News from Brian Murphy about Gold Eagle

For those who are familiar with the Destroyer Series, by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy, there has been a new development in their relationship with Gold Eagle. Warren Murphy did not renew their contract when it was up for negotiation last summer, though he did let them exercise their option to publish the Destroyer through 2006.

One of the problems with the negotiations was that Gold Eagle did little to promote the series. They even refused an offer by the owner of Destroyer Club to buy an advertisement for the club in the back of the books. For some reason, now that they've lost the series, Gold Eagle is willing to offer a dedication/acknowledgement of Warren's site. You can view the picture below.

Nano and Web Site

Getting toward the halfway point in Nano! I was hoping to be at 25,000 words tomorrow, but I slacked off a bit today. Only got to 22,195, which means almost 3000 tomorrow if I want to make it. But I will sit down and try. Funny thing is, I've been flying by the seat of my pants lately. I didn't really plan out anything too much. Things just seem to work themselves out as I go along. For instance, originally, I had my heroine's brother telling her too much too soon, but I put up some roadblocks to that as I was writing it. Now, she's searching for answers somewhere else. I only thought of that plot point yesterday, but it gave me something I was sure about to write today. But I didn't feel as inspired to write it, though I got some speed up around eleven.

They had four My Name is Earls on tonight, and I got distracted watching them. Funny show, and sweet.

I still have ideas for tomorrow. The situation I have my heroine in is going to be playing out for a few chapters. No hurry. I still have half my word count to go.

There's an excerpt posted on my viewer profile over at Nanowrimo. It's crude and I haven't edited at all, so if you want to go check it out, I'm dmcourt there.

I'm getting tempted, too, by my new web site. Jerry finally persuaded me to register my name online, so I got a web site too, while I was at it. I worked on that a little, but there's still much to do, and I don't have a really clear idea of what I can put on it. I could have a book review section. And set up links and advertise the Destroyer and New Blood on there too, if anyone ever finds the site! For now, I'm just cross posting a few of my blogs there.

As soon as I finish my book (for now), I'll turn to the website. They have different themes besides the ones you can choose from. I'd like to decorate it for Christmas for now, then after Christmas, either go with a winter theme or -- probably better -- a tropical theme. I'm sure to be sick of snow by January.

Grateful

Got this over at Live Journal . I really need to do this. Too often I only think of things that go wrong or that I'm not happy about.

Gratitude Meme: List ten small things you're grateful for, then tag five other people to do the same.

1. Chocolate
2. Good old movies
3. Bad old movies that are so bad, they're good
4. Sundays
5. Typing instead of writing by hand
6. Warm days in November
7. Cool days in July
8. St. Francis of Assisi
9. My comfortable old bathrobe
10. live journal/blogs

Nano went well today. I couldn't write much Friday, but I had written over on other days, so I wasn't behind. But I mean to get far enough ahead this weekend so if something comes up during the week, I won't go too far behind then. I'm up to 9185, and if I can get in at least 2000 (hopefully 3000) tomorrow...

I was really proud of myself today. I couldn't start writing until after six, and I was starting on the third chapter. I had planned the first seven chapters, but decided, as I was starting tonight, to move what I'd had planned for the third chapter into the fourth chapter, and substitute one written in third person dealing with the villain. When I sat down, I had no real idea what was going to come out, but come out stuff did. While it's not great literature, I really wasn't expecting to pull ideas and words out of thin air like that. I hadn't really thought my villain through until I began tonight.

My cat seems much better today. I'm crossing my fingers. He was able to walk around much better. Yesterday, when he came home, the first thing he wanted was the litter box. He had to rest halfway to the bathroom, then, after doing his business, he lay down in the box until he could get up the strength to get out. He wasn't eating the special food they'd given me and he felt cold when I picked him up.

Today he's walking longer before he has to rest. I gave him his regular food tonight, and he's gone to the dish three times so far and ate a little bit each time. He feels warmer and his nose is pinker. I'll just have to keep giving him his medicine and hope for the best.

