Sortmind Blog – Michael D. Smith

Joe Commer from The Martian Marauders, or, Wiping the Blackboard Clean

Posted on July 8, 2014 by Michael D. SmithJuly 11, 2020

Marooned on dead planet Earth, writhing in fever dreams, Joe is dying from the aftereffects of a Martian ice ray along with his brother Jack. From The Martian Marauders:

FORGET THAT! FORGET THAT! IT’S BEEN SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN THAT JACK COMMER FELL APART AND FAILED MISERABLY! COMMER IS IN FACT A TRAITOR TO THE HUMAN RACE! THAT’S CORRECT, A TREASONABLE TRAITOR! WE SHALL NEVER FEEL SORRY FOR HIM OR HIS BROTHER!

Huey? Huey damn VESPERTINE? But then again, that’s just like you with your total, cynical CRAP! You weren’t there, after all, what do you know? Jack never snapped! It was just that he was way overstressed by the whole day before Mercury! Doesn’t anyone understand the pressures that go with command responsibility?

JACK COMMER FAILED TO UNDERSTAND HIMSELF. FAILED TO HANDLE THE PRESSURES. HIS BROTHER JOE JOINS HIM IN TOTAL, IRREDEEMABLE DEFEAT.

We’re not dead yet, you jerk! We’re both still breathing, both still here–this ice isn’t such a big deal, Jack and I can handle it!

YES, EVEN AS HE WAITS FOR THE END JOE COMMER UNDERSTANDS THAT THE ICE IS SOMEHOW A PRESERVING FORCE. FOR INSTANCE, EVEN THOUGH HE HASN’T BEEN ABLE TO MOVE TO GET FOOD OUT OF THE ESCAPE CRAFT SINCE DAY TWO, JOE FEELS NO HUNGER AT ALL. HE FEELS NO URGE TO URINATE OR DEFECATE, HE FEELS NEITHER COLD NOR HOT, IN FACT, HE FEELS NO BODILY DISCOMFORT AT ALL.

Oh, so it’s the end, now, Huey, is it? Are you gonna preside over my death now? Get outa my head! I tried to be your friend, I tried to make things right, even after you and Jack fell out, even after he said he never wanted to see you again–

ONE HAS TO ASSUME THAT IT’S THE SAME FOR JACK. JACK COMMER MIGHT BE IN A COMA, BUT HE MUST BE DYING PEACEFULLY, AS JOE IS. THE MARTIAN ICE RAY GUARANTEES A SLOW DEATH, BUT LET’S JUST SAY IT HAS PROVIDED SOME ADVANTAGES.

Yeah, name one, you jerk! And bring back General Scott! HE knows what’s going on!

THIS IS SCOTT. PROBABLY THE BIGGEST ADVANTAGE IS THAT JOE GETS TO LIE RIGHT HERE AND THINK, JUST THINK, FOR DAYS! THINK ABOUT HIS ENTIRE LIFE. HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE EVER GIVEN THREE DAYS AT THE END OF THEIR LIVES TO JUST THINK? SURE, IT’S FRUSTRATING NOT TO BE ABLE TO MOVE, BUT WHAT DOES THAT MATTER? ISN’T EVERYTHING FOR THE MIND?

Well … well, sir, I’d say … well, if you put it that way, I guess I agree, sir …

JOE COMMER GETS TO REVIEW EVERYTHING, AND ISN’T IT OBVIOUS THAT WHEN HE FINALLY FINISHES REVIEWING IT ALL, HE’LL SHUT DOWN? AND WON’T THAT BE ALL RIGHT? IN FACT, WON’T IT BE FUN TO SHUT EVERYTHING DOWN, ONCE HE’S REVIEWED EVERYTHING? ONCE HE BECOMES A COMPLETE HUMAN BEING FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HIS LIFE?

Wow … wow … yes, sir, I’ll get right on it, sir! The review! The review of everything, sir! And may I just say in parting, sir, that it’s been a honor serving under you, sir?

