Philip Spade

I Am Victorious!

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 01:44:12 GMT

I just conquered my latest nemesis: Chapter 14 of The Money Shot. It was one of those pieces that I couldn’t get right for so long—drove me half crazy nigh on three weeks. Taking it from its original format, I changed around the action and dialogue four or five times. Every time I completed a given revision and thought I was done, I re-read the damn thing and started to hate it all over again. Finally, though, I’ve got it just so. I can’t tell you how big a relief it is.

But now I’m working on Chapter 15, which is the second sex scene between Diamond and his client, Miss Carlyle. The ground work is already there, but I’ve got to change up quite a few things—mostly details having to do with the clothing worn at the time (which changed in the prior chapter), but also some slight changes to the progression of the action. It’s hard, though. For some reason I’m having more and more trouble writing the sex scenes. I think it’s because I’m afraid I get too repetitious with them, but also because the words don’t seem to flow as easily as they did before. Ah well. Whatever the problem, I’m sure I’ll overcome it the same way I have before—by banging my head on the desk until the good ideas run out of my ears and onto the page.

Which leads me to another thing I’ve been thinking about. After reducing a sufficient amount of my gray matter to liquid form, I hope to have twenty chapters or so completed (basically, edited up to the point where I stopped last). At that point I was hoping I could get a couple volunteers to read it as one continuous document rather than a bunch of serialized chapters. I worry that the story might be viewed a little differently when read that way, and I also wanted to get some criticism about the overall plot, characterization, etc. And that you can’t do very effectively when you’re reading a chapter every other week.

So with that said, are there any other takers on the idea? Any masochistic beta readers who get a kick out of punishing themselves? If so, please let me know. I don’t know how I could pay you back, but you let me know and I’ll do my best!

We’re going three by three to the mountain top
To throw that son of a bitch right off the highest drop

God Bless the Crazy Ones

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 01:59:04 GMT

On Friday night I flew back from Chicago. The trip was pretty fun. Chicago was a cool (if utterly corrupt) town. But after flying in, the wife and I hopped into the car and drove the 3 hours to her parents’ lake house. There we met her folks as well as my best friend from college, the guy who was the best man at my wedding. We hung out, drank some Jack, and bowfished the hell out of the lake one night. It was fun, but the real kicker of the weekend came when my buddy started talking about his ex girlfriend (whom I’d met before).

Evidently she was batshit crazy. And as we all know, crazy girls equal crazy sex. But there was one incident that really set her apart. My buddy had volunteered to be the DD for a bachelorette party his girl was a part of. Somehow events led them to a strip club, where the girls all chipped in to get him a lap dance. When they finally called it a night, he went home with his girlfriend and another of her friends—at which point said girlfriend initiated a threesome with all present parties.

That blew me away. I almost didn’t believe it, but I knew my friend is on the level because… well, I know him. He’s not the bragging type. But when he told me that he broke up with her shortly afterward because of that very incident, I was dumbfounded. But according to him, even all the crazy amazing sex wasn’t worth the agony of dealing with her on a daily basis. Which got me to thinking.

I’ve heard the same thing from a lot of people—that yeah, the sex is great, but when you’re dealing with a crazy person, it just isn’t worth it in the long run. Maybe I’m just biased (because let’s face it—I’ve had nothing but sane sex my whole life), but there’s got to be an equilibrium point when the sex gets crazy enough to balance out all the down points. But what about the rest of you out there? Have you dealt with similar situations? Was it worth it? I know mama said not to tell tales out of school, but mama ain’t here, so get to tellin’!

when that gal gets down you can’t help but stare

Quarterly Update

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 04:15:31 GMT

It’s been a long while since my last post, hasn’t it? Well, if anyone is out there who still gives a damn, here’s an update on the status of things since my last post.

On the home front, the wife and I are still trying to sell our house. With the market as it is right now, we just can’t seem to get anyone to bite the hook. There’s plenty of lookers out there, but there’s also a ton of inventory and in order to set yourself apart from the pack, you have to drastically cut the price—something we just can’t do. The numbers just don’t work out. So we’re going to keep the house on the market at the current price and wait ‘til the market comes back and we’re able to sell it and get enough money out of it. If that’s a year or two from now, so be it.

