Sortmind Blog – Michael D. Smith

Akard Drearstone – The Blog Post, Part I: Publication at Last

Posted on October 30, 2017 by Michael D. SmithJune 26, 2019

A cinder block falls on Akard Drearstone’s head and he trades his print shop job for lead guitar. Months later, as the four members of the Akard Drearstone Group face the onslaught of national fame at their rural Texas commune, twelve-year-old Jan Pace nurses her crush for the narcissistic, paranoid bassist Jim Piston, growing up way too fast in a surreal summer between seventh and eighth grade.

eBook:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Smashwords

paperback:
Amazon

cover art by Michael D. Smith

The Akard Background

Over the past forty-two years Akard Drearstone has gone from being an unexpected if unpublishable flood of expression and experimentation, to an obsessive trial and an abandoned burden, to years of neglect followed by a renaissance demanding new integration, and finally to a determination to press this project to a conclusion, to make it the best writing I can do and push it out into the world. I’m not just polishing up some decades-old manuscript I’m feeling nostalgic about; there is some karmic life-destiny about finally publishing Akard through Sortmind Press. The cover and the glorious print version confirm that for me. What a lovely object has taken form!

The central vision for the novel was my secret desire after graduating from Rice to live in an artistic commune. Since I couldn’t do that, and being a rigorous introvert probably would’ve hated it anyway, the next best thing was to write about it. Akard emerged full-scale in one day in August 1975 as I constructed a satire record album cover out of scraps of pink paper. Three single-spaced pages of notes I typed a few days later charted the course of the first draft. From August 1975 to February 1976 I heavily inventoried dreams, recent ideas, and my bleak employment in an insurance company to throw everything into what I knew would be a massive work unlike anything I’d done before. It may be that the stretching involved in Akard, the disbelief that so much expression could flow out, is the reason I’ve been so committed to it. It was Akard’s tone and methods that began the evolution towards the rest of my novels.

Official Sortmind.com Website Synopsis

Jan Pace, a twelve-year-old girl at the Akard Drearstone commune north of Austin, Texas, watches Akard Drearstone and his fellow musicians setting up for what they think will be a small concert on their dirt parking lot. Jan, who knows she’s in love with the twenty-seven-year-old bass guitarist Jim Piston, tries to comfort him while he freaks on marijuana. Meanwhile, to everyone’s shock, thousands of Akard Drearstone Group fans have invaded the parking lot and the vast fields beyond.

Continue reading →

Amid Work on Three Karmic Novels

Posted on September 11, 2017 by Michael D. SmithJune 26, 2019

I’ve finished good drafts of the Three Legacy Novels outlined in the June 18 blog post. The question was: could I make the older manuscripts of Jump Grenade, Akard Drearstone, and Sortmind into fully modern, high quality expressions? Was there a karmic/fate reason for returning to their energies? If not, I knew I had to relegate their last versions to the desk drawer, along with clear and conscious reasons for my refusal to complete them.

I don’t feel I’ve been looking backward out of fear that my well may have run dry, though I’ve seriously considered whether looking at older novels may imply that. But I truly don’t feel I’m just trying to pad my writer’s résumé with a bunch of trashy old stuff. For instance, I have lots of experimental novels and novellas I have no further interest in working on: Nova Scotia, The Fifty-First State of Consciousness, Zarreich, The Galaxies Groan Within, Parts I and II, Linstar, Notice and Dream Topology, the Holy Dark Ages, The Psychobeauty, The University of Mars. I suppose I could always change my mind about some of these but they call up no deep reverberations. They were either just practice or their themes have been better explored elsewhere. I can feel massive new writing clamoring for expression; I don’t feel a further need to return to old stuff.

I wondered if I could publish all three legacy novels in 2017. I figured I probably did have time to at least get them into a more or less completed manuscript state–to do the real writing all three needed–but that finalizing them, doing the covers, publishing via Sortmind Press to whichever platforms I choose, then marketing the things, would involve toil and time pushing publication further out.

