ANOTHER ERNESTO STORY, ANOTHER ANTHOLOGY

2013 just keeps on keeping on!

“Novaheads,” my post-cyberpunk take on the masked Mexican wrestler genre featuring a dangerous chili-based drug will appear in Super Stories of Heroes & Villains. Look for it in August.

There's more about “Novaheads” and Steelsnake, my luchador hero, but let's save that for later . . .

FIRST ERNESTO STORY SALE OF 2013

I'm off and running this new year, new baktún, with another story sold.

“Pancho Villa's Flying Circus” – a post-steampunk spaghetti western with Pancho Villa, Nikola Tesla, and airship, and death rays – will be be in the anthology We See a Different Frontier edited by Djibril al-Ayad and Fabio Fernandes.

It should be hitting the bookshelves in July.

CHICANONAUTICA GOES TO THE WORLD WIDE WILD WEST SHOW

Chicanonautica, over at La Bloga, gets chased by the ghost of Buffalo Bill to the World Wide Wild West Show. And look at the video extras I found:

Who would have thought that there was a song about Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, written by Ernest Hogan, Father of Ragtime, for his 1907 Broadway play, The Oyster Man?

The Indian attack leapt from the Wild West show to the western movie. We haven't seen a lot of it in recent decades, but here's a 21^st century variation from England:

Shades of Vargas Llosa's The Storyteller, there are still uncontacted tribes out there, though governments don't want to believe in them:

Be careful when seeking spiritual enlightenment in places like Sedona, Arizona:

And of course, these days, even cowboy culture has been translated into native languages:

ERNESTO INTERVIEW AT LATINOPIA

Cuallioso news, namiquetzime! And some nigrománticoa, too – heh-heh!

There's a video interview of me at Latinopia.com. It was shot in the Venusian Jungle Garden, here at the Hogan hacienca. I shoot my mouth off about High Aztech and Chicano science fiction.

So, I better get to work, and hurry up and get that ebook ready . . .

And, there may be some other cuallioso High Aztech news soon, so stay tuned, namiquetzime!

¡Ticmotraspasarhuililis!

SMOKING MIRROR BLUES ONLY 99 CENTS!

Yes, I've lowered the price of the Kindle Smoking Mirror Blues to 99 cents! Like Cortez on Jupiter! Less than a buck! Just to see if more of you will buy it!

Better do it now! I may change my mind again . . .

And you know how my mind can be.

CHICANONAUTICA, 2013 A.D., AND BEYOND

This time, Chicanonautica, over at La Bloga, is a post-apocalyptic Happy New Year concerning what I'm going do as a Chicano writer living in Arizona in 2013.

For our video extras, I'm presenting the work of some other Latino artists, with suitable surreal and sci-fi overtones.

First, let me recommend Misterio en las Bermudas, one of the most incredible end-of-the-world movies ever. It also has Mil Máscaras, Santo, Blue Demon, Atlantis, alien forces, and the Bermuda triangle. The plot is so convoluted that I'll have to see it again, and write about it later . . .

Meanwhile, in post-Katrina New Orleans, José Torres-Tama creates performance art out of a new Latino experience that's stanger than a lot of fantasies of disaster-ridden futures:

Here in Arizona, El Moises is creating fantastic murals that appear in a commercial for the state lottery:

And for some brain-slamming reading, here's Guillermo Gómez-Peña On illness, the human body, performance & quantum physics:

“People tell me this storyline is no longer science fiction; it’s the way most people relate to the world nowadays.”

Hang onto your somberos, it's gonna be a wild ride!

HURTLING INTO 2013

Whenever someone asks me what I'm doing, I immediately think, Uh-oh, better check my blog . . . I'm usually focused on what I'm doing at the moment, and can't remember all of the projects that I'm juggling. If I scroll down the blog, I'm reminded. What did we do before such things?

Looking back through Mondo Ernesto of 2012, I'm rather amazed. Damn. I actually got a few things done!

My biggest accomplishments have been putting out my novels Cortez on Jupiter, and Smoking Mirror Blues as self-published ebooks. It was an adventure with a steep learning curve. I feel somewhat prepared for whateverthehell I'm going to have to deal with as a writer in the near future.