Work, on the other hand, is going pretty well. I’m not sure if I mentioned it in one of my earlier posts, but in July I received a good raise, which was awesome news. And I’ve received word that next year we’ll be doing some international travel, which will include Mexico City and Perth, Australia. About a month ago I applied for a passport for the first time and got that back last week, so I’m all set to tackle my first trip out of the country and extremely excited about it. This Wednesday I’ll be heading off to downtown Chicago for a couple days to attend a meeting with one of our outsourcers. It’ll mostly be a pissing match in which all participants will compete to see who has more three letter acronyms on their business cards, but it should be fun to visit the Windy City for a couple days. Also, in December I’ll be sitting for a professional exam that, should I pass, will probably net me either a good raise or a promotion, so I’m excited for that as well.

The unfortunate part of doing well at work, however, is that other things tend to slip—mainly my writing. The Money Shot is still in progress, and lately I’ve made some additional strides in my revisions and restructuring of the novel. So far I’ve got 13 chapters nailed down and I think the narrative is sharper and more succinct because of it. On the other hand, I’m not making the kind of progress I would like. It’s been slow going, but I do intend to persevere. I’m hoping that on the plane ride to O’Hare I’ll have a good opportunity to get some writing done.

Other than that, there’s not much to report. Been to a few concerts, kept the roads hot with lots of day trips and visits to family. The wife and dog are fine, no little bambinos yet. All is (mostly) well in my little corner of the world.

But for all of you whom I haven’t talked to in a while, please drop me a line and let me know how you’ve been doing. I have read some of the more recent posts on my friends’ page, but I don’t fancy trying to catch up on all the reading I’ve missed over these last few months. So give me a quick shout and let me know how things are going in your lives, too. I’m eager to catch up with all of you.

I’m the poison in the well

I’m the fruit rotting on the vine

To Russia With Love

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 01:30:07 GMT

The fourth installment of “Phil Spade’s Classics of Smut Past” is a little skin novel called Zarina by Veruschka O.

This one was quite the find, if I do say so myself. Found it on my trip to San Diego in a place called Wahrenbrock’s Book Warehouse, an old three story building in the heart of downtown jammed to the gills with dusty old treasures. And boy, is this one a find.

The story involves the most famous of all British Secret Service agents, none other than James Bond. Of course, they author is very careful not to use the actual name, but the hints (calling him “James B—“ and throwing “M” in as a character) were kind of hard to miss. But with copyright laws as they are, it’s no wonder. Anyhow, as fertile ground as James’ Bond’s exploits would be, 007 is mostly tangential to the story’s plot. ‘Cos other than the very first scene, the only folks getting it on in this one are the ladies.

As the story goes, there’s a beautiful Russian scientists named Zarina that’s been working on a faster than light (FTL) engine for the Russian space program. And since the British can’t just stand by while that happens, they send the illustrious James Bond “To Russia With Love.” The aim is to seduce her into defecting, but it turns out that Zarina is a bone fide lesbian and wants nothing to do with him, so the secret service sends in their top female agent, Georgina Flame. And, well, I’m sure you see where this is heading.

I’ve transcribed the story into a .rtf file (about 45,000 words, all told) and posted it online for your reading pleasure. I haven’t given it a detailed read-through, so there are probably some typos in there. If you happen to find any, let me know.

Carve me a smile

The Shinies

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 01:40:46 GMT

As we speak, I am battling a phenomenon of horrible proportions. It is the bane of writers everywhere, that nameless sound in the night that makes us all shake in fear. It is the that one thing which all novelists dread more than anything else in their craft. The otherworldly horror of which I speak? The Shinies.

Not to be confused with The Shining, of course. The Shinies are something completely different and even more terrifying. It is the one single thing that can easily derail even the most well planned of novels. They’re that idea you get just before you go to bed, that suddenly realized premise that is so full of absolute fucking awesomeness that you can’t not write about it. You feel this surge of sudden inspiration, this drive to get it all down on paper before the creativity dribbles out your nostrils like so much snot and is lost forever.

So yeah, that’s what I’m dealing with right now. I feel like I’ve still got plenty of inspiration to finish out The Money Shot. I mean really, the story is all there, I just have to write it and edit the crap out if it. It shouldn’t be that hard. But I’ve run up on an idea for a new story that I just can’t seem to put on the back burner. To make matters worse, there’s another conundrum on top of it.