THIS IS T. JASPER MARKTHOLOMEW, CUTTING TO THE CHASE! THERE WILL BE NO SUCH CALM APPRAISAL OF JOE COMMER’S WORTHLESS LITTLE LIFE! HASN’T MR. COMMER BEEN EVEN A LITTLE SUSPICIOUS ABOUT THE ORIGIN OF THESE HALLUCINATORY DREAMS? FOOL! DOESN’T HE KNOW THAT THEY’RE SIMPLY A CLEANSING AGENT? THAT THEY’RE HERE TO WIPE JOE COMMER’S BLACKBOARD CLEAN? JOE’S OWN PRECIOUS BLACKBOARD WITH HIS OWN PRIVATE SET OF PSYCHO-PHYSICAL EQUATIONS, THE EQUATIONS THAT HAVE DEFINED HIS LITTLE LIFE? THE FEVER DREAMS WIPE ALL THAT CLEAN!

No, no, bring back Scott, I liked what he was saying, that was MY OWN LIFE we were talking about, after all!

THE HUEY VESPERTINE REPORT CONTINUES! THE ESSENTIAL EQUATIONS HAVE ALWAYS REVOLVED AROUND THE PEOPLE IN JOE’S LIFE, AND WHETHER OR NOT HE’S SCREWED THEM OVER!

Aw, crap, Huey, you oughta talk, you turned your back on the USSF, on–hell, on the whole human race!

CONSIDER THE TANGLED THICKET OF ENERGIES RELATING TO THE FOUR COMMER BROTHERS AND THEIR FATHER! IT PROBABLY CAN’T BE NAVIGATED BEFORE SYSTEM SHUTDOWN! FOR WE SUSPECT IT ALL GOES TOO DEEP TO BE DEALT WITH IN THIS LIFETIME. PERHAPS IN A COMING LIFETIME JOE WILL DEAL WITH–

I don’t believe this! Don’t give me this coming lifetimes crap!

THE NEED FOR COMING LIFETIMES COMES FROM THE TANGLED DESTINIES THAT DEMAND RESOLUTION, NO MATTER HOW MANY EONS IT TAKES. CONSIDER THE WOMEN JOE COMMER OWES SO MUCH TO, AND ALL OF WHOM HE’S WRONGED ONE WAY OR ANOTHER. DID HE REALLY COME UNGLUED DURING THE HORRORS OF THE FINAL WAR AND THE EVACUATION? THE LAST SIX WOMEN CAME DURING THAT TIME, AFTER ALL. DID THEY SOMEHOW RELATE TO THE BREAKDOWN OF HUMAN EXISTENCE? HUMANITY ITSELF HAVING ITS BLACKBOARD WIPED CLEAN?

THIS IS GENERAL JOHN J. DOUGLAS, THE ALIEN HUNTER, TAKING OVER THIS LINE OF INQUIRY!

Oh, no!

OH, YES, YAH BAHSTAD! AS I HAPPEN TO BE AN EXPERT ON THESE MATTERS, IT’S MY DUTY TO INFORM YOU OF YOUR SERIOUS SEXUAL TRANSGRESSIONS!

Me? You’re accusing me–?

YES, CERTAINLY, JOE! YOU DON’T MIND IF I CALL YOU JOE, DO YOU, JOE? BECAUSE WE MIGHT AS WELL GET UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL IF WE’RE GOING TO DISCUSS THE SHAME OF YOUR SEXUALITY!

Shame–? Of–? You jerk! Get out of my head! You’re just a fever dream!

More about the Jack Commer, Supreme Commander series

The first book in the series, The Martian Marauders, is available in eBook and paperback format from Double Dragon Publishing, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other online retailers.

Justification, or, Flush These Notes Out of My System Before They Wreck a Novel!

Posted on July 5, 2014 by Michael D. SmithJune 12, 2015

“Some guy at the bus stop disrespected me, so I blew his head off.” I could load this post up with a thousand examples, but let’s make it short and let that one serve.

I’ve been struck by the appalling notion that from the beginning of time people have come up with reasons for anything they take into their heads to do. Anything can be justified, articulately or not, in terms of logic, need, or desire. Let your mind wander over the hundreds of thousands of justifications you’ve used and which you’ve encountered. Innocent excuses for trivial daily impulses up through monstrous, utterly insane rationalizations for the worst possible horrors.