All in all, a much better birthday than I was picturing a few days ago.

Rights and Wrongs

I'm one of the administrators over at Destroyer Club, a site dedicated to the series created by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir. There have been over 140 books in the series since 1972, many of which have been written by ghost writers. Some background material before my rant.

When I first found the series, it had just gone over to Signet, and Murphy & Sapir were still writing it (for the most part). Then Will Murray took over as the main writer, with an occasional book by Murphy, Sapir, or both. I didn't realize back then about ghost writers. M&S's names were still on the books, and if they were a little different, they were still entertaining and featured the characters I had grown to love.

Signet gave way to Gold Eagle, and a few years later Murray gave way to Jim Mullaney, and still the series went on. But Gold Eagle didn't advertise it very well and didn't seem to care about selling as many of the books as they could. Jim Mullaney was made an offer he needed to refuse during his last contract negotiation, and a new writer took over. Sales plummeted, and as it stands now, Warren Murphy has refused a new contract with Gold Eagle and is shopping for a new publisher for the series. Since then the books have taken a nosedive in quality with the new writer, and GE has never promoted it, it's going to be a bit of a task.

Jim Mullaney, who continues to love the series, has been trying to help get the series back in the public eye a bit. Last week, National Review Online (the web branch of a conservative magazine) published an article by Jim. It posited that one of the reasons for the series' sliding popularity was that the conservative slant that had been in place since Murphy and Sapir's books had been sliding toward the left. He also happened to mention that the ghost writer before him, Will Murray, had also in his opinion not stayed true to the series' conservative roots.

Now, agree or disagree, it did get the series a bit of publicity, much more than it's had since Murphy and Sapir's Destroyers were mentioned in the New York Times Book Review. Sales (on Amazon.com) of the Assassin's Handbook 2, a privately published reader's guide to the thirty years of the series, even went up a little in the days after the article appeared.

However, Will Murray took it rather badly. Which is his right. However, he used this as the occasion to join the Destroyer club and make his first post there -- not to answer fans' eager questions, or give them a chance to say how much they loved his books, but to rant against Jim Mullaney. As one of the administrators, I can't take sides on the forums, but my blog is my own.

What an honor! After over a year of the club's existence, another one of the ghost writers finally shows up and it's to do nothing but spew venom against a fellow writer. Makes me wonder, if he cares so much about the Destroyer, why it took him so long to find us. It was pretty quickly rectified once he'd got a bug up his butt.

Contrast his behavior to that of Warren and Jim's, who have been posting on the Destroyer Club since the beginning. And while both of them have expressed their opinion about Gold Eagle, they haven't attacked the latest ghost writer or dissed other writers of the series. Even with Gold Eagle, they've never named names.

The Destroyer club is supposed to be a site for the fans to talk about Remo and Chiun and Smith and CURE, ask Warren and the ghostwriters questions, and just get together to talk. It is not supposed to be a site for one of the writers to slam another of the writers, no matter how justified he might think he is. The other admins aren't happy about his little temper tantrum either.

It really bothers me how he's gotten people's hopes up. Finally, another of the ghosts is on the forum! Several members responded eagerly to his post. They didn't give him the angry reactions he wanted, but were excited to see him there. The more cautious ones didn't weigh in; they probably read the message and found it disturbing. But I would bet everyone's hoping he'll be dropping in on us regularly now he's found us. I feel that since he's done his spewing and didn't get the indignation and support he craves, he won't be back. Which stinks for the fans. It's sure to occur to them that he could have found this site easily a year ago and didn't bother. And the site is for the fans, not for him to spit venom at Jim or engage in vendettas.

Twelve days to...

nanowrimo. Now I have the song from You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown running through my head. The one about The Book Report on Peter Rabbit... Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five... I'm glad Microsoft Works and Open Office come with automatic word counting. And I also wonder if contractions count as one or two words. Maybe I'll I will not use any, just as a little bit of a word count booster.