I don’t think I’ve told anyone on LJ this before, but my introduction to writing was in the realm of fanfiction. If you don’t know what that is, count yourself lucky. Fanfiction is the dregs of the literary realm. It’s full of teenage matchmaking fantasies, “what-if” alternate universes, and a plethora of spoofs, vignettes, and other badly written stories. But that’s where I first cut my baby teeth, so it is what is it is. One of the fandoms I dabbled in was that of Silent Hill—you know, the survival horror game franchise by Konami? It was recently parleyed into a movie of the same name, which really didn’t do the series justice, but that’s neither here nor there.

Anyway, my story idea involves a Silent Hill-esque town in which the main character confronts secrets of his family’s past as well as his own internal demons. The whole thing would be sort of like a big long “dream vision,” in which the reader is just a little unsure of what is real and what is happening in the narrator’s mind. The idea’s been kicking around my skull for a few years now, but recently I’ve started to solidify certain ideas, details about what I want to do. The added problem comes from the fact that I am unsure if I can make my idea my own. It’s inspired by Silent Hill, so if I create my own spooky town with its own strange secrets, is it going to seem too much like a cheap knock off of the original? Would I be just as well served to write the thing as a piece of Silent Hill fanfiction instead of going through the motions to dress it up as something similar but different?

I don’t know. I mean, I know that original fiction is the way to go. Fanfiction is a dead end. But I want to write it so bad that I almost can’t help myself from jumping in the midst of it. I need help, some sort of grounding. Some advice would be good. Do any of you out there have anything that might help me?

Words

They twist and turn in me

They rip and burn in me

I Have a Sad Clown Fetish

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 01:56:00 GMT

I Have a Sad Clown Fetish

At least, that was what I told my wife the other day when we were having sex. She was in the middle of that phase in her cycle when she typically turns moody and hormonal—yet somehow I’d convinced her to do the wild thing that afternoon. It had been all but two minutes since I’d slid into her, when she suddenly started to sob.

If you haven’t had the pleasure of seeing your partner burst into tears in the middle of the sex, you’re missing out. There’s nothing like trying to soothe her fragile self-esteem while simultaneously maintaining your stride. But somehow I did it, and she eventually came out of the PMS-fomented funk. But then there was another problem.

“Is my mascara running?” she asked.

“Nah, it’s not bad.”

“It is, isn’t it?” she mewled piteously.

“It’s cool,” I replied, “I have a sad clown fetish.”

She suddenly busted out laughing. The PMS blues dissolved in a wave of cackling laughter, and as soon as she could stop laughing, we were humping like rabbits again. So all’s well that ends well, right? Exactly. Except for one thing.

How do I tell her I wasn’t joking?

I’m going to keep digging deeper into you

Until I find what makes you scream

The Nooner

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 01:26:00 GMT

God, who doesn’t love a good nooner? There’s nothing like leaving the office, doing the deed, and then going back. It’s empowering—like you’ve got a dirty secret no one else knows about. Part of the fun is that no one else knows, but at the same time want to rub all their faces in it. You want to shout it to the world that while everyone else was off sitting at the drive thru, you were buried deep in a sweaty, moaning, writhing embrace.

That was me and the wife this afternoon. And we both agreed. It needs to be a regular occurrence. When I get back to the office tomorrow, I’m putting a weekly reminder on my calendar. It’ll give a whole new meaning to the term “hump day.”

A little bit of sunshine

A little bit of booze

A little bit of me

And a little bit of you

Down the Rabbit Hole I Go

Fri, 08 May 2009 02:58:20 GMT

Just like Alice, I’ve tumbled down the rabbit hole. But unlike the little blonde heroine, I’m not going to Wonderland. I’m going to a far more treacherous, far more horrendous realm. I call it Revisionland

My experience has shown that the process of editing can be an endless rabbit hole of revision upon revision. The perfectionist in me over thinks every little word placement, every nuance of plot until a simple redraft turns into a maze of changes worthy of M.C. Escher. I have to be really careful not to edit or analyze too much. It’s admittedly hard for me, being an English major and all, but with The Money Shot so far I’ve been able to stave off the urge to print out a copy of the manuscript and red-line it all to hell and back. That is, until recently. Now I’m up to my armpits in revisions.

In the interest of making sure the overall plot “still works,” I’ve taken it upon myself to start from the beginning and edit up to the point I’m at right now, roughly 2/3 of the way through. And while I meant for it to be a quick breeze through, it’s turned into anything but. I edited the first four chapters, which wasn’t terribly bad, though I did end up rewriting several parts pretty much from scratch. The problems only started when I began to look at my high level plot outline and suddenly I realized: it totally sucked.

