Learning the tricky ins and outs of audio/video recording and editing ain’t easy for an old dog like me. But I’ve always wanted to offer audiobooks as part of my humble literary portfolio, so I guess it’s time for me to grin and bear it and get to it ’cause I certainly ain’t getting any younger.
As I work on recording my new novel Sorrow, I figured I might as well have a little visually creative fun with it along the way…
Narrating in general is less than easy for me; it is even less so when it’s the Early Modern English that was spoken nearly half a millennium ago.
And you have until midnight tomorrow, or more specifically, 11:59 p.m., Sunday, November 24, 2024, (Bezos Standard Time, aka PST), to purchase a free Kindle version.
An aging white male forsakes humanity, changes his name to Sorrow, and begins identifying as an it, just as its white son learns his Black girlfriend is pregnant, and you begin a murderous rampage targeting interracial couples just like them...
And as Arthur Schopenhauer, that merry misanthrope, only happy when I’m not philosopher of old, reminds us:
It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.
Now, I am only the author of the tale so I cannot be sure, but if I were a betting man, which I’m not, but if I were, I would bet that Sorrow, our odd protagonist of our newly released tale, would agree with me that the quote above is true to the spirit of its journey. But alas we are sure to never know for sure since…
So here we are the day after such an historic election, one full of hope for some and angst for others, and it is my pleasure to present to you my new novel Sorrow.
A disillusioned aging white male forsakes all humanity, changes his name to Sorrow, and begins identifying as an it, just as its white son learns his Black girlfriend is pregnant, and you begin a murderous rampage targeting interracial couples just like them.
I believe I mentioned here in the past that I completed a novel in the summer of 2023, and that I was determined to get it published in a traditional manner. Well, after a year-and-a-half of the manuscript being rejected — and by being rejected I mean mostly being ignored — by over a dozen publishers, it is time for me to face the reality that the only way this novel will get published is independently by yours truly.
Since I am seeking your help in getting the word out about Sorrow, particularly by you reading a free advanced copy of the book and posting your review of it at all the usual places, I should probably make you aware of the potential elements of the tale that may cause concern to some.
Let’s not call them “trigger warnings” because that term in itself is quite triggering to many; let’s instead call these concerning elements of the tale simply “noted concerns.”
SORROW’S NOTED CONCERNS
Behavioral health concerns
Suicidal ideations concerns
Abortion concerns
Homelessness concerns
Homicidal concerns
Gun violence concerns
Police brutality concerns
Racism concerns
Identity concerns
Pronoun concerns
Sexual content concerns
Brief nudity concerns
Vulgar language concerns
Religious cult concerns
Alcoholism concerns
Smoking, both tobacco and marijuana, concerns
Pandemic masking concerns
Fully developed Black, Hispanic, and white female characters created by an old white male concerns
I think that about covers the concerning elements of the tale, with some elements, of course, being more concerning than others. At least now you have some idea of what to expect of the story’s content. If it were a movie it would definitely have a solid “R” rating.
I guess I should point out that there are also some magical realism and meta-fictional elements involved in the tale. Perhaps, depending on your literary sensitivities, they too should be included in the noted concerns section, lol.
Anyway…
What is the crux of Sorrow?
Let me give you a full synopsis of it (or is it summary? I always get the two confused):
Harold Thorson Sterner, Sr., who had come to be known as Hank, an aging white male no longer able to bear the downward spiraling, troubled state of the world, has decided to end his relationship with it, the world, and all that it entails: all humanity and its entire “civilized” existence, his name, his family, his profession, all his responsibilities, everything, even, perhaps, his conscious mind.
To ensure his new relationship with the world is clear and properly regarded by others, he legally changes his name from Harold Thorson Sterner, Sr., to Sorrow and begins identifying, not as a man, or even as a human for that matter, but simply as a being, an it.
He, or rather, it, has made this what turns out to be rather ironic decision to forsake humanity just as its white aspiring author son learns his Black aspiring business executive girlfriend is pregnant, and you, an aspiring serial killer, begin a murderous rampage targeting interracial couples just like them out in sunny Los Angeles.