Rather ordinary day. Good news on the Destroyer front. Jim Mullaney wrote an article about the decline of the series that was on The National Review Online. Anything that will get the series in the public eye now that Warren Murphy's shopping it around to publishers. Caused a bit of a controversy on the Destroyerclub (but what doesn't).

Yesterday was the twelfth anniversary of my mother's death. Got through it better than last year. Don't know what happened last year that made it so hard. Maybe a convergence of that, hormones, and God knows what else. Though it may not have hit me on the exact day. Last year I had a bad two days, then for some reason my mood broke suddenly. The only reason I can pinpoint the day is that I suddenly felt better about halfway through the seventh game of the world series. Not because the Red Sox had a chance of winning that for the first time in 87 years (or so). I remember sitting there, feeling miserable and wishing I could enjoy something I probably wouldn't see again, and suddenly I felt better. Hormones. Go figure. But I think the last game of the world series had to be later than the 18th.

To get back to nanowrimo, I'm wondering about the hyphens. Do hyphenated words count as one or two? Vital questions for a very important issue...

NaNoWriMo

I've signed up for the national novel writing month. I'd heard about it last year, but couldn't think of anything to write. This time I have an idea; whether the novel will turn out well isn't the point. In fact, since it's probable there will be no time for editing, I should make up my mind before I start that it'll be total crap. Although I still hope that somehow there will be something worthwhile somewhere within it -- enough that I can work on it and maybe have something better than I thought.

While I'm waiting to start, I'm plotting out characters and what's going to happen and breaking that into chapters. I won't have time for planning when I start writing. There may be a lot of: he was a very, very, very, very, very tall man. Hmmm... note to self, don't use italics too much, takes too long to italicize words. I could probably type five of six words in the time it takes me to highlight and hit the little "i" button on top of the box here.

I'll also try to write something every day, sort of as a warmup. Can't go from no words to 1700 a day. I'll continue my entries about The Witching Hour on my Live Journal and My Space, try to post more on Destroyerclub (though I'll have to keep on topic there). Too bad these places don't give you a word count.

One good thing has come from signing up for nanowrimo, but I can't say what it is yet. I don't want to write that something is going to happen and then it doesn't pan out.

Everything is Beautiful (in its own way)

Had a little misunderstanding on Jim Butcher's mailing list earlier. There was a thread which had gone from word meanings to dress. One poster had written about seeing a five year old girl dressed in a skin tight mini skirt, hot pink tight top and knee length boots with two inch heels. Oh, and fish net stockings(what else).

There were a few posts in which the words decent/indecent came up regarding the issue of dressing a five year old (or allowing her to dress) this way. I wrote in mentioning that, emotionally charged words aside, it was a very constrictive, uncomfortable, and unhealthy (two inch heels are a bitch on adult feet, what they'll cost to a five year old years down the line is a matter for chiropodists to speculate).

As an aside, I happened to mention that I thought it was totally inappropriate unless you were between the ages of 18 and 29 and had a perfect, bulgeless body. I should know better than to speak lightly.

So, naturally, someone posted to the list that they weren't criticizing my opinion, then went on to suggest that I'm also revolted by the idea of elderly people having sex, that our society (and I by association) am superficial and only think perfect bodies should be seen. I have a sneaking suspicion she thinks I am between 18 and 29, with a fab bod who spends my time snickering at ugly people.

I'm feeling a little irritated right now that I'm feeling defensive about my opinion. After all, one of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes is "Number 22 Looks Just Like You" about a future where people were forced to have surgery so that everyone would be beautiful (and lobotomized). Rod Serling was a good writer who managed to say a lot in a half hour playlet about the nature of beauty and the importance of individuality and diversity. It was ahead of its time, in this age of plastic surgery and extreme makeovers. It worries me sometimes. It's shown so much on TV and the movies; we're getting Hollywood's view on the importance of looks shoved down our throats. I've written before that I'm an optimist, so I still believe that the majority of people outside Hollywood and NYC don't buy into that.

