Mondo Ernesto

ZEN AND THE ART OF EBOOK COVERS

2012-01-27T12:34:00.000-08:00

Hey, everybody! My wife, the fabulous Emily Devenport, has a new ebook out. It's called Pale Lady, and takes place in an afterlife like no other. And if you go to her posting about it you can get the coupon code that will allow you to get it for $0.00.

What a deal!

Another reason you may want it is because I did the cover.

Not bad if I do say so myself, though I'm still learning the art of ebook cover design.

This is my first solo attempt; the first cover I did was a collaboration with Em for her novel Broken Time (originally published under the pseudonym Maggy Thomas).

Again, pretty good, but since it was part of the learning process, I see things that could have been done differently, and better. I'd go back and redo, but that would eat up a lot of my valuable time. It's better to go on to the next cover, not look back -- do better next time.

Currently, I'm struggling with a cover for the e-edition of Obsidian Harvest, a novella I wrote with Rick Cook. I've done some drawings, scanned them, and am using GIMP to combine them with lettering to make a eyeball-snagging cover.

The problem is, I'm still struggling with the intricacies of GIMP. For this I have to do more than the diddling around I do for my on-the-run, straight-from-the-sketchbook, slam-dunk blog illustrations. Still, I would like for these covers to have the same instant impact.

The problem is, I'm just plain thinking too much. I need to forget about all the technicalities and just do it.

In the words of that American master, Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, “I never spent any time thinking about art, I just did things.”

ERNESTO TO JUDGE THE BLACK MARKS LITERARY AWARD

2012-01-22T11:49:00.000-08:00

A black robe, powdered wig, and gavel may be in order – I'm going to be a judge . . . of the first Black Marks Literary Award that is. It'll be for a perviously unpublished science fiction novel. There will be a cash prize of $500, plus the option of publication.

So, if you have a virgin science fiction novel manuscript kicking around that you think is a winner, check out the guidelines, and read them carefully, because they warn:

Any guidelines that aren't expressly followed are grounds for automatic disqualification.

What will I be looking for in picking the winner? What I usually look for in the genre – I hope to get my mind blown. Give me daring feats of the imagination!

I like my sci-fi psychedelic rather than narcotic.

Or, to use a bullfighting metaphor: For me, science fiction should be a burladero rather than a querencia.

For those of you non-aficonados out there, here are the definitions from Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon:

Burladero: a shelter of planks set close together and a little out from the corral or barrera behind which the bullfighters and herders can dodge if pursued.

Querencia: part of the ring that the bull prefers to be in; where he feels at home.

These days, too much science fiction is hunkered down in a querencia rather than surviving close calls in a burladero.

So, go ahead, leave the safe zone, try to blow my mind. It'll make my day. But it won't be easy, I've been soaking my brain in all kinds of weirdness since my Atomic Age childhood. It's made me a bit jaded.

But what's life without challenges?

CHICANONAUTICA LOOKS AT SHERIFF JOE

2012-01-19T08:53:00.000-08:00

Yep, amigos, the latest Chicanonautica over yonder at La Bloga is about good ol' Sheriff Joe Arpaio, of Maricopa County, in the great state of Arizona. Here are some extras:

First, let's set a spaghetti western mood:

And, it's only fair to let the man speak for himself:

And acknowledge that he made a feminist breakthrough:

Let's sign off with a song that for some reason always reminds me of him:

ACROSS THE BRIDGE TO NOLLYWOOD

2012-01-16T10:31:00.000-08:00

I first discovered Nollywood back in 2008, while killing time after we had finished packing for the World Science Fiction Convention/National Parks road trip that inspired my wife Emily to become a geologist – but that's another story. Clicking on the TV, I channel surfed into the farthest reaches of our cable service, and landed in a documentary called This is Nollywood. It blew my mind.

Already being a fan of the works of Nigerians like Fela Anikulapo Kuti and Amos Tutuola, as well as low-budget filmmaking from places beyond Hollywood, my curiosity was inflamed. I got online, did some searches, and found some trailers that also blew my mind.

I've shared these trailers on Facebook, and blogged about them more than once. When I need my emotions uplifted, I seek them out. They have a rapid-fire style that makes the movies seem even more outrageous. I hope to someday write short stories that pack that kind of a punch.

(Awk! I just found out that the trailers I embedded on those posts are no longer available on YouTube. Guess I'll have to do some more searching. But that's life in the Information Age . . . Meanwhile, dig the funkadelic digital fuzz!)

One movie that seem especially bizarre, and interesting, was Across the Bridge.

The trailers (at the time I found several) were incredible. It looked like blaxsploitation in Africa gone stark raving sci-fi. The laser-eyed giant-breasted goddess/devil is one of the most remarkable creations in fantasy film. Sure, her breasts are like something out of a cheapo Fifties Hollywood monster movie – Attack of the Fifty-Foot Woman comes to mind – and her other special effects are examples of video primitivism, but she comes through with a power that today's CGI spectaculars can't match.

And the glimpses of Nigerian life – the clothes, neighborhoods, and curious practice of money spraying that I had heard about, but never seen, all promised an exciting new backdrop for the wild fantasy.

When I finally realized that entire movies could be found on YouTube (these last few years have been kind of hectic) I searched and found Across the Bridge. At first I thought the original had spawned a pair of sequels – I was thinking Hollywood structure and marketing – but to my surprise, Parts One, Two, and Three were sections of one long movie. It, like a lot of movies from other parts of the planet, has a slower pace than the manic trailers, and most of the first two parts deal with character development and motivation to want to “suck the breast of everlasting milk.”

I was a bit confused, but I was not disappointed.

The life in the Nigerian town, isolated, with tantalizing glimpses and tastes of a lavish consumer society just out of reach, was as fascinating as any science fiction or fantasy world. Everyone's jealous of those who seem more successful – but, of course, things aren't what they seem. It's the Nigerian Dream rather than the American Dream. Europe is the place where all the wonderful products come from. There it is: the reason for the upheaval and protests all over the world – including Nigeria.

Most of the wonderful cheap thrills of the trailer are concentrated in Part Three. I would recommend just watching that for most of you who are used to contemporary Hollywood's condensed storytelling, but you would miss out on a genuine chance to experience something outside the corporate-generated consumer reality of your pre-packaged life.

It's why I like to watch movies from other cultures without any Mystery Science Theater 3000-style buffering. You shouldn't face the alien with all your defenses up, hurling wisecracks to prove you are smarter than something you don't understand. How smart can you be if you aren't even trying to understand it?

If you cross the bridge, and let the alien weirdness sink into your brain, it just may expand your mind a little -- then you'll see things in the absurdity of it all that will make your laughter something greater.

You may also realize how much you have in common with the guys kneeling down before the tremendous breasts of the devil/goddess.

BRAINPAN FALLOUT IS STILL OUT THERE!

2012-01-14T11:49:00.000-08:00

I was pondering all my diabolical plans for 2012, when I remembered Brainpan Fallout, this bizarre thing I did back in the Nineties. It would probably make a good ebook, too. So I Googled it, and – lo and behold! – it was still on the La Silencia website, an Introduction, and Parts One, Two, and Three.

It's the original version that appeared in The Red Dog Journal, both the web and coffee-house giveaway/dead tree versions. All the original typos, glitches, and things I've had second thoughts about are there. You can recreate the experience of Phoenix counterculture from them there days.

I think that after this year's Cortez on Jupiter / Obsidian Harvest / Smoking Mirror Blues / High Aztech ebook blitz, I'll serialize the final edit of Brainpan Fallout here at Mondo Ernesto – with illustrations – and then put it out as still another ebook.

Meanwhile, I guess I have work to do . . .

CHICANONAUTICA GETS MAYANOID IN 2012

2012-01-04T15:38:00.000-08:00

My first Chicanonautica for 2012 over at La Bloga takes on the whole Mayan calendar/2012/end of the world issue, and finds an excuse for self-promotion. Here's some Mondo Ernesto video extras:

Here's a Maya elder on the subject:

And if the world is coming to an end, why is Mexico promoting Mundo Maya tourism?

So, enjoy the Mayanoid stuff for entertainment purposes only -- meanwhile, check out what the real Maya are saying:

Also, there's business that needs to be taken care of:

MY DIABOLICAL PLANS FOR 2012

2012-01-01T11:30:00.001-08:00

Don't bother with resolutions – they never work. Just make plans – then go out and do them. I don't usually go around giving advice, but that's a damn good chunk of it.

And I've got some plans for the apocalypse-branded year 2012. They're good and diabolical, like those of my mad scientist childhood role models. Call me mad? I'll show you Mad! Bwoohoohoo-hahahahahaha!

First, I'm finally getting into the self-published ebook business. 2012 will see four launched into the smoldering world:

Cortez on Jupiter is almost ready. It'll be out pretty early. I'm almost as excited as I was when it first came out. Meanwhile, you can read “Guerrilla Mural of a Siren's Song,” the story it grew from in Alien Contact.

Next will be Obsidian Harvest, my collaboration with Rick Cook, that first appeared in Analog back in the year 2000. With an Aztec detective and dinosaurs in Mayan city – it's perfect for our times.

Then it'll be Smoking Mirror Blues, with Tezcatlipoca rebooted by a new technology. Can you prove it's not happening right now?

Finally, as we draw close to the final days of the Mayan calendar, High Aztech will rise from the ashes of the traditional publishing world. I'm saving it for last, because scanning it (I wrote it before I had a computer, if you can imagine such a thing), and proofing it, will be a monumental task that will do interesting things to my mental health. I'll report on them here – if they don't get picked up by news outlets or go viral first.

All four of these books have pre-Columbian themes and subject matter, so they fit into the whole 2012/Mayan calendar/end-of-the-world meme that's sweeping over the planet. I don't believe that reaching the end of this cycle means the world will come to an end, but I am not beyond taking advantage of it to grab attention for my own products. I'm reading P.T. Barnum's autobiography. I plan on having fun amid all the psyche-straining work that I'll be doing.

I'll also be writing. I have these projects about Paco Cohen and Victor Theremin that are scraping the hell our of my brainpan. And some unfinished business from 2011 that I'm rushing to get done. The unexpected is lurking around every corner.

Never give up. Doing stuff is the reason for living.

ALIEN CONTACT REVIEWED, GUERRILLA MURAL MENTIONED

2011-12-28T07:32:00.000-08:00

John Ottinger III calls Alien Contact “an excellent collection.” He's also the first reviewer to mention “Guerrilla Mural of a Siren's Song.”

Though he admitted that he didn't really get the story, he wrote that: “It's likely to be the favorite story in the anthology of people with a less analytical and more artistic bent than myself, but for me it was rather confusing.”

So here's to all you artistically bent folks out there!

CHICANONAUTICA GETS HOLIDAZED

2011-12-20T19:25:00.000-08:00

We're getting Holidazed this time on Chicanonautica, over at La Bloga. Over here at Mondo Ernesto, we're offering some holiday extras:

El Vuh makes an offering for the Winter Solstice:

And in case you wanted to know what some of the Maya have to say about this:

Here in Aztlán, we have the tradition of the luminarias:

And, of course there's that all-important holiday tradition of tamales:

AN EXPERIMENT IN BOOK REVIEWING

2011-12-17T12:35:00.000-08:00

These days, you never know when you're going to end up in the middle of something experimental. Flaming chunks of the unexpected keep crashing down on your path, forcing you into out of your routine. It happens to me a lot.

So there I was, minding my own business, farting around – er, I mean, keeping in touch and promoting myself on Facebook – when I saw a post by Norman Spinrad announcing that several of his books were becoming available free from Amazon's Kindle Owner's Library from December 15 -17. I was especially interested in one title: An Experiment in Autobiography.

