THAT???

I told myself I would take my time with this, no matter how long it would take, and I’m glad I did and do.

I sit there with the book, making notes on paper, mostly with my computer turned off. The first time I did that and learned its vast advantages was during a sixteen-hour cross-Atlantic flight to Las Vegas nine years ago. I was stunned to find 240 bigger and smaller «faults» in a 400-page book. Now, I know better.

Five others, btw read through that book several times, helping me catch wrongdoings. I lost count of how many times I read it. In my opinion and experience you can do a read-through a thousand times and still be found wanting.

I and I believe all writers tend to see the book, fiction or non-fiction as done, as ready for publication before receiving that much mentioned Proof Copy, but that just isn’t so. I will probably have nightmares for weeks about what would have happened if I hadn’t had that proof copy to read through. Doing it is an ordeal, really, since you are confronted with what seems like massive amounts of sloppy work, but the base necessity to end all necessities remains…

This is btw yet another reason why you shouldn’t use editors and proof-readers. Only you and you alone can know what feels right, what is right for your story. I have some good experience with using skilled honest friends that know me and my motivations and are somewhat familiar with my work as early proof readers, but that is as far as I go.

If you only publish ebooks you will miss out on the crucial final attempt at getting it right and that is certainly one reason why ebooks in general contain more errors than printed books. A printed book is quite simply the single superior tool for catching everything wrong (or not quite right) with your text. Computer screens and even printing it on A4 sheets and all the other available and necessary steps are just that, steps on your path to «near perfection» (there is no perfection).

It is hard looking through your work, your beloved baby scanning with an eagle eye for what shouldn’t be there, and for what isn’t there and should be there. If you scan for such beasts you will find them. It is a dirty job, but someone (and that someone is you) must do it.

Let me stress that most last-minute changes aren’t grammar mistakes (even though you will always find the most frustrating, idiotic blunders), but rather a given writer’s final touch on the story. No major changes are made. You learn yet again that reality is in the details.

Most readers could probably read the proof copy and not spot much, or not care. He or she isn’t the obsessive perfectionist. You are.

A final word of comfort (or not): You will never catch everything. No one will, ever. When Neil Gaiman says that there will always be work left undone in a given book, I agree completely with him. It doesn’t matter whether or not you do everything yourself or you’re outsourcing some of it or most of it to a guy being paid a million bucks for reading through your masterpiece. No one, absolutely no one will catch it all.

And it isn’t a tragedy either. Polishing too much is as bad as doing it too little. We humans, happily enough are creatures of imperfection.

That somewhat comforting thought won’t stop the upcoming nightmares or current blazing neurosis, though…

PS: I just had to return from the forest and write this down while it was still fresh in my head. I am very pleased with how it turned out. It’s funny and deadly serious and crazy and everything between and also well composed. The end result feels even better than I envisioned it, there in the dark and inspiring forest. It’s longer, more detailed and more concerns and angles are included. Once I started rolling most of it came to me without hassle or the need for (much) pondering. Amazing! I was clearly on a roll.

You have just read one result, one side-effect of weeks of meticulous, self-imposed doubt.

For some reason it reminds me of the story in issues #334 to #336 of the comic book Fantastic Four. If you have read it and it is somewhat fresh in your mind you will probably know what I mean, at least if you have a sense of gallows humor, my humor of choice.

Proof Copy = a gathering of pages and cover exactly like the published book, deprived of the final, nightmarish process of correction. :)

That’s it (I think). Constructive comments on this will be very welcome.

Germs

2011-05-26T20:29:00.000-07:00

She stood by the window, looking out.

Looking blindly at the shades of gray and red. The room was lit by many small lights. The window glass was thick, difficult to see through, like meters of liquid, clouding and clearing her vision in quick succession.

There was no sound. All the windows, all the walls were soundproof. She looked down at the people scurrying back and forth far below. Most of them were coughing, she knew. Occasionally she could clearly see them clutch their throat. They fell and hit the tarmac… with a dump sound.

Hands folded behind her back she returned to the center of the room.. It was a nice room. Pale colored paint on the walls, pale colored furniture. Scarce furniture, a chair, a table, nothing more. A very clean room. She walked to the dinner table, scratching her arm in a distant manner. Shaking hands grabbed the pills on the platter and the glass of water. She swallowed the pills. Good, clean food, a nutritious dinner. No waste of time. During the time it would take to eat an old-fashioned full meal she could do a lot of work, perform several necessary social services. She was a humanitarian, after all. Perhaps she couldn't help those poor beggars below, but she could do a lot beside that.

A flash of light made her turn. She walked to the window once more, knowing fully well she shouldn't. There could never be any point to it. Down below the cleaning crew drove by, their huge, imposing machines sweeping up all who had died the last hour. People yet not sick desperately attempted to escape, to run into the nearest shelter. Many did not make it in time.

The left arm started shaking, shaking slightly. She didn't scratch it. It would stop by itself. It always did.

She looked out the window, looked at the violent eruptions of red and gray.

It stopped. The arm stopped shaking. And she told herself that it hadn't really shaken at all.

She turned abruptly and returned to the relative calm of the room.

The dwellers in the wilderness

2011-05-24T17:44:00.000-07:00

"We, the most distant dwellers upon the earth, the last of the free, have been shielded... by our remoteness and by the obscurity which has shrouded our name...

Beyond us lies no nation, nothing but waves and rocks"

- Calgacus, Northern Chieftain of the Picts

Author's Word - The Defenseless

2011-05-10T09:48:00.000-07:00

It is a special pleasure for me to publish this novel. It is my first, and thus it has been rejected most times by established publishers…
This is the very first book of ten (or eleven) in the Janus Clan series:
Ten stories (or so) about the wild man in the modern world, forty years of wandering before the Phoenix is rising from its ashes.
It usually takes me about ten years to complete a book, from start to the final finishing touch. But with The Defenseless it has taken me thirty-seven years. It has been a long, long Journey, from the moment I first glimpsed the story in my fevered dreams when I was twelve.
My first version was about 50 000 words. I quickly grew dissatisfied with that one. My second was about 150 000 words. The main difference between those, written in the late seventies and early eighties, and this, final one is that I know more, now, much more, about everything, and that I’ve learned to write dialogue. The dialogue in the two first versions sucked, quite frankly. I have strived to keep the original mood, though, the fact that the story was originally written by a teenager, which is manifesting in a number of ways. It’s the same story, in spite of the minor and major changes in approach when it comes to telling it. I also remember it all, the context and my state of mind when I wrote it.
This book is very different from all others I’ve written, even different considering that I always strive to make each new book I write different from the previous, to always and passionately seek new ground. I see that in every sentence, every paragraph, perspective and inclination.
Ted isn’t me, even if he is fairly close, at least in some aspects, and all major characters I write or wrote are usually both demonic and idealistic versions of myself. Like any writer and artist I use what I experience and observe, both good and bad.
This novel is me, like every story I tell is me.
1977
1982
2003
One Sherwood Forest 2010-06-16
The Sherwood Forest isn’t a place, but a state of mind.

The book is for sale at Amazon and AmazonUK and Barnes & Noble and basically all over the world.

True to life

2011-05-02T17:54:00.000-07:00

Do you want to read truly different, true to life novels and books filled with vivid dreams? Then you should try a Keppler or five. Then you’ve come to the right place.

If you like boring mainstream stuff you’ll probably not like mine, unless you’re looking to expand your horizon.

«Why don't you just write the same kind of books everyone else writes»? They ask me.

That one, too, is easy to answer. Because I don’t want to, of course. I don’t want to write what everybody else is writing, but keep creating my own, unique «brand» of storytelling.

You will never get any mainstream books from me. Mainstream is Death, both for the artist and Human Being.

For what it is worth

2011-05-01T17:02:00.000-07:00

If I happen to see a list of «25 things a writer should know», in a given «advice» article I would probably disagree with every single thing. It’s noticeably outdated, but worse than that still peddling to the established publishers’ cruel hold on most writers.

And 25 things? The sheer quantity of the «advice» is anathema in my eyes. C’mon, why not hundreds or thousands? How detailed, how rigid should the creative process be, in your humble opinion?

The first thought going through my head when I read such shit is usually «what the fuck».

For what it’s worth, here is my much shorter list of advice to writers:

Be independent, even fiercely so. If you aren’t, what’s the point? Then you can just as well be a clerk or languish in some other nine to five job. Being truly independent means self publishing. There is no way you can remain independent if you surrender yourself to the ruthless, oppressing regime of established publishers. If you truly work hard at it, your book will also be better than ninety-nine percent of everything published by those before mentioned established publishers. It will be superior in so many ways, be different, original, interesting and the most important of all: It will be your work, not a carbon copy of virtually anything else on the market. Self publishing doesn’t assure quality in a given publication, but increases the changes of it dramatically.

Supporters of the old system keep spouting the party line that it is the establishment that will encourage quality, of course, but that has never been true and never will be.

I would stair away from editors and agents for the same reasons listed above. Hiring a proof reader, if you can afford one might be a good thing, but I begin to doubt the wisdom in even that, after currently checking the version of the upcoming re-release of my novel Dreams Belong to the Night. It isn’t just about checking for mistakes, but also about making the final changes as you go along. All in all: the clearly defined line between various invented necessities the old system operates with just isn’t very feasible. It has no bearing on the true reality of a creative mind.

«Everybody uses editors», the «established pro» (and/or editor) snorts, and then proceeds to list a long line of famous authors that have done so. I’m not impressed. It’s just more bullshit, of course. Far from everybody has, but everybody caught in the mire of the oppressors has.

Editing, generally speaking is censorship, of free thought and expression. You can excuse it all you want, but that is what it is.

Don’t take any classes, for the same reasons listed above. It makes you predictable, makes you the same as everyone else and teaches you the language of the oppressor. Work with yourself with a passion, do so from the very start and learn the «craft» from the ground up. Surrendering your work for others to review is also a kind of laziness you could and should do without.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take advice from people you trust to give you honest counsel, just that you shouldn’t treat it as anything else than what it is and act accordingly, retain your confidence in your Self and your art. If the advice makes sense to you, consider using it. If it doesn’t, reject it and move on.

Take your time, especially after you’ve completed your story. In my opinion a given book should be published years after what some writers call «first draft» is done. It should be reread and pondered several times before you’re done with it. You should aim to not do first drafts, though, learn to edit in your mind before putting anything on paper (or the screen). I’ve never been a fan of completing anything in just a few months and I use about two years of spent time on average on a book or on 175 000 words that has been my approximate, preferred size to this point (I have one at 87 000 and another at 300 000, though). Then add two more years of infrequent checking and pondering. The general «rule», which I actually agree with, is that you get back to it about six months after your previous screening, except just before sending it off to printing. Then you should proofread it both intensely and with detachment at least twice.

Focus on the story. Content is far more important than form and technical prowess. Don’t set out to break all rules of storytelling. Write from your heart, follow your instinct and inner drive and you will break them, will gloriously smash them to pieces.

Don’t write genre. Don’t even accept it as a guideline. It is an industry-imposed and self-imposed limitation that quite simply is completely ridiculous and destructive.

One more crucial, urgent appeal, for your benefit: Don’t set out to copy your favorite writer or do any sort of «homage» to him or her or use lots of quotes. Tell your story, not repeat others. Seek your own, unique «voice»/expression.

That’s it, really. There isn’t much more to it. The rest will come to you, as you search for and discover, little by little your personal approach and preferences. The practical woes and pleasures of self-publishing I’ve covered extensively in other posts listed below.

One final note: Stop watching TV, stop completely. When I did that my creativity exploded from an already high level.

The story so far:

Poet's word

Sites supplementing my books

Making covers

True artistic freedom - Stage 1 to 4

Hysterical and fanatical grammar defenders

Doing it yourself - technical advice for self publishers

Kill the dog one of the very best advices when it comes to writing fiction...

True artistic freedom - stage 4

Author's word - Night on Earth

Author's word - The Slaves

Celebration mighty and true

Real

Author's word - Your Own Fate

True artistic freedom - stage 3

True independence

Independence

Modern slavery

The Storyteller

True Artistic Freedom (II)

Reading it again

The chores of an independent author/artist

My fifty cents

True artistic freedom

Labeling and genre writing

Alarums of reality

The difficulties in describing a complex storyline

Other links:

Firewind - my stories, art and poems on the Web

My writer «CV»

The Janus Clan

William & Kate, Royal Wedding, Westminster Abbey & Buckingham Palace and all that

2011-04-29T02:13:00.000-07:00

Do I envy William & Kate? Certainly not! I think they and what they represent are an aberration, a horror to everything & everyone great.