I'm 44 and not ashamed to say it (or put it on this blog). I'm also short and stout (being kind here) and if I ever go outside in a midriff baring outfit, it would be because my cold, stiff body is being taken out by ambulance.

Am I ashamed of my body? No. Neither do I think it's a work of art. Because I say that, some people might try to tell me I have "poor self esteem." My reply would be that it's a fair and honest assessment and I'm comfortable with it. Isn't it more a sign of poor self esteem if you're afraid to be honest with yourself?

Maybe it's my age, maybe it's just the way I was raised, but I don't believe that flaunting my body, wearing revealing outfits, shows pride in myself. It has nothing to do with sexuality. I was taught to dress to complement my body, minimize the flaws, accentuate the positive. Even if I were gorgeous, the same rules would apply. I've seen pictures of beautiful movie stars wearing outfits that didn't flatter them. Did they know that when they looked in the mirror and didn't care? If they did, I say go for it, girl! Just don't anybody insist that I say that they're looking their best.

Why CompuServe 7.0 sucks

When I hooked up my new computer, I was glad I'd saved the CD my ISP had sent me several months ago, when I'd had to reload it. It had been fouled up then, too, I forget the details. My old computer couldn't support the latest version, so I continued with Compuserve 4.0, which suited me anyway, as I was used to it.

Now here I was with Compuserve 7.0, and the problems started almost immediately. Suddenly, I couldn't log in to My Space. Every attempt took me back to the sign up page, and when I tried to sign up again I'd get an error message. I contacted My Space three times and received no reply. Guess you get what you pay for.

Then I noticed when I went to My Preferences and tried to change anything, CS would freeze, forcing me to log off. And my computer would freeze if I tried to log back on too soon.

Now to Blogger. My dashboard looked strange. I saw the problem: the blogger news that they post under the dashboard was now superimposed over my dashboard. And none of my dashboard controls would work. Wrote to Blogger. Three times. See the last sentence two paragraphs back.

By this time I was increasingly irritated and worried and decided to bring some of the problems to the attention of Compuserve. I wrote to them about My Space and Blogger (hadn't realized the "Preferences" problem yet) and received a disinterested reply that I should really get in touch with the web sites in question, as how could this be Compuserve's fault.

I had installed Firefox, on the recommendations of a few friends, when I set up the new computer. Jerry had sent me a DVD-rom with some of his favorite freeware programs he'd found over the years.

A few nights ago, at a loss for any solutions, I had activated Firefox. For the hell of it, I decided to try connecting to Blogger through it. Since you're reading this, you can guess the outcome. And My Space. Success there also. JKRowling.com, which I had just discovered I couldn't access, except through the text only version on good old CS? You probably can guess that too.

I'm only paying $14.95 a month for CS, though I'm thinking of adjusting my budget enough to spring for DSL. But we have Comcast cable at work, and it has it's down moments. I could add, once more, that you get what you pay for. But Firefox is free.

Hypothetical Situation

Urban Sasquatch posed this time travel question on his blog a few days ago. At first, I meant to answer in the comments for that blog, but decided it would take up too much space.

The situation and rules are:

You have a year in which to prepare for this trip in any fashion you dub appropriate.

More still -- you can take approximately two hundred pounds of cargo with you, be it another person, equipment/books, money -- the list is infinite!

Now, the important part: It's a one-way trip!

Wherever you go, whenever you go, you will live out your life there until the day you die in whatever fashion Nature dictates.

1. Where/when do you go, and why?
2. How do you spend your year preparing for the trip?
3. What do you take with you?
4. What is your purpose?

I needed a few days to think it over and shush my practical side.

