My books got moved

I'm actually sort of surprised that Smashwords lasted as long as it did before merging/folding/evolving into some other site. But now in 2024, the books I had for sale there are now available on the new digital publisher's site, Draft2Digital. Since their moment ahs come and gone and sales of these books are nonexistent, it feels a bit dopey to update the info, but nonetheless, here we are. Links to Apple, Barnes and Noble, and all your other favorite booksellers are below.

Blood Picnic and Other Stories: In this diverse collection, the versatile writer and blogger Tony Noland has gathered some of his best flash fiction and short stories. These twenty eight stories range in style from fantasy and horror to magical realism and literary fiction.

Verbosity's Vengeance: Alex Graham's genius designing video games brought him happiness and made him a fortune, but he never expected to see his work misused by military scientists. The collapse of the mysterious Project Unicorn left Alex with scars, nightmares, and strange powers unlike any other superhero. Years later, as the Grammarian, he uses the strength of supple syntax and the power of perfect punctuation to fight for justice on the mean streets of Lexicon City.

When his arch-enemy Professor Verbosity threatens with a mysterious new superweapon, only the Grammarian can stop him… just as soon as he hires a decent sidekick. Mix in the interference of the Avant Guardian (a goofy superhero wanna-be), a vicious stranger who strikes from the shadows, and a beautiful, brainy college professor with an obsession for superhero technology, and the Grammarian has his work cut out for him.

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It's like a time machine, but simultaneously worse AND better

It was about 10 years ago that I got a complicated new job and the first of my four kids entered the teenage years. The demands of family and work meant I had to cut way back on my writing. And more or less abandon any effort to talk about my writing or engage with other writers, at any level, in any forum.

I still wrote, mostly lousy, half-baked first drafts of lousy, half-baked novels. There was the corporate thriller, the sci-fi conspiracy action book, the touching redemption story of estranged brothers, the alternate history where the Nazi scientists fled the reich early and Operation Paperclip made Argentina a third superpower....

All crap, of course, but it kept the flame alive.

Now, in 2024, career changes have put me more or less back where I was in 2013. Family-wise, we all made it through the teenage years with what feels like no more than the usual score of bruises, grudges, tears, revelations, insights, and new vistas opened before us. At least, I hope so.

The question is, what does this mean for my fiction writing? Will I pick up the pen again? I could revise and extend the drafts I wrote while wandering in the wilderness, try to make something of them. Or I could re-read them all, shudder in horrified revulsion, thank each of them for their service, and bury them all face down in an unmarked mass grave at some forgotten crossroads.

Or I could try to write something new. Ideas and snippets and stories are always floating in me. For a long time, I haven't bothered with any serious effot to capture them, since I didn't have the bandwidth to do anything with them. But now, perhaps, I do. Once again, I do. Or I might.

Or have I outgrown this? Should I redirect my energies into something else? The world doesn't need any of my writing, but in truth, the world NEVER needed my writing. I needed to write. Do I still?

Do I?

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It's 2023 and I'm still alive

It's not been a great year for me, but I'm posting this here just to make sure the world knows I'm still alive.

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The End Is Nigh For Twitter

Today's dose of flailing lunacy from the Mad King of Twitter:


True fact: I saved this jpg as "twitter death spiral". The whole thing has a desperate, Berlin Wall vibe about it.

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Believe me, I am still alive

... for now, anyway.

Since it looks like Twitter is going down the tubes now that the Worst Person In The World (Runner-Up) is running it, this is a reminder that you can find me here, like an unquiet spirit hovering over what's left of the meat puppet it used to enhabit.

TBH I'm not sure if I will continue to exist if Twitter becomes uninhabitable.

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The TBR pile... it just keeps growing

When you already have dozens of books on the TBR pile, ranging in difficulty from light and fluffy to seriously complicated and challenging, does it really make any sense to visit a used book store and buy yet more books to add to the pile?

Sure. Take joy where you can find it. What is a book if not hope in physical form?

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Tracking the traffic

It was on this date in 2009 that I put a tracker on this blog so that I could dig deep into Google Analytics. I could see which posts got what traffic, who was looking at my posts, from where in the world, at what times, etc. My thinking was, "you can't improve what you don't measure". I had a brilliant career as a novelist waiting right around the corner, right? I needed to get off on the right foot and build my audience right from the start.

Now, from the perspective of 2021 as I survey the withered husk of this cobwebbed wasteland, that level of literary ambition seems like escapist lunacy.

Anyway, here's a link to a popular post about what a lifecoach would tell an assassin about how to kill people better.

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2020: The Last Year

I feel as though 2020 is The Last Year.

The Last Year we shook hands instead of bumped elbows or bowed.

The Last Year we blew out candles on a birthday cake, getting all of our vaporous exhalations all over the food we then served to the friends and loved ones gathered around us.