As a writer, I find writer's autobiographies fascinating. And Norman led an interesting life, through interesting times. I was hesitant about signing up for one more goddam thing, but what the hell, it wouldn't hurt to go on Amazon and see what the deal was.

When I looked up An Experiment in Autobiography, I noticed that they were offering if for $0.00, including free wireless via Amazon Whispernet. “You Save: $3.00 (100%)”

I got out my trusty iPod touch, and – without having to sign up for anything – purchased Norman Spinrad's autobiographical experiment for $0.00.

I started reading it right away, blasted through until the Low Battery message flashed, hit Dismiss, and kept going.

Yes, I enjoyed An Experiment in Autobiography. The journey through the writer's life from Beat Generation Fifties through the Psychedelic Sixties and beyond hooked and reeled me in. There's valuable background about the New Wave (the interface between science fiction and the Sixties “revolutions,” not the French movies, or the Seventies music) which, believe it or not kids, is going to come in handy in the next few tumultuous years. It also shows how hard it is to make it as a writer, and how there has been something very wrong with publishing in America for the last few decades. I highly recommend this book.

The free purchase deal may be gone by the time I post this (I'm an old-fashioned writer -- I write in a word-processing program, paste into my blog, edit, and all that good stuff), but if you get a free trial membership to Amazon Prime you'll be able to borrow it for free from the Kindle Owner's Library. The writer is supposed to get royalties on the lending. As Norman put it, “Let's see if it works or if it's a scam.”

Meanwhile, I downloaded free Spinrad ebooks – reading a writer's autobiography, or biography, tends to make you want to read and re-read their books.

No, I'm not sure about how all this is going to work out, but we've got to experiment here, and the worlds of librarian/futurist Stephen Abram's mind-blowing speech at the Phoenix Public Library's Staff Development Day echo through my mind: “We're not in the book business – we're in the reading business.”

BURRITO MELTDOWN FLASHES BACK

2011-12-17T09:21:00.000-08:00

Suddenly, it hit me, like an orange gorilla dancing in front of a dazzling Arizona sunrise, my story "Burrito Meltdown" -- inspired by Sheriff Joe Arpaio -- is still available in the anthology Angel Body and other Magic for the Soul edited by Chris Reed and David Memmott, from Back Brain Recluse and Wordcraft of Oregon. Amazon even has a few used copies.

"Burrito Meltdown" is a wild romp about Arizona, illegal aliens, and UFOs, and it just as just as hip and relevant as ever thanks to Sheriff Joe and the Justice Department.

Here's how it begins:

A hyperscrambled satellite feed, from a CIA stealth saucer over Chiapas, Mexico:

Aerial view of unknown pre-Columbian ruins. On the top of a pyramid, priests in feathered headdresses commingle fresh blood from a male jaguar and a female human virgin.

The jaguar hisses. The virgin screams.

The priests look up, directly at the camera. One pulls a cell phone from under his robe and makes a call.

The camera zooms back to the horizon where a pyramid-shaped UFO appears. A beam of light lashed toward the camera.

The screen goes blank.

THE LONG LIMBO-DANCE OF ZOMBIE-LOVING ANISE AND OTHER ABOMINATIONS

2011-12-12T13:01:00.000-08:00

This is a convoluted tale of the writer biz. It's bizarre and disturbing. It's also true. So there.

The September/October 2011 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction features an excellent novelet by Chris DeVito, Anise. It's everything I look for in good, brain-slamming science fiction: sex, death, religion, politics, all twisted by technical innovations into a new reality that is actually our troubled world turned inside-out. The zombie trend that is all the rage these apocalyptic days is taken in an unexpected direction. And talk about a different kind of love story . . .

Yeah, I know, it's no longer on the stands, but I've noticed that over the last few years back issues of F&SF have been appearing on the freebie tables of science fiction conventions. Be on the lookout. Grab one if you can.

Anise comes off as very up-to-date. The only clue that is was really written in 1992, “when I was a lot less bloody and broken,” as Chris puts it, are the long, delirious paragraphs that modern advisors on commercial writing tell us readers won't plow through – but they are worth it.

Why would such a gem take so long to get published? This is where the truth gets ugly and twisted.

Like any good writer, Chris sent Anise out to the markets, and was rejected all over the place, until Scott Edelman bought it for Science Fiction Age. Unfortunately, the publisher “declined to publish it because of its explicit sexual content.” The contract eventually ran out, and Chris kept the money.

Yes, kids, these things do happen. I know, it's happened to me.

Like a good professional, Chris sent Anise around again, and “everyone rejected it all over again.”

In the mean time, Chris had written and published two books about the jazz great John Coltrane: The John Coltrane Reference, and Coltrane on Coltrane: The John Coltrane Interviews.

After this Chris became interested in fiction again: “I dug out Anise and – with no hope at all – submitted it to F&SF, partly because I have fond memories of the magazine and mostly because it's now the only print publication that doesn't have stated restrictions against explicit sex/violence.”

And editor Gordon Van Gelder had the good taste – not to mention the cojones – to buy and publish it.

It makes me happy because, like I said, I've had similar frustrating experiences in publishing.

I first “met” Chris back in the early Nineties, when the world was in economic turmoil, and I couldn't seem to sell anything I had written anywhere. People who wanted to start crazy magazines would seek me out. Yup, one of these folks was named Chris DeVito.

A sealed envelope arrive in the mail. It contained a copy of something called Fuck Science Fiction (no kidding – that was what it was called). The cover was a collage made from porn photos that you could play Name That Infection with. There was also a letter from Chris saying that he was a big fan of my infamous, twice (as far as I know) filmed story “The Frankenstein Penis,” and would love to publish me . . . but couldn't afford to pay me anything.

These folks who want to start magazines never seem to have any money.

I wrote him, saying to get back to me when he got ahold of come cash, and by the way, I had an idea for a sequel to “F-Penis,” “The Dracula Vagina,” that I would write when I found an editor insane enough to buy it.

After some lively correspondence, Chris bought and published “The Dracula Vagina” -- one of my most bizarre works – in a one-shot called Proud Flesh.

I also did illustrations and the cover. And there was a T-shirt. I still have mine, and wear it on special occasions.

I've had better luck publishing fiction than Chris, but I've been through the same Hell. The publishing establishment won't touch my novels. My short fiction usually appears in offbeat fringe markets (Analog seems to be the great exception). The worlds of mainstream publishing and science fiction have always been uncomfortable with me. They often make me feel like a Hell's Angel at a church social.

That's why I get this sharp-toothed smile when I look at allthe upheaval we see going on today.

CHICANONAUTICA LOOKS AT GUADALUPE DAY

2011-12-08T09:13:00.000-08:00

With la Día de la Virgen de Guadalupe coming up on December 12, Chicanonautica, over at La Bloga, does an update on last year's UFOlogical speculations, looking at movies about the LADY. Here we've got some video of how the new holiday is celebrated in Mexico:

It does look like there's a preference for PreColumbian costumes, and dancing that harks back to ancient rituals involving virgins:

Though sometimes, it's more churchy with knee-walking pilgrims, music, and balloons:

Here the dances, costumes, and rituals look like an Aztec revival, as the pilgrims seem to be more like penitentes:

And why not some delicious pan dulce for fun and profit?

GIVE THE GIFT OF ERNESTO

2011-12-03T15:33:00.000-08:00

The seasonal consumer orgy has begun. May these rituals resurrect the world's economy. It's a lot like that great, ancient North American tradition of the potlatch:

So let me humbly suggest that while buying all those gifts, you give the gift of Ernesto – buy and give books and magazines with my stories.

The most recent of these is the anthology Alien Contact, edited by Marty Halpern, including “Guerrilla Mural of a Siren's Song,” the diabolical germ of my novel Cortez on Jupiter (very soon to be an ebook – stay tuned for updates).

You can still order Tales of the Talisman, Vol. 6, No. 3, with my story “The Great Mars-A-Go-Go Mexican Standoff” in which Spike Gershwin, interplanetary detective, saves the Solar System, from a stateroom of a luxury spaceliner/casino while wearing a Godzilla suit. I've been getting the urge to write more about Spike, so get this and be ready.

2020 Visions, edited by Rick Novy, is an exciting pack of stories about the near future. My contribution is “Radiation is Groovy, Kill the Pigs,” a wild romp with Victor Theremin, the science fiction writer whose life has become indistinguishable from what he writes, through the exploding US/Mexico border as radioactive marijuana runs amok. There's also Em's wonderful “If the Sun's at Five O'Clock, It Must be Yellow Daisies.”

Full-Throttle Space Tales #4: Space Horrors, edited by David Lee Summers, delivers the scares beyond Earth's atmosphere. “Plan 9 in Outer Space,” my collaboration with my wife Emily, is an offbeat tale of deep space zombies, and a guy who wants to be the Ed Wood of his generation.

Also still available, as both paperback and ebook, is Voices for the Cure: A Speculative Fiction Anthology to Benefit the American Diabetes Association, edited by James Palmer. In “Human Sacrifice for Fun and Profit” I introduce Victor Theremin. Somehow, I contemplated the Singularity and created a monster alter ego who took on life of his own – watch out, I may write more about him if things get crazy enough. And the money goes to diabetes research, so you get to read my perverse story and feel that you're helping make the world a better place.

Speaking of human sacrifice, I guess if the potlatch strategy doesn't get the economy rolling, we can always try something more like the rituals of my Aztec ancestors.

CHICANONAUTICA HAS A GUAJOLOTE THANKSGIVING

2011-11-24T10:35:00.000-08:00

It's Thanksgiving and guajolote this time on Chicanonautica over at La Bloga. So here's some video extras that celebrate the guajolote:

We start with an irreverent tribute:

Then show an interesting wedding ritual:

And demonstrate that in Spanish, “gobble, gobble,” translates to “gordo, gordo.”

REPORT ON ALIEN CONTACT

2011-11-22T17:07:00.000-08:00

All you have to do is click on the link here on Mondo Ernesto, and you can read “Guerrilla Mural of a Siren's Song” for free. Why should you bother shelling out hard-earned cash for Alien Contact?

I've been pondering this conundrum. Marty Halpern asked me to review the ebook version when I told him I had successfully loaded it into my trusty iPod touch. At first I wasn't sure if it would be considered kosher, but then I realized that most of this book was written by other people, and if I come clean and admit that this is promotion rather than an attempt at “objective” criticism (can a critic ever really be objective?) it should okay, especially if I make it entertaining.

So here I am in my straw hat and striped jacket, waving around a bamboo cane in front of the gaudy, hand-painted facade of this sideshow. Come one, come all! We've got it right here! Some of the best science fiction of the last thirty years, in a convenient package that you can have in both paperback or Kindle formats!

Following Marty's suggestion, I read the e-version, and it turns out to be a great way to read an anthology. I carried it around in my pocket and read it on the run, having some blowmind lunch breaks, making some crazy days better then they might have been.

In his introduction, Marty gives a nod to the Bug-Eyed Monsters of pulp science fiction, and to sci-fi movies. The original Invaders from Mars, and Alien were an influence on him, as they were with me. But Alien Contact isn't all just invasions, space wars, and extraterrestrial menace – though there's plenty of that, too. We get a diverse spread of variations on this theme that cause the mind to reel. We get aliens in many forms and settings, interacting with a variety of humans.

It makes me realize that that when you have humans contacting aliens, the humans are forced to define themselves.

My favorites were:

“The Aliens Who Knew, I Mean, Everything” in which George Alec Effinger (look him up if you haven't heard of him) has fun with the idea of “higher” intelligence.

“Kin” Bruce McAllister's gloomy, but brilliant take on how humans may be treated by a “superior” species.