I go through phases like this in every work that I write. Every few months or so I have a panic attack about my plot. Suddenly something doesn’t fit and I have to beat my head against the wall until I dislodge some great idea, and everything clicks back into place again. In the course of writing The Money Shot, I’ve done this four or five times already. After a little skull sweat, I can usually work out my problems, make a few minor tweaks, and move on with the story. But this time was different. This time it was bad. You know that feeling in the pit of your stomach? It feels like a big, invisible hand squeezing the life out of your guts. Its that sense of dread right after the hammer drops—your girlfriend has been cheating on you, your boss is about to fire you, your grandma just died. Yeah, that kind of feeling. That was me Tuesday for the whole goddamn day.

I literally couldn’t work. I got nothing done. I just read my outline over and over, scribbled in my note pad, and generally belabored the fact that my plot had more holes than a piece of Swiss Cheese. The more I thought about it, the more wound up I got. I spent the whole day like that, not working, just desperately racking my brain for a solution to my conundrum. It wasn’t until I got home and smoked a couple of cigarillos that I relaxed enough to get my head around the problem. I decided to try an old trick I’d learned in college and started at the end. I worked my way backward, scene by scene, until I’d outlined the entirety of the story. And believe it or not, it worked. Some scenes I’d already written got cut. Some got moved up earlier in the story. But now I think I’m got a solid outline that is going to stand up to all these revisions. It’s also more compact. Before this I was kind of worried about keeping the wordage below 100,000, but now I do believe it’s going to work out.

Of course, I’ve said the same thing before. Only time will tell if I’m right this time around.

I’m not looking to stand up real high

I’d be happy to crawl

California Calling

Sun, 03 May 2009 22:51:29 GMT

California’s calling again. She’s the mistress I just can’t seem to keep away from, the drug I can’t get out of my system. I thought my most recent visit would be the last for a while. But no. She’s got her hooks in me now, so here I go again, back to her sun-bleached bosom once more.

This time it’s San Diego. My flight leaves Friday morning, and I’ll be staying until the following Friday. It’s the time of the year in which my department usually goes off to a big group grope they call “training.” It’s is great and all, considering it’s actually some good training and the whole thing (including travel and lodging) costs a pretty penny. But seven days with face-to-face contact with no one but your coworkers is a sure recipe for a mental breakdown. This year, however, is different. Because of the current economy and the financial constraints that go along with it, they’ve decided just to send a handful of us to separate venues. So in other words, I’ll be free to do exactly what I want when I want to do it.

To tell the truth, I was originally kind of bummed to hear San Diego was my destination. I’d been hoping for New Orleans—even had my eyes on a concert at the House of Blues one day that week. I can’t see how it could be any better than Bourbon Street, maybe San Diego will be a close second.

The hotel is in downtown San Diego. It’s on the waterfront, pretty close to the Naval Air Station. I’ve already identified a used book store I want to go to, and I think I saw that the book store has a large section of erotica. Maybe there I’ll be able to pick up some more titles for Phil Spade’s Classics of Smut Past. I’ve also recently found that I enjoy Ian Flemming’s original James Bond books, so I wouldn’t mind finding some more of those, either. There are also sure to be a ton of bars and restaurants, as well as tourist attractions galore. I’m sure I’ll be able to find somewhere to spend my evenings, but I think overall I’m just going to play it by ear.

I don’t know exactly what the week will have in store, but I look forward to finding out.

Set a fire in me

The Nurse's Curse

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 13:59:06 GMT

Allow me to present the next installment of Phil Spade’s “Classics of Smut Past.” This one is The Nurse’s Curse by Stanley Gross, and it’s available for your perusal here.

The story is about a prudish school nurse who finds that she’s drawn to a younger sort of lover. I’ll let you fill in the blanks as needed, for we all know where this is going.

The story is all right as far as cheap 70s porn books go. The author is, as I call it, “adjective happy.” He seems to have bought into the school of thought that “more is better,” for every sentence in the book is jammed full of enough adjectives to choke a thesaurus. It must have been because the nouns were lonely. They needed a lot of company—words like “lewd,” "wanton," and "lascivious" are repeated ad nauseum, a constant companion to any bumping of uglies that might transpire.