Sorrow, up until now a semi-celebrated author who had moved recently to sunny Los Angeles to adapt its former self’s successful novels into screenplays, attempts to explain its decision to forsake the world it in a letter to its estranged wife Evelyn, who now lives separated and carefree from her disillusioned husband in Miami, enjoying life with her young Cuban boytoy Alejo.
The letter, more a missive really, prompts Sorrow’s son, who is already in the midst of his own crisis due to his girlfriend’s unexpected pregnancy, to trek out to LA in hope of finding his odd father and providing him the care that he needs. His girlfriend, distraught at her boyfriend’s untimely departure, soon follows him out there. Together in LA, the troubled couple has unwittingly placed themselves at risk of your violent wrath.
And so, as the story unfolds and Sorrow slowly morphs into what? a Christ-like figure? a mad bodhisattva? just another behavioral health breakdown victim littering the streets of LA?, and as whatever it morphs into somehow draws to it other disillusioned souls who begin worshipping it, and as three of its original acolytes, a self-identified indigent and two hippies, are able to magically fly – one by spinning his long, matted hair like helicopter rotor blades and the others by vigorously flapping large palm fronds typically reserved for their worship of Sorrow – and use these skills to fight evil forces on behalf of Sorrow, and as all but one of the story’s narrators mysteriously, suspiciously, disappear, and even as the body count from your murderous rampage steadily grows around it…
Sorrow does not respond.
Okay, maybe that was a bit TMI, but, simply put, what we have here with Sorrow is a very contemporary tale with all of society’s, especially American society’s, tragedy and drama, hopes and dreams.
If you are interested in reading and reviewing Sorrow, and I hope you are, please email me at hank@kurtbrindley.com and I’ll shoot you a copy post haste, as I hope to have the story published on Amazon soon.
Or you can just leave a comment here if you prefer and we can take it from there.
Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or silly action for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgement, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?
I am partial to the title, as it is quite representative of the literal climate of the story’s Tokyo setting as well as the story’s dark, metaphorical mood, so putting it out to pasture was not an easy decision to make.
However, after trying several different covers in a futile effort to get the book noticed, I decided it was time to take more extreme measures.
I am pleased to introduce to you:
Romance Noir
With the heartbroken shards of a shattered past lodged deep within his soul, falling in love is the last thing a mysterious American expatriate in Tokyo is looking to do, especially with an alluring jazz club singer shrouded in vague mysteries of her own…
And to celebrate its new name and look, it, and all the rest of my books, are free all day at Amazon.
I’m a big Poe fan (Who isn’t, am I right? I mean, does anyone even know anyone who isn’t a Poe fan? or anyone who knows someone who was told once a long time ago about someone who isn’t a Poe fan? Exactly.), so when I got the latest book recommendation from Amazon for yet another collection of Poe’s greatest works, this one illustrated by Edward Gorey no less, I was all over it.
But then I saw it was a Kindle in Motion book and my heart sank.
Yeah, I’ve been seeing these types of newfangled in-motion titles pop up every now and then and my initial reaction to them was pretty much the same as was my initial reaction to the dawn of Kindle books.
Not in my library, no way. They would have to pry the r-book (real book) out of my cold dead hands before I would ever take hold of an e-book.
But then of course, with way leading on to way, I came to love e-books and they have become indispensable to my well-being and I no longer feel guilty when walking past my long-ignored bookshelves only annoyance because they are so damn dusty..
I mean, back to Kindle in Motion books, if I had the desire to watch pictures that move, then I would watch either a motion picture or get up early on a Saturday and watch animation/cartoons (are there still such a thing as Saturday morning cartoons?).
Anyway, long story short, since I’m no Luddite (stay tuned for my upcoming AI confessional post, btw) and since it has Gorey as the illustrator I checked out the Poe in motion book post-haste – figuratively and literally since as part of the Prime Reading offerings it has to be checked out, and found it to be pretty frikkin’ awesome.
Okay, of course it isn’t illustrated by Edward Gorey, how could it be since he’s been residing in weird genius illustrator heaven for nearly 2.5 decades. It was only wishful thinking on my part and my eyes saw what they wanted to see.
The actual illustrator’s name is Corley, M. S. Corely to be precise, and by the looks of his resume he’s had a pretty good career cranking out book covers.
And I must admit, Mr. Corely did a bang-up job on the Poe book. The pictures in motion are very cool with the likes of swinging pendulums and ravens flying ominously across the page.
So yeah, check it out. The good news is if you have an Amazon Prime account (and who doesn’t, right?) it’s free.
We all know William Shakespeare, right, perhaps the biggest ball within the entire round of the Western Canon…
Now, I’m far from being a Shakespeare aficionado, and even farther away from being one who has read and/or watched all the great Bard has, apparently, plumed for us, but I’m no Shakespearean slouch either.
And as much as I enjoy and appreciate that little of his which I have read and/or watched, I enjoy almost equally the intrigue that surrounds him. Is he really the one history has assigned to being the greatest English voice of all time, or is he just a front for another who for some reason or another has preferred to stay anonymous?
My opinion on the topic sways with the wind and is mostly dependent upon which documentary and/or article about it I’ve recently watched and/or read.
Now, I knew that there has long been intrigue surrounding his sexual orientation, but I didn’t know, or I don’t remember that I knew, that there was intrigue surrounding his religious practices, the whole Protestant/Catholic thing that was/is all the rage, literally.
That is, I didn’t know that I knew, until now…
In the tucked-away document, which heavily cites an obscure 17th century Italian religious tract called The Last Will and Testament of the Soul, the writer pledges to die a good Catholic death. If the writer was indeed John Shakespeare, who remained a devout Protestant until his death in 1601, it would have indicated a major shift in his beliefs and suggested a clandestine life during an era when secret allegiance to the Catholic Church in Elizabethan England could have been dangerous. For this reason, many experts have suspected the document to be forged.
But in the new study, Steggle used internet archives to track down early editions of The Last Will and Testament of the Soul in Italian and six other languages and concluded the document could have only been written after John Shakespeare’s death. That left Steggle with just one other “J. Shakespeare”: Joan.
If you don’t have a Popular Mechanics subscription, which I’m guessing you don’t, you can read the article with an Apple News subscription, which is where I found it.
And if you don’t have either, the article, referencing a recent study in the Shakespeare Quarterly (which of course you need a subscription to view the study beyond the extract), goes on to surmise that since new information now appears to prove that his sister Joan was a closeted Catholic, perhaps ol’ Willy himself was as well, which may be why we know so little about his personal life, particularly that part of it spent in his hometown, homevillage?, Strafford-on-the-Avon. He feared, perhaps, of being outted for being a papist, which of course was a big and bloody no no back in his day.
I know, I know, all this historical intrigue and speculation is high level nerd alert stuff that, considering all the strife inflicting our pretty yet petulant planet right now, is very inconsequential.
But so is my mind, which is why I enjoy it all so much. Enquiring minds want to know, you know (if you’re familiar with that quote/slogan, then it not only dates you/me, it also tells us so much about your/my intellectual taste, or lack there of).
Anyway, I guess if I had to guess who I think the real Shakespeare is if it truly isn’t Shakespeare himself, then I guess my guess would have to be Sir Francis Bacon, mostly because that was who Mark Twain guessed it to be, and I guess we all know that Mr. Twain was a lot smarter than I pretend to be…
Then the thing happened which has happened to more persons than to me when principle and personal interest found themselves in opposition to each other and a choice had to be made: I let principle go, and went over to the other side. Not the entire way, but far enough to answer the requirements of the case. That is to say, I took this attitude, to wit: I only believed Bacon wrote Shakespeare, whereas I knew Shakespeare didn’t.
Usually that’s okay because he is such a great storyteller, one, I believe, who (whom?) deserves to be appreciated literarily well beyond the horror genre. Few can convey the human condition, its perils, its pleasures, as well as he.