“Sunday Night Yams at Minnie and Earls'” is the kind of story I always hoped for when reading science fiction – Adam-Troy Castro turns conventional ideas about space travel and aliens inside out, and reminds us that when looking at the unknown, we should expect the unexpected.

“Exo-Skeleton Town” is an extremely original tale in which Jeffery Ford performs daring feats of the imagination on how humans interact with aliens, but also how technology will change the way we interact with each other; it refers to old movies.

“Lambing Season” has Molly Gloss' New-Mexico-sheepherding-heroine's skill with living among other species come in handy when she meets an extraterrestrial.

And if any or all of these stories cause you to lust for more about where they came from, there's a lot of background information available, online at More Red Ink and SF Signal.

I agree with Keith Brooke in his review in The Guardian that Alien Contact is “an excellent snapshot of modern SF.” It would be a great gift idea for those just starting out with the genre, and for those of us who remember a lot of the stories from when they first appeared in magazines.

You're probably going to want to read it yourself, too.

THE BUY IT – READ IT – LIVE IT FLASHBACK

2011-11-14T10:36:00.001-08:00

My announcement for Alien Contact wasn't the first time I used the “Buy It – Read It – Live It” slogan. It's been rattling around my brain for years. While shuffling through a box of old art work looking for “alien” images for this current publicity blitz, I ran across the original drawing I did back in 1996.

I drew it at a book signing event at a Phoenix bookstore that probably isn't there anymore. My wife Emily was there, so was Rick Cook, and the late G. Harry Stine. Michael Stackpole, and a few other local writers may have been there, too.

Please forgive the memory fog – this was way back in the 20^th century . . .

Anyway, the slogan was inspired by how, even way back then, everyday life was beginning to seem like science fiction. At least, to those of us old enough to remember when weird, technological wonders were something you used to go out searching for, rather than part of an ever more interactive environment.

“Hello. I am an innovation. I am going to make your day more complicated.”

The slogan also fit the whole “alien contact” theme, so I did a bit of recycling and retrofitting, and turned it loose into the unsuspecting world.

It just goes to show that you never know when these things lurking in the back our your brain will come in handy.

I may do some variations on it in future hype-o-ramas.

Watch for these exciting developments.

STANZA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE

2011-11-13T10:37:00.000-08:00

I wasn't expecting a notification about a Stanza upgrade on my iPod touch. Not after the recent fiasco with the upgrade to iOS 5.0. But, somehow the corporate entities – that usually behave non-humanoid aliens or schizophrenic gods – got together and fixed the ugly situation that left readers separated from their ebooks. I did the upgrade, and Stanza works again, all my ebooks are there – including the ones I paid good American money for.

So now, with eBook Search, and Stanza, I've come out of this ahead, with more access to ancient, weird, obscure reading material, mostly for free. I am a happy customer, consumer, user, or whatever we're all becoming in this here 21^st century.

It is also raining in Phoenix today. I wonder what the temperature is like in Hell . . .

CHICANONAUTICA SEEKS SCI-FI CHICANOS

2011-11-10T10:05:00.000-08:00

This time, Chicanonatuica not only uses La Bloga to shamelessly pimp Alien Contact, but speculates on the possibility of there being other Chicano science fiction writers, lost in the 21st Century cyberwilderness.

Science fiction beamed its way into the barrio from the beginning, no sociological borders were able to hold it back. I remember my father using the word "teleport" in a room full of Chicanos while describing an episode of The Outer Limits and everybody knew what it meant.

Dad and I also used to watch Space Patrol back in East L.A.:

And Commando Cody:

The first time I saw Forbidden Planet was at a local drive-in:

Later, KHJ-TV channel 9's Strange Tales of Science Fiction introduced me to many an Atomic Age flick that messed with my grade school mind, and this was the theme song:

This cultural phenomenon was well documented by Chicano-influenced Frank Zappa:

ERNESTO INTERVIEW AT SF SIGNAL

2011-11-08T08:03:00.000-08:00

Check out this interview with me at SF Signal. I talk about Alien Contact, "Guerrilla Mural of a Siren's Song," and the "alien" subgenre.

SHANGHAIED ACROSS THE EREADER FRONTIER

2011-11-05T14:59:00.000-07:00

The Information Age is such fun. You never know when something in going to come hurtling down the electronic pike and make your week more exciting.

And my week was pretty exciting already, with Alien Contact coming out with my story “Guerrilla Mural of a Siren's Song.” I had also just downloaded an advance copy of the ebook version, via Stanza into my iPod touch, and was looking forward to carrying it around and flashing it at people.

I was feeling so good, I decided -- aw, what the hell – download the new iPod software that my computer had been nagging me about, get all upgraded and ready to go . . .

So I put the new iOS 5.0 into my iPod touch, then went to get a peek at the Alien Contact cover. I got an error message:

“Unhandled exception . . . You can try to continue but the application may be unstable.”

Unstable? It was frozen solid – totally unresponsive!

I grumbled obscenities as I figured out how to get the Alien Contact epub file into my iPod touch though iTunes and iBooks.

Then I surfed into the news that iOS 5.0 has been discovered to be incompatible with Stanza, making that app useless on the iPod and iPad and separating readers from their books.

I was contemplating recently dead Steve Jobs quivering between sainthood and godhood as his corporation pulls an underhanded power grab, when I heard from Marty Halpern, editor of Alien Contact, who had seen my tweet about downloading the ebook, asking if I would be willing to review it.

I asked Marty if it would be kosher for me to review the book when I had a story in it. He said it would be okay, if I explained the situation and talked about the parts of the book I didn't write. Kinda weird, but that tends to be my speciality, so I said, yes, I'll do it.

Then I went shopping for a new eReader app.

I found one called eBook Search. It's free, and works through iTunes and iBooks. (I wonder if there's a Ouija board app that would allow an interview with Steve Jobs about this?) There are a lot of pop-up ads asking “Are you a Stanza Refugee?” and offering to get rid of the ads for 99 cents. Like Stanza, eBook Search has access to ebooks from Feedbooks, Project Gutenberg, Smashwords, and Munseys.

It also has access to Baen Books and Internet Archive, where found some books I couldn't get through Stanza, like: P.T. Barnum's autobiography, because I feel it will help in surviving the the world the way it is rapidly developing; Vincente Blasco Ibáñez' classic bullfighting novel Blood and Sand; and Dames Don't Care by Peter Cheyney, creator of hardboiled detective Lemmy Caution.

But still, there are a number of books that I had on Stanza that I no longer have access to, some that I paid for.

I suppose that somewhere, Steve Jobs and P.T. Barnum are having good laugh.

WHERE DID PABLO CORTEZ COME FROM?

2011-11-01T21:51:00.000-07:00

And the selling of Alien Contact, and "Guerrilla Mural of a Siren's Song" is off and running, with a guest blog I wrote over at SF Signal. It's called "Once Upon a Time in SoCal: The Making of 'Guerrilla Mural of a Siren's Song," and it offers some yet undisclosed insights into how I came up with a character like Pablo Cortez, and the bizarre fate of the original story, and it how it became the novel Cortez on Jupiter. There are things I've never told before here.

ALIEN CONTACT ON SALE NOW!

2011-10-30T09:48:00.000-07:00

Buy it . . .

Read it . . .

Live it ...

CHICANONAUTICA DÍA DAZED AGAIN

2011-10-27T11:16:00.000-07:00

Over at La Bolga, I've got a Chicanonautica for Día de los Muertos going. Here at Mondo Ernesto, I've got some extras that work Halloween/Muertos interface:

From Argentina, we have some kick-but exorcists that will make everyone forget about Linda Blair:

In other news, Puerto Rico is not immune to zombie infestation:

Meanwhile, at the Hollywood Cemetery:

And let's finish up with a Nahuatl blessing:

MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE WRITER BIZ FRONT

2011-10-23T22:01:00.000-07:00

From just looking at this blog, you might get the idea that I've been spending most of my time wallowing in strange and obscure entertainment – not that that wouldn't be a bad life. Unfortunately, I'm more of a workboy than a playboy these days. Besides checking in, sorting, and shelving stuff (not just books) for the Phoenix Public Library at more than one location, the writer biz keep growing new heads and grotesque new appendages just when I think I've thwacked it into submission.

November 1^st is hurtling at us, Marty Halpern's Alien Contact anthology is coming out. I already have my contributor's copy where I can see my name listed among a whole lot of famous writers. Soon I'll be poking through the smoldering bookselling wasteland, hoping to see it for sale. I'll also be hyping it – though these days the word “pimp” is the more popular term.

I had hoped to have Cortez on Jupiter available as an ebook by now, but it's still in the final stages of all-important proofreading – something I've learned is extremely important in self-publishing. And there're all those wonder technical details I've been learning about. Talk about new life and new civilizations!

I'm also trying to get another ebook done, Obsidian Harvest, the Aztec dinosaur detective novella I collaborated on with Rick Cook. When Rick and I get to brainstorming, it can get wild. I'm not only coming up with a cover, but illustrations, and I'm having these visions of an animated book trailer that may take me into some truly dangerous territory.

Meanwhile, other writers are getting interesting and usual ebooks out. Cat Eldridge of The Green Man Review informed me about Neil Gaiman's Snow Glass Apples and Murder Mysteries. And others are popping up all the time. It shames me into getting back to work.

Then there's the ebookization Smoking Mirror Blues and High Aztech that folks are screaming for.

And, yes, I am still writing. I've got this poststeamppunk Pancho Villa - Nikola Tesla - airship -deathray thing that I keep getting distracted from. When I get back to it I've found that vision has changed, which has caused the story to go off in another direction. I end up chasing it through the apocalyptic landscape of our times.

Y'know, it's kinda fun.

CHICANONAUTICA , JESÚS HELGUERA, CALENDARS, POSTERS, CARS, AND SIDEWALKS

2011-10-12T15:37:00.000-07:00

The latest Chicanonautica over at La Bloga tells of how my search for an Aztec detective led me to the works of Mexican painter Jesús Helguera, whose classical images are known from being seen on calendars, posters, cars, and sidewalks.

Mexican art often finds a home in other places than the galleries and museums of the fine art world. Chicano art thrives in these populist venues. These products of popular culture often say more about us than is ever shown in them alta classe places.

I know that these horror movie posters say something to me, and probably reveal a lot about me:

My visions of – and life in – the Wild West look more like these than Hollywood's efforts:

There's something about the hand-painted signs of the world's barrios:

Lowriders with airbrushes often get inspired:

And even a tuba can be transformed by paint:

VICTOR THEREMIN HACKS AGAIN

2011-10-09T09:19:00.000-07:00

I was looking over the stats for Mondo Ernesto, wondering why I was getting a lot of visits from Russia, the Netherlands, and the Ukraine lately, when my screen went black. Suddenly, flashing block letters scrolled by:

YOU BEEN HACKED, SUCKA!

Before I could reach over to turn my computer off, a cornball starfield appeared. Flaming letters in familiar handwriting spelled:

Hi Ernest, this is Victor Theremin. I've been having a wild time in the Ukraine, the Netherlands, and Russia. Wish you were here.

Then my computer restarted itself. A blinding light flashed outside my window. My eardrums popped. I did another restart, just in case.

HOUDINI VERSUS THE ROBOT-CONTROLED CORPORATION

2011-10-03T12:19:00.000-07:00

It was another peculiar image that sent me on a decades-long quest: Houdini fighting with a robot. It was a clunky robot, but then it was from a silent movie. It was more than man-sized, but there also was a small, doll-sized version. Sometimes it carried a candelabra.

I first saw it on Jay Ward's experiment in pre-postmodernism, Fractured Flickers. What was this movie? I longed to see it. Someday.