Justification implies deceit, betrayal, power hunger, control, manipulation, self-delusion. Is it built upon fear, fear which seems to demand some “reasonable drastic action”? Or do people zone out into a temporary psychopath mode in order to get things done without resorting to consulting a conscience? I have a feeling we have few true genuine psychopaths and that fear must be the prime motivator.

Why would we feel a need to “rationally justify” every action to ourselves, to an audience of one, or to the world in general? Yet somehow it seems natural to want to do so–either before the fact, after it, or both. It’s as if some inner lawyer comes to the fore to offer up a self-defined “law” that will, with its impeccable logic, convince others of the righteousness of the action in question. Even if someone decides to offer no explanation except “I felt like it,” or “I enjoy offing people,” that becomes a simplified legalistic assertion of a right.

Does positive, non-manipulative action require such justification? It seems not to. An explanation may be given, but the tone is one of creative urge rather than self-serving excuses:

“We need to build a regional airport here …”
“We could establish orbiting colonies at these Lagrange points …”
“I want to write a novel about…”

Even if some manipulators signed onto the airport project and were satisfied with their own reasons for plundering what they could out of it, the overall thrust of creation behind such a venture doesn’t seem to require justification. Maybe a lot of technical, financial, and political planning, but not self-serving, fear-loaded excuses.

In addition to just boggling at this justification concept, I’m looking at it as a way to assist in looking at characters and their motivations. In a novel somehow all this self-serving paranoia becomes “understandable.”

I don’t know–is there ever a way out of fooling ourselves? What if we meditate long enough?

Again–flushing some notes out of my system before they wind up marring some novel! A decent number of such ideas are rattling around for future posts. You don’t want your hero standing up at a cocktail party declaiming this sort of stuff!

Lt. Lee Borman from Jack Commer, Supreme Commander

Posted on June 12, 2014 by Michael D. SmithJuly 11, 2020

“But can’t you see, Jack, that’s your whole problem, man,” Borman cried, clearly agitated at Jack swinging the shattergun. “You’ve always been so repressed around women that you’ve let this Amav take over your sense of self-esteem. If you’d only actualize your potential, Jack, and learn to recognize those parts of yourself which–”

“So you’ve sobered up pretty fast, Lieutenant,” Jack mocked. “Back to your self-help clichés now, I see.” Unbelievably, Borman had recently gotten a publisher’s contract for a self-help book for men called The Sexual Conquest of Your Inner Mount Everest. To the entire crew’s chagrin he’d printed paper copies for everyone. Jack had read part of one chapter entitled “Finding your F-Spot” and had thrown the thick manuscript away.

That a chunky fighter veteran of the Alpha Centauri conflict was writing self-help books on the subject of male sexuality was beyond the comprehension of any of the crew, and it had only come out haltingly, over a period of months, that the other five members of the Typhoon II admitted that they’d thrown their manuscripts away unread. But Borman had become more and more egotistical about his book as the mission got closer to launch date. He’d even given copies to Amav and the three Martians. Amav never said a word. Dar had briefly commented: “You humans are one million years behind us.”

“Okay, Jack–just–okay,” Borman swallowed. “We all have our hang-ups. I know I did, once. But I learned, Jack. I went inside myself, I took the dare, and I climbed my own Mount Everest! I’m here today to tell you that if you’d only climb your own–”

“Getting sorta nervous, Lee baby?” Jack sneered. “You’re kinda thinking that old Jack boy’s just crazy enough to turn you into a pile of broken glass? Huh? Well, Lee baby, maybe I am just that crazy. Maybe I am …” It was so exciting to hold a gun on the criminal Borman! To feel his finger caressing the trigger, with more and more pressure! For once everyone would know–know that Jack would express himself! Fully and finally express himself! God, it would feel so good, such a sweet release of all the hate and tension and anger and fear!

More about the Jack Commer, Supreme Commander series

The second book in the series, Jack Commer, Supreme Commander, is available in eBook and paperback format from Double Dragon Publishing, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other online retailers.

Sinner’s Opera by Linda Nightingale (or, I Can’t Believe I’ve Read a Vampire Novel!)