And yes, High Aztech is in the diabolical works . . .

Also in the ebook arena, my infamous story “The Frankenstein Penis” is available in M. Christian's weird erotica collection The Love That Never Dies.

Who knows? Maybe its even more outrageous sequel, “The Dracula Vagina” will be remanifesting soon.

I also made contact with Latinopia, The Future Fire, and Federico Schaffler. We're all conspiring to do some serious cultural decolonialization, to chew a few holes into the Tortilla Curtain, and to otherwise make life on this planet more interesting.

Barriers are breaking down. A translation of my story “Guerrilla Mural of a Siren's Song” just appeared in the Polish science fiction magazine Nowa Fantastyka. The global barrio is becoming a reality.

And of course there's all that unfinished business. I'm not ashamed of not having done it all. I'm proud of it. If you don't have unfinished business, you aren't working hard enough. Where's your ambition?

So in 2013 I plan to publish High Aztech as an ebook and also do a collection of my short fiction. Then there's that futuristic bullfighting novel, and the fantasy about the pre-Columbian ball game. And I have these short story ideas. To further complicate things, Paco Cohen and Victor Thermin have been demanding my attention.

There's even more, but over the years of bashing myself bloody as a writer, I've become superstitious about these things until they've achieved a certain amount of solidity.

I'm gonna be busy. At the very least, I'll have me some fun!

PABLO CORTEZ IN POLAND

Yup, that's my name on the Hobbit-festooned cover of the January 2013 issue of Nowa Fantastyka – you can see if you squint hard enough. Inside you'll be able to find “Partyzancki Mural Syreniej Pieśni” – “Guerrilla Mural of a Siren's Song” translated into Polish!

Thanks to the story's appearence in Marty Halpern's Alien Contact, Marcin Zwierzchowski got in touch and asked for permission. I like it when they do that.

So Pablo Cortez has been turned loose on Eastern Europe. Maybe it will result in more copies of my science fiction novel/street art manual Cortez on Jupiter selling. Or there could even be interesting images mysteriously appearing on walls over there.

Let the art, life, and madness go on!

Just in time for the Great 2012 Holiday Crunch!

CHICHANONAUTICA CELEBRATES THE NEW BAKTÚN

At 6:12 A.M. Eastern Standard Time it happened – the Winter Solstice, and the end of the Mayan calendar. Some thought it would be the End of the World. It was actually the end of Baktún 13 and the beginning of Baktún 14, and the Long Count started over again. It is a new era – the Sixth Sun.

That's what my latest Chicanonautica over at La Bloga is all about. Here are some videos to watch as the world keeps going on:

A lot of folks were as hot for the End of the World as Major Kong was for the Bomb:

They're probably feeling like Skeeter Davis today:

Arthur Brown also blew relationship troubles up to apocalyptic proportions:

And Barry McGuire thought it was the Eve of Destruction:

But that was a long time ago and, of course, he was wrong.

As for the Maya:

So have a great Baktún14! Welcome to the Sixth Sun!

MAKING THE COATLICUE/GUADALUPE CONNECTION BEFORE THE NEW BAKTUN

The Holiday Season is upon us. Or as I like to call it – the Holidaze.

It's a little crazier this year, since the end of the Mayan Calendar has a lot of misinformed people thinking that it means asteroid collisions and the zombie apocalypse, when it's just the beginning of a new baktun.

But there are a lot of other holidays in this season (not to offend some Christians who dream of world domination). I seem to discover a few new ones each year.

A young, upstart holiday that deserves some attention is December 12, Virgin of Guadalupe Day.

In my novel High Aztech (manifesting as an ebook soon!) I pointed out that the Virgin seems to be standing in for the Aztec Goddess Coatlicue.

Lately, I've been pleased to see that others have been pointing out the Mother Goddess connection.

My wife said that that the Virgin seems to be a user-friendly version. At least, more so to our culture.

It's like the Virgin was an updating of the software for a changing world. Software that updated itself. I wonder what kind of technology we're dealing with here?

And the world is changing. Again. As usual.

I wonder if what kind of updating we'll see in Baktun 14?