Fine, you may ask, if you haven’t thought it through, «it’s just a wedding», why not let it be with that, make a hopeless attempt at ignoring it and move on?

Because I don’t think it should be ignored. I believe firmly that it, like everything horribly wrong in the current society should be confronted at any turn, at any opportunity.

The «wedding» is a celebration of the hierarchy, of the vast injustice and inequality dominating our world today. It’s a confirmation of the church and religion’s dominance, of nationalism, of the shallow, superficial state of modern society. Criticizing the media circus is meaningless without going deeper into the underlying motives for all this.

Would you know more?

You should!

Poet's Word - Amos Keppler: Complete Poems 1989 - 2003

2011-04-28T06:12:00.000-07:00

This is a time machine for me, reaching back into the muddled and not so muddled past, revealing once again the truths of many a bright, a dark, powerful moment, one filled with mist and Shadow.

Poetry is yet another thing I practically stumbled over to realize how crucial it was to my life, to me constantly being born. One component was that I saw the movie Dead Poet’s Society, which obviously had an enormous impact on me and my creativity.

Except for one notable poem in High School, Reason (lost in time) I didn’t write poems, but with the film something clicked within. A novel takes years to complete. The immediate of the creative process can never be properly maintained in a novel, but is drowning in the inevitable slow burning process. A poem might take ten minutes to complete. It’s a different angle, a different skill and discipline.

Then I met an old school buddy (more like an acquaintance, really) at a reunion party. He was a member of a rock band and after hearing me read my poems, he wanted me to write a piece of lyrics to them. I wrote it, but he never got back to me, and coincidence and my thoughts and yearnings took yet another strange turn. I met a guitar player, and we started working with songs and music. I hadn’t really played much, but our collaboration led me to purchase a keyboard and inflame yet another unrealized passion of mine. The Oliver Stone movie The Doors made those two passions one, and also joined it with my radical political beliefs. It felt like fate.

Some say lyrics can’t and shouldn’t be poems and that poems shouldn’t be lyrics, but I disagree with that, like I disagree with virtually every single established voice on anything.

So, I wrote lyrics and poems and music, adding that to my already numerous other storytelling capabilities. I cried out the verses during my street theater performance all over Europe.

I’m a so called «stunt poet». That means I can create verses on the spot, in the burst of the inspired moment. Many have come to life that way.

All complete collections are in this volume. I plan on publishing next volume, Secrets late 2015. I will do it if I feel it’s done. That’s also how I’ve done it so far. When no more poems fit into a given collection they were complete in my eyes.

I could have published the single volumes individually first, before the Big Collection, but except for the Aleister Crowley illustrated leaflet, it never felt right.

Rhyming? I’ve done a few like that, just to actually do it, but have mostly left it alone.

My poems don’t fit labels any more than anything else I do.

Oh, yeah, I wrote about experiencing an LSD-high before I actually tried it. Once I tried it I could confirm to myself that my preconceived description was very accurate, and my creativity exploded yet again. If I hadn’t been a poet before that great night of April 2, 1992, I certainly became one then.

But I was, I always was. I just didn’t know it. The awareness of the fact quite simply eluded me for a time.

The fact is that I was almost 30 years old before I got serious as a writer of poetry.

Some of the poems are descriptions of my novels, either before, during or after they were written. Some, like Ragnarok and Caravan were in itself major inspirations and roadmaps for Thunder Road: ice and fire.

I see my first poems as somewhat crude today, even though I still appreciate them, exactly because of that, because they are me, the poet in its initial, primitive state. I guess you can say that the texts become more poems the later they are written.

Or not.

No matter, except for a poem first written in Norwegian, one I consider to be totally untranslatable, and that before mentioned High School poem, they’re all here, fourteen years of poetry, a lifetime, many lifetimes of the ant contemplating the Universe, of the Universe contemplating the ant.

Like almost everything I do they are stories of the world as it is, as I see it and the world as I want it to become.

The book is for sale at Amazon and AmazonUK and Barnes & Noble and basically all over the world.

Sites supplementing the books

2011-04-27T03:35:00.000-07:00

My websites add spice and additional content to my printed stories. The bonus material to Your Own Fate, for instance is vast.
These are the updated and/or new pages I’ve done to supplement the TWO books I’m publishing Saturday:

Complete Poems main page

Complete Poems cover

Birds Flying in the Dark

The Janus Clan

Firewind (with a major update of my movie script The Hidden World, among other things)

Night on Earth

More to come, of course. My web-additions are useful for my readers, as an in-depth study of what you've read and a help for those that may want to read my work, of course.

J. Allen Hynek: UFO - A documentation (I)

2011-04-06T22:56:00.000-07:00

J. Allen Hynek (1910 - 1986) was professor in astronomy and worked with the US air force Blue Book Project and its predecessors for twenty years. He started out, to say the least as a «UFO - skeptic» and ended up being totally convinced not only of the fact that alien intelligences are visiting us regularly, but also that there are undeniable evidence for such activity.

The following, describing the start of his work for the air force is from his book The UFO Experience (Contemporary Books 1972 ISBN-10: 0809291304):

«Before I began my association with the air force I had joined my scientific colleagues in many a hearty guffaw at the «psychological postwar craze» for flying saucers that seemed to be sweeping the country and at the naiveté and gullibility of our fellow human beings who were taken in by such obvious «nonsense». It was thus almost in a sense of sport that I accepted the invitation to have a look at the flying saucer reports – they were called flying saucers then. I also had a feeling that I might be doing a service by helping to clear away «non-science». After all, wasn’t this a golden opportunity to demonstrate to the public how the scientific method works, how the application of the impersonal and unbiased logic of the scientific method, (I conveniently forgot my own bias for a moment) could be used to show that the flying saucers were figments of the imagination? Although many of my colleagues at the university looked askance at my association with such «unscientific» activity, I felt secure. I had ample «files protection»; as an astronomer I had been invited to examine the subject.»

Poker in my novels

2011-04-02T19:40:00.000-07:00

Poker is fairly important in some of my novels. It makes sense, really, to include it, to use it, since I’ve played since I was eight years’ old and professionally and semiprofessionally most of my adult life.

When Mike and Ted, the estranged brothers duke it out in The Defenseless the initial sparring is a poker game. The game, with the introduction of The Gambler, both of them is also very much present in later books in the Janus Clan series. They are playing the odds these people, are players, measuring opponents like they would around the tables.

In Your Own Fate Jeremy Zahn meets his opposite number, Timothy Joyce over the poker table, and the game is also used to illustrate Zahn’s growth as the story progresses. A more than memorable and insane game plays itself out in a dump of a casino in Calcutta (Kolcata), India.

Some players claim that it is life itself playing itself out around the poker tables. I don’t really agree with that, but the game has always fascinated me, also because it is a kind of counterpoint, juxtaposing to my radical (beyond radical political views). I enjoy the game. I see beyond the table, into people’s hearts, and everybody is staring at the card of destiny and probability as it is flipped around, revealing the brutal reality hidden beyond its innocent appearance.

Poker isn’t chess, isn’t limited to a square board on a table. Thousands, perhaps millions of variables of coincidences and decisions are played out in every game, and millions of games are played every night, all over the globe, just like there are stars in the sky.

Poker isn’t a game of chance, but of disposition, bluff, counterbluff, risk and gambits. The future isn’t a lottery and not predetermined events, but something in-between and beyond both.

Yes, it isn’t strange that poker plays a fairly important part in my stories.

Ostara, a pagan spring revelry

2011-03-22T17:32:00.000-07:00

Ostara is the ancient festival of life, far older than christianity and religion itself.

It was not long after the hunt had resumed after the long winter. Passion and blood flowed freely, boiling in the veins. The trees were still naked. Birds didn’t rest on the branches. The strong colors of the campfire cast its power across the gray landscape.

The skin turned towards the flames was hot. The skin turned away was cold. But hot bodies growing hotter turned in the dance, in the ancient celebration of renewal, of life surging through the Human Being. The blood of the Hunt fills the mouth, flow down the throat. The power of its flesh spread throughout the body. On the cave wall and on skin carvings incantations and images of the mind are given form. Dead animals live again.

Life, in all its forms is celebrated, without shame or guilt or restraint.

We feel those ancients tonight, as we move in rapid, exhaustive movements around the large fire, feel them in body and mind and in the deepest recesses of our being.

People are held in strict reins in present day society. At every turn as a child and as an adult, throughout their life they’re told to behave, to control themselves, to obey law and rule and to adhere to Order.

At Witchnight, any Witchnight they’re told, from the very start and throughout the night and/or weekend the complete opposite, told to let go, to listen to their inner selves, told anything is allowed. With words and acts and all possible ways this is conveyed to them. I’ve seen it so many times, seen a closed up flower open herself or himself and finally become a Human Being in its own right. It’s a sight to Behold, yet another beyond valued experience to those of us always encouraging such wild and unfettered celebration of Life.

There is thought, there is drinking, there are bold words and actions and opinions, as the celebration takes off in earnest.

When we undress it happens like the most natural of the world. Clothes slips off us like mercury. When the touching begins it hardly feels awkward at all. It’s just… life, in its natural state, unfettered by fake modern notions of morality and decency. We move, around the fires and each other, like planets and stars around each other, gracing the others’ outer limits, moving in on the warm, hot-blooded body closest to us.

Is this right? Someone will ask.

We don’t ask that. In fact we find the fact that anybody will ridiculous and offensive.

When the savage mating begins it feels effortless, so casual and natural that the very question slips from our heated minds.

The rest of the night is a blur, is clarity we have hardly previously experienced. It can’t be properly described, only Lived.

The Night is alive around us, Burning with a heat stronger than any star, and so are we.

Christianity stole, preempted Ostara, like it did with many of the ancient pagan celebrations, but tonight we retake it, retake life itself from those who would destroy it and enjoy it while doing so. Tomorrow, we think, tomorrow we will address that, all that, tomorrow…

If tomorrow comes.

More about this and similar themes on Midnight Fire:

Midsummer night - the way it should be celebrated

Forever

Witchnight

Not exactly yet another Wednesday

Book of Shadows

The Long Walk

Magick in the attic

Labyrinth

Time of Change

meaning of life

Living in the wild

Another life

Book of Shadows

Fire of creation

Illusions

2011-03-17T11:14:00.000-07:00

It has once more been confirmed to me how dangerous illusions are, both for the person harboring them and for the rest of us.

Many poor people will defend almost viciously rich people’s supposed «god-given right» to stay rich and to keep oppressing and stamp on the rest of us. The South African freedom fighter Stephen Biko said that the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed and he was quite correct.

Two percent of the world’s population owns ninety percent of the monetary wealth, and most people accept that. That’s how far the deception has gone, how deeply ingrained in the population the tyrants’ propaganda and web of illusions are.

A truly free society will have no rich, no poor. That’s the truth, the message people desiring equality in all things should convey, at any opportunity.

Celebration

2011-03-15T11:07:00.000-07:00

Many people have slightly misunderstood this. They mostly «celebrate» on birthdays and holidays and such.

I rather think we should celebrate more when there is no specific reason to do so, even when, especially when a day or night has turned out to be not so good.

Or rather, at any day or night celebrate Life itself.

No good walk with walkman

2011-03-08T14:03:00.000-08:00

I’ve never owned or used a walkman. When lots of people bought one in the eighties I Stayed Away, and true to that I’ve also rejected its descendants Ipod and shit.

There are several reasons for this. At first I didn’t care much for the sound. And companies like Sony and Apple have always been inedible to me, long before a rather long list of horrors from both companies appeared.

But the main reason is quite simply this: I’ve never understood why anyone would walk around with plugs in their ears and close themselves off from the world, from its inspiring sounds.

This is a quite common ailment today, but that makes it worse, not better. Many people feel the need to be «entertained» all the time, to have some kind of prepackaged constant harmonies in their ears.

I don’t. I love music, both playing it and listening to it, but I see this way of «listening» as demeaning, really. I see it as one more sign of the sickness dominating today’s human society. It isn’t strange that humanity as a species is in major trouble, when we so easily cast away life’s bounty.

Most people would rather hear mindless pop than birdsong and whatever other great natural sounds we might encounter in the natural world. They prefer to close themselves off from the world, and not experience its full and exciting audio imagery. The world is painted by sound, by its voices. Listening to nature and one’s surroundings is an amazing experience and people close themselves off from it voluntarily???

I was twenty-three when I decided I wouldn’t be one of them. Ever! I’m happy to say that my resolve hasn’t diminished since then.

Forever

2011-02-27T10:20:00.000-08:00

This is my take on the big question, one of the biggest questions possible, I guess, my life-long experiences and studies of it:

There is no God, are no gods, faeries, angels, demons or «higher beings» whatsoever, but there is an afterlife, or rather a middle life, lots of them, actually, what’s commonly referred to as reincarnation, without its religious trappings.