Posted on June 4, 2014 by Michael D. SmithSeptember 2, 2014

I found Sinner’s Opera a psychologically astute page-turner. The characters from the protagonist vampire Morgan D’Arcy and his love Isabeau down to minor supporting cast all work well, propelling the reader through a mesmerizing plot with twists up to the end. I find myself looking forward to a sequel.

Since I’ve never read anything in the vampire romance genre before, I approached Sinner’s Opera in terms of human emotions and motivations. The reader can’t help but feel sympathetic towards the male half of the romantic pair, Lord Morgan D’Arcy, who’s been a vampire since the 1600’s, though Morgan also strikes me as a good depiction of a manipulative psychopath. Nevertheless Morgan has some heartfelt desire to know real love and empathy–all on his own terms, of course.

The various vampire laws and vampire powers in this novel work excellently, integrating into the characters’ development and never becoming mere plot devices. The vampires may initially strike the reader as being inordinately powerful, yet they require these attributes in the face of other inherent shortcomings, like destruction by sunlight or the need to replenish life energies through murder. Teleportation or the ability to rise from mortal wounds seem natural, integrated facets of the vampires, and the casual arrogance with which they wield these powers strikes me as similar to how a nineteenth century British colonial administrator, imbued with centuries of imperial power, might feel towards the natives he feels he benevolently rules. This metaphor is not too far from how Morgan views the object of his love, the genius geneticist Isabeau Gervase. While Morgan feels deep passion for Isabeau, he’s genuinely surprised to find that she has her own view of their relationship. It’s amazing how he can manipulate her and keep her in the dark, how he can mold and control her in the name of his own concept of love. His desire to father a child with her involves keeping it a secret from her–as well as from fellow vampires who’ll punish him for transgressing vampire law.

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Who is Jack Commer, Supreme Commander?

Posted on April 8, 2014 by Michael D. SmithJuly 11, 2020

With the shocking suicide of the Typhoon I, the most powerful military spaceship ever built, the four Commer brothers are reduced to two. After the horrors of the Final War, the evacuation of Earth, and an unexpected conflict with native Martian terrorists, is eldest brother Jack really fit to lead the United System Space Force? Yet despite stress bordering on hysteria he always seems to come up with the proper solution. Shy with women but easy with command as opposed to his passionate, guilt-ridden brother Joe, when promoted to Supreme Commander Jack passes over numerous ambitious admirals and holds onto power for decades with the newest rejuvenation technology. But has he ever really recovered from the responsibility of overseeing forty years of futile time war with the Alpha Centaurians?

from Book One, The Martian Marauders:

“Did you find all that in the Martians’ minds as well?” Jack snapped.

“Yeah, Jack, I had to look, after all …”

“Yeah, you had to look.” Of course his brother would have taken the opportunity to explore all the back corridors of the Martian mind while Jack hung at the vent and contemplated the complexities of Martian language and Amplified Thought. In fact, it was probably because Joe was so intent on Martian sexual practice that he’d knocked the stupid grating onto the Council floor in the first place. Damn it all! It was just like Joe.

His younger brother dated scores of girls in all the colonies, on the barren asteroids and the surviving moons of the major planets. Joe knew all about girls, and women, and the difference between them. And he’d sit in the copilot seat on those Typhoon missions and crack insipid off-color jokes for hours. The old adage, “Those who talk about it, don’t do it,” apparently didn’t apply to Joe. He talked and did, and talked and did. Occasionally he’d get semi-seriously caught up in an affair at some outpost–Lucia from Ganymede was the last big one Jack recalled–and be moody and silent for a few weeks, but soon he’d shrug it off, contact one of his numerous girlfriends, and the putrid sex jokes would crank up again.

Was Joe one hundred percent devoted to duty? It wasn’t just the sex talk that bothered him–every once in a while Joe would burst out with some enormous emotion that embarrassed every crewman on board, like declaring the Earth was a death trip and he was glad to have left it behind. Sure, sometimes it turned out that Joe had broken a lot of buried tension with that sort of wild remark–McNarri once said Joe was the unofficial spokesman for the group’s emotions. But what the hell did that mean? In any case, how could Joe indulge in all these emotions and sexual escapades and still focus on the job of copiloting the most deadly spaceship ever made?