Continue reading →

Free Soul Institute! Free Twenty Steps! Through July 31

Posted on July 2, 2017 by Michael D. SmithJune 26, 2019

The eBook versions of my flagship literary novel The Soul Institute and my science fiction novella The First Twenty Steps can be had for free from Smashwords through the end of July.

The Soul Institute

Himal Steina realizes his dream of a mythic return to the sanctuary of a vast foggy university of Soul when he’s appointed writer in residence at the Soul Institute and falls in love with one of its numerous faculty goddesses. But the Soul Institute is splintering under its unhinged Director Alfred Moid Burlcron and his secret society of Overcrons, and as his teenage son consolidates command of the Paint Sniffing Gang, panic and violence build in the small coastal Texas college town.

The First Twenty Steps

Just released from six years in prison, unsure how to meet basic needs, Harry finds a kindred spirit in Roberta, in thrall to a depraved motorcycle gang. But the passive-aggressive leader of the Cerberean Knights leads them into a major crime this evening as he seeks to pay back favors from the corrupt city council of One-West. As the motorcycle attack on the Dataflux computer building turns terrifying and surreal, Harry and Roberta find themselves outgunned by another biker gang belonging to a mysterious billionaire who intervenes to protect his secret hyperspatial supercomputer.

Paperbacks?

If you’d rather have paperback copies, which alas aren’t free, try these links:

More Background

The Soul Institute

The First Twenty Steps

Three Legacy Novels

Posted on June 18, 2017 by Michael D. SmithAugust 20, 2019

Why should writers’ blogs, including my own, continue to spout, in glorious marketing-ese dialect, a sort of Chamber of Commerce civic boosterism about our stunning writing careers and our usually boring buy-my-book blurbs? Why should I post as if everything I’ve written should be considered, whether anyone including me believes it or not, as a potentially life-changing, culture-altering bestseller? Most writers don’t blog about their failed novels or raise doubts about whether problematic works in progress are worth publishing, as if the very difficulty inherent in experimenting with a novel idea, in composing fiction, will later affect its market value. But maybe it’s time to discuss three novels that have given me a lot of trouble even as they’ve compelled me to keep turning back to them.

I touched on this theme in a 2012 blog post, How Do you Deal With Your Backlog? While I still don’t want to push old crap out into the world just because I’m emotionally attached to my work and happen to know how easy it is to self-publish it on a variety of platforms, I do have three legacy novels I want to continue to work on. I’m defining a “legacy novel” as a past work, out of date in many ways but which still has psychic reverberation demanding attention. I would publish these novels unless they fail the test of one last clear-eyed revision, in which case I’ll know to shelve them as writing exercises.

I had this experience once before with a twenty-five-year-old novel I rewrote in 2009, The University of Mars. But after doing a decent and actually fun revamp on it and then garnering seven rejections, I finally took a sober look at this book and realized I had to consider it a not-to-be published exercise. That novel is what I had in mind in the February 2012 blog post:

… but a new consideration arose: suppose I did get one of these “not quite my best” novels published? And what if it were available on Barnes and Noble and amazon.com right next to my best work? Suppose someone bought a “not quite” and justifiably wrote me off as low quality and never saw the good stuff? In shock I realized that trying to push out something not quite right is actually a pollution of your writing life.

I have three legacy novels in different stages of development, but I want to be mindful of that 2012 post’s warning. I even said then that I had no qualms about publishing Sortmind or Akard Drearstone, but I’ve seen since that those two need a lot of work to function as modern consciousness.

Continue reading →

Milton Raeynold Glouair IV from The Soul Institute

Posted on June 13, 2017 by Michael D. SmithJune 26, 2019

Soul Institute library director Milt Glouair secured his appointment through his grandparents, influential donors to TSI who somehow outmaneuvered the usually politically astute Soul Institute Director, Alfred Burlcron, who hates Milt and threatens to bust the snippy martinet down to student shelver. Skinny, with thin blond hair, a pointed wedge face, gold wire-rimmed glasses, a huge mole on the left side of his nose, red cheeks, and icy blue eyes, Milt wears dark three-piece suits as library director, but when on combat patrol at the college, overseeing the teen thugs of the Kaiser Death Gang, he dons camouflage fatigues and a green beret.