Later I read about it in some Houdini biographies. It was The Master Mystery, a silent serial. There was even a novelization.

Houdini plays a Justice Department agent investigating a corporation that buys patents to keep the inventions off the market in order to extort big payoffs from established businesses who would have to compete with the new technology. A top executive's brain has been “transplanted” into an “automaton” – the robot who went by the name of Candlestick Parker in Fractured Flickers!

The automaton gives orders to a gang of thugs who keep putting Houdini into complicated death traps that he can escape from rather than simply shooting or stabbing him. Not very smart – but then they are following the orders of a corporate executive.

There's also a mind-paralyzing drug that the automaton used that candelabra to deploy, a heroine and a villainess who both fall in love with Houdini, a fake fortune teller, Fu Manchu/Yellow Peril Asians, a hypnosis machine, and an idol with heat ray eyes.

Sections are damaged and/or missing, entire chapters are synopsized, and it ends with the cliff-hanger of the penultimate chapter, making it look like the evil corporation triumphs -- just why is the world still hanging onto fossil fuels?

But it's still pretty damn entertaining.

I think this is because the complete story isn't the point. The appeal of serials isn't linear. They are slices of melodrama rather than life. The plot isn't as important as the delirious effect of the stream of mayhem that keeps titillating the audience before it has to go back to life in a fracturing world.

CHICANONAUTICA EXPLORES WILD WEST MEXICAN COMIC BOOKS

2011-09-28T12:16:00.001-07:00

My latest Chicanonautica at La Bloga takes a look at the outrageous Mexican comic book Frontera Violenta.

Since I'm overdue returning to this popular subject – every day, people visit my other posts about it – here are some more examples from my collection, this time focusing on the western genre:

A long-time favorite is Aguila Solitaria (“Lone Eagle”), an Indian raised Tarzan-style by eagles, who wears wings that allow him to fly -- a Native American superhero out for ¡LA VENGANZA!

The most popular western Mexican comic book is El Libro Vaquero, that promises – among other things – “the most emotional stories of the Old West.”

This ad for El Libro Vaquero hypes “magnificent colors” and “the authentic cowboy flavor” in “the best magazine in Latin America.

Here's a blonde Indian warrior-princess beckoning us to read “true and authentic stories of the Legendary West.”

Something from the days of monochrome comics printed in a sepia ink that had a pungent uric acid smell when fresh. I never could make out the second word in the title, but it offers “intrepid and reckless gunmen and the most beautiful and sensual women.”

Another look at the mystery title. “The most intrepid and valiant men who forged the Legend of the West with the most beautiful women.”

Getting literary, here's a page from Novelas Inmortales No. 502, “El Jeque de Kalhuran” with Karl May's Old Shatterhand in Arabia, having a flashback to his days in Arizona with his Apache pal, Winnetou.

WHEN THE SON OF HERCULES WAS BLACK

2011-09-19T11:54:00.000-07:00

I was on the lookout for the 1914 silent film Cabiria. It influenced Fellini – he named the heroine of his Nights of Cabiria after the title character. It was the beginning of the peplum, or sword & sandal, genre. It's also the first appearance of the muscular hero Maciste – whose origins seemed to be shrouded in mystery.

It lives up to its reputation. It's an action-packed adventure set during the Punic Wars in the Third Century. It starts with Etna erupting – most movies since have saved their volcanoes for the end. There's also Archimedes as a prototype mad scientist incinerating Roman ships with his solar-powered death ray. And of course Cabiria, still a little girl at this point, is taken to Carthage, where cultists try to sacrifice her to Moloch.

This incredible scene influenced Fritz Lang later in Metropolis, and may have even been in Allen Ginsberg's mind when he wrote his Beat Generation anthem, Howl.

Of course it is Maciste, played by Bartolomeo Pagano, who snatches Cabiria just before she can be inserted into the diabolical, flaming Moloch machine, stealing the show.

And once he showed up, the mysteries about his origins fell away.

His skin is dark. Very dark. It's makeup. I'd use the term “blackface,” but its all over his body, on every exposed muscle. He wears a leopard skin. He is the African slave of Fulvio “Fulvius” Axilla, a Roman gentleman hero who, in the Victorian tradition, has a loyal, hulking manservant to do the heavy lifting.

All the other slaves in the movie have the same paint job. It is said the D.W. Griffith was also influenced by Cabiria.

In the end – which takes place ten years after the beginning – it is Fulvius who Cabiria marries, while Maciste stands back and grins.

Maciste turned out of to be marketable. Bartolomeo Pagano played him in twenty-five films. IMDb says that he played the character in blackface in all of these, but he looks pretty white in Maciste in Hell, and in photos I've found online. Somehow, the movie's first black superhero turned white when he became popular.

This does add to Maciste's mystery. His adventures unfold in any place and time that the flimmakers see fit. He just shows up, like Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck, without a visible time machine. Could it be that besides superhuman strength and time travel, he can change race at will?

Later, in the Sixties, more Maciste movies were made. He was played by a number of well-developed white men.

But when they dubbed them into English, there seemed to be a problem with the name, Maciste. It must have sounded too “foreign” for the Anglo audience. It does kind of sound African, doesn't it? So he was Maciste only in a few, given other names for some, sometime he was even called Hercules. Or the son of Hercules.

They were even packaged as a Sons of Hercules series.

But I do wonder, if remake-crazy Hollywood decided to make a new version of Cabiria, what color would Maciste be?

CHICANONAUTICA MEETS XUANITO

2011-09-12T12:01:00.000-07:00

This time Chicanonautica lets the Latino lit crowd at La Bloga know about "Xuanito," my story in the latest Flurb. I also celebrate my monster movie roots. And here's some Mondo Ernesto extras:

The theme some to the show that introduced me to many a monster:

These days, teenaged girls dream of romantic vampires, but teenaged boys have always been werewolves at heart.

I saw the dubbed versions of some on these on television in my youth. These days I'm inspired by the originals.

The classic Attack of the Fifty-Foot Woman has had a barrio remake:

And everybody's favorite Latino monster has popped up in Brazilian production:

SHIFTING PRADIGMS AND FALLING METAPHORS AT COPPERCON

2011-09-10T14:40:00.000-07:00

I arrived at CopperCon 2011 on Saturday afternoon. There were people milling around the halls. I saw some costumes – mostly steampunk, which in Arizona has spaghetti western flavor, rather than a slavish worship of corporate franchises. Funny, and kind of sad, how mundane hotel guests aren't shocked anymore.

I found Rick Cook talking about ebooks with a guy who “just prefers real books.” I've been hearing that lately, from a lot of people, especially science fiction fans, who, as usual, are resisting the future as it comes crashing down on them. They really need to read Rick's ebook, Shift Happens: The New E-Publishing Paradigm And What It Means for Authors.

The panel on online publishing mostly had writers and wannabees in the audience. That's the big issue: How do you get readers to find out about your ebooks? Looks like we're going to be forced out of our home offices and into the streets, or where ever . . .

Rick and I got to talk about the illustrations that I'm currently doing for the ebook of our novella Obsidian Harvest. Images for an Aztec dinosaur detective story take a lot of research. A guy can get distracted.

As I was driving the Crudmobile home, it started dying at intersections. I was lucky I made it home. Then it hit me: Here it is, a big, flaming metaphor dropping out of the sky – the old technology giving out just I was trying to go on with business as usual.

It'll happen for all or us. Soon. Hell, it's already started. Is there a Barnes & Noble in your town? Where do you get books these days?

The next morning we let the con know through Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, and phone that we may not make our Sunday-night panels. Fortunately, El Troque was in good working order, getting us both to our jobs that day and the con that evening.

I was twenty minutes late for the panel on where to find science sources. No other panelists had showed up, so the audience started without us. Yes, there are people who are interested in science out there. It was fun.

Em also found a DNA analyst and an astronomer to help her with a homework equation that was giving her trouble.

Monday, Em had a couple of panels, I got to hang out in the audience and think about where all this science fiction stuff is going.

We're still hearing a lot about the highly formulaic popular fiction of the past decade – paranormal romance, sexy vampires, etc. – and how that's the way to go, even though the format that they sold in – the good ol' mass market paperback – and the stores that carried them look doomed. In my last couple of years at Borders, I saw the sales of genre paperback melt away to nothing. Will they make the transition to ebooks? We'll have to see what happens in the next few years.

Steampunk is also big, not just as a fashion statement, but in fiction. I can recommend David Lee Summers' Owl Dance. Again, this is nostalgia for old futures, old technology. I guess I should finish my Pancho Villa airship story.

Ans now that it's over, I've got this long list of things to do, so I there's probably a future in this sci-fi stuff after all.

READ “XUANITO” AT FLURB!

2011-09-06T00:01:00.000-07:00

Once again, Rudy Rucker has allowed me to get away with an outrageous act of sci-fi. Over at Flurb, you can now read “Xuanito” a Godzillaesque romp in which a young Chicano takes on the world.

That seems to be a recurring theme with me . . . I wonder why?

This story has history. I originally wrote it after being depressed for a few years after the corporate sci-fi industry declared that I had no commercial potential and decided they weren't going to touch me with a ten-foot pole. For a while, turning on the computer to write would make me burst into tears.

But the sinister urge was still there. So I decided, screw it, forget about salability, or even what form it should take. Just write. Make it good diabolical fun. After all, like Henry Miller said in Tropic of Cancer, “Everything that was literature has fallen from me.” This was a good ol' “gob of spit in the face of Art.”

It took time to sell. I had some near misses. It's amazing how often a magazine can go out of business before they publish your story. I think I was even paid for it more than once . . .

Of course, then I called it “Your Future in Hallucinogenetics.”

When I sent it to Rudy, he wrote back with some suggestions. They were good. Rudy gets what I'm doing, while a lot science fiction professionals these days don't. He also wanted to make the story wilder. I can't resist when someone asks me to crank it up rather than tone it down.

The result is a better story. Xuanito became a dominant character, so I gave him top billing like Frankenstein, Dracula, and Godzilla.

Thank you, Rudy, for making it possible for me to unleash this glorious monster into the world.

CHICANONAUTICA GETS POETIC

2011-09-02T00:01:00.000-07:00

This fortnight's Chicanonautica over at La Bloga is all about bilingual poetry, and reviews Charlie Vázquez' Meditations/Mediatciones – Bronx/Salsa, and Emanuel Xavier's anthology Me No Habla with Acento: Contemporary Latino Poetry. So, the extras here at Mondo Ernesto are poetical:

First, a teaser about Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales' Chicano classic I am Joaquin:

Next, Victor Hernández Cruz gives some advice that has again become relevant:

And I even found one of Charlie Vázquez reading one of the poems from his book:

Finally, so we don't start taking ourselves too serioso here.

COCKFIGHTER: A GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL

2011-08-26T13:52:00.000-07:00

I'd been looking for Charles Willeford's Cockfighter for years. He's one of greatest American writers of the Twentieth Century – in my humble opinion. Roger Corman made the book into one of his few movies that didn't make money. And since I took care of chickens – and roosters – as a lad, I have a certain fascination for cockfighting.

Suddenly, I have another reason to praise the Electronic Publishing Revolution. Cockfighter and a number of other Willeford titles are available for free from Munsey.com. The world is changing for the better.

Cockfighting is the stuff of pulp fiction. In Mexico it's a recurring theme in action entertainment and popular song. But it's rare to see it presented in our English-speaking culture other than as something totally abhorrent that needs to be abolished muy pronto. The specter of Puritanism haunts Norteamerica, and will not be exorcized any time soon.