I guess I have a no-nonsense approach to this, like I have to everything that is currently perceived as paranormal and life itself perhaps.

First of all I’m not and will probably never be one hundred percent certain about this, not as long as my heart keeps beating. My experiences, and those of millions of others, may be hallucinations or fever dreams, projection or otherwise imagined, in spite of countless both empiric and purely scientific evidence to the contrary. The physical death might be the end. One can never be completely certain about anything. I reserve the same doubt about this as I reserve about everything.

But I am fairly confident that I’m basically correct, that what I have experienced and what I’ve read about others’ experience is true and verified in any truly objective mind’s eyes.

Many people calling themselves skeptics claim the paranormal isn’t rational, but I say it’s very much rational, and I say it’s those self-appointed skeptics that are in truth irrational because they deny the evidence. Even many proponents say you should leave rationality behind and take things on faith. I certainly don’t agree. Each person should approach this, like they should everything, with a truly open and skeptical mind.

I’ve been beyond the veil quite a few times, usually in uncontrollable, also life-threatening situations, but also because I traveled there deliberately. I’ve encountered human beings, spirits both dead and alive, but never anything even approaching those before mentioned «higher beings». The Shadowworld, as I call it is «populated» by human beings and human beings only.

It’s a beyond powerful experience, totally impossible to properly describe. You truly feel like a god. There is no time or fixed time, as you’re bombarded with memories from all your lives simultaneously. The word «knowledge» becomes something empty and trite. You’ve never known anything like knowledge in this life before you become face to face with your Shadow, your eternal Self. Many doing that can’t take it and see either God or Satan or similar, but if you face it without fear or conceit, you see «only» yourself, in a many-angled mirror.

I see it all, us as flesh and spirit, material and immaterial and more, pretty much as a dynamic, many-faceted existence where all the parts of the sum are equally important, crucial to the whole.

I have several times, just for good fun (and deadly serious) walked around and presented myself as God, done it for weeks after one of my Journeys. My guess is that I’m not the only one who has done so during the long and twisted history of mankind…

And do you know what the best part of it is? There is no ego involved here. I can honestly say I don’t care shit if you share my angle or not. I don’t mind talking about it or discussing it, but you should know in advance that I know all the arguments and very few of them impress me.

What often pisses me off, though, is that each and every human is a beyond vast, ancient spiritual being and waste their lives being others’ lapdog.

But then again, that would have pissed me off, even if we weren’t beyond vast, ancient spiritual beings.

Btw, I enjoy my life and would have done so even if I hadn’t seen myself as a beyond vast, ancient spiritual being. I see death as a completely natural part of the cycle. My cycle is slightly more extensive, that’s all.

The true life of the human being

2011-02-25T03:43:00.000-08:00

I’ve just returned from days and nights in the wilderness. Returning to civilization from the wilderness is always a downer. Once again it's confirmed what is the true life of a human being.

We are pretty much asleep and forget so much in our dreary, civilized existence. No matter how aware you may be, no matter how much you fight against it (and I am fighting) you forget. Awareness is reduced, inevitably.

In the forest, in the wilderness I… wake up. I notice in countless small and big ways what it means to be alive, what it means to be Human. My senses improve, hearing, sight, smell and taste and the sense of touch, and what isn’t instantly noticed.

Awareness!

Everything is heightened. It feels like I’m high, except this is done without chemicals, and is far superior to it. Blood is surging through my veins and awareness is soaring.

Civilization has never really felt real or true to me, but on the contrary felt fake and false. There is no doubt in me what so ever what I prefer.

In my continued effort to harden myself, to improve my changes of surviving in nature, also during winter I spend nights and days there, also during subzero temperatures. I’ve lived outside up to eight months from March to November. The first year I did it I did it as research for my novel Thunder Road: ice and fire, which is about the anticipated collapse of civilization and a group of people attempting to survive in its aftermath. The next year I did it because I loved it. I set out to repeat the experience, but it felt even better. During those eight months I wasn’t sick a single day. After I moved back into a house I got sick after just a few days.

It is hard for a person that has grown up in civilization to readapt to a life in nature, the wilderness, but completely possible.

The biggest problem (among many), however isn’t really about surviving there, but about civilization itself, the fact that it’s still there. It becomes impossible to live in a forest that «developers», with their bulldozers might set their eyes on at any time. Even the deep Canadian forests or the Amazon, biggest in the world aren’t safe, not in any sensible understanding of the word. So, you know civilization is coming for you. It’s just a matter of time. So you return to a place you despise. You can fight it by example, show people living in their coffins that the human being is still alive. But you also need to fight it, savagely within civilization itself, in technological arenas like the Internet. Nature is shrinking. We, current humanity are destroying the very foundation for our survival, are destroying everything making life worth living. That’s all I need to know, to fight the horrible Machine with everything I am. It should be sufficient for everybody, but most people are asleep today, most of all when they’re not sleeping. So they endure the horrible existence of civilization because they prefer to live a lie and not embrace themselves and what is clearly the true life of the Human Being.

So, returning to civilization is a downer, inevitably, but it is necessary. Becoming a hermit isn’t the right thing to do, not today. It becomes just another freak show in the current giant established and sickening media circus. I do my best to wake myself up as often as possible. My heightened awareness stays with me longer and is generally at a heightened level, but that is also a form of torture, because you can easily see everything Wrong, see how Wrong the current world is.

But I enjoy my awareness. I don’t shrink from it. Good and bad, great and horrible is better than numb and comfortably numb. I love the extremes of human life, so I am able to thrive, even in the torture chamber that is civilization (yes, I know, I, too, am deceiving myself. Everything, even what is right becomes Wrong, is turned outside in, downside up today).

But I know where I belong, and so do we all, deep down, below the countless layers of shit and poison and self-deception we are coated with in our pale, despicable modern existence.

More articles of many on the subject on Midnight Fire:

Problems

Beyond insane

Destroyers (III)

Just another oil spill

The vast and obvious dangers of modern existence

What's wrong with civilization?

Tumor

Tailspin suicide run

Chemical cocktail

The World Grinder

Living in the wild

Primitivism

Tribe

The technological glorification of technology

Not fit to sustain life

Destroyers

Bulldozer

Any digging in your neighborhood?

Choices of Doom

The Traveler

2011-02-18T14:40:00.000-08:00

This month at the Midnight Fire blog has been about storytelling and this is, too, really.

A few years ago I spent the entire time onboard a plane crossing the Atlantic in conversation with an old lady. She wasn’t really wealthy and never had been, but had had money enough, had used those she had to see the world. She had been traveling all her adult life and had many great stories to tell, from all over the planet, from countless different cultures and viewpoints. It was one of the most enticing flights I’ve ever had, and in spite of not having slept for almost twenty hours I wasn’t tired at all, but awake and happy and encouraged beyond words afterwards.

I could see the concealed frown on her brow, though, and waited patiently for the reason for it to reveal itself, to confirm my suspicion.

She finally asked me, almost at the end of the flight, why I, «a fairly young man» spent hours in the company of «an old hag». I explained it to her, in more detail than I had earlier. I told her that I was a traveler myself, and that I enjoyed listening to other travelers, and that hearing her stories felt so precious to me, and would be, should have been to all mankind.

It was a poignant moment, bittersweet and great. I witnessed how she glowed in gratitude and joy and a certain kind of sadness, as I did, too. She had rarely been appreciated for what she was, for her yearnings and experience. Such is the world today.

But she had seen it, seen how it truly is, how it should be, at least during many brief glimpses, and I told her so.

We haven’t met again, but I know we will, know that our paths will cross again, many times, in the centuries and millennia to come.

The reason the Neanderthals are extinct

The Storyteller

A varied and good life

Multicultural

Nomads

True Artistic Freedom - Making movies

2011-02-17T20:10:00.000-08:00

What goes on in the music «business», the book publishing «business» and the current art world in general also applies to filmmaking. Everything costs less. A film can be made for practically nothing and the old distribution channels that the established production companies dominated are breaking down, being supplanted by the new and exciting and independent ways. The internet is a direct line between the truly independent filmmaker and the audience. Even though the process is slower than with books and music it is clear that also here agents, theaters and the established production companies are becoming redundant.

This is great news for us considering ourselves auteurs, or who’s aspiring somewhat to that somewhat lofty term. An auteur is someone that is participating in the making of art from start to finish, in moviemaking from conception, the writing of the script, the shooting, editing and launching. That as a process has certainly always appealed to me, for many reasons, the biggest being independence, creative and otherwise.

Present time is an auteur’s wet dream. You can make movies for nickels and dimes, for the price of bus tickets and catering. You need only a camera and a computer, and nothing else, both so inexpensive that most people can afford it or choose to afford it. One single human being can make a film, either a documentary or an (un)traditional made up story. I will certainly do that.

People in the established part of filmmaking would claim that it is a collaborative effort, but even though that might be true for most films made today, it isn’t a Universal truth. A big production will always need lots of participants, but some directors, even during today’s dominating horrible system are still able to make it their films, put their unique mark on it. David Lynch, making Inland Empire certainly made that one totally in accordance with his vision, and his alone.

Fortunately for me I’m also enjoying the support and collaboration of a group of musicians, actors, photographers and artists. We will be participating in each other’s projects and make great art together.

Money isn’t really an issue here. Neither is censorship. We will focus on making the films and then show them on the Internet. If that will result in money coming our way, it will be a bonus, not a requirement. This is also clearly an advantage. We will make the films totally without commercial considerations. There will be no censorship, either imposed or self-imposed. We will make the films exactly like we want them to be, with no outward interference allowed or desired. If the writer/director/auteur wants to talk to the producer, he or she may just take a look in the mirror without a care in the world, and have great fun in the bargain. We won’t have to consider how many theaters will show them, since we have no interest in showing them in theaters, in places dominated by monetary or «moral» concerns.

This is how art, all art, all books, music, paintings, sculptures, films and everything should be made, of course. The commercial production and distribution network has ruined art for way too long. This is a fact. If great art occasionally has passed through that system it has become so in spite of, not because of it. Let the old ways die, let it keep rotting on the vine like it has for so long.

The future is now!

Making covers

2011-02-16T08:13:00.000-08:00

I’m making all the covers for my books from start to finish. With a background in digital publishing and as a graphic designer I was never truly in doubt that I wanted to do it, to continue on my stated desire to do virtually everything on a book myself. I decided early on a minimalist design, a deliberate deviation from the flashy, impersonal and repetitive images of mainstream books. My covers aren’t advertising, but descriptions of what the book is about, and they are often planned years in advance, in some cases before the novel has been completed or even started on.

When I took the picture of South Platte River in Denver in 2002 I knew it would be used to illustrate The Defenseless. The river is almost a character in the book, the deep and dark and boiling water being a kind of mirror image to the two dark and deep brothers and their boiling blood. It was taken in bright daylight. I darkened it significantly to get the mood right. It turned out exactly the way I pictured it in my mind.

The photograph of the Los Angeles skyline, also taken in 2002 fit Your Own Fate perfectly, showing Jeremy Zahn’s final destination, the place where his fate would be played out. The branches down in the right corner is a deliberate inclusion, a kind of opposite to the sinister skyline, a bit of green and freshness in all the gray death.

The two above are single pictures, doctored in Adobe Photoshop, in the electronic darkroom to the desired result.

The covers to ShadowWalk, Night on Earth and The Slaves are composite images, a mix of several photos. The Slaves continues the theme of water, adding a crowd of an enslaved population to that of the deep sea. The Night on Earth cover is a mix of a woman with fangs on a cemetery and the front of the New Scotland Yard building in London. ShadowWalk is wild, unfettered wilderness and mystery on the front and a witch walking down the stairs at the imagined Ravenscourt castle on the back.

Covers to most of my upcoming books, even those not written yet are practically ready already. Sometimes ideas to stories have come from photos and not the other way around.

It always feels great witnessing how different angles of creativity and art augment each other and come together.

True artistic freedom - stage 1 to 4 - the story so far

2011-02-05T13:44:00.000-08:00

I’ve written what is pretty much a step by step account of my path from young, hopeful (and naive) writer to the suave, independent self-publisher I am today. I will republish the first few paragraphs of each article here with links to the rest.

I published my novel «ShadowWalk» in March 2003 on my own label, my own publishing company after a desert walk lasting two decades between various established publishers. That was my second. The first was the Norwegian edition of «Dreams belong to the Night».