Okay, so I didn’t feel like drawing the huge mole or the pointed wedge face nor probably most of the description above or below. Sometimes the psychic feel of a character just emerges from a drawing I didn’t intend as a novel character when I started. From The Soul Institute:

Milt Glouair slung the lightweight gun over his shoulder and drank from his thermos. The PeneTraitor X-12 fully automatic machine gun, manufactured for the Red Chinese Army and illegal in the U.S., held five hundred rounds and was probably the world’s foremost military weapon.

And Burlcron comes up with six! One for each of us and himself! What a guy!

Glouair’s checked his watch as his combat boots clomped on the sidewalk through the Central Woods. 0300 hours. Good. Everything on schedule. His fatigues swished around his thighs. His knife sheath rode pleasantly against his hip. The coffee was wonderful. Belgian SynapseFritz–gourmet coffee from the Command Post!

Who’d have thought a shit like Stain Caruck had to have gourmet coffee? Well, Glouair supposed it kept the Kaisers alert. There was the English Building. Hit it fast and then back into the trees. No need to let the Security boys know where he was. Of course Burlcron had TSI Security checking the dorm and the parking lots. Keeping them from the north fields and the Kaiser Death Gang Command Post.

Glouair was pleased to see a deadly soldier in camouflage fatigues reflected in the glass of the English Building. He certainly cut a different figure in this outfit than in those three-piece suits he wore as library director! He adjusted his green beret.

There he was, all five-foot-six of him a professional soldier. He tucked his thin blond hair back under the beret and took in his wedge face, wire-rimmed glasses, the red cheeks, the icy blue eyes. He looked deadly and he knew it. Especially the icy blue eyes. People told him that. “The way your eyes just dominated that meeting, Milt!”

The mole on his nose was damn ugly, he knew. But it stopped people. Put them off just long enough for him to slip his agenda in.

Glouair fell back into the Central Woods. Caruck was in the wooded area around the Director’s house, Bip Elliott further north on Carson’s property, and Muscles Maguire was setting up in town. They’d meet at the sewer at four. The Mesquite kid, down at the sewer, had made their first kidnapping an hour ago–an unexpected piece of luck.

The boys had done fine on Jutland. He’d had no idea the place would blow like that! They must have hit a gas line.

The SolGrid Rebellion to be Published

Posted on May 26, 2017 by Michael D. SmithJune 26, 2019

Suzette Borman copyright 2014 by Michael D. Smith

Suzette Borman, rebel against SolGrid, at nineteen in 2052–or as the rejuvenated woman of 2076.

The SolGrid Rebellion, Book Six of the Jack Commer, Supreme Commander science fiction series, will be published by Double Dragon Publishing. The first four books in the series are already published in eBook and paperback format. Book Five, The Wounded Frontier, is due out in February 2018, with Book Six to follow sometime after.

When the solar system adopts the buggy SolGrid telepathic network designed by former Space Force officer Patrick James, Jack Commer’s charming but impudent son Jonathan James instigates a rebellion against what he considers brainwashing. His followers includes his lover Suzette Borman, a hard-bitten nightclub owner who’s been rejuvenated to look nineteen; Patrick’s girlfriend Jackie Vespertine, emissary to aliens in the Iota Persei system; Pat’s SolGrid partner Sanders Hirte, a former bar bouncer; and Jonathan James’ dog Trotter, bonded to him years ago in Alpha Centauri as warrior brother.

Jonathan James Commer copyright 2012 by Michael D. Smith

Jonathan James Commer, Jack and Amav’s insolent son who wrote the bestselling Alpha Centaurian novel, A Fragmented Encyclopedia of Recent Self.

Smitten with the voluptuous Suzette and finally admitting that his dysfunctional SolGrid is paralyzing Sol culture, Pat accepts a place in the Rebellion. But he’s stunned when Jonathan James storms an orbiting museum and not only steals Typhoon II, Jack Commer’s ancient 2030’s spaceship, but also kidnaps Z’B, Emperor of the Martians. As Jack pursues Jonathan James he begins to understand that his son’s pirate crew is staging an armed rebellion against Sol.

