Sunday, July 7, 2024

New Imprint and New Publication at Tootie-Do Press!

’Tis late to hearken, late to smile,

But better late than never;

I shall have lived a little while

Before I die for ever.

~ A.E. Housman, “You Smile Upon Your Friend Today”


Tootie says it’s my own damn fault that I didn't announce our new imprint and new publication in July 2023 on Wordwhacking Dreams. She’s really not being cheeky when she says she has no opposable thumbs and so can't be responsible for some hands-on tasks around the ranchita. She tried to keep me on task, but alas! So much to do, so many distractions!

Since its inception in 2014, the Tootie-Do Press mission is to publish quirky speculative fiction with a romantic twist. But every now and then, we've considered sharing publications outside that parameter. After all, I write in various styles and genres, and not everything I write is accepted for publication in literary magazines or by conventional presses.

After giving it much thought, Tootie encouraged me to share a much more serious literary short story (no opposable thumbs needed for editorial encouragement!) I began writing "The Respect of Stone" long ago when I began learning the art and craft fiction writing. Years later, I enlarged the story and polished it during my graduate creative writing program at Aberystwyth University in 2009. That particular seminar piece earned my highest score of the program's five-week seminars, and contributed to my earning a "With Merit" status on my MA diploma.

Subsequently, the story placed as a shortlist semifinalist (something like #50 out of more than 500 entries, if I recall correctly) in the SLS Kenya Literary Contest in 2010. This placement included a discount for the December 2010 SLS Kenya - Kenya Between the Lines - Kwani Litfest gatherings in Nairobi and Lamu Island, Kenya. Attending this notable conference was the thrill of a lifetime!

The story was a longlist semi-finalist in the 2011 Carve Magazine Raymond Carver Short Story Contest, also an honor and a surprise.

But alas, university degrees and awards and near awards don't equal publication. The edgy theme of child molestation is something many presses decline to publish in fiction to avoid triggering readers, with some exceptions for edgy memoir. For some reason presses like edgy reality but avoids harm to children in fiction. So after many years of intermittent submission and revision, with some praise but no offers of publication, I finally decided to call it quits and indie published the story as an Amazon exclusive.

I'm glad I waited because I wouldn't have discovered this amazing artist  - Viergachtnor published the tale with this lovely cover if I'd rushed it to publication earlier. Tootie says that procrastination and indecision sometimes works to our benefit! I agree. Sometimes the time has to be right to cast a project into the light.

So without further adieu, here's the cover and link to the Amazon sales page



~*~

Normally at Tootie-Do Press we publish wide our full-length works and you can purchase those internationally from dozens of venues in ebook and in print from Amazon and IngramSpark, but we've shared a handful of short stories as Amazon exclusives. This is our first literary short story that falls outside our press mission, so we created a new imprint called Canid Craft in honor of our canine friends both domestic and wild. There is a dog mentioned in the story that doesn't play a major role in the plot, but the big barn owl on the cover has some strong metaphorical significance. 

We hope you enjoy the tale!

 ~*~

*2011  Longlist semifinalist, Carve Magazine Raymond Carver Short Story Contest

*2010  Shortlist finalist, SLS Kenya Literary Contest

*2010  Attended SLS Kenya, Kenya Between the Lines & Kwani Litfest, Nairobi & Lamu Island

Friday, July 5, 2024

Smashwords July 2024 Summer / Winter Sale

Miss Tootie, our editorial assistant, is excited that our Tootie-Do Press novels and our award-winning short story collection are a cool 99 cents! Whether you celebrate Winter Solstice ✨in the Northern Hemisphere or the Summer Solstice 💦 in the Southern Hemisphere, you'll enjoy browsing titles at the Smashwords 20224 July Summer / Winter Sale, July 1 - July 31! 




Smashwords carries over 150,000 ebooks with deep discounts 🛒of 25%, 50%, and 75% in your favorite ebook formats. Nearly 100,000 books at Smashwords are enrolled at the loooww price of FREE! 