No established publisher would or will ever want to touch my work, at least not without major rearranging, censorship, so I decided to do it myself. I took the advantage of current technology, and did everything, except the actual printing myself. In hindsight I feel almost grateful towards all those greedy and stuck-up publishers…

There are basically two major faults with them. They publish either only work they, personally deem to be of artistic merit, or they just want lots and lots of cash. Either approach equally despicable in my eyes.

True artistic freedom - stage 1

I finally printed my novel The Defenseless. I finally did it.

Publishing date will be July 21.

The novel Your Own Fate is also printed and will be released August 21.

So it begins.

It feels beyond great.

I’ve printed at lightningsource.com and am publishing through its extensive network of distribution partners, retailers and wholesalers.

True artistic freedom - stage 2

My novel The Defenseless is now indeed available all over the world, for virtually anybody to enjoy. The Print on Demand (POD) process is exceeding my wildest expectation. There are no disadvantages compared to offset printing, only advantages. And if a store or a retailer wants to buy 3000 copies of my book and I want to offer them lower prices my printer Lightning Source (LSI) offers offset printing as well.

Self publishing and POD is the way of the future. The old ways are dead. Good riddance. The only way the tyrannical established publishers have any hold of authors anymore is if a given author gives them that hold by clinging to the old and horrible ways. Everybody, generally speaking going through the old system of sell out and censorship should ask themselves hard questions about what they’re doing.

I’m becoming, like I have for a long time. And this is just the beginning. I have lots of novels to offer you in the coming years, all among the most controversial the world has ever seen published, and totally unacceptable to the before mentioned old and horrible system.

True artistic freedom - stage 3

This will deal with many things I haven’t mentioned in the three previous posts and will also serve as a kind of summing up of the info and statements there.

I have now published four novels under my new self-publishing initiative. It works like a charm and beyond my expectations, really. My books are available all over the world, and the Lightning Source network will be further expanded with a new printer opening in Australia for the Australian and Asian markets this summer. And my experiences during the publication, distribution and selling serves to confirm and even add to my previous opinions about the industry.

True artistic freedom - stage 4

You should also read all my other articles of writing and art on Midnight Fire. If you truly desire an alternative view of the world, I guarantee you won’t be disappointed.

Hysterical and fanatical grammar defenders

2011-02-05T13:39:00.000-08:00

I said goodbye to such a line of thinking ages ago.

There is a somewhat comprehensive ongoing discussion about this. A few want everything to be by the rules, by the book, and everything outside that is a baaad thing. Case closed. No further comments necessary. Others say that you need to know the rules to break them.

I disagree with both. I was fairly familiar with the rules once, but deliberately left them behind. Virtually any adherence to those mentioned rules is a bad thing in my eyes. I have to confess you will discover some use of rules in my books, inevitably, since I have inadvertently been tainted by them, but I’ve managed to remove so much of that taint that its presence has reached acceptable levels.

What I do today are deep pools of alternative work, in both form and content, and that is how I love it, of course. My voice is and will ever be unique, also because I am constantly working with myself to develop my absence of rules further.

Most people in the established part of the business today, authors or publishers/editors are ether one of two, either journalists or English teachers (or English majors) and it shows. Generally speaking, the books they’re responsible for, in some way or another, is exactly as dull and stale as my earliest, long since discarded work, and is yet another reason I threw rules out with the bathwater, like the lukewarm shit it is.

It is always funny, when people with such, or similar background, repeat what others have yapped about to me for decades, like I haven’t heard it all before. Explaining it to them seems like a hopeless task. They seem totally incapable of thinking outside any box or their own closed mind.

And with this, I believe, I’ve attacked virtually anybody even remotely associated with the old and stale and oppressive publishing business on the Midnight Fire blog and site. If you feel left out, please inform me asap…

Doing it yourself - technical advice for self publishing

2011-02-05T13:18:00.000-08:00

I’m self-publishing and the result is great, far better than doing it through the trite and oppressive established publishers. My fervent hope is that everybody, within all arts will be self-publishers in ten years, like they always should have been.

This is one way of making the necessary pdf files of the cover and the content, a task necessary if you want to publish through printers and distributors like Lightning Source (LSI).

I had experience from digital publishing and benefited from that, but the process, even though it requires some initial effort should be fairly easy for everybody.

I do everything myself, except the actual printing, a task very satisfying and also creative. Do it like this and you have total control from start to finish. Every word and image you use will be your own, your own creativity manifested. This is true artistic freedom like it should have been all the time, not the fucked up and destructive process that have ruined artists and their work for a century.

The process is easier than ever, now. You needed to make Postscript files before and then make a pdf file. Now, the Adobe pdf process makes one printer-ready file practically in one swoop. These are Lightning Source’s requirements, but they are the so called industry standard and should be quite similar to other printers. I studied the LSI requirement for weeks before starting up, but it was much easier than I had feared, really.

When you make the cover you might want to download a preformatted template from LSI. It will make it far easier to place all elements in the right place, for instance on the spine. I do that and open up the EPS-file in Adobe Photoshop professional, (pretty much the industry standard these days unfortunately). When you do a message box like this should appear:

If it isn’t like this you should change it to be 300 pixels/inch resolution and CMYK color. I recommend that you read a lot about CMYK colors before starting up if you don’t have knowledge of it beforehand. The anti aliasing should stay unchecked. Width and Height are the complete template image, not necessarily the size of the actual cover. When opened, it will look like this:

This is the template where you place your images and text, make your cover. This one is for a dust jacket that I made for one of my hardcover books (Night on Earth). I use layers a lot. If you haven’t done that before you might want to learn it. I use about five hours to complete the actual process, even though the advance creative wrangling takes far longer, of course. But once you have an image in your head about how you want the cover to be, it’s just to get started.

When you’re done you save (file/save as) it all as a pdf file like this:

I write and preformat my books in MS Word 2003 professional, preferring that to later and other versions. You can make files up to 32 MB with that, which should be plenty. I keep it simple, use a few extra fonts and stuff, but that’s pretty much it, no macros and shit. Thereby it will make it easy to also use later versions of Word, if I should need it.

Then I «write to file» (file/print) using Adobe Acrobat (yes, the industry standard) via MS Word. The Acrobat, once installed will appear as a macro in Word. The following is for a Norwegian Word version, but Properties is in the upper right corner.

Custom Royal is my custom-made page size for my book. Default settings are the industry standard needed to make your book print ready, and there must be no security on your file or the printer won’t be able to open it. Uncheck and check everything you see here.

That’s it. You press OK, and you’re done.

Some people claim Word is for writing and that you shouldn't use it for layout, but I've used Adobe InDesign for 15 years, also while it was still called Pagemaster, and I prefer Word for this task. You can do everything important in Word.

One more thing: As a precaution you should always check your file to make sure the fonts, all your fonts are there. You use Adobe Reader, file/properties and check if all the fonts are properly embedded. If they’re not, you must retrace your steps and make sure you have done it right.

This is a bit sketchy, by necessity, or it would have been twice as long and way too technical. Feel free to ask questions.

Right to protest

2011-01-23T14:32:00.000-08:00

We don’t have a right to protest, not in any country I know on Earth, and I’ve been to most of them, and today knowledge is easily available about the rest. We must take that right.

In many places knowing what will happen isn’t difficult. They shoot you like a dog or drag you into a torture chamber if you even breathe at the wrong time. In others freedom of assembly is usual permitted, at least if you ask nice first. If you don’t ask nice the nice men and women in uniform will come with their clubs and shields and guns and convince you that this isn’t such a good idea. The police in any so called democratic country can, in case you’re wondering criminalize an assembly or protest, at any time, also those obtaining advance «permission», and if you don’t have good working relationship with the bullies that will most certainly happen.

The freedom, the right to protest is pretty much illusory. The only people allowed freedom of assembly are those not very dangerous to the people in charge. The rest of us run the risk of suffering broken skulls and bones, and ending up in a not so very nice place.

Police brutality is prevalent in every single country, in the north, east, south and west. Police officers should not be trusted in any capacity. Just keep in mind that police bashing in itself is useless, without also targeting their masters, the overlords sitting at the top of the pyramid that is the modern society.

In Gothenburg, Copenhagen, London, Seattle and a thousand big and small places those with their eyes open see easily the true face of «protect and serve».

Obvious

2011-01-22T19:57:00.000-08:00

I’ve experienced an explosion of creativity and inspiration the last two weeks. It’s really quite remarkable, unlike anything I’ve lived through, even in a life filled with somewhat comparable prolonged moments in time. Everything is boiling in here…

It eventually made me wonder, pondering the cause of it all. The answer wasn’t instantly forthcoming.

Then, in a moment of clarity and a bit of embarrassment, the obvious answer struck me…

My TV-subscription ended the tenth, and a week after that my television set broke down completely and probably and preferably beyond recovery.

The god was dead, croaked, totaled, gone, eradicated.

I was struck by the synchronicity of it all. My idiot box was thirteen years old and derelict, but it kept it going, until a moment not long after I had decided I had no more use for it.

Thirteen years ago, with a little help from good friends I threw God on the garbage heap where it belonged, but like a cancer it snuck back into my life. This time, however it didn’t have a prayer.

Even as little as I watched television it still drained me, drained my inner fire and loud inspiration. These two weeks have actually been like a rebirth, of sorts. I’ve had that type of square box in the house since I was three years’ old, and have for years told myself to get rid of it. Now, when I have, I regret I didn’t do so far sooner.

The benefits of us parting ways are obvious beyond words and relief. Now, knowing what I know, I find myself writhing in discomfort merely by finding myself in close proximity to one of those horrid machines.

I have let go of one more ties that binds. One more chain of my captivity has dissolved to dust, has transmuted into live-giving air, and I’m flying even higher and deeper in the shadowlands of infinite night.

imagine an axe cleaving this one in half

Kill the dog

2011-01-18T13:38:00.000-08:00

It’s one of the best advices I can offer when it comes to writing fiction.

How often haven’t we seen a family in peril with the following scenario: There is a fire or an imminent explosion. The family of four, one boy and a girl has escaped from the house, and they’ve forgotten their dog. The boy or the girl, usually the youngest child cries out: «What about Charlie? We’ve forgotten Charlie». And then they see the dog in the flames. One of two things happens: Either the dog makes it through a long stretch of flames on its own, or the father rushes in through the hungry fire and rescue the poor mutt, either totally unrealistic. Then the fire make the building collapse or the bomb or gas thank go off.

The youngest child walks off with the dog in his or her hands, surrounded by the family, and all is well with the world.

In Clive Barker’s story The Forbidden a baby dies. In the otherwise excellent film version, called The Candyman it’s saved from a giant bonfire. Bah!

There are countless, way too many to be counted examples, all of horrible storytelling, of greed, taboos and intolerance ruining a potentially great story. Theaters won’t show such films, stores won’t sell such books and family friendly pressure groups or similar will do their utmost to keep them from being showcased.

No, I don’t object to the dog or the child or whatever being saved occasionally. I object to the sheer numbers of it.

Don’t make or write a «family friendly» story at all. They suck. All potential in such stories has been removed in a mire of internal and external censorship and lack of daring.

There should be far more stories that are thought-provoking, controversial and confrontational. Killing the dog, transgression should be the norm, not the rare exception.

The story so far:

True artistic freedom - stage 4

Author's word - Night on Earth

Author's word - The Slaves

Celebration mighty and true

Real

Author's word - Your Own Fate

True artistic freedom - stage 3

True independence

Independence

Modern slavery

The Storyteller

True Artistic Freedom (II)

Reading it again

The chores of an independent author/artist

My fifty cents

True artistic freedom

Labeling and genre writing

Alarums of reality

The difficulties in describing a complex storyline

Other links:

Firewind - my stories, art and poems on the Web

My writer «CV»

The Janus Clan

Problems

2011-01-17T22:23:00.000-08:00

The following is human civilization in a nutshell, for dummies (like the books), and perhaps even in a language those greedy and ignorant bastards running things may understand:

If there’s one thing I’ve learned is that problems won’t go away by themselves. They must be tackled head on. If you receive a bill you can’t pay you need to contact the company issuing it as soon as possible and make an arrangement with it, or your situation will only worsen. Many don’t do that, but burn the bill or throw it in the waste bin, and when the next suspicious envelope with their name on it arrives in the mail they suffer from a massive anxiety attack and never open the envelope. This might continue for weeks and months and the initial fairly small amounts and your problems grow to enormous proportions. Some might even flee to another country in a last-ditch attempt to escape the horror their lives have become.

Human society as a whole has similar problems. They started small thousands of years ago and the bill has rocketed sky-high since then. Many small collectors are chasing us for the amount owed, or so it seems, but there’s really only one: The Earth itself. It holds a giant shotgun to our head that has long since grown totally beyond proportions, and the gunpowder it uses is in the billions of tons.

