Welcome to Summer Splash Blog Hop; Signed Copy of Blow Up the Roses is my Offering

Thanks for checking in during the Summer Splash Bog Hop that Cheryl Bradshaw at Indie Writers Unite! started July 26.

I'm offering a signed, paperback copy of Blow Up the Roses to two persons (random draw) who leave a comment with their email address so I can contact them later for snail mail delivery of this novel. Curiosity Quills, publisher of this novel, is running a special so you kindle readers can grab it as an ebook for 99 cents until Sunday.

But, wait. You may not want to be a winner or get the book.

Blow Up the Roses is a very dark suspense/thriller. More than one reader said they wanted to stop reading it, but couldn't. We've got some serious serial killing going on here. Mr. Brown, who rents his side of the duplex from Mrs. Keene, is a very nasty and troubled person.

Some of the back story: I was managing editor of the mid-sized Kansas daily, The Olathe Daily News. from 1978 to 1988. During that time, we lived in half of a duplex on a cul d'sac. An horrific murder occurred in Olathe. Home was entered through one of those unlocked sliding doors from a walk-out basement. A teenage girl was left dead, bludgeoned, her younger brother alive, but with head wound, and elder teenage sister missing. Her body was found a few days later.

The town was terrified and it took the cops way too long to solve this case. It was a tough reporting job for us because we learned that the autopsy of the elder teen showed she was pregnant. To report or not? We reasoned, and I stand by it, that at that time the killer was on the loose and the more people knew all the facts, the more they might come forward with information to find the killer.

The family was not pleased. For me, it became difficult because that family moved out of their death-ridden house and moved into another duplex on my cul d'sac. So I had to drive by where they now lived on my way to work.

Blow Up the Roses is not a fictional retelling of those events. It's a complete new creation, but those events certainly were in my psyche when Mr. Brown made his appearance through my keyboard.

Here's a video trailer I had more fun producing than I should have.

If you live in the Kansas City area, let me know and you'll go in another drawing, winner to be invited to the house for one of my cocktails or, shudder, a non-alcoholic beverage. 

Here's the link to the other authors participating in the Summer Splash Blog Hop.

And, finally, here's where you can find all of my fiction. Well, except for my Philip McGuire mystery Tortured Truths that Curiosity Quills will publish in the fall and its sequel, Heart Chants, in winter. More about those later. If interested, go back to the top of the page and enter your email address for further updates.

Promoting Shorter Works All Under $3.00

I have nine fiction works available for under $3: five at 99 cents and four at $2.99. Here's a promo for them.

I'm all over the genre map. Let's start with those $2.99 titles:

 In One More Victim, the Holocaust is a critical element, so it gets classified as World Literature>Jewish. When I offered this 22,000-word novella as a free download (which I won't do anymore) it reached #1 ranking in free downloads. As a paid download, it's broken through the top 100 several times. Some people say that means I can claim it as a "best seller." I have no idea what that means. I just hope more people will read this story that one reviewer called "...an amazing, heart-breaking, beautiful story."

The Saltness of Time is a 10,000-word literary work. Kansas Prairie, in its review of the novella said: "Travelers stranded in an old hotel by a snowstorm on the Kansas prairie hear a tale from a stranger about a night spent years before in a similar storm. Attwood tells a story within a story, both a compelling portrait of life on the prairie many years ago, and a mystery that keeps the reader guessing until the last page. Attwood skillfully paints Kansas landscapes and the lives shaped by those broad, windswept plains. The twists and turns in this tale are intriguing!"

The Strange Case of James Kirkland Pilley is easy to describe. If you are an H.P. Lovecraft, fan you will recognize the take off on the title of his great work The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. One reviewer said this 10,000 word story "...out-Lovecrafted Lovecraft... The essentials are all there: a narrator speaking directly to the reader and warning of horror and calamity, with an opening sentence announcing the main character's probable doom: Edward Hawthorne had no premonition of the first disturbing and later horrifying consequences that would result from his joining the Friends of Pilley Park Garden Society."

Then there is A Match Made in Heaven, a science fiction novella. The Mormons have left Earth to populate the Planet Moroni where they discover their destiny in the stars and amongst themselves. One reviewer, who has become fond of my works wrote: "I have never met a Randy Attwood book that I haven't loved; he has a real talent for bringing his characters to life and creating an environment that is realistic and detailed without going overboard. This is the first science-fiction story he has published, so I was quite interested to see how he did in this story environment. And it was... brilliant! This is a short story, maybe it could be considered a novella - it took me about an hour to read it through. I am not sure where, exactly, Randy came up with some of the ideas he used in this story, but I found the ideas presented evocative and thought-provoking. There are questions of consciousness, how to truly access God (in whatever form that power takes for you), the humane treatment of others, etc."