Cockfighter is a hardboiled masterpiece. I can see how it gave Roger Corman visions of drive-in glory. The pretensions attached to the artsy-fartsy term noir doesn't apply here. Noir is just French for black, which in Spanish is negro . . . No, there's no hiding in artistic darkness here. Cockfighting often takes place in blazing sunlight that makes the flying blood glisten.

It's the story of Frank Mansfield, a man obsessed with a dream – variation on the Great American Dream of rising to the top of your profession – he wants to win the Cockfighter of the Year medal. He wants it so bad that he has taken a vow of silence until he achieves his goal. That's right, the main character/narrator does not speak. He communicates through improvised sign language while everybody else talks, and he provides an interior monologue that's about the strange, violent, illegal world that he lives in.

This is a freaking tour de force that had me hooked from the opening scene where Frank is making it look like a bird has a cracked beak so he can get better odds.

What a pleasure to read this in an age when most Americans seem to think the Great American Dream will be bestowed on them by some benevolent corporation or government agency because they happen to fit the current parameters for cool. No, kids, dreams come true because you're willing to work hard and make sacrifices. The Aztecs could teach you a few things . . .

America needs more dreamers like Frank Mansfield that are willing handicap themselves and sacrifice for their dreams, dreamers who give their all. Some dreams are only worthwhile after you've made it impossible to give up and lead a “normal” life. Like a rooster, there's no turning back – it's a one-way ticket.

Besides, what is “normal” – a life with only mundane dreams?

ADVENTURES IN RESEARCHLAND

2011-08-23T18:18:00.000-07:00

It's August in Phoenix, and getting up to over 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Folks on the street have that zombified look. Consulting a mirror, I see that look on my face, too. Any sane person would be taking it easy, or at least taking off to a cooler climate – like one where it's down in the nineties – but I can't help myself, I've got ebooks to get ready for release, and the time to do it is now.

My current tasks are a cover for Cortez on Jupiter, and a cover plus illustrations for Obsidian Harvest, a novella that I collaborated on with Rick Cook. It was featured in Analog and Gardner Dozois' eighteenth The Year's Best Science Fiction. It's not just a matter of grabbing the sketchbook and scribbling – to do this right, this calls for research.

Ah! Research! A wonderful excuse to satisfy your lust – I mean, curiosity. “Why are you looking at those horrible books and websites?” Research. “Oh. I guess that's okay.” It's usually more enjoyable than the real work. For me, I find that writing and art are often excuses for me to indulge in doing research.

Coming up with a cover image for Cortez on Jupiter was a bear. I didn't want to draw Pablo's art – it's impossible in Earth gravity. Attempts to create a suitable Great Red Spot or spatter drawings fell short. The image that worked was the actual Great Red Spot.

Luckily it was available in public domain. I emailed the NASA/Hubble/STSci site, asking what the proper procedures were – just because I want to avoid any chance of having to change the cover after releasing the book. This resulted in some Kafkaesque correspondence with a HAL 9000-type entity. I groaned, did some more sketches, but finally a message from a human being arrived, explaining that they liked to have a credit line mentioning the agencies involved, and a copy for their files.

I'll worry about how to send them an ebook later.

I also needed to research old fashioned, East L.A. Chicano graffiti,which led to some interesting sites where graffiti fonts were available online. Ironically, it was a science fiction contact, Eileen Gunn, that led me to the most helpful sites.

I was also learned about graffiti-inspired artist Chaz Borjorquez, who has some interesting things to say about the future of art and culture.

For Obsidian Harvest, I needed material on Aztec weaponry:

For the main character, “Lucky” Tworabbit, Rick Cook said, “Think Mexican beer ad.” This led me the iconic art of Jesús Helguera:

Also there were the “steamers.” Fortunately, stanelysteamers.com is a portal to a world that steampunks need to explore. I may just have to draw existing vehicles and decorate them Aztec/Mayan/lowrider style.

And the story does feature intelligent velociraptors:

Then there's the whole subject of putting illustrations into an ePub file . .

The best part of this is, at the end of day, I can call all this “work.”

CHICANONAUTICA PLAYS BALL

2011-08-14T10:42:00.001-07:00

It's back to the Archaeological Sports Desk over at Chicanonautica at La Bloga, with a look at the PreColumbian ball game. People have been recreating the game lately. Here's some of the mutations and variations:

See what happens with the addition of a volleyball net:

And if a traditional court can't be found, a basketball court will do:

At a festival, you can set up and put on quite a show:

Or it can be a ritual for the tourists:

It's no surprise that we're seeing slick, corporate productions:

So let's go out with a ball of fire:

TO THE MOON, DYSTOPIA, AND UTOPIA WITH EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS

2011-08-10T10:33:00.000-07:00

With the upcoming John Carter movie, a new generation is about be introduced to Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars. I hope the franchise hype gets some of the kids to read the books. Burroughs also wrote a trilogy about the Moon in which he speculates on the future with some interesting socio-political ideas.

The Moon Maid starts 1967. Not our 1967 of the the Summer of Love, but one after the world had just ended a long war that has left the world in a peaceful state. The narrator doesn't know what men like him will do without war. On a transoceanic cruise, he meets a man who remembers his future incarnations because “there is no such thing as Time” – leave it to Edgar Rice Burroughs to not let things like space and time get in the way of a story.

The stranger tells of Julian 5^th who goes to the Moon after radio communication is established with Mars and a spaceship called The Barsoomian is built. The Moon is hollow, and he encounters quadrupedal cannibalistic humanoids and meets a princess from a more civilized, “human” breed. Orthis, the commander of the Barsoomian, throws in with the Kalkars, a degenerate breed of bipedal lunar humanoids, who are responsible for the sorry conditions on the Moon that forces cannibalism for survival – even Julian's princess eats the flesh of the quadrupeds. Orthis and the Kalakars, with modern mechanized weapons, cause massive destruction. Julian and the Moon maid escape to Earth.

The Moon Men begins with the narrator working for the International Peace Fleet, helping out Eskimos. He runs into the man who remembers the future again, who tells him the story of Julian the 9^th, who lives in a world that was invaded by Orthis and the Kalkars. Progress has been set back by their foolish policies. Americans live in poverty, marriage and religion are outlawed.

Like many dystopias, The Moon Men creates a nightmare world by having white people treated like slaves. As Ishmael Reed said in his essay, “300 Years of 1984” – “For Afro-Americans, it could be argued that every year they've spent in this country since they arrived in chains to perform forced labor has been 1984.” Burroughs did this decades before Orwell.

Fortunately, in the Burroughsian fashion, Julian 9^th finds a princess – or at least a girl of proper “Yank” breeding – and leads a revolution, leaving his people free to practice Americanism.

There is no envelope in this one. The Red Hawk goes straight into the action. Julian 20^th is the Chief of a tribe of Yanks in an America than has gotten even more primitive. They live like the Apaches in The War Chief and Apache Devil, with a horse/warrior society, with swords and lances. No complaints about decline of American manhood here.

This comes in handy, because the Kalkars are still around, in the Capitol, threatening to take over again. They also want to mix their genes with the Yanks, which would eventually do to the Earth what they did to the Moon. A lot is made of the treachery of half-breeds.

Julian 20^th finds a girl from a good family and starts another revolution, in which he leads war- painted mounted troops into the Capitol, where the Kalkars and their half-breed allies are defeated once and for all. Americanism goes on, as Yanks worship the Flag and live like Indians in a world without mechanized warfare or decadent modern living. It seems to be Edgar Rice Burroughs' vision of utopia.

CHICANONAUTICA FINDS LUCADORES, AND MORE, IN THE LIBRARY

2011-08-04T10:07:00.001-07:00

Over at La Bloga, my latest Chicanonautica takes a look at the library, and finds Carlos Fuentes, Luis Buñuel, Blue Demon, Santo, Mil Máscaras, and other luchadores. ¡Viva la bibloteca!

Our extras for this are videos from other lucha libre movies that I found at the library:

Santo vs. La Invasion de los Marcianos pits the man in the silver mask against blond Martians with teleportation belts, shows NASA footage, and steals music from Forbidden Planet.

Los Championes Justicieros has Blue Demon and an all-star cast of luchadores fighting a mad scientist, and a horde of super-midgets, with a wild & crazy jazz soundtrack.

And here's a wonderful tribute to Santo:

TO VENUS AND MARS VIA TONTO NATURAL BRIDGE

2011-08-02T18:31:00.000-07:00

Xihutecuhtil, the Lord of Time, smiled at Em and me again. He allowed our days off to mesh. We could take off for another day trip, get away from the Phoenix heat island, recharge the batteries, adjust the compasses.

First we had matadors – a delicious spicy latte – at Lola's in Central Phoenix. Saw some impressive murals there, where naked, crumbling walls cry out for them.

As we got away from town, the roadkill got strange – a mutilated, hairless animal . . . chupacabra?

In front of the short, sweet Waterfall Trail, a sign warned: “This area contains numerous natural hazards. Enjoy it with caution.”

At Tonto Natural Bridge – fossil water seeps through the rocks, comes down in constant rain under the bridge. Passing through it puts you in touch with what's really going on on this planet, this universe.

I though about the term “sacred waterfalls.” But aren't all waterfalls sacred?

Just beyond the bridge was thick, green moss, hanging vegetation, and more water falling and twisting through the wind -- in August in Arizona. We found a place where you could take photo illustrations for Ray Bradbury's classic story about Venus, “The Long Rain.”

Yeah, I know, it doesn't rain on Venus. But maybe some day it will. At least there really is Venusian lightning.

Then we explored this forest where cactus grows out of porous rocks left over from ancient oceans – not far from the deserts that inspired Edgar Rice Burroughs' dead sea bottoms of Mars.

Lots of yellow-orange agave flowers bloom atop long green stalks on candelabra branches.

In Payson we stopped to eat at La Sierra Mexican Restaurant (though the hand-painted sign says “Restaurat” in letters that look like logs) Great décor with painted bas relief chairs and tables from Guadalajara, Univision HD on a flatscreen, psychedelic sombreros on the walls. And the food was great, too.

We passed through another storm on the way back, ready to face August in Phoenix.

DID MILES DAVIS INVENT CYBERPUNK?

2011-07-28T12:26:00.000-07:00

Going over a file of a scanned book, correcting all the glitches generated by the fact that an OCR program doesn't understand human language, is tedious work. It's something a lot of us writers are doing in these days of the Ebook Revolution. Not as exciting as rioting in the streets, but necessary, and the results will be more world changing than mere mob violence.

But, ay, it ain't much fun.

I've found that, like with writing, music helps.

As I go over Cortez on Jupiter until my blood-shot eyes cross, I've been playing Miles Davis' On the Corner. It fits so well, I'm beginning to think of it as the novel's unofficial soundtrack.

That clankity, wailing funk always sounded sci-fi/futuristic to me. Feels like moving through crowded megalopoltian streets teeming with people and machines up to all kinds of business and/or pleasure like the blaxsploitation/underground comix characters in Corky McCoy's cover art. Are those spaceships overhead? Sure we got illegal aliens, and not just from this planet, amigo!

There's also something cybernetic about that sound. The 1972 technology probably didn't have many computers in the mix, but you can hear the hints toward sampling and digital editing. It is the street finding it's own use for technology, but to a beat that William Gibson never imagined. It's the shape of funk to come, pointing the way to rap, hip-hop, techno, the Afro-pop of King Sunny Ade and Fela Anikulapo Kuit.

It doesn't as much make you want to dance as make you want to move through complicated environments to its rhythms. Oh, to be cruising recombocultural streets in customized-to-the- Frankensteinization-point vehicle that can roll and fly, with On the Corner leaking through the windows, and vibrating through the frame . . . and your bones . . . your DNA . . .

Pablo Cortez and his world, and him slinging paint around it, come alive in this music. And it keep me focused as I go over the words, zapping those glitches, making it all come through loud and clear.