Sure, men had feelings. But wallowing in them like that? All that talk about women’s breasts and asses and clitorises, those crude jibes about every female body he saw?

Jack didn’t talk. And he didn’t do. He never had. Well, at least he wasn’t a virgin anymore–that curse had followed him up through last year, at age twenty-nine. The cleaning lady at USSF HQ on Titan … blowsy, big-boobed, and drunk, she’d followed him to his room, asking what he might need …

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Trip to Mars, the Picture Book, or, How the Ship Became a Fantastical Theater Stage

Posted on March 28, 2014 by Michael D. SmithJuly 12, 2020

My first “novel,” Trip to Mars, was fifty-five penciled pages in a small yellow notebook, starring Jack Commer and outlining the horrors of a 2033 World War IV and the evacuation of Earth’s surviving population to Mars. Was the sixth grade and the spring of 1964 really fifty years ago? This ancient story is a childhood prequel to, and the inspiration for, my published Jack Commer series, where many of the 1964 details still find expression. In 1964, of course, 2033 was the far future. Now it’s just nineteen years away!

I’m not sure what prompted me to create Trip to Mars, the Picture Book over the past year and a half, but I had enormous fun with it. The resulting PDF file is way too large to distribute at 109 MB, but I found that if I recreated it as a PowerPoint file I could then save it as a WMA video that loads easily on YouTube and takes just a few minutes to play:

Trip to Mars, the Picture Book on YouTube

So Trip to Mars is now a silent movie! Full screen is best for reading the text/captions. There’s no music yet–I suppose I should think of something.

Unless you’re a really fast reader, the introduction is the only part that can’t be read during the approximately ten-second video transitions, but you can pause at that point if you want to read the whole page, or for that matter if you want to linger on any of the illustrations. But I included the salient points of the introduction in the YouTube description.

Background

I expanded the twenty-page MS. (all of 2,646 words) into sixty-five pages of a few lines each, illustrated each page in pencil, then scanned the results. Of course, this means the words in this “Draft 1” are limited to a scanned Times New Roman 12.

I refused to change any words from the original story other than correcting misspellings, but the text works well for this project, and as the introduction belligerently states, “if there are awkward phrasings and illogical plot developments, that’s part of the flavor.” I think of this project as an homage to the writing it later inspired. I used my generic Sortmind Press as the publisher for now, but I need to figure out where I want to take a final version. PDF? EPUB format with its attendant image hassles? Print? In any case a final version will involve cropping the images and having separate text with larger fonts.

The 1964 notebook also had numerous crude drawings, some of which I used for new image ideas. One aspect of the new drawings that I’ve really enjoyed is that there are spaceship interiors which just cannot be. As the introduction explains:

The exterior views of the Typhoon are more or less consistent, but echo the fact that I drew the ship somewhat differently every time I rendered it in scores of childhood drawings. I had fun with interior views, which are a series of theater stages and absolutely cannot be reconciled with the layout of an actual ship about the size of a space shuttle. And I never worried about depicting any of the characters consistently.

Some concepts that never would have occurred to me in 1964 found their way into the picture book:

Panel 5 depicts some of the equations of Einstein’s 1905 Special Theory of Relativity.
Panel 18 has a copy of the astronomer Schiaparelli’s 1886 drawing of Martian “canals.”
Panel 22 is an homage to the paperback cover of Heinlein’s Have Space Suit–Will Travel.
Panel 38 reveals for the first time what an Xon bomb actually looks like!
Panel 62 depicts a Marsport Automated Transport System bus, which later becomes a flippant robotic character in The Martian Marauders.

Trip to Mars is the 1964 kid’s view of Mars, tempered by nuclear war fears and the Kennedy assassination five months before, which inspired the events in panels 10-12. I can also still recall the sense of shock in the air when the first Mariner 4 pictures came back in 1965 to reveal craters and no canals–and an atmosphere too thin for my astronaut heroes to breathe.

At the North Texas Book Festival, April 5, 2014

Posted on March 18, 2014 by Michael D. SmithJuly 11, 2020

I will be representing Double Dragon Publishing and selling my first three Jack Commer novels (hopefully!) at the North Texas Book Festival in Denton, Texas, Saturday, April 5, 2014. I’ve never done a book festival before so I’m not sure what to expect, but I find myself thinking it may be like opening night for a group art show, only with tables and books. Famous last words.