A seventh and possibly final Jack Commer novel was inadvertently called for by something Jack’s wife Amav says at the end of Book Six. Book Seven has no title and is unashamed vaporware at this point, but dozens of interesting concepts keep hitting me and are being assembled into some sort of structure. And for some reason the Large Magellanic Cloud has captured my imagination for Book Seven.

The SolGrid Rebellion – more information

Trip to Mars in Paperback

Posted on March 16, 2017 by Michael D. SmithApril 16, 2025

A few years ago I resurrected my first attempt at a novel, Trip to Mars, fifty-five penciled pages in a small yellow notebook with numerous crude illustrations. The 2,646-word story I produced as a sixth grader in the spring of 1964 is childish, cute, and illogical, but when the urge struck me in 2013 to render it into a children’s picture book, a wondrous psychic bridge somehow formed between child and adult, a union I really hadn’t expected. The modern illustrations peer through the childhood lens of 1964 but amplify and transcend the kid story, and this project became an homage to the writing it later inspired.

To make the picture book, I expanded the twenty-page manuscript into sixty-five pages of a few lines each, then illustrated each page in pencil. I decided the entire book would be black and white, and used a finger-rubbing technique to make numerous grayscale gradients. The book’s first version in March 2014 was the scanned Word document saved as a PDF, then turned into a Windows Media Video file, and finally posted to YouTube. But I’d always wanted a physical picture book paperback, and after much experimentation completed the project in March 2017. It’s now available as a compact and perfectly-sized 9″ x 7″ landscape-format paperback on lulu.com. I may do an eBook later but the paperback now satisfies my needs.

The story outlines the horrors of World War IV in, at that time, the extremely far future of 2033, along with the discovery of the moon’s instability and the resulting evacuation of the planet’s surviving population to Mars. Jack Commer, hero of my later published science fiction series, pilots the nuclear-powered spaceship Typhoon I and leads the same eight-man crew he’ll captain in The Martian Marauders, Book One of the Jack Commer, Supreme Commander series. The crew includes Jack’s three brothers Joe, Jim, and John. I think I originally named the four brothers after four identical plastic spacemen I had in elementary school. I recall that one of these four spacemen was a little lopsided and he thus became the somewhat loopy John Commer, the youngest brother who later makes a disastrous mistake with the Typhoon I in The Martian Marauders.

Trip to Mars is the 1964 kid’s view of space exploration, tempered by nuclear war fears and a feeling of growing societal disruption; in fact, the story includes a senseless Kennedy-like assassination, still fresh in my mind from the previous November. As a childhood prequel to my Jack Commer series, Trip to Mars also contains themes explored in the later books. Many of the story’s details are taken up in 2012’s The Martian Marauders and some, like the passenger shell catastrophes that numbed the second oldest brother Joe, find expression in 2013’s Nonprofit Chronowar.

The modern Trip to Mars follows the text of the 1964 notebook with only spelling corrections; for instance, I’d misspelled the ship’s name “Typoon” throughout. Awkward phrasings and illogical plot developments are just allowed to do their thing, buoyed up by hopefully funny new illustrations. Of course I could have rewritten the story to modern adult standards, but the effect of naïve writing juxtaposed with modern illustrations is the whole point of the book.

I used some of the notebook’s juvenile drawings for new image ideas, but also had much fun drawing concepts the sixth grader knew nothing about. One panel shows a scientist pointing to equations from Einstein’s 1905 Special Theory of Relativity. Another copies the astronomer Schiaparelli’s 1886 drawing of Martian “canals.” Another is an homage to the cover of Heinlein’s Have Space Suit–Will Travel. I also depict a Marsport Automated Transport System bus, which later becomes a flippant robotic character in The Martian Marauders and subsequent books.