DISTRACTIONS IN BLACK AND WHITE

2011-07-26T16:44:00.000-07:00

It's been a summer of writing, drawing, and ebookization for me. I often end up with a buzzing brain that needs distraction. And now that San Fermín is over, aside from the latest bullfight videos, I like to watch cartoons.

I prefer old cartoons, from the movies that I saw in my Atomic Age childhood in the early days of television. I especially like them when they get weird.

Like this Wild West romp with Bosko, the little black guy who brought musical merriment where ever he went, only this one has a postmodern ending:

And here, Flip the Frog, another early Warner Brothers character, seems to have wandered into Día de los Muertos territory:

And for our grand finale, Popeye, before the Fleisher brothers nailed down his formlua. There is no spinach, Popeye drinks liquor and beats up a lot of Mexicans:

Kind of disturbing, but then all real entertainment is.

CHICANONAUTICA DOES A POST SAN FERMĺN SHOW

2011-07-21T09:43:00.000-07:00

La Fiesta de San Fermín in Pamplona is over. My Chicanonautica coverage of it can be found at La Bloga. For Mondo Ernesto extras, here's some videos:

First, a look at what an encierro was like back in 1951:

Next, this year's stand-out, record breaking encierro, featuring the incredible Resistón knocking the runners around in the final stretch:

And finally, from this year's closing ceremonies, the Gigantes dance with the Cabezudos watching:

CONTACT METAMORPHISM IN ARIZONA

2011-07-20T09:34:00.000-07:00

“Here's one of my favorite examples of contact metamorphism,” said Em.

We were on a one-day road trip to Sedona. The temperatures were getting up into the hundred-and-teens in Phoenix. You can't spend the entire summer in this town without a break, or else you end up with that zombified look in your eyes, like all those people walking their sizzling brains down the blazing sidewalks.

It's cooler up north. Red rock country is full of geological wonders for Em, and just plain anthropogenic anomalies for me. Sometimes you just have to get out and sniff the roadkill – and we running heavily into dead skunks.

Once I spilled coffee on pants, I started to relax. I thought I spotted some roadside datura, but was just a shredded plastic bag caught on a bush.

The interior of El Troque is like a space capsule – especially when Em's driving. This had me fantasizing about a customized Gemini capsule with scaled-up 1957 Cadillac Eldorado tailfins, and scaled-down Volsok booster nozzles. The nozzles would just be for looks and perhaps rigged to leave vapor trails, because it would have to be propelled by a kind of zero-point/antigravity drive. And of course it would have a flame-job in psychedelic, anti-friction paint.

Then I spotted some actual datura by the roadside. It was blooming like mad. And no authorities to control the spread of the dangerous, mind-altering plant, the way the world's largest marijuana fields were being burned in Baja.

We did some hiking past the town of Rimrock with its “RESTAURA T” near Dry Beaver Creek. There was a bee was poking her face into the datura that grew near a visitor's center – was she trying to make some special honey?

I carried and wore Em's pink backpack for her because yo soy muy macho como un torero en un traje de juz rosa.

Later a Japanese girl informed me that the Kanji on my samurai T-shirt said, “Bushido” – the Way of the Warrior.

A lot of tourists with bluish vampire skin were cooking themselves along that trail. Then I saw a little cross made of two crooked sticks tied together. Maybe this really was vampire country.

There were plenty of clouds over Sedona, near Oak Creek. We drove through Main Street, looking at the wacky art in front of the galleries next to places where neon signs advertised psychics. We weren't really tempted to stop.

Does any body buy that art? And what do they do with after they buy it?

After more hiking under clouds, cooler air, thunder and lighting, as well as distant, blurry grey shafts of rain, we had “dunch” (Em's term) at Oaxaca Mexican Restaurant. We had Sopapillas Mexicalli on the covered patio as the storm hit. Pelting diagonal rain leaked in and blotted out the red, hoodooistic mountains. The monsoon had come.

Before heading back, we bought mochas from a barista with a trilobite tattooed on his arm.

We couldn't resist one more hike, even though it was starting to rain. Splashing red mud turned our socks pink. We were soaking wet when we headed home through downpours and lightning that made the windshield into abstract art.

Past the Mogollon Rim, as it cleared up, we rolled down the windows, and were dry by the time we approached Phoenix, where a huge dust storm was crossing the valley, blotting out the sun. This is a summer for haboobs.

By some miracle it did not rain frogs.

Another day of contact metamorphism in Arizona.

"GUERRILLA MURAL" COMPLETELY ONLINE!

2011-07-15T14:47:00.000-07:00

It's done! The third and final part of "Guerrilla Mural of a Siren's Song" is available for your reading pleasure at Marty Halpern's More Red Ink.

Be sure to buy the Alien Contact anthology in November, so you can re-read it in the full, non-electronic experience, and have it to entertain you in the case of power outages.

Meanwhile, I'm back to work ebookizing Cortez on Jupiter. The illustrations are examples of what I'm doing in my groping for a cover image -- these are attempts to make a icon out of the Great Red Spot.

"GUERRILLA MURAL" CONTINUES . . .

2011-07-13T20:32:00.000-07:00

The second part of "Guerrilla Mural of a Siren's Song" is up on Marty Halpern's More Red Ink blog. Whoo-hoo!

Meanwhile, here's a couple of Pablo Cortez-inspired experiments from my sketchbook. What do you think? Spot art? Scene separators?

FIRST PABLO CORTEZ STORY ONLINE

2011-07-12T08:36:00.000-07:00

"Guerrilla Mural of a Siren's Song," the first story to feature Pablo Cortez, zero-gravity splatterpainter, that I later expanded into the novel Cortez on Jupiter, has been posted online at More Red Ink, editor Marty Halpern's blog. At least the first of three parts.

This is in anticipation of it's being reprinted in the Night Shade Books anthology, Alien Contact, in November. I highly recommend that you buy the book as well as reading it online, as insurance against an electromagnetic pulse device being set off in your neighborhood.

Meanwhile, I'm getting Cortez on Jupiter ready to be released as an ebook. I'll let you know where to order it as soon as I've got it all worked out.

Meanwhile, enjoy these drawings that I did after selling Cortez on Jupiter to Ben Bova, after he asked for suggestions about the cover. Note the presence of the Quetzalcoatl. This was because he said Tor believed that dragons promoted sales, and the Feathered Serpent was close to a dragon.

I'll let you know when Part Two is posted.

ALCHEMY, LOST AND FOUND

2011-07-10T17:12:00.000-07:00

Yeah, Minister Faust's The Alchemists of Kush is about Sudanese “lost boys” struggling to survive in Edmonton, up in Canada. But it's not another one of those books that Americans like to read to make them feel glad they weren't born in an “underdeveloped” country, or to feel good about how ways other than their own are being wiped out. Go ahead, let corporate franchises bring civilization to primitive neighborhoods near and far. After all, is there anything outside of your everyday consumer life worth knowing?

The title hooked me. And the Africentric modernism. Then Ishmael Reed praised it. I bought it, read it, and was blown away.

Here is a book you can recommend to young men who listen to hip-hop and play video games, and who aren't impressed by today's light-weight young adult fantasy. Rap and “Jackie Chan's” struggle for survival in the Twenty-First Century is one that they will identify with. And not just the “blacks” – I'm reminded of how in the Borders where I worked, the only kids who looked at the rap CDs were white . . .

This tale of strangers in a strange land builds on modern “pop” culture rather than merely worshipping it. DC and Marvel, make way for a mythology that faces a new world and remembers a ancient one. Good to see in a time when all our superheroes are owned by corporations, and I keep hearing the target audience say that the latest megabudget comic book movie is, “Okay, not great, just okay.”

The Alchemists of Kush challenges everything. It tweaks the language to make the reader hear the accents and feel the rhythms. It destroys genre-distinctions; realistic depictions of fantastic contemporary life with Facebook and Twitter will be misinterpreted as science fiction by some, and it is not fantasy or magic realism – if we are lucky it is pointing the way to a new kind of realism. It steps out of the bounds of the young adult category – I remember when that category came into being, someday it will cease to exist. It's a book too big to be corralled by the publishing world's self-imposed limits.

Besides, that publishing world is crumbling.

It's hard to compare it to other books. The closest I can come is Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo – not in the plot or content, but the effect. Reading it gave me the same feelings I got when I read Reed's classic decades ago – the feeling of finding a universe that had been hidden. Having access to it expanded my possibilities.

It just might be exactly what the current generation needs.

It may be what we all need. After all, in a rapidly changing world, aren't we all immigrants and refugees? We wake up one day, and the things we were used to are gone, weird new things have replaced them. You might as well suddenly be on another continent, or another planet.

Yeah, Minister Faust. It's all about transformation. Don't accept the Pyrite. Go for the Gold.

CHICANONAUTICA DOES SAN FERMIN

2011-07-07T14:51:00.000-07:00

In my latest Chicanonautica over at La Bloga, I go from singing the praises of bullfighting, to celebrating the Fiesta de San Fermin, better known as the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain.

I mention PETA, the FBI, Ernest Hemingway, and how you can enjoy the Fiesta online.

Here's SanFermin.com's irreverent take on the Txupinazo (the opening ritual):

Instead of showing this years reenactment of PETA's dull protest from last year, here's one of their wilder ones from the past:

Here's a tribute to Hemingway and bullfighting:

And San Fermin Encierro's artistic take on this year first run:

SELF-PORTRAIT AS AN ARTIST/ADDICT

2011-06-29T09:33:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, I defined myself as an artist. I was young, and full of crazy ideals.

Later, after thrashing around with the real world, I found myself thinking, “I used to be an artist.”

Recently, Marty Halpern suggested I inquire about using Ron Walotsky's cover painting for the original Tor edition of Cortez on Jupiter for the ebook. It's a wonderful painting -- if I had the money to throw around, I wouldn't mind owning it. Some of my hand-lettering would look nice over it . . .

But – it would be the perfect cover if I was marketing it to folks who felt nostalgic about the good old days when the novel first came out. Are there many folks like that out there? Did I want to limit my sales to a subgroup of aging literary science fiction fandom?

Also, how would that detailed image look shrunk down to thumbnail size, the way people browsing for ebooks would encounter it?

And, I was – and still am, at the moment – in this room that is filling up with sketches I've been doing for the Cortez on Jupiter ebook cover. Nothing definite yet. Experiments.

See? Present me with a situation, and I turn into an artist. I can't help it. It's an addiction.

I never got along with whole fine art business. Those kind of artists, and the whole gallery thing, make me uncomfortable. Who buys fine art anyway? I don't know anybody who buys paintings on a regular basis.

My sensibility is somewhere between a cartoonist and a bullfighter. Yeah, there's this surrealistic thing going there, left over from the hunter/gather instincts to make ritual images to attract the animals for us to kill and eat so the tribe will survive.

It sure does translate into strange business when you do it in the Twenty-First Century, and plug it into the brave new media . . .

So, I may never make my living as an artist, but leave me to my business, and I'll end up making some kind of art. I can't help it. It makes my life complicated, interesting.

It may eventually kill me, but it's not boring.

On the upside: being an artist, I don't have to hire one. Not being a “real professional,” I can easily afford me.

And I do like my own work.

So, as I go about my humble day job, in my brain there's all these images, and strategies for constructing them on paper and computer, flashing like a psychedelic light show . . . letters that look like flying liquid . . . the Great Red Spot as an abstract expressionist/graffiti/gonzo icon . . . cool colors burning through hot . . .

I gotta do something that Pablo Cortez will be proud of. I gotta.

It's an addiction.