I actually volunteered to be a speaker, figuring I ought to at least make the attempt, but to my 20% chagrin/80% relief, I’ve just found that I didn’t make the cut. That’s OK, as this whole thing will be new enough without that stress. My topic would have been the irregular origin of The Martian Marauders, the first book in the series. Which I wrote about in a blog post a while back anyway. This is such an easy story to tell (because it’s true) that I don’t think I’d have any serious trouble giving it as a talk.

Here is the URL for the North Texas Book Festival which includes location, time, authors attending, and background info:

http://www.ntbf.org/

Righting an Ancient Injustice – Review of Ascarion by F. T. McKinstry

Posted on March 11, 2014 by Michael D. SmithJune 27, 2019

A deep psychic imbalance manifests itself on the island of Tromb in the Gray Isles, where the inhabitants play by their own rules and practice ancient and unapproved magic. Each of its four castle towers was to be commanded by a son, but the king and queen only produced three, and their daughter Rhinne, who became Sentinel of the North Tower, is shunned by the people of Tromb for supposedly condemning the island to its malaise. However, the causes of the imbalance prove to go much deeper, as this fast-paced novel brilliantly proceeds to investigate.

Ascarion, the fourth book in the Chronicles of Ealiron, is a rich and satisfying fusion of characters and themes from the first three volumes, and points the series in new philosophical and psychological directions. The opening scenes describing the unease on Tromb are unforgettable. The royal castle becomes a metaphor of timeless stagnation, injustice, and oppression. The architecture of the four towers with their claustrophobic circular underground seems a perfect breeding ground for evil as oborom warlords, a dark order claiming the undersides of the island, begin emerging from the depths under the command of Dore, Rhinne’s power-mad brother, and her father, King Ragnvald, whose soul has been taken over by a god seeking to hide an unthinkable past crime.

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Default Forces

Posted on March 4, 2014 by Michael D. SmithJune 27, 2019

I’ve grown quite enamored of this painting I did a couple weeks ago. But I hated it and cursed the monster as I fought to hook it and lash it to my little boat for hour after demented hour like the Old Man and the Sea. Finally admitting failure to achieve anything near the original plan, I just gave up on it. Later that evening, however, I began to see that the painting must have demanded to depict some sort of default energy state …

But during the awful hours of execution what was going through my head?

Forget it, this is the end, I have NO IDEA what I’m doing! I should never have tried to fool with this gloppy CRAP it doesn’t do what I want it to do but then WHEN DID IT EVER??? I’m DONE with abstract painting forever, no scratch that I’m done with ALL PAINTING FOREVER!!!! Why are these damn colors behaving like the STUPID CHEMICALS they are when I want them to be METAPHYSICAL TRANSCENDENCE???? Instead I get muddy GLOP! The damn paint isn’t making any SENSE! It’s NEVER made any sense!

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On Achieving a Slice of the Dream

Posted on January 24, 2014 by Michael D. SmithJune 12, 2015

Novel publication by a royalty-paying publisher is a major milestone, and feels a hundred times better than self-publishing. It means a lot that Double Dragon Publishing has acknowledged my potential. I’ve also enjoyed learning much more about this entire process than I think I could have with just self-publishing.

However, this isn’t the old print era where you got an advance against royalties and a marketing department selling your work. A lot of your attention and writing time is immediately diverted to Internet and otherwise marketing, to tooting your own horn, to setting yourself up on website, blog, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and whatever the next big thing is, to constantly being on the prowl for new marketing venues. Now this isn’t a bad thing, as explaining what you’re about can be clarifying–and may result in sales! It’s all new experience for growth. However, the realization soon sets in that you’re quite on your own. And there are times when you must choose between working on the newest novel or spending a great deal of time and energy describing your published work to a nebulous audience which in all likelihood isn’t even aware of your presence.

The main pitfall of such marketing efforts is to lose energy and get disheartened. But there can’t be any desperation about this process. You’re just putting out some seeds here and there; some may indeed grow down the line. Keep returning to your own work and the real reasons you write.

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