But I suppose that’s the main reason why these books are so endearing. They’re bad—deliciously bad. They’re composed by hackishly hack writers, forming a not so pretty reminder of our pornographic past. And I love them for it. Perhaps you will too. Give it a read and let me know what you think.

You’ve got a whole that you need to feed

The Midnight Train

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 13:03:12 GMT

(The following text was penned at 5 am, 4/10/09)

I’ve been on a train since eight o’clock this evening, and it don’t stop ‘til eight the next morning. This train runs on sugar and caffeine—M&M’s, Jelly belies, diet coke and stale coffee. That’s all the fuel she needs. And she’s chugging through a filthy gray land, a place no sane person would ever want to live in. I call it the arm pit of these United States, but most folks call it New fucking Jersey.

See, my department has been called upon to observe a 48 hour disaster recovery exercise for our critical financial applications. I don’t know why the “powers that be” chose this hell hole as their recovery site, but then again I’m not privy to the rest of life’s great idiocies, so why should this be any different? Lucky fellow that I am, I managed to draw night shift duty for this royal FUBAR. So here I am, struggling to stave off the sandman and retain at least a few shreds of my sanity in this shit hole known as New Jersey.

If you take offense to me calling this gray, filthy state a shit hole, then I’m sorry. I’m sorry you had to grow up in such a god forsaken place. Because that’s the only way you’d ever have something good to say about Jersey, if you’ve lived there your whole life and don’t know any freakin’ better. So yeah, for that I’m sorry. No one should be subjected to that.

But the train is almost at the station. Then I’ll be able to go back to my rented bed and drift off into slumbering oblivion—at least, until the next night rolls around and I have to do it all over again. But Saturday is my salvation. The train’s final stop is a freedom bird that will take me back home, to the land of green, to the promised land below the Mason Dixon line.

Garden State, my ass.

Traded my emotions for a contract to commit

I Need a Woman's Opinion

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 02:36:01 GMT

After a three month dry spell, I finally completed a new chapter of The Money Shot. Chapter 22 is now posted, but as usual, it’s ‘friends only,’ so you’ll need a mutual friend if you want to read. The chapter itself isn’t all that great. I mean, I’m happy with the language and the descriptions and the flow and all; it’s just that the subject of the chapter isn’t all that exciting. Nothing of consequence really happens, but I still need it all the same in order to further the plot. I guess that’s just par for the course. Such is the burden of the craft.

As I was wraping things up, though, I noticed something about the story that I hadn’t taken into account before. Generally, I feel like my imagery is all right. Anyone who’s read any of this story knows that I like innovative (or what I hope is innovative), “out of the box” metaphors and descriptions. I feel that I’ve spread it around pretty evenly for the most part. But when it comes to matters of sex, I’ve come to notice a bit of inequity. That is, I tend to put more emphasis on describing the female rather than the male.

It makes sense that it would turn out that way. I’m a young, heterosexual male full of piss and vinegar, and as a result I gravitate toward T&A more than C&B. It’s a natural thing. And since the main character is a man and the POV is, for all intents and purposes, told from his vantage point. It would make sense that I wouldn’t describe his physical attributes each time he did the nasty. It’d be repetitive.

But here’s my dilemma. I know that the majority of readers of erotica are female. Again, it just makes sense. Most men are more visual than their female counterparts. So why would a guy go through the trouble of reading a book to get his jollies when he could flip on his computer and be surfing a virtually limitless supply of porn in 3.2 seconds? And that’s fine. But with the majority of my readers (what few they are) being mostly women, I’ve started to worry that perhaps my writing doesn’t catering enough to the female palate. There are no descriptions Diamond’s “strong shoulders” or his “rough yet gentle touch” or any other cliché phrases from your typical romance novel. To me that stuff just seems to sentimental to fit with the vein of the story.

But here’s my question to all of you out there (ladies especially): do you feel like the descriptions of the male anatomy in The Money Shot are adequate? Does the imagery strike you as sufficiently “hot” for an erotic novel? A woman's opinion is what is needed to sort out this conundrum. I’d like to get a pole of sorts going on, so please, let me know what you honestly think. Don’t pull any punches!

The precipice of fate is where I carved my oath

With a dagger from my back and you know what I wrote

Another Take on the Satyricon?

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 01:48:07 GMT

For any of you who thought that kink was a recent invention, I give you:

But you know what the funny thing is? That satyr is hairy everywhere but it's balls. How does that make any damn sense?

