New Book Concept (give me the credit, at least)

I was in a waiting room the other day (no, not the doctor… but thanks for caring) and looked around for a magazine to riffle through while waiting and it seemed the wait might be longer than interminable.

No magazine rack. No unruly pile of well-worn last year’s Sports Illustrated or ESPN News… not even a copy of Golf Digest.

But in front of the couch I was sitting on was a “coffee table” though there was no urn in sight. And I coulda used a cup to help me stay awake, too.

Anyhow, there was a book on the table.

Only one.

With the reading materials category being so severely limited, I picked it up. It was, of course, a “coffee table book” and it was heavy!! I set it on my lap and spent about five minutes massaging my elbow, aching from the strain of the grab and lift.

Ah, but back to the book. It had thick glossy pages filled with full-color photos of the American West, or more specifically Arizona. It was a collection of the best photographs from “Arizona Highways” magazine. Some of them were ancient! Sepia toned prints from Ansel Adams and a couple of other old dudes snapping shots of the Grand Canyon… you know, before the tourists got there and brought their burros.

Anyway, that’s when I got this great new idea for a coffee table book. It is called The Coffee Table Book. Catchy, huh?

And it will be filled with the history of… the coffee table. And it will be filled with full-color shots of… coffee tables. All different styles, designs, and so forth.

And sitting on each one, placed near the center (prominent position), unobstructed by plants, candles, or annoying coffee cups, will be The Coffee Table Book!

Wow! Wouldn’t that be so… so… well, so something, I am sure.

So, if you’ve got the inclination for that one, it’s yours.

But I’d still like to have the credit, maybe tucked away somewhere behind the title page, eight-point font, below the copyright information, perhaps.

Thanks!

Trying to Get Away from Time

My editor asked me a question when I brought him my next novel. After the humorous science fiction novel When Time Went Mad he asked why my next novel was called, of all things, A Waste of Time.

And was it, he asked, another novel about time travel?

Geez! I wonder how he guessed? Could it have been the sketch of the front cover showing the various time periods that gave him that…

Okay! All right! Yes, its another science fiction about time travel. But it’s nothing like the first novel, it’s… well, different.

Still, he wondered if I had become obsessed with time travel.

Now how could anyone become obsessed with such a thing? Aside from the fact that – since there were not actual “facts” in the field – the subject is completely wide open, limitless, and so on.

With such complete freedom in that specific genre, how could someone not become obsessed with it? Anything could happen in such a story!

The opportunity for humor is as limitless in this genre as the number of possible scientific interpretations, or endings.

How can anyone not love this genre?

Well, I guess, my editor, for one.

Still, the volume on which I am currently working has absolutely nothing to do with time travel. Nothing!

(That is if you discount the little… No, I’m joking! There’s no time travel.)

Although there is a lot of clowning around to be had. But then it is called Attack of the Bozoids – Clowns From Outer Space.

But that’s still in development at present.

And I promise I won’t even think about making time travel a part of the volume.

However, the next volume…

a Small Gathering to Meet the Author

Yes, that’s what this is.

And I would be the author.

Hopefully, you have reached this blog because you are a fan of my books (only two at the moment: Mechanical Mouse, a tome of satirical poetry with accompanying illustrations of rodents, and the science fiction epic-humor-thing, When Time Went Mad.

If you wandered onto this blog by accident, please check out the two volumes in question and join in the conversation… or something.

(Yeah, like that sales pitch is going to work!)

Even if the books are not the reason you came, hopefully we can find something funny to discuss. I mean, this is the world after all and it is populated by the funniest species in the universe: people! And they are always up to something that can be viewed from a variety of humorous viewpoints.

At least, I hope so.

But as I am starting this thing after the election is finished – except maybe for Florida… but then there’s always the Floridian exception, isn’t there? – I guess I won’t get a chance to use all my Mitt Romney jokes (or the very few I had about Paul Ryan, either) and so I’ll have to figure out something to discuss.

Until then, over and out.