CHICANONAUTICA CELEBRATES BULLFIGHTING

2011-06-23T19:12:00.000-07:00

I confess my love of bullfighting in my latest Chicanonautica over at La Bloga.

This was bit of a problem when it came to coming up with extras to offer here at Mondo Ernesto -- seeing that a lot of you out there are sensitive artistic and literary types who get disturbed by videos of actual bullfights. Luckily, over the decades, animators have recognized tauromaquia's cinegenic qualities. So here's three wonderful bullfighting cartoons:

First, we give some time to the "anti" viewpoint from everyone's favorite two-fisted vegetarian:

Next an example of high weirdness from the twisted mind of Tex Avery:

And finally, a masterpiece of the ridiculous and the sublime (often simultaneously) by the immortal Chuck Jones:

ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO CITY . . .

2011-06-17T11:05:00.000-07:00

Household archaeology unearthed a box of art from our overloaded, walk-in closet. There was also an old sketchbook in it, with an interesting first page:

I don't know what day it is. Me & Em are in love, in Mexico City – that futuristic metropolis built on ancient foundations that exhales magic realism in its smog: A fire-eater entertains motorists at a busy intersection . . . live, if seemingly zombified rattlesnakes are part of a street-show for “natural healing”. . . across the street from our hotel a show of fantastic artists appears overnight . . . a painted vampire seals a a broken window . . . and then, across the street from Las Galaxias (a strip joint) is the incredible Hotel Ixtaban, a facade without a building, decorated with nude goddess statues, no signs of life, but at night the sputtering neon sign somehow goes on . . .

Later, I would go on to write Cortez on Jupiter, High Aztech, and Smoking Mirror Blues. I also married Em. People ask why I'm smiling.

FRANKENSTEIN PENIS TO BE REPRINTED

2011-06-14T09:11:00.000-07:00

"The Frankenstein Penis," the most infamous of my short stories, the subject of unauthorized translations, reprints, and two student films is going to be reprinted. And it's a real deal this time: I signed a contract, and they're going to give me some real American money.

So look out for the anthology The Love that Never Dies: Undead Erotica edited by M. Christian. Watch this blog for the details . . .

CHICANONAUTICA REMEMBERS LEONORA

2011-06-10T13:35:00.000-07:00

Over at La Bloga, I pay tribute to Leonora Carrington in my latest Chicanonautica. Here at Mondo Ernesto, I'm offering up extras about some associated artists:

Leonora had an important relationship with one of my favorite surrealists, Max Ernst:

And how can talk about female artist connected with Mexico, with mentioning Frida Kahlo?

Once we've mentioned Frida, we've got to bring up Diego Rivera:

And last, but by no means least, Leonora's good friend, Remedios Varo:

BEYOND BORDERS: BACK TO THE LIBRARY

2011-06-03T14:09:00.000-07:00

Forget about the Senior Prom, go to the library and educate yourself if you've got any guts.

Frank Zappa

I hadn't been in a library since I started working for Borders back in 2000. Full-timing it there was like being held hostage. It's amazing that I did all the writing and drawing, and that I published all that stuff during that time. Libraries have changed in the New Millennium – computers and Wi-Fi for the public, lots of DVDs, CDs, audiobooks.

As a page, my time is divided between wrangling books in the back room, checking them in, packing them for shipping to other libraries, pushing around carts of books to shelve, and picking them up from reading tables. We find out what people want, then use computers, lasers, and the laying on of hands to connect customers with the object of their desire.

So much better than trying to work the "make titles" that Borders wanted us to push into every conversation with a customer, so we could meet the quota Corporate had decreed.

I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it's better than college.

Ray Bradbury

I did my own version of Ray Bradbury's self-education through the library. During the Great Recession back in the Nineteen-Seventies, it just made more sense to me than running up humungous Student Loan debt getting a degree that would qualify me to be an administrator or a bureaucrat, when I wanted to be a writer/artist/adventurer.

And I became a writer/artist/adventurer.

Yeah, I'm not rich, but not many people do become rich doing the crazy stuff I do. And there are a lot of rich people our there who aren't as happy as I am. I need to work part-time at a library, but now I have more time to do what I love to do.

And work on making this madness pay.

The America I loved still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.
Kurt Vonnegut

The library isn't just a great place to work, it's a great place to be. As I do the work, I'm walking around, eyebrow deep in serendipity. I can't help but be inspired.

All kinds of cultural artifacts pass in front of my eyes and through my hands. My brain gets titillated through the work day. And I discover new things I wouldn't have otherwise run across.

Then there's the people; they're working on something, be it getting a job or trying to overthrow the government, the homeless with laptops, girls with scarifications or headscarfs, men in kilts and sarongs, those people who need constant entertainment, and folks who are looking for something.

The library is a great place to look for things, even in the age of the Internet. You see, kids, believe it or not, there is a helluvalota stuff in this universe that isn't just a Google search away. I know, I've spent most of my life looking for more information on things that the usual, handy sources don't know diddlely about. I kept asking teachers about things that they knew nothing about, and eventually I realized that if I wanted to satisfy my curiosity, I was on my own.

I've found that the library is a good place to search, especially after you can't find something online. You may find that there isn't much in the library either, but that means you'll have to go off on a quest, keeping your eyes wide open in the wild, real world. It may take you years, decades -- hell, you may never find what you're looking for, but your life will be interesting.

And that's the way I plan to keep on enjoying myself.

A REPORT FROM ANOTHER NEW FRONTIER

2011-05-31T08:59:00.000-07:00

I'm experiencing time dilation. The last few months seems like years. And now, here I am, in a new world and a new job, with new situations coming at me. Once again I'm crossing another border, entering a new frontier.

When I was young, I wanted to be an explorer. Some diabolical gods granted my wish.

So now I'm in a rush to learn how to make a book into an ebook. With “Guerrilla Mural of A Siren's Song” coming out in Marty Halpern's Alien Contact in November, the time is ripe for Cortez on Jupiter to be released in the new format. Unfortunately, it's from my antediluvian (I wrote it back in the late Eighties), pre-computer days – I have to scan it, then go over it to correct all the glitches caused by the OCR process. Then there's getting it formatted . . .

Also, I'd like to put in some images. Another crash course I need to take.

There's also some other deals pending, but I won't talk about them yet. I'm kind of superstitious about such things.

If this sounds like I'm complaining, I'm not. This is all making me happy. I'm merrily going over Cortez on Jupiter with Miles Davis' On the Corner (pure sonic science fiction) blasting through the house. The ravings of Pablo Cortez are inspiring me, as if I didn't write them – and making me feel twenty years younger.

I'm experiencing what are either delusions of grandeur, or a boost to my self-confidence.

If I can get Cortez on Jupiter ready as an ebook in the next few months, then why not shoot for doing Smoking Mirror Blues (which is already a computer file), in time for Día de los Muertos? And then I can scan High Aztech and have it ready for 2012, the end of the Mayan Calendar and the beginning of a new world.

Yeah, I really think I can do this. I feel good, and good things are happening -- like the other day, Emily was cleaning out a closet and found a box full of my artwork that I had either forgotten about, or thought I had lost.

Some of them are on this post.

There were also some Cortez on Jupiter drawings in that box.

Think I need thank some diabolical gods. And make some sacrifices . . .

CHICANONAUTICA GOES TO MARS (WITH MARIACHIS)

2011-05-26T09:02:00.000-07:00

Is anybody surprised that I devoted the latest Chicanonautica at La Bloga to “Death and Dancing in New Las Vegas” appearing in Analog? I also discuss where Paco Cohen and the NeoMartians idea came from. Crazy ideas. They are out there.

So, here’s some extras that show the sort of stuff that influenced me in writing these stories:

First, Lola Beltran doing a classic that was a big favorite with mi familia, even though ever since they played it at my grandmother’s funeral, it makes me cry:

Getting away from the traditional into roque ‘n’ roll with Lalo Guerrero y Los Lobos:

Then there’s the mad dream of Wild West sci-fi:

And this sweet countercultural/utopian vision from a more innocent time kept running through my head:

Lastly, my Mars is in part inspired by the dystopian California where I grew up, that Frank Zappa captured so well:

SNEEK PREVIEW OF “DEATH AND DANCING IN NEW LAS VEGAS”

2011-05-24T07:46:00.000-07:00

In case you haven't heard, I have a story in the July/August 2011 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact. It's a special double issue, so you get my story and a lot more for your hard-earned $7.99. And to further drive the point home, here's the beginning:

Everyone else slept while I dove the Rolling Serpent along the Tharsis Highway, where it runs parallel to the steaming Marineris Canal, through the pre-dawn darkness toward the distant lights of New Las Vegas. Then a black bug kamikaze'd right between my eyes. I blinked hard, expecting it to splatter against the windshield. But no, that didn't happen.

The insect stopped just short of impact, hovered, flying backwards, staring me down.

It seemed be what we call, back in the varrios, a ninja bug. I had thought that they were a NeoMartian folktale. I had even written a song about them:

If the corpos don't like you

They'd send ninja bugs at you

So don't go boo-hoo-hoo

Be a nice little you

And there it was, the black bug with the red glowing eyes.

That's from “Death and Dancing in New Las Vegas.”

Even though it's a sequel to “The Rise and Fall of Paco Cohen and Mariachis of Mars,” I wrote it so it could read on its own. But if you're at all curious, the first story is available as a podcast.

And there are more Paco Cohen/NeoMartian stories growing in my brain . . .

CHICANONAUTICA RECONSIDERS LA LLORONA

2011-05-20T18:18:00.000-07:00

That's right, now that it's getting warm and water tempts the children of Aztlán, in Chicanonautica over at La Bloga, I'm once again haunted by La Llorona. Here are some video extras:

I mentioned La Venganza de La Llorona, starring Santo and Mantequilla Nápoles. It's one of the more interesting and unusual Santo movies, which (in that series of films) is saying something. Here's an exciting scene:

The expansion of La Llorona's territory is another concern. Here's documentation of her making inroads into Hollywood via Universal Studios:

There's still no sign, except for mentions on a couple of sites, of the La Llorona Verizon commercial. A conspiracy theory may be in order. Meanwhile, here's another Verizon commercial – NOT the one I remember with the “Can You Hear Me Now” guys – but also in the scary Mexican woman vein:

Down in Mexico, in Xochimilco, they do an Aztecan version of the story:

Back on the Americano side of the border, the tradition rides in the family car:

ISHMAEL REED, O.J., AND THE SO-CALLED INFORMATION AGE

2011-05-15T14:14:00.000-07:00

A new Ishmael Reed novel is out! People should be dancing in the streets! How come the media isn't covering this major cultural event? Hm . . . could there be something to this talk about the Jim Crow media?

Maybe everyone was just too busy with that earthquake/nuclear disaster in Japan, the Arab Spring revolutions, and the sputtering global economy. Maybe literature, or at least the audience for it, is dead.

Anyway, it's called Juice! And it's about O.J. Simpson.

Well, actually, no. O.J. never shows up a flesh & blood character in novel. We just get his media image, and a lot of opinions about him -- the way a lot Americans experience the sex symbols they're in love with.

It's actually about Paul Blessings (though most of the time he's called Bear) a diabetic African American cartoonist who becomes obsessed with O.J. Simpson, or rather that infamous media image. Bear and his world are a whole different universe than any stereotypes you see in contemporary entertainment and political discourse.

Reed also draws some of Bear's cartoons, blurring the line between literary and visual art, not to mention fiction and reality.

Bear's cartoons tend to be misunderstood. But the way things get misread as they go from one human being's self-expression to content for the brave new media seems to be the point of Juice! It's a novel of the Information Age -- or should that be Dysinformation Age? And it captures life in the online Twenty-First Century reality better than any other that I've read.