Okay, now to those 99 cent reads. Some good stuff in these stories of less than 5,000 words. I hope.

Blue Kansas Sky Brad, who lives on the grounds on an insane asylum, where his father is its dentist, catches a ride on a bus for the patients who are allowed to go to town on Saturdays. Brad goes to play snooker, which has become a passion in his life. That game, and one of those patients, will teach him the most important lessons any of us can learn.

Innocent Passage A tale of innocence lost, as two adventurous boys discover tragic hidden secrets and their own true nature.

By Pain Possessed This is a science fiction story I wrote while taking a class at KU from that great classical science fiction writer, James Gunn. He actually provided me with the ending. One reviewer's comment: "There is an undercurrent of facing up to your fears and becoming a stronger person for it, but also a warning about becoming that which you hate and therefore losing sight of yourself."

Downswing "An absolutely gorgeous story, voluptuous descriptions that just beg for someone to paint the scenes in oils. Who thought that a short story about golf could be so intense, so vivid and so engaging."

The Richard Dary Weight Loss Institute The best diet program is the one you can't remember.










If you don't have an ereader, these works are available in two paperbacks, with shipping they cost about $15. One More Victim, contains that story as well as The Saltness of Time, Blue Kansas Sky, Innocent Passage, and Downswing. The paperback Very Quirky Tales contains The Strange Case of James Kirkland Pilley, A Match Made in Heaven, By Pain Possessed and three other stories that are not available separately as ebooks (Tell Us Everything, It was Me (I), and The Notebook.)

Presentation, Book Signing, and Everything Else

I had great fun doing a presentation "This Brave New ePublishing World" a couple of weeks at for the Community of Reason group that meets at the University of Missouri-Kansas City campus on Sunday afternoons. Very nice turnout. I go over how and why I got into ePublishing, what I've learned since doing so in the spring of 2011, and what still baffles me. It also gives me a chance to talk about each of my works and offer them for sale afterwards.

I'd be happy, and am searching for, other venues within a four-hour driving distance of Kansas City that would be interested in such a presentation. My bookshelf on Amazon is now 16 works deep. 

Last Saturday, I went to Emporia, KS and joined 56 other authors at the Town Crier, an wonderful Indie bookstore in downtown Emporia. A nice number of buyers and lookers came in and although I only made three sales, I'm happy I went because I think other on line sales resulted. Also, the fellow sitting beside me was Dave Burns from Ottawa, who started the Ottawa Writer's Guild and teaches creative writing. His website is here. Thank you Cheryl Unruh for the picture. He sold more books than did I (probably just because he's cuter than I am). However, on the way out of town I stopped at Mike's Tavern for a libation and the bartender asked about me. I explained who I was and why I was there. She started shouting about a local author being in the bar and her friend, Jennifer bought two books. Bottom line: new readers and enough profit to pay for the gasoline and slab of ribs from Williamsburg, still the best around. Whenever I break even, I'm happy.

I'm 30,000 words into a novel that is set in the future that has a couple of elements that are really working for me. It's called Stop Time because the stoppage of time is one of the elements. That's been done many times (I think John D. MacDonald's The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything was one of the first I read.), but one of the characters who is unaffected by this time stoppage is a student artist, a realist painter. Can you image what it would mean for a realist painter to be able to paint during a time stoppage when the model doesn't move and the natural light values of the sun don't change? It's also important to present the mechanism for the time stoppage and I use a spell from a Wiccan healer and a really cool trick for why the student painter isn't affected.

America has been destroyed by the barbarians from within, but the Kansas City Plaza Enclave has saved itself behind walls that protect its civilization, and, for all they know, perhaps the only spot of civilization left in the country. Beyond the walls is Scumtown. No need for prisons in the Plaza Enclave. Misbehave and just get booted into Scumtown.

The internet is so incredibly helpful. I've networked now with Wiccans to help me on those details. And I've also hooked into a couple of people very familiar with the APC (armored personnel carrier) that plays a role in the story. The APC has been combat locked so how do you open it with no power tools or welding torches at your disposal?

And wait until I tell you about the steam locomotive train expeditions into Western Kansas!