Tootie-Do Press novel titles – Heart of Desire: 11.11.11 Redux and Cryonic Man: A Paranormal Affair, plus our award-winning Tootie-Do Press Original – The Contest and Other Stories, a mash-up of quirky, connected magical realist, paranormal, and fantasy tales inspired by artwork🎨 – are a hot 'n' cool 50% off in your favorite ebook formats. Ninety-nine cents is a steal by any stretch of the imagination! 

Not only that, all Tootie-Do Press titles at Smashwords have snazzy new interiors for your reading pleasure!  




Tootie, our intrepid editorial assistant!


Thursday, July 4, 2024

Someone, Somewhere, Somehow . . .

I asked you how he's doing, the day before he died
You said, "He's doing fine, we're all just doing fine . . ."

~ Skyler McKee, Super Whatevr - "Someone, Somewhere, Somehow" - Good Luck (EP)

Wowie, I've been absent for a long time! The current contentious state of American politics is one reason; I stay engaged, immersed in the political drama unfolding the past few years and participate now as a local poll worker. (That's the most useful and fun part!) As the 2020 election, 2022 US midterm elections, and election year 2024 approached, I've spent way too much time reading books, articles, and blog posts, viewing news highlights featuring various pundits on YouTube, and listening to various podcasts. Then there's the obligatory daily dip into social media - sometimes dipping several times a day when some particularly important news drops. I'm a Gemini info enthusiast, so there's no way I'm not gonna read up and comment on issues. As an introvert,  commenting online is a way to develop my thoughts for real world conversations. Maybe I'm just weird like that. For me, there's no clear dichotomy of cyberworld  *bad* and real world *good*. Both the cyberworld and the real world have their illusory and limited qualities. Community and communication happen at both levels too. But sometimes cybersurfing seems like gigantic waste of time that could be used for real world socializing or recreational pursuits. I tend to live in my mind - a dreamer, as my mother used to say, though she meant it as criticism. On the other hand, I've lived through family-rearing, working years in which I've limited my online time to an hour or less per day. I can be quite disciplined when push comes to shove.

Sadly, I'm not one of those writers who's able to churn out creative writing while the world feels like it's descending into chaos. I so admire authors who have planted bottoms to chairs and fingers to pens and keyboards through the tremendously distracting ups and downs and changes of the past decade -  the Trump years, Covid, and the current uncertainty that affects both our nation and the world as controversy surrounds the first Biden - Trump debate, shadowed also by recent US Supreme Court decisions that range from questionable to biased to corruptly influenced. Beyond the shared national and international news, everyone alive has personal  challenges, obstacles, or dramas to quell too - life is a path with built-in joys and sorrows, so everyone negotiates these against a more sweeping backdrop of local, national, and world events. We also experience empathy and consternation when our loved ones are dealing with challenges. It seems lately than any personal peace is suddenly turned upside down because someone near and dear is experiencing a crisis - that's how it's been for me lately, anyway. Every aspect of our lives are part and parcel of our human nature and fodder for growth and wisdom. It's intriguing to consider that we might choose these crazy lifetimes for particular learning situations when we enter the physical realm.

Despite my distractable nature, I've kept up with editing projects for clients, written close to 300 book reviews in the past five years, and regularly answered some thematic questions on Quora since 2016, but feel as though I've had the creative juice sucked right out of my physical and spiritual bloodstream. My creative charge has been next to nil since early 2018, though I've tinkered a bit with revision of a handful of unpublished poems, stories, and essays. Re-visioning and re-envisioning old work. I think now and then about the memoir I put on a back burner not long after I began jotting notes om 2014, crafting an introduction, and one early chapter draft. I now have another decade of growth to work from. I have some new, exciting ideas about the memoir composition and structure, inspired by some author pioneers who have recently penned and published speculative memoir. I've not yet implemented these ideas in reality and am still considering how this writing technique will mesh with my childhood recollections. There's a dream-like aspect of my childhood that's naturally surreal, so word-weaving that alternate reality through the more ordinary narrative should be a cinch. I'm anxious to get started, yet don't feel like the time is right. I'm revving the engine and popping the clutch but not in motion yet. The only certainty is that I don't know how much time I have left. I really should get cracking to beat the mortality clock. I can't afford to live as if I this life is infinite. I'm at an age where one begins to gaze beyond the beyond!