Trip to Mars copyright 1964 by Mickey Smith

A 1964 loose space helmet

Trip to Mars copyright 2014 by Michael D. Smith

A modern loose space helmet

While the exterior views of the Typhoon are consistent, being more or less the same ship I drew hundreds of times as a child, the interior views are a series of theater stages that can’t be reconciled with the layout of an actual ship about the size of a space shuttle. I immensely enjoyed drawing these interiors that just cannot be.

Trip to Mars available at lulu.com

Early marketing efforts for Trip to Mars

2014 YouTube video

Background at sortmind.com and links to current Jack Commer titles

The back cover:

Trotter is Part of Your Garthah-/yuu? A Dog?

Posted on January 31, 2017 by Michael D. SmithJuly 11, 2020

To keep Jack Commer’s kidnapped son sane aboard Alpha Centaurian flagship N8J’rallifh-hhu42jdnh, Captain Clopt of the Imperial Guard sent time-traveling agents to Sol to obtain first a robot companion, then a puppy, for five-year-old Jonathan James Commer. The mission to obtain the beagle Trotter was in fact the last successful time invasion the Centaurians were able to perform before their Empire abruptly collapsed in May 2053. But Clopt’s plans over the next decades to turn Jonathan James into a merciless Zarj killer get muddled as Trotter becomes an indispensable part of Jonathan James’ military training. In 2075 the beagle is twenty-two years old but rejuvenated to about three or four, and has picked up some of renegade Martian Emperor Greeney Gooney’s ability to telepathically project his thoughts. As an insufferable Jonathan James kidnaps his own mother Amav along with former Typhoon II engineer Phil Sperry in a plot to restore the hive mind of the Alpha Centaurian Grid, Trotter prepares to defend his master from Clopt’s competing dreams of power.

From Collapse and Delusion:

Jonathan James smirked. “Sorry for the inconvenience, Mr. Phil. But we needed to grab both you and Amav and get you into orbit with us. So we’ll have the party now.”

“How in hell could I not know the damn Castle is a spaceship?”

“Well, if Greeney can turn the Castle into a spaceship with Amplified Thought, he can certainly do it in a way that fools engineer Phil Sperry. You may wonder why I’ve issued so few invitations to visit over the past few months.”

“This has been going on–for how long?”

“A few months. Greeney knew that the end of all time travel meant that we were ripe for a change, let’s say. So he got everything ready for us.”

“Let me get this straight. Are you saying you and Clopt are working with Gooney now? That you support him? This Emperor business?”

“Yap yap!” Trotter cried. AND ME TOO!

Phil stared into the big brown beagle eyes. “You–?”

“The damn thing bonded into our Garthah-/yuu,” Clopt said, and Phil could feel his disgust even through the translator spheres which had resumed floating all around them.

“Trotter is part of your Garthah-/yuu? A dog?”

“Any species can form part of a Garthah-/yuu. Greeney commanded us to include him.”

“So there are three of us now,” JJC said. “Zarj brothers who will fight and die for each other. Of course Clopt takes full responsibility for his new dog brother, doesn’t he?”

“… Dammit …” Clopt muttered.

BIG DOG TRIBE! Trotter beamed. I AM PART! HATE THIS PLANT WORLD! EMPIRE SHOULD BE HUNTING SOCIETY! I WILL JOIN, I WILL HUNT! EAT!

“Theoretically you can have up to five in a Garthah-/yuu,” JJC added. “Would you care to join us, Mr. Phil? Turns out Mother is ineligible. Due to being our Goddess, of course!”

“Dammit, I can’t believe this!” Phil sputtered, casting a glance at the writhing, half naked Amav on the couch. “How can you treat her this way?”

JJC leaned back. “You need to have more faith in Greeney, Mr. Phil. As you know, he can do anything. And now that he’s our Emperor, and yours, too–”

“Are you crazy? You really think Gooney can be Emperor? That he can start up this Grid thing again?”

The Grid! Phil had forgotten all about it! He could feel the Grid flooding back–the lovely, all-encompassing Grid!