Author Returns to Larned for All-School Reunion and Setting for "Crazy About You"

Thursday, June 6, I left KC for Larned, KS to attend the three-day, first, all-school reunion. This means all classes were invited back. Larned now is a town of 4,000 people. This reunion returned it back to the population it had when I lived there: 5,000 people.

Glad I reserved my motel rooms eight months ago!

My father was the dentist at the mental hospital just west of Larned and we had housing on the grounds. One of my first jobs was working in its cafeteria. I got to know a lot of "crazy" people.

That background became the basis for Crazy About You, which I took to the reunion to sell and, wow, what fun it was. Capitalist bottom line: I sold enough books to pay for the trip. Emotional bottom line: I had so many people come to my signing to tell me they had already read the book and loved it. It doesn't get better than that.

Best buzz: my book signings were at a bar and grill recently opened by a fellow classmate (Max Galliart) who bought a building downtown (built in 1883) to live upstairs and run the business downstairs. Their 20-something bartender started to read the copy I gave Max and his wife, Donna, as a thank you. I'd never watched anybody read any of my books. It was obvious she was getting into it. The last day, when I had packed up, she gave me the price of the book and said she wanted her own, signed by me. Thank you, Reese!

I took pictures of all the houses I lived in while in Larned: three in town and two on the grounds of the mental hospital. They all looked so small! Then I realized that the psychological spaces in our memories are so much larger than the physical reality where they were created. What is happening in our psyche is always huge. The physical dimensions really don't matter. That the physical spaces, when we return to them, seem puny, make no less large the psychological events that made us as the person we are today.

Before taking pictures at Larned State Hospital, I stopped a security vehicle to tell them what I was doing. The grounds now house a prison and sexual predators unit, so security is tight. They said I needed permission from the Supt. Went to his office and his secretary told me he was out of town. She knew who I was and the book I had written and called the acting Supt. He said she needed to call Topeka. The wonderful woman did and quickly got me permission to take the photos. (I think I'll do a separate post of photos that relate to Crazy About You.)

I think one of the great things about having grown up in a small town is that when you return, not a lot has changed, so you can quickly connect the streets and buildings with your memories.

It was not easy to put this reunion together. There were a lot of naysayers. But the organizers prevailed. To see the joy of so many classmates and friends re-encountering and hugging was worth the price of admission, which was all of $35 and included a banquet.

I am so proud to call Larned my high school. I am so grateful for the experiences that allowed me to write Crazy About You.

Thank you, Dan Knupp, for this photo!

Re-examining Those All-Important First Sentences for Works of Fiction

I'm fiddling with a new fiction project, The Fat Cat, and I really liked its first sentence:

I hadn't seen that good-lookin' motherfucker for almost a year when he walked in with his partner to ask me about the dead dancer found that morning in our dumpster.

It made me think how important first sentences are.

I've always hated the cute little human relation's phrase: "You only have one chance to make a first impression." But, with fiction, it is so true. It really has to feel right. It's like the opening line of a song, and I think writing is like music. If you get the words right and the rhythm right, you make a kind of music in the reader's brain that resonates.

Made me go back and look at my first sentences and comment on them.

I like the first line for The Fat Cat I think because the phrase: ...the dead dancer found that morning in our dumpster really hits those d sounds and creates great imagery.

Some other first lines, in no particular order:

The Notebook

I had two phone calls from Don before he killed himself.

I like the simplicity. It tells us something important happened and that someone should have know it was going to happen.

Tell Us Everything

Cricket carefully backed her crummy car, which needed a motor mount bolt replaced, down her cousin’s driveway.

I like this simple introduction of this character. I think it sets the tone right away.

It Was Me (I)

On my drive home from work Friday evening I stopped at a traffic light, glanced left over at the driver in the other lane and saw myself.

How better else to start off this Rod Serling "Twilight Zone" type of story?

Blow Up the Roses

Mr. Brown closed the door on the whimpers and walked up the stairs to take a shower.

How can you not want to know more about Mr. Brown?

Blue Kansas Sky

There really is a Kansas sky, wide as the land is flat.

Lyrical intro for a story based around a snooker game.

Downswing

It wasn't until the 15th green that I realized how alone I was.

Really? You play 15 holes of golf and then realize you are alone on the course? Must be something else going on.

Innocent Passage

The skies were cloudy all day.

Any Kansan knows our state song with the verse "And the skies are not cloudy all day." Yet there are some days that are cloudy all day and that sets up the anomaly for this loss of innocence short story.

One More Victim

The most important summer of my life began with a house-shaking thunder boomer that woke me up on a Thursday night in 1958 near the end of my fifth-grade school year.