But, to me, his overzealous output of words is always a fine line issue because, even though I usually finish any novel of his that I attempt to read/listen to, the ones that I don’t finish are always because I become overwhelmed by what to me seemsan abusive overwriting of character and plot asides, a la…
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Even four years after the sudden death of his wife, best selling novelist Mike Noonan can’t stop grieving, nor can he return to his writing. Now his nights are plagued by vivid nightmares of the house by the lake. Despite these dreams, or perhaps because of them, he decides to return to Sara Laughs, the Noonans’ isolated summer home. In his beloved Yankee town, he finds himself falling in love with a widowed young mother, who struggles to keep custody of her 3-year-old daughter. He is also drawn into the mystery of Sara Laughs, now the site of ghostly visitations, ever-escalating nightmares, and the sudden recovery of his writing ability. What are the forces that have been unleashed here – and what do they want of Mike Noonan?
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Bag of Bones is a perfect example of this. Weighing in at a hefty 752 pages it is immensely overwritten in my blurry view. However, the story is limber and sinewy enough that I was able to make it through to the final round.
I know, I know, enough of the boxing metaphor. I get it.
Another example of an overwrought novel of his, you ask?
Well, funny you should ask because I just finished fighting my way through one…
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A terrible accident takes Edgar Freemantle’s right arm and scrambles his memory and his mind, leaving him with little but rage as he begins the ordeal of rehabilitation. When his marriage suddenly ends, Edgar begins to wish he hadn’t survived his injuries. He wants out. His psychologist suggests a new life distant from the Twin Cities, along with something else:
“Edgar, does anything make you happy?” “I used to sketch.” “Take it up again. You need hedges…hedges against the night.”
Edgar leaves for Duma Key, an eerily undeveloped splinter of the Florida coast. The sun setting into the Gulf of Mexico calls out to him, and Edgar draws. Once he meets Elizabeth Eastlake, a sick old woman with roots tangled deep in Duma Key, Edgar begins to paint, sometimes feverishly; many of his paintings have a power that cannot be controlled. When Elizabeth’s past unfolds and the ghosts of her childhood begin to appear, the damage of which they are capable is truly devastating.
The tenacity of love, the perils of creativity, the mysteries of memory, and the nature of the supernatural: Stephen King gives us a novel as fascinating as it is gripping and terrifying.
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Duma Key maintains the unbelievable fighting weight (sorry, I can’t seem to shake the blasted metaphor) of 783 pages! Strangely enough though, it doesn’t seem quite as flabby as BoB.
Now, as one would assume, these books are for all intents and purposes horror novels; ergo, I listened to them instead of reading them, for, to me, horror is served best via the ear versus the eyes. You know, ghost stories around the campfire vibe and all that.
One of the best attributes of BoB as an audiobook is that the King himself reads it. He’s a fantastic narrator, and he doesn’t seem to mind at all having to read all the extraneous words he wrote.
Duma Key is narrated exquisitely by none other than John Slattery. The only problem with him as narrator is I could never get Roger Sterling out of my head while listening.
And if you don’t know who Roger Sterling is, then take a lap!
The deceased author William Gay, that is, not the former professional football cornerback William Gay.
Well, William Gay the cornerback may also be a literary genius, I’m just not aware of it.
But I am aware that Nic Pizzolatto is too a genius, at least of the screenwriting variation, as is evidenced by his hugely popular HBO series True Detective.
I watched season one of True Detective as soon as it was released, what… nearly ten years ago now.
I liked it. Maybe not as much as many seemed to have at the time, and certainly not as much as I like season two (I know, I know… I’m woefully in the minority on this one – I have never been much of a fan of Woody Harrelson’s acting, and I thought Matthew McConaughey’s character was a bit over the top), but I liked it enough to dig into the particulars of its development.
Which is when I discovered Nic Pizzolatto.
And which is when shortly thereafter I discovered Thomas Ligotti…
As this highly misanthropic madman (both literally and literarily) genius author was a huge influence on NP and his creation and development of MM’s forlorn and highly misanthropic character Detective Rustin “Rust” Cohle.