The Last Year we had parties where friends and loved ones were gathered around us.

The Last Year we could sustain the illusion that the people in charge were competent or cared.

The Last Year for averting the coming climate crisis.

The Last Year for NATO, for Inspectors General, for ethics regulations.

But maybe, just maybe...

Also The Last Year for blind acceptance of exclusionary power structures designed by oligarchs.

Maybe.

Maybe this is The Last Year.

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Idea: "Boomtown"

“Boomtown”: A novel about:
  1. the world’s first antimatter factory
  2. the quasi-governmental agency that runs it
  3. the company town that fears/depends on it
  4. the oil cartel that hates it
  5. and the time-traveling aliens trying to infiltrate it.


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#NaNoWriMo 2019: At Least I Tried

Final word count for NaNoWriMo 2019 is 26,300. This is far from the winning goal of 50,000 words, which I've hit with satisfactory regularity in the 12 (13?) years I've been doing NaNoWriMo. But it's OK, and I'll take it.

I knew as far back as the spring that this was going to be an exceptionally difficult November, schedule-wise. That, I can handle. Finding time to write in airports and hotels, on airplanes and trains, up early and up late... that I can do, and have done.

But I didn't anticipate that there would be emotional trauma that distracted and derailed everything. I sank low this month, and things that should have been fun... weren't. Although I have plenty of supporters to offset the haters, the calculus of emotional leverage is such that just the effort of seesawing one against the other is exhausting.

In writing my NaNoWriMo for 2019, I originally wanted to do something light and fun and silly, something diversionary. Without my wanting it to, it took a dark, bleak turn, and went to places that were far sadder than I expected. It became real work, and I avoided it. My repeated efforts to turn away from the dark and force the prose into the light were, paradoxically, not helpful, because the book felt - you guessed it - forced.

So I think I need to go into this effort, pull out the sad stuff and set it aside.

"Yes, I WILL write that book," I'll tell myself, "but not now. That is not THIS book. THIS book will be silly and fun and ridiculous. The serious book will wait. I will pack a lunch and some extra batteries for the headlamp and head back into that cave later, explore it some other time. But for now, here on this sunny beach, somebody needs to build a sandcastle. And that somebody is me."

Stay tuned. Or don't. Your call.


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Review: Rocketbook reusable notebook

For a few months, I've been using a Rocketbook reusable notebook. It works a lot like a regular notebook for writing, drawing, etc., except that it's got a special reusable paper. The sheets are coated with a kind of plastic (or maybe they're made of that plastic - IDK, I'm neither a paperologist nor a plasticologist) such that the writing stays on the page until you're ready to reuse it. Then you wipe it with a damp cloth and *poof*, the ink is gone. The sheet is blank again, ready to be reused.

By itself, that's no better than a pad of throwaway paper which reduces all of your deathless prose to transitory ephemera. But the real trick is in the app that comes with the notebook. You point your phone at the screen, and it will automatically line up the shot, take a picture of your page, and assemble all of your pages into a single document. Then it will automatically send that to you wherever you want: email, Google docs, Instagram, Twitter, Dropbox, etc. It'll send the pages as a PDF, or (and this is a snazzy touch) it will do OCR of your handwriting, convert it to text, and send along the transcription as a Word doc, Google doc, etc. Every page, every line, every word, captured for the ages.


What I like: I like the reusable pages, the ease of wiping away the old to make way for the new, the auto-send to wherever I designate, and the OCR/transcription of my handwriting is lovely black magic. My handwriting is pretty crap, but the OCR has done a decent job of making sense of it.

I also like how I can can carry a very light notebook (only 40 pages!) instead of a thicker, heavier notebook, or a really heavy laptop.

What I don't like: The Rocketbook will only work with pens from the Pilot FriXion line. These are erasable, and use a special kind of ink. It's a pity I can't use any of my own pens. Also, I wonder how limiting this will be, since I can't just grab any old writing implement that's close to hand if my pen runs out.

The FriXion ink comes out quite wet and although it dries instantly on regular paper, it takes 10-20 seconds to dry on the special plastic pages. This probably isn't a problem for most use cases, but if you're steadily writing page after page of prose, racking up words by the thousands (as I've done with mine), you run into a situation where you have to wait a few seconds before turning the page and continuing to write. If you turn it while the ink is wet, it will blotch all over the facing page. A kludgy solution is to use a blotting sheet - a sheet of regular paper - to blot the fresh, wet ink at the bottom of the page before turning to the next sheet. However, that tends to gray out your writing, since you're soaking up ink. The pause to let the ink dry interrupts my writing flow. Fussy me, I guess, but there it is.