I'm not sure why I'm sharing these thoughts at this particular moment, especially when I've not created a large following here and nor posted regularly. I took down my old website and bought a new website template, thinking to stop blogging and post a detour notice here, but I haven't built the site. I've been in life review, questioning everything I've ever accomplished writing-wise. I've considered quitting for three years now - I mentioned that in a previous post and continue to drag my feet indecisively. Part of me doesn't want to keep writing at all and could walk away from this interest that morphed from hobby to profession and back to hobby level again over the past twenty-five years. I've been awaiting some definite sign or some special inspiration to help reveal what I should do with my remaining time on the planet. Maybe no strong answer is a sign I should simply relax and enjoy life more. Time to get out of my comfortable but limiting home zone and have some bucket list adventures before it's too late!

I feel tonight as if I'm casting words to the wind like seeds seized by air currents, darting, twisting, and drifting to potentially fertile gardens or rocky, untillable ground. I release thoughts from my mind, from my life, from my ownership, not really caring if my word seeds grow or even if they matter to someone, somewhere, somehow . . .

Are any of our thoughts unique? Do we all think many of the same things randomly? I wrote the last phrase in the preceding paragraph spontaneously. Then googled the phrase someone, somewhere, somehow because it feels like a fairly common, universal expression. The alliteration sounds good and the thought is plaintive or romantic. I knew a plethora of links would come up in a search, both English grammar practical stuff and daydreamy creative stuff. I figured the phrase would come up in poetry or a short story first, but the first few results related to the song lyrics from which I quoted above. Do you or I think about or express anything now that hasn't been considered before? We seem to inhabit billions of different bodies over eons of time, each experiencing universal events with random personal reactions that also seem universal in essence. 

The history of humankind is short in cosmic terms, but seems lengthy to us because we're in temporary containers with an average lifespan of seventy to eighty years. A century seems like a long time to us, let alone a millennia or more. The total number of humans and humanoids who have existed throughout the ages on our planet is probably incomprehensible. So must be the number of thoughts and utterances from these innumerable beings. The root of human communication is our natural ability to compose and share story. We are all talented storytellers - we tell one another about our days, our dreams, and our struggles and sorrows quite often. We're lucky we humans have an innate capacity for storytelling, otherwise life might be far more drab without this gift. Lately it feels as though humanity's most wounded people are pitching fits and sucking up all the oxygen in mass consciousness. Our emotional outlet when confronted by things that make us uncomfortable is the ability to share our feelings and tell our stories.

How are you dealing with the juxtaposition of your dreams and the realities of daily life in this precarious era? What are the stories that you're sharing now? 

I've been too serious for a long time. I think I just wanna have more fun.


Ziplining - Ensenada, Mexico


Friday, April 28, 2023

Reimagining - Reconsidering

Your children are grown and your career has slowed down - all the stuff that took up so much attention is gone, and you're left with expansive time and space. You have to reimagine who you are and what life is about.

- Jessica Lange

I've been doing a bunch of reimagining in the past decade. In fact, reimagining my life has truly reached a zenith over the past year, probably because I'm approaching my seventieth birthday this summer. I'm seriously considering retiring entirely from writing and editing, which feels shocking on one hand and oh, so logical on the other. 

It's under this influence of reimagining that I renamed this blog from Jellyfish Day to Wordwhacking Dreams a month ago. I nearly unpublished the blog when I unpublished my creaky old website just moments before. Really, it would have made far more sense to keep the old website up until the new site is complete, but I just had the awful feeling one day that it was time to unpublish.

I'm sometimes a spontaneous soul but not necessarily impulsive - I tend to overthink everything.  So hitting the unpublish button on the website wasn't particularly impulsive in that I've intended to redo it for over a decade. And I refrained from actually doing it due to a combination of work issues, laziness, apathy, and lately, my uncertainty about continuing on my word-whacking path. I finally settled upon creating a simple CV-style website and left the actual writing and editing decisions up in the air. So far, the website creation has not been fun, but that's a story for another day.