My practical side said, "When you start going back in time, each era will have increasingly inferior medical care." It glared fiercely at me, adding: "Don't mention diseases like AIDS and SARS. Without vaccines and antibiotics, you've got polio -- and tuberculosis. What about bubonic plague, huh? Huh? And if they know enough to operate, before the mid-nineteenth century, you won't get anesthesia. Think about it."

This is only an exercise in imagination, you know. We're supposed to have fun with this.

"Fun? You won't have much fun as a woman. Let's face it; in this time and place you have more rights and protection than any time in history. Go back far enough, even here or in Europe, and you won't be able to vote or own property."

Shut up.

"Oh, and speaking of going to other countries, have you even thought of the language problems? Remember all those years of French in high school? Can you speak it, really? You don't really have an ear for languages. And remember, go back more than three or four hundred years, and even English becomes a little tricky."

OK, so I never could shut my practical side up. But I did manage to compromise. It's still not happy. Anyway:

1. Where/when do you go, and why?

England, Regency period, c.1800-1830. Not too bad for women. Language not a problem; good literature (Austen, the Brontes), with Dickens to look forward to. Napoleonic wars, but England is peaceful. No big famines or plagues. Women have ditched the big powdered wigs and the fashions are comfortable. Interesting people and conversation. London's got a fairly small population and anyone worth knowing is pretty much there.

2. How do you spend your year preparing for the trip?

Learning as much about the times as possible, with an emphasis on investments and shipping. When I get there, I'll need to make as much money as quickly as possible. No point living in the past if you're not rich. The conditions below middle class were wretched in the city, and work from sunup to sundown on the farms.

Also, take a few nursing courses, learn as much as possible about herbs and natural medicine. Investigate if I'd be able to make a few simple antibiotics. Learn to bake from scratch, how they do laundry, etc. (I'm planning on getting rich enough for servants to do all that, but it's better not to be ignorant of household things).

3. What do you take with you?

A medicine case (I know, any pills would lose strength eventually, but it would give me a start). A few precious gems to sell for a start up stake, since you can't get gold. A few favorite books.

4. What is your purpose?

Do I have to have a purpose? To live well, to enjoy the company of the great thinkers and writers of the age. To stay one step ahead of the times.

New Blood On Sale

A few years ago, on warrenmurphy.com, Warren wrote to his fans that he wanted to thank us for being such loyal readers of the Destroyer series. He'd decided to publish a book of short stories, entirely fan written, with a forward written by him.

I'd never written any fiction, aside from some small attempts as a child, but I decided to try. There had been a character mentioned a few times, but never seen. I'd always wondered what she'd have to say. I had already imagined things about her life as I'd come across references to her in the books. Since something of her life was known, I thought it might be easier for a beginner. The story already was structured; I just had to fill in things from her perspective.
It was both easier, and much harder, than I'd imagined. I got stuck about two thirds through, and spent months fiddling with it, changing a word here, a phrase there. Finally, about a year later, after I learned how to format it, I e-mailed the file. It wasn't bravery, it was ignorance (or innocence). That, and I figured he lived too far away for me to hear him laughing.

Then, hearing back from him. Finding out that he thinks it's well-written. Finding out he likes it. Imagine that, something I'd set in someone else's world, a world that I love, and hearing back from the author that he liked what I did!

Now, the book's been printed. My copy is already on the way. The book went on sale yesterday. Just through warrenmurphy.com, and destroyerworld.com; later Amazon will get some in. Ballybunnion is a small publishing house so it can only do so much.

My biggest hope is that Mr. Murphy will at least break even on the printing costs, or maybe do a little better. I know I have a few stories ready to choose from if a second book becomes a possibility. I know some of the other authors have some too. Then there are the others, the ones who didn't know about the short story submissions until it was too late. Some of them have written fan fiction at the DestroyerClub that's really well done. It would be a shame if none of them got their chance. For now, I'll have to wait and see and try to think of ways to sell New Blood.

And, if nothing else ever comes from it, thank you, Mr. Murphy, for giving me the incentive to try something I'd always wanted to try.