Peel off our skin we’re gonna burn what we were to the ground
fuck in the fire and we’ll spread all the ashes around

I Have Returned!

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 02:22:25 GMT

Wow, has it really been almost months since my last post? I should be ashamed of myself, but my excuse for the lapse in writing is way to “domestic.” The wife and I have spent the last two and a half months working on our house in the hopes of getting it ready to put on the market. We are hoping to cash in on the low interest rates that are coming down the pike from the recent economic downturn and purchase a new home; though that’s all contingent on selling our house, which is a shot in the dark in and of itself. I won’t go into the laundry list of improvements and repairs we’ve been making, but let’s just say that my weekends have been slam full since the new year. We’re about 2/3 done with the renovations, and plan on putting it on the house on the market by mid-April. Hopefully we won’t kill each other before then.

Needless to say, all that work has cut into my free time. But it’s also sapped my creativity. Up until recently I haven’t been able to bring myself to work on The Money Shot or do much of anything that involved writing. But thankfully the itch has returned. In my free moments I’ve been working on Chapter 22, rambling, tweaking, and generally getting back in the grove of it all. Hopefully there will be another chapter to post pretty soon. I’m also playing scribe with yet another 70s snuff book. It’s called The Nurse’s Curse, and once I’ve gotten it all down (about halfway through now), I’ll post it for the world to enjoy.

From now on I’m going to try to be more active on LJ—and with my writing.. There’s quite a few people I need to catch up with, and I’ll be reading up on you all for the next little bit. So f any of you read this, drop me a line. I’ll be sure to do the same on your own journals.

Close my eyes for the chance of a better view

Los Angeles: Birthplace of Noir

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 04:03:25 GMT

A little more than a month ago, I returned from Monterey, California after an eight day stay the Granola State. And today, I return—though, not to the same city, or even the same part of the state, for that matter. No, this time I’m going to Southern California, the land of sun, sin, and stardom. And did I mention it’s the birthplace of Noir?

L.A.’s that quintessential Noir town. Chandler and Elroy and Brown and a host of other classic writers used this city as their setting of choice for a reason. It’s partly because most of the great (American) noir movie classics were made there. The sights and sounds of the city have become synonymous with hardboiled mystery. The other part of it is just the bare-bones nature of the city. It’s full of the rich and the low, the crooked and the plain sleazy. The city is still home to both high and low life, a place where a kind word and a fat stack of cash can get you just as much as a harsh look and a gat. In L.A. you can find just about anything your dirty little heart desires—though now a’days more of it is legal than in decades past. So maybe the bootleggers and mobsters have been replaced by Crips and Bloods, La Eme and MS13, but the underlying violence still simmers just below the surface of glitz and glam just like it did in the old days.

I’ve read so much about the town, but I’ve never actually been there—until now, that is. I’m on a two week long business trip to Aliso Viejo where we’ll be performing an audit on some stuff that probably doesn’t interest anybody. But Aliso Viejo is right outside Laguna Beach (you know, the one with the TV show by the same name?) and just an hour or so south of L.A. So of course over the weekend I’m going to see the sights and sounds.

I already miss my wife and baby dog, but I’m determined to make the most of this trip. I’m interested in walking around Hollywood and getting a feel for some of the places I’ve been writing about in The Money Shot. More than the last trip, I feel like this one will really let me inject some much needed life into the story’s descriptions. Of course there’s that annoying work thing that might get in the way, but the weekend should give plenty of time for cruising the streets.

I’m under orders to take lots of pictures while I’m there, so after I’m back I reckon I’ll load some up and post them here for the world to see. And in between snapshots, I’ll be trying to get some writing done, too. The city should be good for some much-needed inspiration.

Let’s just hope said inspiration doesn’t stab me and leave me to die in the gutter.

Sometimes I feel like I don’t have a partner

Sometimes I feel like my only friend

Is the city I live in, the City of Angels

Lonely as I am, together we cry.

A Tan and Sandy Silence

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 03:56:19 GMT

This was my first book by John D. MacDonald. I’ve got two more of his books on the shelf, and from what I’ve read of this book, it appears that they’ll be tolerably decent. The three books are all “Travis McGee mysteries,” narrated by the man of the same name. He’s a bit different from your usual mystery protagonist, as he’s not a private dick or a cop or a reporter or any of that. His chosen profession is “naval salvage,” or more accurately, beach bum. MacDonald describes him as a “big scruffy teddy bear,” skin browned and hair stiffened by years of working on or around the sea. But in addition to being a teddy bear beach bum, he’s also something of a “problem solver” for his friends. And boy do his friends get into some trouble.