Sometimes you just set the opening like you were laying a foundation stone.

Rabbletown: Life in These United Christian States of Holy America

Bob Crowley, drunk and very tired, almost tripped over the broken toy truck before kicking it out of his way then trudging around the side of the house to the back of a former duplex that now housed six families of 50-some Christian souls.

This is a first sentence as a simple, but engaging scene setter.

The Saltness of Time

"I like these kinds of snows. They cancel things out."

I don't open many stories with dialogue, but this I thought would draw a reader in.

SPILL

Fred Underwood was driving his 15-year-old, once-white, now rust-speckled Nissan pickup six miles over the speed limit on his way to deliver the head of a dog to the state’s vet school for rabies testing when several things happened to him.

Another scene-setter opening sentence, and if that head of a dog doesn't get you to read the next sentence, nothing will.

The 41st Sermon

The Volvo in the closed garage purred quietly as it exhaled the gas that Jim Garrison inhaled.

I think this opening line imparts so much information and tone. I really like it. The use of exhale and inhale creates a great rhythm.

The Strange Case of James Kirkland Pilley

Edward Hawthorne had no premonition of the first disturbing and later horrifying consequences that would result from his joining the Friends of Pilley Park Garden Society.

This is my homage to the great horror writer H.P Lovecraft. I hope this is the kind of sentence that he would have written and would have loved the phrase "Friends of Pilley Park Garden Society."

Gas Prices Bumping $4 Got You Down?

As gas prices start to bump that $4 level you might need some comic relief that SPILL can provide. Here's the opening: 

Fred Underwood was driving his 15-year-old, once-white, now rust-speckled Nissan pickup six miles over the speed limit on his way to deliver the head of a dog to the state’s vet school for rabies testing when several things happened to him.

He saw a sign announcing—as though proud of the fact—that gasoline at the upcoming station was selling for $4.15 a gallon. He looked into the rear view mirror when he heard a siren and confirmed that, indeed, a police car was chasing him. He uttered, “Shit,” but then felt his body swept with euphoria: an idea smacked him that would make him rich.

And here's a review that just came in the other day, from England of all places!

This darkly satirical comedy, depicting a failed schoolmaster's attempt to take on the American political system evokes memories of Our Man in Havana. Mr Attwood has the true comedian's lightness of touch, and there is hardly a dull moment in it. Particularly fine were the descriptions of Our Hero's experiences as a schoolmaster. The action moves well throughout the book, and although I found the ending a little abrupt, on reflection I don't know that the more conventional, drawn-out epilogue chapter would have added anything worthwhile to it.
Comic fiction lives or dies by its characters, and this is a particular strength in Spill. Even minor characters are lovingly drawn; no cardboard cutouts here, they are all real and alive. A traditional third person narrative is used, with subtle shifts to its tone depending on the point of view. I have always felt that it is in his use of narrative that a writer shows his true quality, and Mr Attwood passes this acid test with flying colours.


SPILL: Big Oil + Hot Sex = Game On

Rabbletown Connects With Former Fundamentalist

Rabbletown: Life in These United Christian States of Holy America really connects with many people. It's a dystopia work set in 2084 when the Religious Right has been in the control for decades and the Pastor President and Pastor Governors rule with a Bible in each fist and the computer in your hovel. I worked on it for a long time, ever since Pat Robertson got involved in influencing elections. But I had written myself into a corner, and it just sat there until one day I revisited it and realized I had to let Bobby, the son of a stone mason, do his thing.

Katy Sozaeva is a top 500 Amazon reviewer, which means this woman reads A LOT OF BOOKS. She wrote her longest review for Rabbletown, and she has said it is the best book she HAS EVER READ. I think the caps are justified. I'll include the video she let me do about that review here, but just in is another review from a reader who really connected with the work. This kind of response is extraordinarily gratifying for a writer. And I really liked the last two sentences.

WOW! I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. This book touched my heart in such a way that I can't explain in words. Growing up in a fundamentalist church, understanding, later in life, the damage it did to me, makes this book terrifying in one way but so outrageously funny in another. This book takes place in the future. Everyone has nuked each other and there's not much left in the United States. The United States has turned into dictatorship run by the descendants of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. There are many parallels from the Bible, for example, a savior comes in the form of a boy named Bobby, a stone mason's son (instead of a carpenter's son, like Jesus). I don't want to give away too much of the plot without ruining it for you. But you have to read this. It's different from anything you've ever read. What a mind this author has. It makes me wonder about his background.

The review is here: