Projects included in this animation are © the producers listed in the animation.

¹ Sorry Apple® mobile users (of which I am one)… this interactive flash can’t be converted to video.

I had just skidded across the lip of sixteen when the Feebs (the EFF BEE EYE) first came knocking at my door.Okay, my mother’s door – looking for me. They were tall, and expressionless, like Sergeant Joe Friday on tranquilizers. Their suits were the same gray, their shoes the same shiny black. I figured what I had done was freedom of expression, they called it something else. ‘Nuf said.

My “crime” appeared to be that I was a ringleader in the Great Pizza Protest of 1966 in a northern Colorado high school (I could tell you the name but then I’d have to — you know the drill.) The high school had begun to enforce what they lovingly called a “closed campus.” This meant, among other things, that our lunch-time sustenance would be limited to — you got it — school lunches the stuff that comes in 55 gallon drums that the govmint hands out. If you’ve ever had one, you’ll understand the reasoning behind the Great Pizza Protest of 1966. A bunch of us had the gol-durned gall to have fresh, steaming, sweet smelling PIZZAs — about 50 kazillion of them — delivered right to the school lunchroom. ‘Nuf said.

Turns out the administration felt that the Great Pizza Protest of 1966 was distracting, disrespectful, disruptive, and downright disAmerican. They handed out a lot of detention and other forms of horrible, evil punishment. Man, it was terrible. ‘Nuf said.

So, right about now, you’re wondering. What the hell does the FBI have to do with the Great Pizza Protest of 1966? Were they using mozarella made with plutonium shavings? Nah, Rocky Flats was about 30 miles away. It kind of went this way — I decided that I would let the principal know my true feelings about the horrible, evil punishments meted out, especially to us ringleaders. How did I let him know? I wrote him a letter.

Huh? You ask.

Then (suspenseful pause inserted here) — I MAILED IT.

Turns out if you’re going to mail somebody a letter about horrible, evil punishments meted out to everyone especially the ringleaders, you ought to be careful about the language — and the timbre and tone, if you know what I mean. Otherwise, the FBI, with nothing better to do, will come and pound your door.

If I took a poll right now, you’re opinion would probably be that I made all of this up. You’d probably think that there really was no Great Pizza Protest of 1966 — but you’d be wrong. Every bit of it is true. It’s the rest of the stuff you see here that’s made up.

I’m a writer, ya know.
rlc

I just went over to the Ron Chalice Official Website and was shocked to see that it is only ONE page. No links, nothing! My first thought was that what the Boss said a couple of months ago about whacking me might just be true.

Then, I took half a minute to actually read what was written on the page. It says that things are just temporarily on hold over there because new projects are coming dow the pike and I’m going to get some help!.

Cool!
rlc

[ed. note Since you can see this is a brand new site for RC, we obviously didn't fire him. He's hard at work on a new project this very second. RB]

Update:

Sometimes a martini can get you whacked!

Two freakin’ years this post has been sitting the “drafts” bin, and I still haven’t had the martini I was going to talk about when I started this post. OK, I have had a couple of martinis in that time, but not the martini I was dying for in July of 2008.  Since then the manuscript’s been through a number of revisions, a gender change on the romantic interest (huh?) and a couple of other permutations. People from a couple of the larger houses have seen it:

Response A:” Great concept! An extreme escape thriller — will be a hard sell because it’s too real and the escape is too uncomfortable.” – Huh? too real? Maybe there is something to that. I did have a conversation with a filmmaker about it and he said, “Sounds like non-fiction to me.”

Isn’t that the point? Don’t we want our stories to smack of realism? Aren’t scary things more scary, and thrillers more thrilling when they are realistic?

Response B: “Too complex. Trim it down to a couple of characters and get rid of the subplots.”

A couple of contests, and several industry people said the title I used (a couple of military alphabet characters) sounded like a romance, which might be alright if it had more kissing and few explosions, crashes, and gunfights — but it doesn’t. So I changed the title. I’m not mentioning either title here because the manuscript is still up for grabs and I don’t want to jeopardize or prejudice any submissions or readers (hint, hint).

[ed. note: If you've got a short attention span, like I do, you don't really want to know all this whiny crap. You want to know how a martini can get you whacked! --- it's coming. Really.]

So anyway,

A problem with me being a pseudonym is that I can’t take meetings (learned that living in L.A., but I digress), that other guy with the funny German name, who is too busy doing other things to worry about me, is supposed to be the one out there pitching this shit (er… stuff). I can sit in my office and email the submissions and all that, but I can’t really talk to anybody.