The title Jellyfish Day made extraordinary sense to me in 2010, considering it was one of my euphemisms for having a bad day. The title feels much less appropriate in 2023 - perhaps even an insult to jellyfish. They're rather exotic, drifty, and tranquil-looking creatures worthy of more praise than association with a chilly, dark, damp, and disappointing mood or day, as I see it now. As we become ever more socially conscious, we also have to consider how we metaphorically insult pigs, dogs, and jellyfish, even . . .

That said, renaming the blog was definitely a bit impulsive, considering the posts contained many author interviews and book reviews easily found with search engines. Now I've rendered them a bit hard to locate under a new blog title, but I suspect that search engines will catch up . . .

My logic for wanting to unpublish the blog is that Blogspot was a big deal and the blogging venue of choice back when I created Jellyfish Day in 2010. Now people are Wordpress-ing and Substacking their hearts out instead. I opened Jellyfish Day while traveling overseas because my older-than-sin website had no blog option and I had lots to say. These days I have much less to say. I really don't have much desire to open a substack or have an active YouTube channel. I do enjoy sharing my photos on Instagram - and that's also a story for another day. 

Basically, I just wanna have more fun with a lot less stress and effort. Retirement can be as boring or as interesting as you make it, and the writer and editor in me are kinda weary of putting in long hours and not having much playtime. When you're long in the tooth and not certain how much time you have left, careers and mid-life to-do seem much less important than cherishing and celebrating the time you have left . . . 

Of course, I could make it my eleventy-first birthday celebration, like Bilbo Baggins. Or to 92, like my mom, and with the grace of Spirit and her inborn determination, she'll make it to 93 this summer, and perhaps beyond . . . My father lasted until 82. My combined genetics may not be as hardy as hers or his!

Maybe I'll pop off tomorrow. We never know how long our Earthly sojourn will be!

Anyway, this post wasn't supposed to be about me, dammit. But since I wiped my website from cyberspace, I owed readers an explanation. I figure I oughta repost a few things from it!

On that note, Cryonic Man: A Paranormal Affair (Tootie-Do Press, 2015) celebrated its eighth birthday recently. So without further ado, here's a piece written by author Joe DiBuduo about his first published novel. The essay first appeared on his website and on the Tootie-Do Press page of my now-defunct website in 2015. 

July 2024 Note: Sadly, Joe DiBuduo passed away on August 15, 2023. He didn't preserve himself cryonically, and he's very much missed by his family and a wide circle of artisan and writer friends. A week after his departure he sent double rainbows to my ranchita in the heart of the Sonoran Desert to say he's just fine! I'm pretty certain that Joe is having a blast beyond the beyond, just as he always did in earthly life.

: : :



Hello! I’m Joe DiBuduo and I’d like share how and why I wrote Cryonic Man: A Paranormal Affair, my sci-fi / paranormal romance novel (Tootie-Do Press, 2015).

During my research for Cryonic Man, I studied the procedures used in cryopreservation and I explain this process in the novel. I first read that the concept of cryonics was introduced by Robert Ettinger, the founder of Cryonics Institute, in his landmark book, The Prospect of Immortality (Ria University Press, 2005).

At this writing (2015) it is illegal to perform cryonic suspension on someone who is still alive. A person who undergoes this procedure must first be pronounced legally dead – that is, their heart must have stopped beating. I’m sure your first question is, “But if someone is dead, how can they ever be revived?”

According to scientists who perform cryonics, “legally dead” is not the same as totally dead. Death, medical science says, is the point at which all brain function ceases. Legal death occurs when the heart stops beating, but some cellular brain function remains. Cryonics preserves what little cell function remains so that, theoretically, the person can be resuscitated in the future.