And humanity as a whole keep refusing to open those envelopes, and our anxiety attacks… they go through all roofs, too. Running to another country won’t help. The debt can easily be collected everywhere and it is. There is nowhere left to run.

Countless stacks of bills are long overdue and the collector is getting impatient.

Further reading on Midnight Fire:

Beyond insane

Destroyers (III)

Just another oil spill

The vast and obvious dangers of modern existence

What's wrong with civilization?

Tumor

Tailspin suicide run

Chemical cocktail

The World Grinder

Living in the wild

Primitivism

Tribe

The technological glorification of technology

Not fit to sustain life

Destroyers

The politics of hatred

2011-01-16T16:42:00.000-08:00

The politics of hatred is pretty easy to describe. It is when people and politicians are blaming various minorities and their supporters for whatever perceived trouble a country or society has, and even more so when such a blame game is tipping over and results in violence and aggression against a given group. It’s often, very often mixed with nationalism and religion. Members of a given minority are painted as enemies of a given nation or religion.

Without nationalism, in any form or religion, in any form the world would most certainly be a better place, lacking two of the main incentives of totally unfounded aggression.

Recent immigrants or groups belonging to the same ethnic group as recent immigrants are very popular hate objects. They are evidently «ruining the country» (whatever that means). The racist hate groups are speaking a lot about defending or taking back their country, a country that was never really theirs in the first place.

There’s a thoroughly eerie and insane line of thought these people display.

Racism is quite common all over the present world. It’s displayed by most majority groups, and even in some minority groups, but most of all in those clinging to nationalism and religion.

Bashing vulnerable people and minorities are useful. It’s a great tool when you want to be an elected official in some or other capacity. It’s also very handy for the tyrants in a given country when they want to set groups against each other, to better control the poor and huddled masses.

Most countries have fairly popular far right groups. Sadly the far right isn’t the only show in town peddling to the racists, or there wouldn’t truly be much of a problem. Center right, center and center left of the political spectrum have all their own muddled tendencies. Very few politicians and elected officials take a stand against racism. The popular current double speak version of racism is to say that a person is «against immigration», while the obvious truth is that anyone opposed to a multicultural society is a racist, filled to the brim with bias, prejudice and intolerance for any alternative lifestyle.

The fairly respected French government threw out all the gypsies on what were clearly triumphed up «charges», and even though there was outrage, it wasn’t very loud. This is just one example of many, where the authorities make what is called a popular decision to distract from their own troubles.

We saw demonstrated the inevitable result of the politics of hatred in Tucson, Arizona, USA recently. Jared Lee Loughner, after listening to the aggressive hate speech of Sarah Palin, Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh and countless others for years decided to off United States Congress representative Gabrielle Giffords. He shot her and many others. Among the dead was Christina Taylor-Green, a nine year-old girl.

Palin and the other conservatives in the so-called Tea Party movement have been very defensive, and attempted strenuously to evade blame for their obvious complicity, but their guilt is obvious, really. They should even be charged with incitement and could just as well have stood behind the shooter and cheered him on.

I can't say that every member of the tea party is bad, since I haven't met all of them or heard all of them speak, but those I have met and heard speak are raving, dangerous lunatics.

They are beyond guilty scum, and «hardly human» in my eyes, and it’s about time we all took a stand against them and their like, in all countries on Earth.

PS I have deliberately left out mentioning the United States haters’ gun terminology, since I don’t really believe it is about that, isn’t about pro guns or not. My view is that people who want to get a gun, want to kill people usually succeed in doing so. Europe and other areas haven’t the same insane availability of guns that the United States has, but there are still many similar smaller and bigger cases all over the world.

The beyond aggressive rhetoric and acts of the intolerant mind has a long history in civilization in general.

True artistic freedom - stage 4

2011-01-14T10:56:00.000-08:00

This will deal with many things I haven’t mentioned in the three previous posts and will also serve as a kind of summing up of the info and statements there.

I have now published four novels under my new self-publishing initiative. It works like a charm and beyond my expectations, really. My books are available all over the world, and the Lightning Source network will be further expanded with a new printer opening in Australia for the Australian and Asian markets this summer. And my experiences during the publication, distribution and selling serves to confirm and even add to my previous opinions about the industry.

And if I, at some point should become dissatisfied with Lightning Source there are lots of other alternatives out there.

I'm not really very prolific, even though I have published four novels in six months. This is simply an acquired boon stemming from the fact that I've written eleven novels in a period of decades and that I can now enjoy the fruits of my long labor.

Self-publishing isn’t just possible and desirable, but the only way to publish your work if you have any self-respect or dignity at all.

Stay away from agents, editors, established publishers, and most authors published under the old system. The aid they may provide is at best ill-advised, at worst totally destructive to your possible path as an author, artist or human being even.

Read about authors’ experiences with established publishers here.

Agents are merely an intermediary between you and the established publishers. They provide nothing of worth, except how to ruin yourself and your work, in an effort to be noticed by the trad pubs… and thereby gain the opportunity of being ruined by them. And they, like the established publishers themselves have now become, even more than before a totally unnecessary link between you and the reader.

Editors are pretty much the same, except that they are even more involved in your participation in your own destruction. When they’re done with your work you will hardly recognize it, and it will be as bland as most other works published by the Old Ways.

I was skeptical to editing from the start. Except for correcting pure mistakes, I swore my books should remain exactly as they were written the first time. Time and experience taught me to modify that view a bit. I had to admit that some rewriting or revision was needed and even desirable. But my fundamental skepticism towards professional editors remained and was strengthened in my contact with them. They don’t truly care about your work. They are just true to their masters, the publishers or their own limited, very limited notion of what a story or piece of writing should be. Very few of them know you or even try to know you or your work, or what you want to do and where you want to go.

Now, as an experienced author I do the editing and revision pretty much in my head as I write what some authors call first draft, anyway. I’ve never done drafts and do so even less, now.

I wouldn’t listen to anyone praising the old system, no matter how many copies they’ve sold, especially not then. Writing classes and conferences are usually a part of the old system and should, like writing groups in general be shunned anyway. A novel can never be written by committee. I’ve learned to write on my own, never taken any classes, or read any books about «how to write» what so ever. Therefore I can state, with just pride that I have a unique «voice», one not marred by mainstream horrors and an old, corrupt system of censorship and ruination of art.

All those «how to become a better writer» books out there should also be shunned, of course. At best they’re a horrible shortcut, at worst one more way of leading you astray, pulling you into the maelstrom of mainstream mediocrity. There are no good such books. Even the good is bad, if you get my drift.

Yes, ninety-nine percent of the established industry is set to ruin any prospective author or artist and their works. This is true whether you’re a writer, musician, a movie maker or artist in general.

I have to point out that everything isn’t black or white, though. Of course not. There is blurring around the edges. Small time press or independent individuals might serve in a capacity similar to what a friend or personal adviser might provide, an honest alternative view of your story.

But why should you choose a small publisher, when you can easily be one yourself?

Because of the lighter workload in the sales and exclusion of secretary work I would consider publishing through an established company if they agreed that I made all decisions, that I could do everything I do, now, and have the total freedom of an self-published author, but that is as likely as if the sun should rise in the west or something, so I don’t waste any time thinking about it. I would certainly be very skeptical if anyone approached me, for the many reasons I’ve listed earlier.

I like where I am, now. It’s a great start for possible further future «glory», a foundation I can work with and expand at my own pace and coincidences and luck and persistence may magnify to a greater degree. There are no limits, literally, and even more important: far fewer limitations than doing it all through those before mentioned asshole established publishers and their rotten (rotten in most meanings of the word) system.

Most authors and prospective authors are still stuck in the old mode of approaching agents and publishers, craving their acceptance as a way of «feeling complete» as an author and the equally misunderstood notion that the chances of earning lots of cash are greater if they should accept you. I see that both on Internet and elsewhere. But fortunately this is changing. My dream of a world filled with true independent artists and human beings is being actualized, slowly but There, no matter how all the weight of the old, inhuman world is leaning on it.

The story so far:

Author's word - Night on Earth

Author's word - The Slaves

Celebration mighty and true

Real

Author's word - Your Own Fate

True artistic freedom - stage 3

True independence

Independence

Modern slavery

The Storyteller

True Artistic Freedom (II)

Reading it again

The chores of an independent author/artist

My fifty cents

True artistic freedom

Labeling and genre writing

Alarums of reality

The difficulties in describing a complex storyline

Other links:

Firewind - my stories, art and poems on the Web

My writer «CV»

The Janus Clan

Unapologetic

2011-01-08T08:58:00.000-08:00

I searched for one word for a few seconds, to describe me, and suddenly, there it was.

I make no apologies for being the free human being that I am, for attacking an oppressive society, with all its lame and horrible and dangerous normalcy with everything I am.

You’re free, you can do what you want. Living in a tyranny, like every human being on Earth is doing today, there have to be a few concessions. You have to acknowledge the fact that they have a certain limited physical power over you… but aside from that… small, tiny thing, there is nothing holding you back. If you accept that the overlords and their stooges have power over you, they have. If you don’t… they haven’t. It is as simple as that.

That’s the key. The system and its ever-changing overlords can only rule us all, as long as we accept being ruled. If enough of us stop accepting it, the tyranny ends.

If you decide to kill a person, for instance, if you really decided to go through with it, very few could actually stop you. The person you set out to kill could do so, of course, or circumstances could work against you, but if you put your mind and will to it, that isn’t very likely. Whatever you want to do, if you are ready to accept the consequences, you can do. Big acts are actually easier to do than smaller, troublesome chores in the confines of an ordinary existence.

The propaganda tells you that obeying the rules, being the nice law-abiding citizen is what to strive for, is the right, honorable way to live. I reject that false truth, the smoke and mirror tactic of the tyrants. The older I become, the more I reject it.

Those embracing an ordinary, dehumanizing existence have really forfeited the right to be treated with respect, in my opinion. Respect must be earned. If you don’t have respect for yourself, how can others have it? If you accept, willingly or unwillingly today’s dreaded existence, and succumb to it, if you see yourself as nothing but a tiny wheel within the bigger, horrible machinery, you obviously have no self-respect. You might insist that you have, but you would be wrong.

So expect me to keep telling you, for as long as I breathe, in no uncertain terms what a despicable lowlife you are.

These nights I celebrate my sixth anniversary as a blogger. Those years have been wild, as the many years before them.

You ain’t seen nothing yet!

Yes, I know, the sentence above is «grammatically» wrong. Language, too, is a prison, if you decide to abide by its constraints.

And with that, I conclude this literary masterpiece.

Useless - except for lining drug production companies’ pockets

2011-01-04T05:38:00.000-08:00

The independent Cochrane Institute in Rome, Italy reveals a startling truth about flu vaccines, pretty much confirming what other independent bodies and individuals have claimed for years. Their conclusions are based on 36 studies. They show that all studies not conducted by or paid or sponsored by the drug companies are quite conclusive: flu vaccines are virtually useless. Every single one of them has little or no effect. Only one in hundred people, at best is helped. It doesn’t work, and isn’t even helpful for the so called «risk groups», like children and old and sick people, but on the contrary serves only to put them at bigger risk of becoming a victim of the drug’s adverse effects. Again, natural resistance is shown to be infinitely superior to any human-made compounds.

All countries official «experts» and national drug administrations recommend vaccination, yet another revealing truth about their close connection to the drug production companies. Will they react, now, when the undisputed truth once again has revealed itself?

I doubt it. If Big Bucks, with the aid of their good helpers can’t subvert the truth they most certainly can ignore it. The flu «epidemic» last winter earned them billions of dollars more for their extravagant lifestyle.

Have they killed people in their greed? Most certainly. Not only occasionally, but all the time. Will they ever pay for it? Not likely. They are the respected citizens of the current society.

1984 - The next generation

2011-01-03T06:22:00.000-08:00

According to another eye-opener from Wikileaks a German/US clandestine project is set to develop the next generation of spy satellites, satellites that make the story 1984 by George Orwell seems like child’s play in comparison.

Again, this was no secret. We have known that such satellites were in development. No matter how strenuously official sources have ridiculed people stating that they were. But once again Wikileaks confirms what was previously firmly set in the domain of «conspiracy-theorists».

Again, calling somebody a «conspiracy-theorist» is a safe way of discrediting him or her, a very successful way, used by tyrants and tyrants’ stooges for decades.

It’s funny, really, in a bad way, and even funnier that some people keep attempting to deny that governments and corporations wish us the worst of times.

This is really great stuff, you know. The author, the Storyteller in me is choking on the laughter on this one.

The aim of the military clandestine HIROS-project, camouflaged in official doublespeak as environment satellites is to see everything, really.