It's so easy to filter out opinions you disagree with, and surround yourself with material that backs up your preconceived notions. You feel happy and secure. But sooner of later, reality bites you in the ass.

And don't expect Juice! to stick to any party line. This is trickster stuff. NeoHooDooism is alive and well. We get an alternative universe with left-leaning TV network that is like a combination of PBS and NPR that is criticized for it's racism. The way cartoon characters and celebrities can become more real than actual humans is demonstrated. This is an expedition in the terra incognita where Philip K. Dick blazed trails. It twists and turns, and surprises.

And it's funny.

Juice! reminded me of how much the world has changed in the few decades. I had a time travel fantasy about what it would be like to take a copy back to the Sixties, to show it to both the emerging African American Literature audiences and science fiction fans of the time. Their minds would have been blown by this vision of their future.

Come to think of it, a lot modern book consumers would get their minds blown by this vision of their present. Years of corporate publishing, cranking out market-researched bestsellers made not to challenge their off-the-rack identities, has taken it's toll. This is the age of disappearing bookstores and lite reading.

Guess I better go out into the virtual street and make some noise of my own . . . before it's too late.

A NEW ERNESTO STORY IN ANALOG

2011-05-11T09:24:00.000-07:00

This just in: my story "Death and Dancing in New Las Vegas" is on sale now in the July/August 2011 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact! It's a sequel to my previous Analog story, "The Rise and Fall of Paco Cohen and the Mariachis of Mars" -- that's right, Paco Cohen rides again!

Real science fiction! Buy it! Read it! Live it!

And there's more hype to come . . .

ALL QUIET AT THE LEPRECON FRONT

2011-05-10T09:46:00.000-07:00

The whole Borders/work situation really beat me up the last few months. I'm still recovering. On a good day, I look around, saying, “I could have sworn I had a writing career stashed around here somewhere,” and “It seems I used to be an artist . . what was that about it?”

As the desert warms up, I'm feeling better, even felt up to playing the part of a writer at LepreCon. Em was busy, not just with her job, but studying for a chemistry exam. So,off I went on my own, in the troque, down the freeways, across the artificial lake, to downtown Tempe, not far from Arizona State Univerisity. I didn't know what to expect.

Eager wannabe writers showed up at two in the afternoon on Friday for the “How to Write Action Scenes” panel. Most of them were female. A lot of them took notes. They got advice on how to write the sort of commercial fiction that hasn't been selling much lately – at the Borders liquidation sale, these books didn't start moving until the discounts got up to 70%off.

No one showed up for the “The Great Downfall (of Borders)” panel. A young woman came in the door, but just wanted water. Then an old lady peeked in the window . . . So much for this hot topic.

The panel on Arizona geology went well thanks to an enthusiastic audience and knowledgable participants – I moderated and provided comic relief.

The “ancient, prehistoric” science fiction panel went well, again thanks to the audience and bookseller Marty Massoglia. I played the role of comedic sidekick.

I also met with some writers:

Rick Novy says that not many of you folks are buying 2020 Visions, so to inspire you to order a copy now, here's the opening scene of my story Radiation is Groovy, Kill the Pigs:

A video clip from an unidentified source:

Aerial view of mountains in a desert area much like that on both sides of the US/Mexican border. The camera flies over an area of thick vegetation. Zoom in. It is an illegal marijuana farm. Bombs are dropped. The plants burst into flames.

Still burning, they begin to walk.

There it is folks! Science fiction! Buy it! Read it! Live it!

There are also stories by my wife Emily Devenport, Rick Novy, Jack Mangan (who was at the convention playing master of ceremonies at Meet the Pros), and many other who are are too numerous to list here.

Do it now! You don't want to have to answer to Victor Theremin, don't you?

I also met the New Mexico writer, David J. Corwell y Chávez, and we discussed La Llorona and how her domain is beginning to extend beyond the Southwest.

Over all, it was a quiet convention, which was alright by me. I wasn't up to the a lot of mind-blowing excitement. I needed to touch base with kindred spirits, and get a clue or two about what the hell I'm going to do about this crazy creative business that keeps taking over my life.

As I sat the patio, occasional people dressed in pirate and steampunk costumes passed. As I wandered the halls, it was hard to tell that anything, much less a science fiction convention, was going on.

Maybe it's getting too quiet. Maybe science fiction needs a desperate shaking up . . .

I contemplated future creative activities as I drove past buses that flashed VENUS and MERCURY on their destination signs.

CHICANONAUTICA BURNS JUDAS, AMONG OTHER THINGS

2011-05-05T09:12:00.000-07:00

Inspired by recent holidays, in Chicanonautica , over at La Bloga, I demonstrate that there's more to Mexican culture than what you can find at your local taco franchise, and I make some mad scientist modest proposals.

And of course, La Cultura offers all kinds of extras:

Speaking of Mexican restaurants, did you know that they've got them in Ohio?

How about some charras (Mexican cowgirls) doing the escaramuza? Yes, they are wearing long, frilly dresses, and are riding side-saddle.

Another reminder of what Cinco de Mayo is really about:

And one more Judas burning for the road:

FINAL DAZE AT BORDERS

2011-05-02T09:26:00.000-07:00

Things broke down in the last few weeks at Borders Paradise Valley. With no bathrooms and not much merchandise, business got slow. It was an endurance test. I had a hard time thrashing my notes into something coherent.

Little Old Ladies From Hell were out in force. They were making the circuit of all the closing stores. “The other stores look nekkid compared to yours,” they chortled. A lot of them suddenly had use for shelves and fixtures -- and of course they're connected to non-profit organizations, so they have to ask about tax exemption.

An old fart pulled up a long horse-trailer and filled it up with shelving and fixtures.

They kept asking “When's the last day?” I started to to fear we may be the last store to close in the area.

The “Area-e” desk that once glowed in the center of the store like a sacrificial altar became just another fixture for sale, its red, particle board & plastic veneer tops pried off, exposing a complex tangle of wiring that once ran the computers.

“Customers” who don't need bathrooms stared at empty shelves and exposed wires – for hours.

The official close date of 4/16/2011was announced. I put it on my name tag. The information didn't make customers happy.

There was a lot of impulse buying of marked down Sony and Cruz readers. “Hey, gimme one of those, too!”

A man bought one of the fixtures holding up a LAST TEN DAYS! sign.

An effeminate boy showed his mother the least disturbing illustration of a manga he could find to convince her let him buy it.

A workshop on applying for unemployment, doing a resume, etc. at the North Scottsdale store was announced.

Nerdy teens in lame manga-inspired costumes complained about the graphic novel selection.

Then they changed the final day to the 17^th! I amended my name tag . . .

While moving the science fiction section, the seat of my pants split – I had to tie my overshirt around my waist & show my HOMELAND SECURITY/Indian war party T-shirt. Once again, I went naked before the world, and nobody noticed. They weren't paying attention

We got a delivery – all the stuff the Tucson store couldn't sell.

The guy giving the unemployment/job hunting seminar showed up at our store by mistake. He didn't believe he was wrong. After some arguing, he got out his cell phone and called them.

Finally, we sold out of e-readers – even one of the original Sony's without a touchscreen.

A new sign appeared in the back room: “Attention – Our new Closing date has been moved to the 19^th or the 20^th.” I drew a big question mark on my name tag.

Then they committed to the final date: Wednesday, 4/20. It was my day off. I didn't mind missing it. The customers were having some heavy emotions, and I didn't want to deal with it:

“What if something happens and there's no internet and ebooks don't work – what will we do to pass time?”

“What am I going to do on Friday nights?”

“Where are those homeless people going to go?”

Then, because someone complained, a health inspector made us reopen the bathrooms that hadn't been cleaned in weeks, a couple of days before the end.

Another note appeared in the back room: “Paychecks for 4-22-11 will be sent to your homes. Then your check for this week will come in your mail mid week next week.”

I'm glad to be out of there. Hope those checks clear.

CHICANONAUTICA SNEEKS SCI-FI ACROSS THE TORTILLA CURTIAN

2011-04-15T10:30:00.001-07:00

It's Chicanonautica time over at La Bloga again! Since I'm still being held hostage by Borders, it's a short, sweet announcement about how Mexican science fiction has found its way into Rudy Rucker's Flurb, in Spanish and English thanks to guest editor Eileen Gunn. And how globalization of the genre is developing thanks to Jetse de Vries.

So -- over here at Mondo Ernesto, I'm bringing you news of a long lost Santo movie, El Vampiro y El Sexo, which would have fit in with the current trend for sexy vampires if Hijo de Santo hadn't said no to the release.

As a video extra, here's a classic fight scene from Santo vs Blue Demon In Atlantis. The embedding was disabled by request, but it's worth the click. And don't miss the shadow of the camera!

And check out this trailer:

Now, if we could just get more of this kind of stuff on the NorteAmericano side of the Tortilla Curtain!

LIQUIDATION SPRING AT BORDERS

2011-04-05T08:56:00.000-07:00

The store is half-empty . . . or is it half-full? I'm reminded of Dalí and Buñuel's Un Chein Andalou: In the springtime, the couple is half-buried in the sand and insects devour them.

Me? My nose got runny. Spring in Phoenix. Snot bubbles and dribbles don't bother customers any more than blood.

People keep asking about what day we're closing for good. I had to make a DON'T KNOW WHAT DAY THE STORE IS CLOSING! sign for my name tag – a few people laughed, most still asked.

Customers quibble over every discount – wanting to know the percentage off of each item. They're asking for items to be taken off the transaction when the total is too high. Or they have their children “decide” what to put back if it all costs too much, and of course, the parent forces the child to keep something “educational.”

And they keep saying how sorry they are – a never-ending funeral! And some have just now heard the news about Borders.

The homeless guy who sleeps standing up still comes, propping an open book on an empty shelf, pretending to read.

All the fixtures have price tags. Even the shelves. Pre-fab, particle-board crap slapped together by bookstore clerks that will fall apart before your get them home. Get 'em while they last!

All we're out of Harry Potter – entire kids section squeezed into a pair of shelves up front.

And the computers are gone . . . no more looking up things

They've managed to do one last ridiculously complicated coupon to give customers an additional 10% off.

Frankly, I'm sick to death of discounts.

More people ask when our last day is, they don't notice my tag. They don't believe me.

A guy bought a heavy metal boxy thing for ten bucks: “I don't know what it is, but I like it.”

All products are looking like crap to me.

A family of bikers bought Hunter Thompson's Hell's Angels and Sonny Barger's book on motorcycle safety.

An old guy ransacked the history section. Most sections are melting away and getting jumbled.

Rumors about stores – not ours – closing this weekend . . .

Later, I dreamed I was working in the new, improved Borders of tomorrow. It looked like a Las Vegas casino with lavish décor, plastic plants, costumed dwarves, and live animals. And no sign of any products or even shelves. I was called to an office where I was given poor grades for my customer service.

Borders customers are like the inhabitants of Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville, going haywire when their master computer dies .

A sign of things to come: “Our bathrooms will be closed as of 3-28-2011.”

CHICANONAUTICA ROCKS AND ROLLS

2011-03-25T15:06:00.000-07:00

This time on Chicanonautica over at La Bloga, I review Land of a Thousand Dances: Chicano Rock 'n' Roll from Southern California by David Reyes and Tom Waldman, an important document about La Cultura. So, here at Mondo Ernesto, I'm providing some musical examples.

Before rock learned to roll, Lala Guerrero shook things up in L.A.:

Then an Anglo provided the pachucos with a theme song:

And Thee Midniters wrote the lowrider anthem:

Later Los Lobos brought us más:

Finally, some elegant time travel from Mark Guerrero, son of Lalo, because the cycles keep spinning . . .