How people are able to survive on the brink of death depends upon medical technology. A hundred years ago, cardiac arrest was irreversible. People were declared dead when their hearts stopped beating. Today, death is believed to occur six minutes after the heart stops. After that time interval, it’s difficult to resuscitate the brain.

However, with new experimental treatments, more minutes of cardiac arrest can be survived without brain injury. Future technologies for molecular repair may extend the ability to resuscitate people beyond what is imaginable today. The definition of death may be revised from “a permanent cessation of all vital functions” to “a temporary pause in vital functions.”

Millions of people are captivated by the concept of living, dying, and awakening dozens or hundreds of years from now. Cryonics may be a simple form of time travel that doesn’t involve wormholes, speed of light travel, curved space-time, or breaking the scientific laws of Einstein’s theories. Cryonic suspension could be used in long interstellar space flights.

Cryonics slows down or stops molecular activity to halt aging, and more importantly, to avoid or extend to the future, the process of dying. For most of us, cryonics seems bizarre, but it is plausible. When we get used to the idea that medical science will advance to the point in which dying people can be healed and even aging can be reversed or slowed down, we can accept the idea that cryopreservation is obtainable in our lifetime. Even now, molecular healing via nanobots is under research and will become a viable process in the near future.

Essentially, advanced technology in the future will restore any cellular function destroyed by hypoxia, disease, the cryonic preservation process, or reperfusion injury – damage caused when the blood supply returns to tissue after a period of ischemia, or lack of oxygen, such as after a heart attack. The point of cryogenics is that nearly everyone who dies is only “mostly dead.”

Often, people confuse cryonics with cryogenics. Cryonics is a process and cryogenics is a field of study – the study of the production and the behavior of materials at very low temperatures (below −150 °C, −238 °F or 123 K). Cryonics borrows from cryogenics but it is not subjected to the same rigors and is intrinsically based on assumptions that seem quite plausible at the present time, but may or may not turn out to be true.

American baseball champ Ted Williams was cryopreserved in two parts – head and body – after his death in 2002. Stories about his body undergoing disrespectful treatment emerged soon after his cryonic procedure. Larry Johnson, a former chief operating officer of Alcor Life Extension in Arizona, came forward to report “horrific” and “unethical” practices by the company.

Cryopreservation includes a full-body preservation option or the “neuro option” of having only the head preserved, on the premise that the brain is the seat of memory and that the human body and its organs may be easily regenerated from DNA in the future.

The following questions filled my mind after reading Ted Williams’ story:

1. If Ted were revived, who would own his DNA?

2. Would those who had inherited his property have to return it?

3. The skills of most anyone revived after a number of years would be outdated.

4. Should a person who wants to be frozen for future resuscitation invest in some type of insurance program to ensure they’d have an income when revived.

5. If a young person were cryonically preserved, would he or she age?

6. What if he or she was brought back to life after fifty years and he remained the same age at time of death and cryopreservation?

7. Where does the cryopreserved person’s soul go for fifty years?

8. Is there a spiritual world where people go after they die?

9. Does the cryopreserved person go to heaven, hell, or someplace else?

10. Could another spirit or soul possess a cryopreserved person’s body when that person is resuscitated after years in a cryonic state?

11. What if a cryopreserved patient’s body is possessed by an evil spirit? Would the two souls combine and become one, or would a battle for the body ensue?

12. How would a cryopreserved person feel about children or other loved ones who are physically older?

13. How would a cryopreserved patient feel about their spouse or partner who may end up being twice or three times their age?

14. If a cryopreserved patient is a champion sports figure like Ted Williams, would he or she want to resume their career?

15. Will there be laws written to protect the rights of cryopreserved and resuscitated persons?

I wrote Cryonic Man: A Paranormal Affair to answer these questions. So if you’d like to see my answers, please purchase a copy!


Photo and text ©2015, Joe DiBuduo

:::

Cryonic Man is available in ebook formats at many international book emporiums. The book also available in new and used softcover at all international Amazons.



Tootie-Do Press
 Quirky speculative fiction with a romantic twist!