The satellites will make it possible to survey any place on Earth down to 50 centimeters - with new photographs from 3 to 5 times a day.

The images will be available much faster than before, from 2 to 5 minutes. Today it takes hours, or so they say.

It will be easier to make three-dimensional images in color.

It will be possible to take infrared photographs at night and capture activity below the ground.

Again, to an aware and radical person, this is nothing new, but it’s great to have it all out in the open like this, even though most people will either fail to read it - or if they should read it or hear it in other ways - shrug and turn away.

They, the people behind this and the other projects will tell you that their attention is directed at perceived «hostile states» or «terrorists» or any other group they may blame for the sorry state of the world. Don’t believe them. They lie, lie all the time, about everything, also cleverly by telling the «truth», by slight of hand performances leaving out important details.

Together with the Echelon-project used for eavesdropping on E-mail and people’s conversations worldwide and several other control-activities, like close up video-surveillance in cities, all of it in operation for a long time, this forms an unequivocal message:

They are watching you.

Yes, you.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a law-abiding citizen, if you have never broken the law or anything. The purpose is to scare you, to the point that you’re not even thinking about stepping out of line. This is about Control.

For more than a few years now we’ve been entrenched in the insane world of Big Brother. It is going from bad to worse fast.

In secret cables in and out of Berlin and secret conversations exposed elsewhere we certainly see what the true intentions are: total control of all humans on Earth.

One intermediary source: Aftenposten (in Norwegian).

The animal at nightfall

2010-12-29T13:56:00.000-08:00

"Montgomery told me that the Law... became oddly weakened about nightfall;
that then the animal was at its strongest;
a spirit of adventure sprang up in them at the dusk;
they would dare things they never seemed to dream about by day".

H. G. Wells
The Island of Dr. Moreau

Profound bullshit

2010-12-28T11:45:00.000-08:00

Fortunately, another christmas is now definitely done and tons of more rubbish is spouted by the defenders of this beyond shitty holiday.

The quote below is on example of the quality of the criticism I and others received when we pointed out the blatant hypocrisy of the all. The person in question even claims to be an atheist, which is somewhat typical for the problem humanity is currently facing. Christianity and religion obviously have deep hooks in us all, even in those claiming to have left it behind.

«I love Christmas ~ it has nothing to do with religion ~ it is a celebration of the core of goodness & light in everyone ~ Merry Christmas»

What profound bullshit

Christmas symbolizes greed, hypocrisy, oppression and the horror of religion. There is no viable excuse for defending this vile practice.

The invisible Palestinian liberation struggle

2010-12-27T06:32:00.000-08:00

Palestine 1946

Today is the second anniversary of the Gaza massacre. Two years has passed since the beyond brutal attack by israel on what is basically a defenseless population, two years since israeli military and paramilitary forces murdered men, women and children, even young children and bombed to dust hospitals, schools, community houses, ambulances and just about anything both moving and not.

The obviously correct and meticulous Goldstone rapport offers a detailed and horrible picture of what happened. The Norwegian surgeons Mads Gilbert and Erik Fosse and others present gave their personal account of «wading in blood», all of it pretty much ignored by western news media.

The Genocide of the Palestinian people, by israeli forces, ongoing since 1945 took yet another dramatic turn for the worse.

Let me once again remind you of what genocide is, according to Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948):

Article 2

...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Article 3

The following acts shall be punishable:

(a) Genocide;
(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
(d) Attempt to commit genocide;
(e) Complicity in genocide.

Make no mistake, this is what is happening in Palestine.

The official international reaction to the massacre in Gaza was as predictable, as it is sad and inhuman. It was a shrug, really, and yet another attempt at blaming the victims for the acts of their oppressor and occupant.

Private citizens, like myself got totally fed up, though. I had been aware of the situation in Palestine for years, and written several articles about it, but I hadn’t actually engaged myself in its activism. Many felt like me. Thousands joined the various Palestine-friendly groups in Europe, United States and the world.

Western governments, however continued their fence sitting, continued being «friends with israel», a completely disgusting and unacceptable stand.

Anything putting pressure on israel, like the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement and South American nations recognizing Palestine as an independent state (worrying to no end the israeli cabinet minister Benjamin Ben Eliezer) is a good thing, but far stronger measures are sorely needed.

The attack on the international flotilla and massacre onboard the Mavi Marmara elicited pretty much the same reaction, the same lack of response. The Turkish government was pretty livid… for a while, but now says it wants a return to «normal relations» with israel.

There are the massacres, a new one every second year or so, but even worse than that is the ongoing, deliberate erosion of the Palestinian people from Palestine. Look at the map from 1946 and look at the same area today, and an undeniable truth appears even stronger than it does in the daily independent news.

Palestinian farmers on the West Bank have to beg Israeli soldiers for working on their own land. Practically every day they have to put up with hours of humiliation and degradation to do even the most simple of tasks. The Palestinians are terrorized while, israeli citizens are stealing ever more of their land.

Today Palestinians lack even the most basic of human rights, in Gaza, on the West Bank and within Israeli borders. It’s an intolerable situation that the world community is mostly ignoring and allows to deteriorate further.

More articles about Palestine on Midnight Fire:

Hasbara

Britain's unions commit to mass boycott

I believe it

Israel's inhumanity in Palestine exposed yet again

Definition of Genocide

Blood on their hands and worse

Israel reveals its true face time and time again

Israel's wanton killing of children

A land given them by God

My christmas tradition

2010-12-22T11:23:00.001-08:00

This is a tradition at least as old as the Internet.

Each year, or every second year I publish or republish three poems to give my thoughts on christmas. This year, as an added bonus I've added a fourth.

Enjoy...

Christmas is finally over

I shit my pants today

The Burning

Nothing happened - a ballad

Author’s word - Night on Earth

2010-12-14T19:19:00.000-08:00

The novel Night on Earth grew out of London’s streets and back alleys…

Calling it «a London story» is indeed more than correct.

And even though I have also used London as a backdrop in other novels, it’s the first where the entire story takes place there.

I’ve always felt grateful, almost indebted to London because of all the inspiration it has given me. An artist, any type of artist get a lot for free just by walking its streets. It’s a great city for most people, but for artists and storytellers it is an amazing place, filled with stories and moods and settings.

It’s a bit of a coincidence that I arrived in London the first time during the summer of 1983. I needed a European city, setting for my novel The Slaves, and I chose London, and I traveled to London because of that. I will always be twice grateful because my life as an artist enriched my life in general. It didn’t just help bringing me to London, but to all over the world. My life and art became even more one and the same.

Not many authors or filmmakers go deep into a setting today. If they describe a character’s surroundings at all it’s very often in a more technical, clinical way, lacking the depth and thorough effort the setting deserve. London makes it easy, at least to me, to describe it properly.

I’ve often visited the town, and I’ve lived there for five years. If I have a home at all, within civilization it’s there.

I had a quandary before writing the book, since I didn’t want to be too kind to the setting. The present day London, as it was, when I lived there, from 1988 to 1993 was difficult for me to describe in a bad way. So I struggled a bit, before I had the idea of moving it into the future, a strategic move that also fit well into other ideas I had about the novel.

And the thing is, many of the bad things I describe, like the extensive surveillance and oppressive police presence has already come to pass. The bad stuff was there in the early nineties, too, of course, but not as prevalent as it is today.

For one thing there were countless truly alternative and radical bookshops and venues. Now, there is hardly any left. You could also find radical books in ordinary bookshops, something that is very unlikely today. The horrible and pervasive pressure from above has more or less made any free expression that much harder. That the free expression and wild human being is still present says a lot about both London and the prevalent human spirit.

This is as close to a genre book I’ll ever come, I guess. It has some of the elements of the horror story and some of the Gothic, dark fantasy elements, more so than my other stories, perhaps.

But on the other hand it has a lot of other elements usually not used in those genres. I abhor genre-stories, really…

I’ve been told before that I do write Gothic stories, even though many of the classic trappings are missing, because my characters often have wicked and unsavory traits. To me that means I’m merely describing human beings, not the paper dolls so much present in mainstream storytelling. My main people are just that, people, not heroes, not anti-heroes or anything fitting into any preconfigured notion of how they should behave.

Btw I wrote this between 1992 and 2004, long before vampires became super-popular…

It’s a classic vampire and London story without being a classic vampire and London story. The word «vampire» btw isn’t mentioned in the novel at all. I’m quite proud of that.

I’ve always loved vampire stories, their nocturnal and feral nature, vampire stories with bite, that is, not the diluting, ruination of the legend we’ve witnessed the last twenty years, in both film and books. This is a far cry from the countless «young adult» vampire stories we suffer the presence of today. I have also totally removed the religious trappings, and returned to basics, far removed from the christian morality that has also ruined many a potentially great story. You won’t see my vampires recoil from the sight of crosses or being unable to enter churches and such. To me they’ve always been enhanced humans and not supernatural beings.

I feel a little ambiguous writing this, at least publishing it on the Internet, since I would prefer that you have read the story before reading this commentary. It takes a while before the presence of the vampires becomes apparent, as it should. As always I let the reader dive slowly into the story and discover the puzzle in his or her own way. I would guess that the presence of vampires doesn’t come as a shock to the aware reader, however. It is certainly not meant to be a secret, or a surprise, for that matter. Many people that are into paranormal literature and art would know or at least suspect that vampires are present by reading the blurb, the back cover description.

It’s a Mystery of the mind and the flesh, slowly unfolding and exploding, one more story about the Wild Man in the modern world.

PS: I’m always surprised by the thought and contemplation that has to be done in order to write even a brief commentary like this...

The christmas sickness

2010-12-11T09:22:00.000-08:00

I usually do an annual or at least biannual attack on christmas and its sick celebration, both with (gallows) humor and seriousness, and this year, by a bit of coincidence I started early. It usually results in some controversy. When people are told a truth they don't want to hear, they grow angry, of course and so also in this case.

During my first years on the Internet, when I sent out mail to the people on my mailing list, all fairly radical I could receive replies such as this:

«Why did you send this message to me? Many of us were very distressed by it. Please remove me from your mailing list immediately».

I told her I couldn’t understand why she was on it in the first place and obliged. I got rid of lots of dead meat that way…

I’m gonna document it, in a bit more detail this year, to see if it leads anywhere.

The first person has blocked me on Twitter because of this subject already and it’s just the 11.

@StephenBBagley I know it's not sophisticated or smartly cynical or even snarky, but I love Christmas. Despite the darkness of this December, I still do.

@HoodedMan @StephenBBagley christmas symbolizes greed, hypocrisy, oppression and the horror of religion http://bit.ly/8plWl9

@StephenBBagley You must be fun at christmas parties

@HoodedMan @StephenBBagley I don't go to any, of course

And that was that.

The latter link is to an excellent article by Maxine Montserrat ( @LucidGlow ) on the subject and I recommend it wholeheartedly.

Beyond insane

2010-12-06T03:17:00.000-08:00

There is no nation on Earth where Freedom reigns, just tiny pockets of it besieged by the armies of oppression. The insanity is pervasive, everywhere, and on all fronts. It’s easily identified, almost no matter where you go, from top to bottom in society.

It takes a series of minor and major forms every day and night.

Humanity has, for a while now dug deep holes in the ground to find poisonous compounds, compounds they knew early were poisonous. And we continue this horrible tradition today, when our knowledge about its poisonous «qualities» is better known than ever. We make ever more poison, more artificial chemicals in addition to those we dig from the Earth, thousands new and beyond dangerous every year.

This wretched stupidity goes beyond even insanity, into suicidal behavior.

We live in a society where both the leaders and most of its people are both deeply ignorant and irresponsible, where humanity, as a species is committing collective suicide.

Alternative information is suppressed.

Any truly alternative way of living is sneered at and its proponents are persecuted.

Our extensive use of coal and oil is about to transform Earth from a fairly pleasant globe to an inferno. Coal brings death below to the people digging it up and disaster once we start using its «bounty».

Our equally extensive use of chemicals in all parts of our life is making us sick and threatens to make most of the life on the planet infertile.

What is currently seen as viable alternatives, like nuclear energy is even worse. Its fuel is the most dangerous compound in existence.

Advanced technology makes us ever better in the art of destroying nature, ruining all life. We have transformed 50 percent of the wilderness into cities and other lifeless, truly desolate areas. It’s a process speeding up year by year.

The modern human society is steeped in oppression, intolerance and devastation. Civilization is destroying everything making life worth living. If not all the physical aspects of the present day horror make you stop and think, this aspect of modern existence should definitely do it.

Current humanity is totally fucked up!