Collapse and Delusion background

Rhys of Quadrant Six by Kara D. Wilson – Review

Posted on January 11, 2017 by Michael D. SmithJanuary 11, 2017

Fascinating and Unexpected Directions in Book II

Rhys of Quadrant Six, Book II of the Falkrow Narratives, takes up shortly after the action in Book I, Rhys of Earth, but accelerates into fascinating and unexpected directions as it amplifies the richly-drawn characters from the first book and introduces compelling new ones. Rhys is in turmoil, exhausted, grieving for dead comrades yet still immersed in warfare and duty, when he discovers a surprising new helper who leads him to hidden technology and an appalling revelation of an Earth secretly divided into computer-controlled quadrants. As he drives himself and his crew on in the face of staggering obstacles in order to right a centuries-old wrong, he forges new connections to remnants of the spacefaring society of his original home and begins to integrate this advanced culture with the scattered, warring humans of Earth.

The author’s storytelling skills are large, and you find yourself trusting her style and instincts. Even while sending the characters on enough new adventures to fill five different novels, she manages to engage the reader’s interest at every turn; the developing plot always defines the characters’ feelings and conflicts superbly. I found myself continually unable to anticipate where the plot might go next, but once an unexpected development occurred, I said, yes, of course it had to be this way …

I marvel at this Earth set so far in the future that all our current history, even a sense of geographic place, has long since been erased. This future Earth, divided into strange, indefinable zones, filled with cultures alien to each other, stripped of our current civilization’s knowledge yet yielding tantalizing bits of lost future technology, seems large, mysterious, unfathomable, yet this same planet always showcases ancient human themes and conflicts.

While we might expect the eventual triumph of a hero in an epic novel like this one, the author artfully keeps the reader guessing how such a triumph might be accomplished, and indeed whether it might fail or only partially succeed. A lovely and satisfying concluding chapter points to a third volume, but from the handling of this one, you understand that you will be entering completely new dimensions in the next book–which I’m eagerly awaiting.

review by Michael D. Smith

Buy at Amazon

The Regent’s Daughter by Kara D. Wilson – Review

Posted on December 26, 2016 by Michael D. SmithJune 26, 2019

Epic Coming of Age Story Newly Re-Released from Goldminds Publishing

The first book of The Aurora Chronicles follows eleven-year-old Reila as she grows to maturity and becomes aware of her destiny to lead a foreign country, the prosperous and psychically-oriented Liang, and defend it from what she’s been raised to believe is her home country, the warlike Shiin. All inhabitants of Liang possess different kinds of telekinetic Power, whereas the kingdom of Shiin is noted for its lack of Powered people, and therefore seeks them out in order to make use of their abilities for conquest. What is intriguing about these Powers, and adds much richness to the characters, is that each person has a different kind of Power, with inherent strengths and limitations which each individual must acknowledge and master.

Reila’s relationship with the Shiin emperor’s son Kaito begins in childhood enmity but deepens into romance and comradeship as they grow older, develop their powers, and begin to understand the evil at the heart of Shiin’s belligerence towards its neighbor. The author shows a great deal of insight into the relationship of Crown Prince Kaito and his warmongering father, Emperor Sohryu; their father/son bond is complex and fascinating. The Emperor possesses the charismatic Power of being able to brainwash anyone into following his demented visions, and Kaito isn’t strong or independent enough to fully assert himself. Thus it’s a constant struggle for him to assert what’s right as he struggles to define his role amid the turbulent politics and the outbreak of war between the two kingdoms. Meanwhile, Aurora, an undefinable raw entity centered in Liang, soon focuses its unsettling interest on Reila. As she assumes growing responsibility and leadership in Liang, she must make some daunting choices about how to deal with this unfathomable mystical power.

The book has an epic quality; Reila’s adventures are simultaneously a coming of age story and part of a grand chain of fated events which the author unfolds in a well-constructed narrative as she fashions numerous fully realized and thought-provoking characters. I’m looking forward to Book Two, The Raven’s Sister.

review by Michael D. Smith

Buy at Amazon
Buy at Barnes and Noble
Kara Wilson’s website