In this particular installment, McGee is asked by the unfaithful husband of and old flame of his to find said old flame. At first he doesn’t want to do it, but when it becomes his lady friend has been caught up in some strange business dealings with her husband and a real estate development firm, Travis goes searching in earnest. His travels lead him from his home in Florida to Grenada and other locales in the Caribbean as he tries to unravel the mystery and set things right.

The writing was fairly good. The dialogue and the imagery and the action were all great, but it was lacking that special something to push it over the edge and make it something great. Still, I have to give MacDonald credit. He may not have reached the loftiness of great detective fiction, but he damn sure tried. There were several periods in the narrative in which he made a stab at writing some poignant observation on human nature and the world at large. For the most part it was good, but to me it seemed like he was trying too hard, you know?

My only other gripe was the composition of the story. It was 270 pages long, but it easily could have been trimmed back about 50 pages or so. There were several periods of complete filler, dialogue that could have been majorly condensed or explorations of McGee’s character that were, to say the least, superfluous. I mean, it was good filler, but it was still filler, and didn’t do all that much to propel the story onward. It wasn’t a big deal, but it did slow the reading somewhat in those points. Plus, the story was good enough that it could have stood on its own two legs without the extra pagination to prop it up. But then again, all that is just my armchair critic’s opinion, so take it for what it’s worth.

All in all, it was a good book. Most lovers of good mystery stories will like it—perhaps not love it, but like it, definitely.

I won’t let you walk away

Without hearing what I have to say

Carter Brown Mysteries - The Beginning

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 03:51:45 GMT

Well, not really. I mean, it isn’t the first book in the series, but it’s my first book, if you know what I mean. I’ve got four other Carter Brown books sitting on my shelf that I still need to read, and let me tell you—if the one I just finished is any indication, the experience isn’t going to be anything special. Carter Brown mysteries are your typical “who-dunnit” fare from the 1950s and 60s. There’s not much too him, both from a literary substance standpoint and a length standpoint. This particular book, The Brazen, was published in 1960 and was only about 130 pages. So of course, it was quick read.

As with most of the Carter Brown books, the story is narrated by a California police lieutenant named Al Wheeler. He’s a mid-forties, brash, wisecracking, head-busting cop that somehow (perhaps it’s his irresistible machismo?) manages to bed lots of beautiful women half his age. In short, it’s the author living out his own fantasies through the adventures of his character. Which is O.K., really, ‘cos lots of authors do that. Successful authors who make lots of money. And I’m sure Brown (or whatever his real name is) made plenty of it. His books sold like hotcakes back in the day, but I’m not quite sure why.

The writing isn’t very good. Brown tries hard to fill the book with tough, hardboiled imagery and witty banter, but it doesn’t work. It just ends up sounding like a poorly contrived porn script just before all parties involved decide to shimmy out of their clothes and “get buck wild!” The plot, likewise, is similarly lackluster and transparent. I’ll spare you the details. Suffice to say some people die, Wheeler investigates and beds a hottie, some more people die, Wheeler bust some heads, and all is right with the world. Despite gross negligence and outright illegal activities, Al Wheeler is celebrated as the hotshot cop he truly is, beds another hottie, and thus ends the tale.

Needless to say, I didn’t like the book. But since I have four more of the damned things sitting on my “to read” shelf, it’s safe to say there will be more posts like this in the future. For some reason it irks me to own a book that I haven’t read, so you see I’ve got to read the rest of them. I guess I’m just a stubborn bastard that way. I know my wife would agree. But hey, on the bright side, there will be lots more bad writing to make fun of, so let that be a feather in your cap.

I burned my bridge to the past

And buried my broken bones

Now I long for what I’ve known

Pleasure Island

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 03:05:56 GMT

Here’s another smutty blast from the past. This one is called Pleasure Island.

It was published in 1968 by Pendulum Books (in Atlanta, no less!), and it was written by a talentless goober named Jack Pine. The guy couldn’t write his way out of a wet paper bag. His writing is simply awful. His characterization is abysmal. His sex scenes are just plain dumb. And his plot is just plain dumb.