Wikileaks (I)

2010-11-28T21:15:00.000-08:00

Let me first start with what a great thing it is that Wikileaks has released and is releasing United States’ classified information in unprecedented quantities, and that the United States government and industrial/military complex seems helpless to stop it.

Governments lie, lie through their teeth, lie all the time and this will inevitably let more people realize this.

What has been revealed so far, about the US and NATO brutal warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan and also elsewhere isn’t really that much new stuff. The detail of it is impressive, but radical people like myself have been well aware of far more disturbing facts for decades.

It has even been in the public room, fairly easy to come by for those seeking them.

United States has made 132 invasions since its inception, an unprecedented track record very hard, if not downright impossible to beat. They have been carrying out genocide against the indigenous population. They have instigated, directly and indirectly a rule of terror in Central and South America. The entire world has felt its terror.

They have assassinated heads of state, toppled governments and generally speaking contributed a lot to today’s fucked up world.

These are facts, not a matter of opinion.

Has the United States contributed anything good to humanity at all? Yes. But nowhere enough to counter all the bad.

Anybody buying the establishment’s criticism against Wikileaks should have their head’s examined. Somebody should have done this and more decades ago.

My only objection so far concerns what hasn’t been published so far. There should be no holding back what so ever here. As long as there is, there will always be a justified suspicion that this is all a controlled leak from some faction in the forces behind the government.

A frank, honest man.

Celebration times four

2010-10-28T13:26:00.000-07:00

There will be at least four reasons for celebration when I arrive in London on Sunday.

I have completed my novel "At the end of the rainbow", the fourth installment of my series The Janus Clan tonight. It will be published next year.

The Slaves, the second book in the series is officially published on Sunday.

Being in London is, in itself a reason to celebrate.

It's Samhain Sunday night, an ancient All Soul's Night where Life itself is celebrated.

At the very least those four. But I'm convinced one or ten more will easily manifest.

Machine not

2010-10-23T12:23:00.000-07:00

«What is it that makes us human? It isn't something you can program. You can't put it into a chip. It's the strength of the human heart, the difference between us and machines».
Marcus Wright - Sam Worthington - Terminator Salvation (2009)

There are those who would disagree with the above statement, claiming that humanity can be quantified, can be measured and defined like a chemical solution in a dish. Most people calling themselves scientists would make that claim without hesitation.

Such an approach to humanity, to life itself is certainly one major flaw with science in general.

One of several disastrous results of such a horrible outlook is the society civilization and its advanced technology has created. The society previous humanity has made, current humanity is making is a Machine, and humanity is its nuts and bolts and wheels, one where many scientists and techno-freaks speak about artificial intelligence being potentially superior to mankind’s, where people like Hans Moravec boast about their desire to download human consciousness into a machine and brag about its advantages.

What follows is my review on the movie Terminator Salvation and related subjects, translated and expanded from my original Norwegian article:

I watched the film for the second time tonight, re-experiencing the greatness, the experience further enhanced in my mind, one motion picture many professional reviewers have called «painfully bad».

The film is a masterpiece from the first to the last frame. There is something about the Terminator movies bringing out greatness in everybody working with them.

John Connor has been played by at least four people. Three directors and several writers have contributed to the story. Quality remains high throughout the series. All four films are up there with the very best. They say so very much about fate and what it means to be human, and are rare gems of deep, intense action-films.

Before each new installment I have been pretty much without high expectations. I don’t know quite why that is, but I guess I have feared that it would be impossible to repeat past greatness. Each and every time I have been beyond pleasantly surprised. There is something about the theme and story that obviously bring out the best in the various crews working on the films. One can see and sense, easily notice how thorough they are.

We’re finally watching John Connor, humanity’s «leader» in the war against the machines, follow him in the future, a part of the story we believed we would never be told. We know a few things about what happens, about what must happen, before the film starts, but the excitement and tension is still high, in spite of that. Connor is no longer absolutely necessary for the war against the machines to continue. Kyle Reese is, but not John Connor. And we’re kept on the edge of our seat to the final frame. The story is about Man and Machine, literally. In a time where humans become ever more organic machines, robots, puppets hardly doing anything but dance in strings a film like this is increasingly valuable. Marcus Wright says that humans can’t be programmed. I don’t know if I share his optimistic view there, but what’s certainly true is that not everybody can be. The fire burning within all humans cannot be extinguished.

Reviewers are, as I often say the art community’s parasites. They have no true function. They have no true knowledge of film, what is great film, or rather: don’t have any better knowledge than most people and far inferior compared to those of us burning for a great story, an experience beyond description inside and outside the theater or living room. Reviewers state their ignorant view and present it as a bible of what movies (books, music, art in general) are supposed to be.

In a strange and startling and very telling way they remind me of scientists. Both groups are beyond eager to classify, define everything. If they can’t label stuff, they grow very cranky and self-serving, and even desperate and yes, dangerous.

I’ve always made sure to watch movies slaughtered by reviewers and they have, practically without exception shown themselves to be great films.

That these people are paid to publish their shit is absolutely incredible.

You’ve just read one man’s opinion.

Author’s word - The Slaves

2010-10-18T07:44:00.000-07:00

The Slaves, the second installment of my series The Janus Clan is my most violent novel so far, one that takes the art form of transgression far and beyond, I'm proud to say. A friend of mine told me that reading it had been an ordeal, and I said thank you. He said he had a hard time dealing with all the wounds it opened, and I beamed at him. I want my readers to have a hard time with it, want them to ask themselves the hard, the truly hard questions.

But it’s also, in many ways an upbeat tale, one about empowerment, liberation from enslavement, or at least the start of the long road to true Freedom.

It is extremely violent, an attack on the senses, both mentally and physically, but it has to be, with the story it's telling. It's a tale for adults, in all meanings of the word, one hardly subtracting anything from the horror that is the current human society.

I remember once when I discussed it over the phone with a representative for a publisher. «It’s so rough, so beyond brutal». I could virtually see him sit there and shake his head.

«So what»? I asked him.

He never really replied to that one, except in hopeless generalities. I discovered a startling truth that day, in my youth and naiveté: A story that explicitly revealed the horrors of modern life just wasn’t feasible to established publishers.

Eventually I would discover that a lot of stuff wasn’t feasible to any established publisher. They would speak a lot in public about the need for fighting censorship, but when push came to shove… they would turn away. The obvious reason for this is that they’re an integral part of the public censorship, one bastion of several erected to keep troublesome and truly alternative material from reaching the public.

I am a Storyteller, I want to tell stories, but I’m also a very engaged, passionate human being. I look at the current world and want to change it, change it dramatically, also through my art. Censorship, in all forms has always been one of many pet peeves of mine, and I certainly don’t hold back when I’m writing in fear of what timid, domesticated people may think.

Thanks to David Huxley for the crowd picture, one which turned out to be exactly what I was looking for. Thanks also to Obskur (not Obscure). I didn’t end up using his picture, but it still helped me in the process.

A better world (I)

2010-10-12T17:11:00.000-07:00

I want a better world, a much better world.

A good start on our path to such a distant place in time and space would be to let go of the pretense and blatant hypocrisy dominating today’s global society, locally, nationally and internationally.

There are very few good things about the current world. We, humanity live in a hell of our own making, and we claim it’s a good thing.

A better world wouldn’t celebrate something like Columbus Day, but would call it the horror it was and still is, and always will be. In a better world most people wouldn’t say good things about bad people in the bad people’s funerals. They wouldn’t feel the need to hide real problems because of convenience and fear of losing face or influence or stature.

The white Europeans exterminated millions of native «Americans». You would believe that a fact like that should have a greater impact on a society claiming to be more evolved and «civilized»… right? Yes, it has happened, it can’t be undone, but that isn’t really the issue here. You see, instead of being condemned Columbus' arrival in the land now called America is celebrated, yet another sign that nothing really has changed, and that the same mechanisms are still present today. The forces driving the state of israel are allowed, openly to do the same to the Palestinians, and the rest of the world shrugs in its indifference. There are countless other examples.

Might makes right.

You might claim that the custom of never saying bad things about anyone after they’re dead is a minor thing, a way of softening grief, but it isn’t really. It’s one example of many of how pervasive hypocrisy is today.

Hypocrisy serves the tyrants, obviously so, keeping important issues from being discussed. It’s one major type of oil keeping the wheels of the Machine going, like fear on the keys to the Kingdom to those people thriving in this thoroughly unjust, unequal and destructive society.

This as a modest start…

Multicultural

2010-10-06T16:35:00.001-07:00

It suddenly occurred to me, when I first published this article a couple of years ago that I hadn’t written this before, at least not quite like this. There is too much that stays unsaid, because it’s self-evident, but perhaps it should be said anyway, and far more often. The way the world works today, one should definitely do that.

I’ve traveled quite a bit, a lot in my life. The places I enjoy the most is filled to the rim with cultural variety. London is such a place. The city is a smorgasbord of cultures from all over the world, both residents and visitors, travelers. One million people that aren’t residents are visiting the city at any time. You’ve never quite experienced the true value of the multicultural society until you’ve visited or lived in London in spring. Growth is everywhere, and the plants are just a minor part of that. You hear dozens of languages and witness virtually an infinite number of behaviors. I used to live there, and have visited countless times beyond that, but every single visit is still an experience. Even whatever may exist of daily routines become a great experience there.

New Orleans is another city with similar pleasures. It enjoys Spanish, English, American, French and native roots, and has for centuries been a melting pot of cultures. You notice it easily when you walk through the distinct streets, the amazing mood virtually assaulting you. New Orleans is a poor city in financial terms, also before Katrina, but aside from that it isn’t really poor on anything.

These are two cases. There are many more, all over the globe.

The obvious truth, heard and stated rarely, way too infrequently is that this, in such melting pots is where true creativity and display of humanity is exhibited in earnest. To a true seeker and artist such places are a fabulous inspiration. Throughout history they have been an ever-growing source of growth, the reason a group of people have moved on from possible stagnation, while people living in isolation and being full of themselves have ended up on the graveyard of history.

I’ve never truly understood racists and people hostile to strangers, and I never will. They’re scared and sad creatures, a fact that’s easy to understand. But what’s going on in their heads aside from that is impossible to guess. They close themselves off from life, and wish to do the same with everybody else. They give me the creeps.

But in melting pots like London and New Orleans one forgets those kind of humans, dismisses their narrow view on reality like the bad dream it is, and remembers easily, beyond memory… what it means to be human.

The Hooded Man

2010-10-03T14:10:00.000-07:00

«The greenwood is the outlaw's friend. Now, the orphan boys make us welcome. No tax, no tied, nobody rich, nobody poor. Fair shares for all at nature's table. Many wrongs to be righted in the country of King John.»

Lady Marian - Cate Blanchett - Robin Hood (2010)

Celebration mighty and true

2010-09-26T19:00:00.000-07:00

There has been a lot of celebration this summer. In fact, except for a sixteen-day and night binge-drinking Tour to London in 1995 and a wet month in Thailand in 2003 I’ve never celebrated more.

The best reason for this, except for Life in general is that I’ve started publishing my novels, finally started in earnest. It hard for me to truly convey how much this means to me, what a thrill, a savage joy it is. Doing so is a reward in itself, but doing it, knowing the long and hard struggle behind it makes it thrice worthwhile and precious.

Yes, celebration is its own reward, but knowing the long walk behind it, makes it that much more explosive and fun. I’ve danced around the campfire in the wilderness, drunk myself into a stupor on Guiness and left pubs in ruins, in the deepest, darkest night and even in the grayest of days and sorrow. Lives have been ruined and transformed in the course of my wild celebration…

It has been a great summer.

Real

2010-08-24T09:01:00.000-07:00

Timothy Joyce is real.

This is a warning to all you complacent tyrants and would-be tyrants out there.

This is a blinding flash of shadow to all of you fighting for true justice, equality and freedom everywhere.

Timothy Joyce is the shadow lurking at the edge of our vision. He has always existed. There is always a Timothy Joyce somewhere. He will always be here. Timothy Joyce is something, someone beyond rebellion, beyond hope and wretched abandon. If you’re looking for a decent, peaceful and nice opponent to today’s horrible regime, he isn’t it. He’s what all complacency fear, a fire burning on the coldest of rock.

I am Timothy Joyce and so are you. He’s a man, a woman, a human being that has let go of all bullshit, all pretence, of all hope that present day human society will ever be right.

He’s the ultimate rebel, one that has thrown all inhibition to the wind.

If you’re a poor public servant or corporate office rat or an ordinary, average obedient citizen that just wants to be left alone, forget it. You have no right to any kind of peace. If you think you have Timothy will soon rob you of that pleasant illusion.

If you’re lucky or unlucky enough to spot him with your closed eyes, terror will strike you to the bone.