I was planning to use my Rocketbook for NaNoWriMo 2019, but that pause in turning the pages is, well, giving me pause. I've done the last couple of NaNos longhand, and once I'm in the flow, I'd like to not be interrupted. FYI, each page holds ~275 words of my longhand, so 182 pages of prose will give me the 50,000 words of a NaNoWriMo. I'll have to fill, erase, and reuse the notebook four times, hitting 50K on the fifth time through the book.

What I don't like that isn't the Rocketbook's fault: The FriXion pens feel kinda cheapo. Since I've got a lot of really great pens, and I'm used to writing on pretty good paper, I wonder what kind of issues I'll have with fatigue after using these FriXions on the Rocketbook for hour after hour after hour of longhand. You can swap the FriXion cartridge into a Pilot G2 body, though. Since the G2 is a lovely pen, and far more comfortable to write with than the price might suggest, that's what I'll probably do for a Rocketbook NaNoWriMo. I'll just have to be sure to NOT mistake a regular G2 for the FriXion-enabled one, since a regular ballpoint would ruin the special Rocketbook pages.

Also, the FriXion inks aren't uniformly great. The blue is a nice, solid blue, but the black is more of a darkish gray. Red is blotchy. (I haven't tried the teal, green, purple, or pink because I am a Serious Writer.) Yes, I know complaining about the quality of the ink is picky, picky, picky, but if I'm limited to this kind of pen for use with the Rocketbook, I think it's fair to identify the limitations that will face you should you want to give this thing a try.

Yet another semi-serious concern is that the FriXion pens run out pretty quickly. In my experience over the last few months, each pen will only last for about 4300 words, max. As the folks at Rocketbook noted, this is a pen thing, not a notebook thing:
(Not part of the review, but I rather appreciate the "Sir, this is a Wendy's" quality of that response.)

To do a NaNo will take about a dozen FriXion refills. That's not a huge problem, but it's something I'll have to consider and prepare for, if I commit to doing it this way.

Conclusion: the Rocketbook is pretty cool, and its technology works exactly as advertised. Worth considering if you do a lot of longhand.


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Nothing to announce

Nothing to announce, but when anything happens, I'll be sure to let you know.

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A new review: "as smooth as grandma’s turkey gravy"

There's a new 5-star review up for "Verbosity's Vengeance":

I laughed so hard at this, I spit coffee out my nose.

To understand why this is funny, you'd have to be following me on Twitter. If you're not... well, all the explanation in the world won't help.

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"Why didn't you call her?"

Recently, on a whim, I asked a successful TV writer on Twitter if she'd be willing to read my novel WIP and offer any comments. She kindly agreed, although she said she didn't know when she'd be able to get to it. I gave her my email address and asked her to send me an address that would be good to send the file to.

I could have just gone to her website, located an address, and sent the file. But this is an easy way to leave the ball in her court, and for her to decide if she actually wants to follow through on a spur-of-the-moment thing she agreed to do for a nobody she doesn't know. A successful writer's impulse to help out an aspiring writer is a real one, and it's a generous, admirable one, too. But it's also something that will drown you in extra work if you give in to it too much.

Whether she was serious about accepting my request, or if she was just being polite to some random guy on Twitter, then this is a minimally invasive way to either continue the interaction (if she's truly interested) or to nip it in the bud (if she's not).

The alternative is for me to send her the file without really knowing if she actually wants it or has any time or inclination to do anything with it. Then I'm in a position of either forgetting about it and going on with my life, or sending her that dreaded email two months from now: "So, did you get it? What did you think?" Guilt, irritation, and obligation all around.

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How's the WIP coming?

My WIP first draft is now at 64K. Probably another ~20K to finish the story. Much of it crap that I'll have to delete and replace, but it's a first draft.

I've heard it said that a first draft is just you telling the story to yourself. I must admit, I'd like to finish this, so I can find out what happens.

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October frosts

It's that time of the year when autumn is undeniable. Chill nights, shorter days, pumpkin spice and the wretched scourge of eternally-disgusting candy corn... these are the hallmarks of the season.

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Another year, another renewal

I have once again paid the annual renewal fee to retain ownership of this domain name, tonynoland.com. Things have certainly changed in my life since I was updating this site almost daily. I rarely post anything here now.

So why renew? It's not like there are hordes of people eagerly waiting to scoop up tonynoland.com if I let it lapse.

I guess it's because, against all rational thought processes, I still kinda have hopes of one day taking up writing fiction again. It's never far from my mind, even as it gets farther and farther from my schedule. And my priority list, and my skill set.

Right now, I'm not a writer, not anymore. I'm a guy who used to write, a guy who once wrote a novel. And since it was self-published, it wasn't a "real" novel, not the kind of thing you discuss in decent society. The childish effort of a Dunning-Kruger amateur, best forgotten.

But the novel I'm thinking about NOW, the one where the planet-killing asteroid headed toward Antarctica leads to a cultural reexamination of the nature of God and the ultimate purpose of humanity? THAT novel will be worth reading.

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