And what’s he doing? Nothing! Nada! Zip! Zilch! He’s not talking this sucker up at all anymore.

So I pour him a martini, then one for myself, and I sit him down and say… “Hey boss, what the hell is going on?”

He says, “nothing, that’s the problem. You can’t write for shit.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah,” he says. “In fact I’m thinking pretty hard about just whacking you and moving on.”

“Whack? Me?” I ask. (Now some writers would insert the adverb “incredulously” here… but me, I follow the rules.)

“Yup,” he says. “Thinkin’ on it pretty damned hard as a matter of fact.” (Now you know why he’s not the writer.)

“As you know (now we really know why he’s not the writer) I pulled that crappy novella out of print.”

“What?” I ask. “You wrote that one, you just put my damned name on it.”

“Whatever,” he says. “Anyway, I don’t think you’re ever gonna sell anything. It’s time to move on.”

“What?”

“I’m just sayin’,” he says. “I think it’s time to whack you.”

Then he gulps down the rest of his martini and the rest of mine!

“Be seein’ ya,” he says.

Then I just watch his fat ass walk out of my office.

Then I find out that he’s even told everybody on Facebook he’s gonna whack me. I know what I want to do, but he’s hidden all the vodka… I’m going to hide out on Pseudonyms Anonymous (www.pseudanon.org) for a while.

(to be continued)

And… drumroll… It finally came to me.
The Near-apocalyptic Snorker.

Huh???? I can see the wheels spinning behind your eyes. “How the hell did you come up with THAT?”

Welcome to NaS 101.

First, we’ll start with the middle. (Don’t we always, but I digress.) Apocalyptic. Most people think it means the end of the freakin’ world. And, to most of the world’s religious definitions, CAPITAL A Apocalypse does mean the end of the world. Everybody’s toast, kaput, all-she-wrote. The freakin’ fat lady sang.

But what about LITTLE A apocalypse? The etymology is Greek apokalyptein – or “uncover”.

Heaven knows (yes, that’s intentional) we’ve certainly uncovered a lot of things in the past couple of years. What the hell, maybe the “uncovering” even began with Watergate. Besides, uncovering could mean a lot of things, and I do a lot of uncovering in my plots.

Ex. 1 Combes threw back the tarp to uncover the body in the truck bed.

Ex. 2 Berni’s ex-husband, the ex-race driver, threw back his martini so fast that his toupee slipped, uncovering the warts on his head.

Ex. 3 Vaz threw back the blanket to uncover Macie’s…

OK, in addition to a lot of uncovering, there’s also a lot of throwing back. At least it’s not throwing up, although there is some of that too.

So, dang it, for a lot of reasons apocalyptic fits.

OK, what about the Near- part? What’s with the hyphen anyway?

The rule is: Anytime you say apocalyptic, it has to be something HYPHEN apocalyptic. As in post-apocalyptic (after everybody gets whacked), pre-apocalyptic (before everybody gets whacked when only some people get whacked), neo-apocalyptic (only the freakin’ punk rockers get whacked), post-cretaceous-apocalptic (when the dinosaurs got whacked).

So NEAR-apocalyptic means it could be just around the corner from everybody getting whacked — or just around the corner from everybody in the world getting uncovered at once — which could be cool in Orange County California, and not so cool in Orange County Florida.

Understand so far?  Good! That makes one of you. Now the last word.

Why is it the last word?

Because I always get the last word, that’s why.

Snorker.

WTF is Snorker? You ask.

Well. To quote a lawyer friend, and pretend that I am a lawyer myself — It DEPENDS.

Depends on WHAT? You ask, this time not quite as friendly.

It depends on where you live.

For example a snorker in Australia — well let’s see. I guess it depends on whether or not you’re hungry. One Aussie definition of snorker is a sausage. Twisting that into a metaphor of your own, I’ll leave it to you to find out what the second definition is.

What about if you live in Detroit? You ask.

What? Who lives in Detroit? Nobody I know. OK, well maybe those car guys. You know, the ones that thought using music by the ole’ Zep in commercials would make their car a better car.

WAIT! Now you’ve done it, you’ve got me digressing by a freakin’ mile here. FORGET Detroit!

Lets just say if you live ANYPLACE BUT AUSTRALIA –

A snorker is someone who makes a pig sound when they have a good laugh. ERGO (my, doesn’t that sound impressive? I’ll have to say it again.)