Timothy Joyce is a force of nature rising from the deepest pit. He’s frustrations turned to rage and rage turned to a storm, one raging all shores, all fields and towns.

Author’s word - Your Own Fate

2010-08-21T13:20:00.000-07:00

My friends jokingly and affectionately call this novel «the leaflet» because it’s «only» 88 000 words. My stories are usually approximately twice that or more.

This doesn’t need to be any longer than it is, though. I knew it would be fairly short before I began writing it. When I wrote the final chapter first it was always Chapter 12. Everything, every scene, every event or detail fit well into the others. It needs neither more nor less.

There are a few more additions I didn’t include, that I ultimately felt was unnecessary. They’re here, though, on these electronic pages, adding spice to the story.

The story is a riddle, a mystery of sorts, the only one I’ll ever write that will even approach a detective story, a crime novel. Like all of my stuff it’s a hybrid, everything and nothing of the above. But a mystery, a puzzle to be solved, somewhat. So I needed to leave clues for readers to ponder, but not be too obvious about it. I wanted to give people a change to solve the riddle before the end, but not making it too easy on them. Based on the talks I’ve had with people that have read the book, I believe I have succeeded. Most of them didn’t find out the startling truth until Jeremy Zahn himself did.

This is the first book I wrote completely on a computer, without having written any of it before on my old, derelict typewriter.

There’s no longer a Hotel Schirman in Amsterdam or a Plaza Cinema in London, among other places described in the novel. Which is perfectly fine with me. I can describe in detail what used to be real places in a present tense, without giving them free advertising.

London, Amsterdam, Los Angeles and places are described like they were around the turn of the millennium, when I wrote the novel.

As usual, there are many sources of inspiration, even some surprising ones, among them Bruce Willis and Hollywood in general, in a backwards kind of way. You’ll understand why…

Without revealing too much or anything, really: If I had made Die Hard, the cop hiding inside a building full of «terrorists» would have been killed early in the film.

After I watched that film in 1988 the process began in earnest, I believe. Other movies after that with the usual, beyond silly Hollywood bent pushed it further along. Other movies before had helped a lot, too.

The ending of Under Siege 2 would have been quite different, of course, and Casey Ryback (Stephen Seagal) would have been dead in the first movie.

In River Wild with Meryl Streep the murderer would have slaughtered the family quite easily and moved on to other victims.

Stuff like that.

River Wild and Under Siege 2 really clinched it for me, I think. After an ongoing and persistent and increasingly LOUD buzz in my head, I started on the novel two years after I had left the theater with foam on my lips.

Obvious sources of backwards inspiration also include lukewarm environmentalists, non-violence advocates and all those police programs and crime stories on TV and in books…

But first and foremost, like many of my stories it’s a tale of empowerment and freedom, about people breaking free of all shackles, all confines, about winds of change running wild and great.

I'm happy to report that it’s vastly different from The Defenseless, like most of my books are different from each other.

Sometimes I fear I could have written an entire book about my writing of the leaflet…

If you look at the material I’ve put on the Internet already it’s obviously true.

True independence

2010-07-29T15:52:00.000-07:00

This place, this Sherwood Forest is for everybody seeking true freedom, true independence from oppression and censorship, seeking to express themselves freely, without constraint. This includes, but aren’t limited to self-publishing authors, musicians, filmmakers, artists and human beings in general. True art surpasses art and has a deserved place in human society as a whole. Art is politics, because politics is everything, whether or not you choose to go left or right when you leave your home. Art should be radical, should be controversial, both because there is am undeniable need for it in today’s world, and because the Human Being should always seek to break boundaries and imposed realities.

True Artistic Freedom stage 3

2010-07-26T12:34:00.000-07:00

My novel The Defenseless is now indeed available all over the world, for virtually anybody to enjoy. The Print on Demand (POD) process is exceeding my wildest expectation. There are no disadvantages compared to offset printing, only advantages. And if a store or a retailer wants to buy 3000 copies of my book and I want to offer them lower prices my printer Lightning Source (LSI) offers offset printing as well.

Self publishing and POD is the way of the future. The old ways are dead. Good riddance. The only way the tyrannical established publishers have any hold of authors anymore is if a given author gives them that hold by clinging to the old and horrible ways. Everybody, generally speaking going through the old system of sell out and censorship should ask themselves hard questions about what they’re doing.

I’m becoming, like I have for a long time. And this is just the beginning. I have lots of novels to offer you in the coming years, all among the most controversial the world has ever seen published, and totally unacceptable to the before mentioned old and horrible system.

And the next step is evident.

I’m now ready, more than ready to take that next step.

There has been an increasingly strong need, for some time, now, to counter the propaganda issued by established publishers of books and music, producers of films and art dealers in general. Young, hopeful authors and artists are still caught by that destructive establishment, still told by «authors» and «artists» that have already submitted themselves and their work to be ruined that the old system is best. Those established authors lie through their teeth to protect their hard-won vanity and their corporate masters, a process very common in all professions. They call themselves professionals, but are little more than hired thugs for the power still exploiting and ruining art for a quick buck or for personal satisfaction.

Do I see any value, any value at all in the vast majority of art published through established channels? Of course not! How could I, or anyone searching for true freedom of expression? It’s all the same tedious mash, a narrow template hardly deviating from itself at all. I was asked if I support authors/artists attempting to find acceptance in that horrible system and I certainly don’t.

So, I’m starting up True Independence in the hope that it one day will grow to become something major and great, but never established.

No matter, it’s worth pursuing and has its own rewards. The attempt itself makes it worth it. Self publishers are the true authors and the true artists, and even though they are a diverse bunch, they’re far less prone to be boxed in and limit their work through self-censorship. By rejecting the censorship and hacking process of established publishers, producers and similar we’re also, many of us rejecting the overall tyranny so prevalent in society at large, inevitably, because established media, the fourth estate has always served the general established society, tyranny of the world.

I have been very frustrated, also as a reader all my life. One casual glance at a given book or article, and I see censorship, see the skeleton hand of established publishers and a society filled with oppression, of both the printed word and speech in general.

Wild, unbound creativity should be celebrated, not frowned at and persecuted, like it is today. There is no country in the world where true freedom reigns. A society with a justified respect for itself should be encouraging creativity and free expression, not stifling it or merely tolerating it.

Say goodbye to dogma, to oppression of thought and speech and life in general. Live your life, as close as you can possibly come, like it should be lived.

The story so far:

Independence

Modern slavery

The Storyteller

True Artistic Freedom (II)

Reading it again

The chores of an independent author/artist

My fifty cents

True artistic freedom

Labeling and genre writing

Alarums of reality

The difficulties in describing a complex storyline

Other links:

Firewind - my stories, art and poems on the Web

My writer «CV»

The Janus Clan

Independence - My best advice to new writers or/and artists

2010-07-15T10:06:00.000-07:00

One thing is more important than any other. My foremost advice to burgeoning authors or burgeoning anything is this:

Independence.

It takes precedence over virtually everything else.

You do things your way, or you don’t do them. If you can’t or won’t be original, can’t or won’t do something that hasn’t been done before or done that particular way… don’t bother.

That leaves out any traditional path, leaves out anything even smacking of the average, the safe and acceptable. Any artist or human being’s duty and right are to blaze a trail in blood and guts and wild abandon.

Forget about agents and of being accepted by established, traditional publishers. Don’t be a slave. Be your own publisher.

Further advices:

Don’t edit your story to death. Frown at editing, but do change what you’re not pleased with from the original manuscript, and consider without prejudice suggested changes by people you trust, accept them or not, but stay loyal to the original idea.

I tend to compare writing and subsequent «editing» with a bank robbery. If you plan too hard and long, nothing will ever be done. You may stand right across the street from the bank, and mutter to yourself: «Why didn’t I think of that before»? And you turn back and go home…

And years pass by, and you may no longer be in the necessary mental and physical shape to commit to the robbery and all plans remain in your drawer.

Incidentally, most of the advice young authors/artists receive today is still infested by the old, stale and tyrannical system. They tell you you have to submit, to bow to guidelines that has always seemed quite insane to me, now, more than ever.

I knew from the very start that my books would be published one night, somehow. I confess I didn’t know how, but I felt it in my bones. And with the onset of digital publishing and the Internet they were. And now I have the pleasure of being able to publish my backlog, publish twelve books during the next two years.

Many great manuscripts have remained in the drawer because of the tyranny of the established publishers and the system of tyranny they established, but that system is now, increasingly so in tatters. And what great news that is.

This is Your time, the age of the truly independent artist/author/publisher.

You should read the links below. They provide you with a step by step history of my evolution as an author/artist/publisher, and also technical advice.

The story so far:

Modern slavery

The Storyteller

True Artistic Freedom (II)

Reading it again

The chores of an independent author/artist

My fifty cents

True artistic freedom

Labeling and genre writing

Alarums of reality

The difficulties in describing a complex storyline

Other links:

Firewind - my stories, art and poems on the Web

My writer «CV»

The Janus Clan

Modern slavery

2010-07-12T10:56:00.000-07:00

I read about modern human slavery, what I call the modern human condition already in my early teens, and it quickly became a part of my writing. It’s present some way or another in almost every story I’ve written, but most of all in my first novels, The Defenseless and The Slaves. I read about people being kidnapped to distant lands and started to dig deeper, and then I found stories about people, refugees, immigrants coming to Europe, United States and the West in general that were turned into slaves, in many ways, not only as sexual slaves or cheap labor, but in far more fundamental ways… joining those already there.

This was a time when I, in ever more fundamental ways found that the description of modern society as basically fair was a base lie. I can’t recall exactly when that thought first struck me, but I would guess it was a slow realization, as I gathered more knowledge and more basic understanding of how the current world works.

I decided, made a conscious decision early on, on many things, to focus on the story, but also to include what concerned, excited and enraged me, both on a personal level and with society as a whole, no matter where it might lead me and the stories I wrote. This fit well into my early disgust for any kind of censorship. I watched how unpleasant truths were edited out of the main news stories and on every level of society. That before-mentioned modern condition was a non-issue.

It still is.

My books are political, of course they are, since everything ultimately is political. Not party political, mind you, but about the lives we live or don’t live. They tell an engaging story, but in that story is everything that I am and care about. Yes, art and the person making it is the same. Most current stories told by established artists are as bland and boring and non-engaging and shallow as the person writing it. When a slave is embracing his or her existence as a slave, like most present-day people do and writes a story about any given subject the result is doomed to be rather bad.

My pledge to myself and the world, both as an artist and a Human Being has been and is quite different. I attack life head on. As a review in Green Anarchist wrote years ago, about my novel ShadowWalk: «This is full-on reality. Blood and sweat and shit - nothing's toned down or dulled. The intensity of life comes through strong and meaty. Real life bursting off the pages».

I love that, of course. It’s nice to have confirmation that you are on the right track now and then.

Slavery, the obvious and the non-obvious is the modern condition, and we’re all its victims, and I will always fight it with everything I am.

«Approximately a million people are each year sold to forced labor, prostitution or quite simply slavery. It’s a common myth that slavery is abandoned in our time.

It’s shameful that we in 1993 are faced with a world encompassing slave-trade, from Brazil to Bangla Desh, in China, Thailand, Pakistan and Europe, in San Francisco, San Diego, Chicago, New York, Boston…»

Excerpt from speech held by
Joseph P. Kennedy II
In the American Congress, Thursday, July 15th 1993

«None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free»

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Errico Malatesta, "L'Anarchia", 1891

1984

Joke

A varied and good life

A frank, honest man

2010-07-10T08:28:00.000-07:00

"The system should be changed, I think, to begin with. It's very hard, really, the way our system operates, now, for a truly frank, honest man to stay in that system indefinitely without being weeded out or fired or made apathetic or in fact corrupted in the end".

- Daniel Ellsberg, interview with Walter Cronkite June 23, 1971

The Storyteller

2010-07-08T11:27:00.001-07:00

I’m a Storyteller. It’s the one thing I have always been good at. There will always be storytellers around the campfire, and I will always be there, to tell my stories, and shake up and stir the gathering.

This was one of the earliest things I noticed about myself, my skill of weaving stories. The current world, society, school, civilization did its best to destroy that fire, like it does all things. But it failed. Even though my ability, my need to create sort of hibernated during early school years of forced learning, it never went away. And it never will.

I know that, now, and I rejoice, because this, among other things, above all else is what I do, what I want to do. I won’t call it a gift, because that implies that someone gave it to me, and no one did. It’s a potential I was born with, and made to grow on my own. After the first tentative steps it flourished. I’ve written millions of words since then, played a lot of music, spoken a lot of words, told many a story.

And I always will.