PS - Tootie, my editorial assistant says Joe doesn't mention it, but Cryonic Man has a dual protagonist and one facet of this persona is Erzsébet Báthory, the legendary Blood Countess. Fascinating!

Friday, March 24, 2023

Impermanence

We did not exist, the we we thought we'd always be.

- Catherine Lacey,  Nobody Is Ever Missing


People get old. So do websites and blogs . . .

I've really, really disliked my old website for a zillion years. In fact, I planned to replace the website with this blog more than a decade ago. Now this blog is older than sin too . . .

After this post, I plan to unpublish my old website even though it almost breaks my heart. It's ugly and outdated to a humorous point, but has tons of information gathered and placed over almost two decades. Perhaps I should leave it up as I craft a new site because I'll likely send some bit of information into the cyberspace ethers that I wish I'd saved for posterity. Sometimes when decisions loom, I can't seem to make these in a rational way. Hence I tend to engage in some radical cord cutting. I can't seem to do anything halfway, like leaving well enough alone until I build a new website. The old one screams defunct and can barely be managed due to web browser improvements.

I've been dinking around for months - actually, about four years - with plans to build a new website, a site with a blog this time. Not a neglected blog with lots of collateral info like this one. I need a nice, modern site with a minimalist feel and just enough info to make my wordwhacking life seem contemporary and relevant even though I've partially retired from the writing, editing, and publishing biz. 

Sometimes I just want to be free and retired and not think about words at all. But there's still enough ink and pixels squirting through my bloodstream to toy with a project or two. I hope to finish at least three books in progress (my own) and I also occasionally take on a book shepherding or editorial project for clients via Starstone Editorial. 

I feel sad that I've devoted so much time to US politics over the past seven years, but let's blame that on fascist tendencies unleashed into the world from our very own democratic republic by the former guy, 45. I had to stand up and say a lot of things since his campaign started in 2015, mostly on Facebook and Twitter, but sometimes here, too. I probably wasted a chunk of my life preaching to the choir, but at least the universe knows where I stand, right? 

Anyway, you'll notice I changed this blog name from Jellyfish Day to Wordwhacking Dreams, because for a long time, my writing life has been little but a dream. I kept the subtitle about jellyfish and sundogs because those are still relevant [Note: but decided in July 2024 to dispense with the subtitle, but the early posts about jellyfish days is still there, as is the corresponding sundog post]. Anyone who reads my posts from the beginning will see why these matter. Everything in the universe matters at some level, of course. 

I miss the jellyfish photo that my youngest daughter took, but I also like the blooming saguaro cactus arm that looks like an extended hand, "hand" since my wordwhacking daydreams currently drift amidst the iconic saguaro cacti groves in the mystical Sonoran Desert. [I wrote this  probably intending to add the saguaro banner photo that I use on X-itter. Sorry, Elmo. 

At least there's that to daydream about, right?

Part of me really wants to remove any trace of my existence from cyberspace and just move on into mysterious obscurity. But the truth is, I still have some kick in my kicks and still need to put some food on the table - and Miss Tootie's dog dish - so here we are. Our Tootie-Do Press titles are still available to readers at multiple international book emporiums. 

When my new website is up, it will hopefully not chase away potential editing clients, as I fear my old website had. When the new site is finished, I'll likely put this blog to sleep as well, but will leave it up to link to the new site. 

Impermanence is poignant and painful. Change never stops. My Cancerian emotions cling to stability and tradition. I don't know how to let go even though I've had to let go of many phases and stages in my life. As I head toward my seventieth birthday this summer, I'm a lot less certain of how to approach this stage of life. The empty nest phase of the past decade has been difficult for me. I should feel free and ready for senior adventures but feel wistful for the family life I cherished, routines that kept me so busy that I had little time to think about anything deeply except when I wrote about it.

I should write about that!

Maybe I will. 

I've been playing lately with a bit of poetry, which is where I started in this writing life . . . writing poetry is definitely inspired by my wacky, wordwhacking dreams . . . 


 
You'd never guess that a freeway exit ramp is on the other
side of that wall! Phoenix, Arizona, Summer 2021