Ergo a story that makes a snorker snork can also be called a snorker.

Thus, (basically the same freakin’ thing as ergo, except in American)

Near-apocalytic Snorkers

BLOODY FREAKIN’ THRILLERS with enough funny parts that you don’t feel the need to puke when someone is turned into FOD burger by a jet engine, or feel like jumping in front of a bus because the whole freakin’ world financial system has collapsed.

Snork on.

Ron

As I laid out the intial strategy for the project, and as it comes together piece by piece, the concept I had in my head was like filmmaking, but without the camera. In the process of making a film, it’s very rare that the scenes are shot in the same order in which they’ll appear in the finished product. For an outsider looking in, the filmmaking process seems disjointed, often disorganized, with a number of people, or teams of people, working on seemingly unrelated activies, simultaneously in a dozen or more different locations. Somehow, within the scope of the director’s vision, the efforts of dozens, even hundreds of people all seem to come together in a perfect union — 120 minutes or so in length.

Most novels come together in a completely different way. A solitary author drafts, hones, polishes, redrafts, submits, reworks, resubmits, and finally sends an completed manuscript to a publisher. At this point, the editor, the cover designer, and the marketing teams build the finished project from the author’s foundation.

A relatively new concept in the the publishing world, the brand or franchise model, expands the basic concept of novel production to include many of the elements used in the creation of a film. The franchise project may actually begin in the hands of a packager, who pairs a brand-name author with a development team that may include apprentices and co-writers, then involves the marketing and branding people from the projects inception. Sounds a lot like movie making to me.

The key thing that all franchise projects have in common is an immense scope. Like a major film, the franchise novel (or more accurately novel series) has immense revenue targets, in the millions and tens-of-millions of dollars. At this level, dozens and perhaps hundreds of people tackle myriad tasks and assignments necessary to bring the project to completion.

Then, the inevitable happens..

With far too much money at stake for “just another book,” the packagers and conglomerates behind the franchise project begin to function very much in the same way as a franchise fast food outlet, or franchised hair-cutter, or franchised hardware store. They begin to genericize the product. Forget the fact that the “brand” author has 100,000 devoted fans that will put every single release on the best-seller lists. This is real money here. This franchise is about building an audience of millions–maybe not as devoted as the 100,000, but devoted enough to buy a book or two, then maybe three.

An audience of 100,000 can be fanatically devoted and have very similar tastes, wants, expectations. An audience of a million, two million, five million, is a different ball of wax entirely. Take out the stuff that “some people” might think is too violent. Take out the stuff that “some people” might think is to romantic. Take out this, take out that, ad infinitum. Oh, yeah–then come the addins.

“Our numbers tell us that there are sixty three million(*MUN) people world wide who own cats. Can you maybe make this scuba adventure story something about cats? Never mind, I forgot this isn’s a scuba story anymore, not enough in people in the demographic. It’s now a taking the kids to soccer practice adventure. Anyway, can you add a cat or two?”

Anyway, I digress. Back to The Flyover War. The audience is just beginning to build, SLOWLY, but it is happening bit-by-bit. And the project is happening very much like a film in progress, or a novel franchise project. Except that in a film, you don’t release the dailies. Except that in a novel franchise project, you don’t print the outlines, the backstory, the daily pages.

It seems disjointed now, because 90% of what has been published falls into three categories: future details, backstory, and rabbit holes. When I write actual scenes and chapters, they contain links to newspaper articles, radio broadcasts, book references, companies and government agencies. All of these have to pre-exist before the chapters can be written and published.

Even in its disjointed state, there is a lot of entertainment already in place. I’ve had “fans” tell me stories of falling into one of my rabbit holes and wandering for hours.

Come in and play -  Check out the Flyover War Backstage -  Flyover War on Facebook -  Follow the Flyover War on Twitter

Then come back here and let me know what you think.

Ron

A little tongue-in-cheek at 5:30 am on April 23.

So the agent says, “300 sales wouldn’t even pay for my morning latte.” OK, probably true. But it might have done something for the 300 people who bought the book that a decade’s worth of Venti half-caf-half-decaf-two-percent-low-cal-hazelnut lattes could never do.

Bogart once said “you got a message, send a telegram.” That was before lightning fast world-wide communications and the freakin’ Xerox Docutech laser printer.

Go for it, Lisa!

ttfn, rlc

Thanks!

Ron