Come to find out there is an actual philosophical movement, however slight (hopefully), that actual believes that, for the sake of humanity, I guess, humanity needs to be disappeared.
Apparently, NP was so influenced by Tl that some/many believed he plagiarized the immensely pessimistically nihilistic author for much of MM/Cohle’s dialogue.
I can understand why (while imitation might be the sincerest form of flattery, I do not condone plagiarism of any stripe), TL’s short stories are some of the most awesomely horrific stories I have ever read/listened to, and I truly appreciate NP for turning me on to the human depressant…
Although, to date, I have not yet been able to make it all the way through his anti-humanity book. It’s too depressing, simple as that.
Incidentally, during Joe Rogan’s last interview with Elon Musk recently, I was surprised to discover, seeing how well informed they both always seem to be, that neither of them seemed to be aware of TL or of his influence on NP or of the whole down with humanity philosophy as they first heard about the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement in a less than recent New York Times article entitled Earth Now Has 8 Billion Humans. This Man Wishes There Were None.
Rogan probably has heard of it before but as much dope as he smokes and as old as he’s getting to be, he probably burned out the brain cells responsible for recalling that information.
Anyway, long story short…
Or have I missed that bus already?
Anyway, for some reason I forget, a few weeks ago I mentioned to my son that I enjoy season two of TD much more than season one.
(Season three isn’t even in the discussion as it is immensely forgettable. And from what I’ve seen of the upcoming season four, it looks equally immensely forgettable.)
My son was shocked at my (poor) taste and went on to pan season two and praise season one, as do most.
So, I figured, since I’ve already watched season two three times, I might as well give season one another shot, seeing that it’s been nearly ten years since I last watched it.
And I recently finished rewatching it.
And I still enjoyed it, probably more because this time around I was familiar with TL and his work and the insight from it was appreciated.
And though I still prefer season two, I still liked season one enough once again to once again look up ol’ NP to see if he has been up to anything new.
Didn’t really discover anything new by NP that interested me, but I did discover this old Buzzfeed article that interested me greatly, as it lists all the literary influences of NP’s that went into the development of season one.
And it was from this article that I discovered William Gay.
The author, not the cornerback.
And I cannot believe I have never heard of this good ol’ boy literary genius before.
And by good ol’ boy, I mean that was one dude whose neck was severely reddened. Crispy, if you know what I mean*.
Never had I read/listened to a collection of short stories where ever single story is as completely fantastic as these are. Especially in a collection written by just one author.
Because my eyes are shot because of the side effects from my bone marrow transplant of so long ago, I listen to books now more than I read them.
Consequently, I have a pretty good ear for great narrators. Great as defined by me anyway.
Tom Stescschulte has been a longtime favorite of mine and this to me is the best work he has ever done.
So, yeah, once again I must thank NP for turning me on to yet another amazing author.
And I hope I’m wrong about season four. I’m a fan of Jodie Foster so I hope she pulls it off.
So, that’s the short story long of it.
Oh yeah!
Since I’ve already missed the short bus, let bring up one last thing…
I’ll make it fast – punctuation be damned.
If you are a fan of audiobooks like I am but are not a fan of Audible’s expensive subscription like I am – the only reason I started my subscription back up recently is because I was offered and I accepted a one-month free promo (which they are betting I will forget to cancel but which I marked my calendar so to hell with them I won’t fall into that expensive trap) – then you must be estatic like I am that Spotify is now offering audiobooks for those who are subscribed with a premium membership like I am and all the books I have on my audible wish list are available on spotify as are many many more and my TBLT (to be listened to) list is so long now I probably won’t finish it until I’m in my eighties, which, sadly, is almost as close as my forties are far away…
Yeah…
*Apologies for the stereotype but, dagburnit that dude is one countrified dude. Not that it’s a bad thing, it’s just, well, you know how the stereotype goes…
Doing a reread of Big Will’s Titus Andronicus so what better way to summon the happy dancing spirits today than by rocking out to a song by, you got it, Titus Andronicus…
If only ours was a union even a little more better…