But it’s retro smut, so of course I still have to like it. That’s my M.O. And like The Massage Palace I posted a month or so ago, I’ve typed this one up as I’ve read it as well. As far as shitty porn books go, I’ve read much better. So that’s saying a lot. This book positively sucks. But someone somewhere (besides me, of course) might get a kick out of it, so I’m posting it here. Whoever you are, I hope you enjoy it… but that’s probably a pipe dream in and of itself.

You’re the victim
He’s the master
Beg for mercy
More and faster

Galleries

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 01:56:49 GMT

This’ll be just a quick post, but I wanted to give an update on something I set up not too long ago. There are now two new galleries attached to the phil-spade profile.

The first is a gallery of my vintage books. Some of them you’ve seen before, some you haven’t. Some I’ve read, some I haven’t. Some are mainstream, and some are… shall we say, more dirty. But they’re all indicative of the era of literature I’m so in love with. Hopefully, some of you might also get a kick out of looking at them, too. You can find it here.

The second is a gallery of vintage porn avatars I created out of boredom. They’re not very intricate or detailed, and there are no words on them, but there was something about each of them that I liked. So, I thought I’d share them. All pictures in this gallery are 100 x 100 pixels, but the “preview” function of the gallery makes them look a little grainy. Check it out here.

The pictures are open to all users, so if you want to copy them, crop them, whatever, you’re more than welcome. Let me know if there’s anything that needs to be changed, if I made a mistake, or anything like that. Otherwise, enjoy.

Thoughts that sit in here
Fall like bullets to the floor

Hardest of the Hardboiled

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 22:51:21 GMT

The first time I heard of Dan J. Marlowe was in a Stephen King book. The book was The Colorado Kid, King’s stab at an a-typical mystery story. It wasn’t that spectacular of a story, but in the course of reading it, I noted something in the dedication. It read: With admiration for Dan J. Marlowe, author of The Name of the Game is Death: Hardest of the hardboiled. I didn’t think about it too hard, but the name and the book stayed with me.

When I found a huge stack of Dan J. Marlowe books in a used book store, I decided to give two of them a try. Once of them was The Name of the Game is Death. I expected it to be a noir-like detective story, given King’s admiration, but it wasn’t. But he was right about one thing—it is the hardest of the hard boiled.

The story’s narrator is a man named… well, the reader is never privy to his real name, but he originally goes by Drake, so that’s the name we’ll call him. He and his partner, Bunny, knock over a bank and the two of them split up afterward. Bunny takes the money with him as both of them go into hiding. Through some quirk in the pre-arranged system of messages, Drake realizes that Bunny has been taken out of the picture, so off he goes to search for him. In the course of the story, Drake remorselessly kills individuals who get in his way while disclosing events of his childhood during the murderous lulls.

King’s assertion would be right on the merit of the utter ruthlessness of the main character alone, but the ending is what really cements the story’s “hard-boiledness.” The main character straight up murders his antagonist (a police officer) in front of half a dozen officers, jumps in his getaway car and roars away. He punches his woman in the eye and takes her car (though she really wanted to go with him), then makes a run for it. He is forced off the road, flips his car, and crawls out, continues shooting at the cops. The cops shoot at his car and hit the gas tank, igniting the whole thing. Covered in gasoline, Drake goes up like a roman candle. But he doesn’t die. No, he just gets almost 100% of his body burnt to a crisp, disfigured beyond recognition, and almost goes mad from the pain. He recovers somewhat, but the ending makes it clear that the authorities are under the impression the man has been driven insane by his experience. He makes a promise to, once he is discharged (since they won’t convict a loony, evidently), he’ll use the heist money to get some badass plastic surgery and continue his quest for revenge—which, coincidentally, sets up the following books in the series.

I loved the character of Drake. He’s a real anti-hero. He perpetrates his murderous deeds without pity, yet he abides by a warped sense of justice that helps the reader identify with and cheer for him. And as we know from previous blogs, I love anti-heroes. I think it’s a mark of an especially gifted writer to be able to write a despicable character and make your audience actually like them.

The writing is nice and succinct. There’s not a wasted word, and the dialogue flows in a realistic way. Marlowe’s imagery could use a little more flair (metaphors and the like), but it may not be the kind of book conducive to such things. Overall, it was an awesome read. I read the entire thing on a plane-ride cross country and hardly even stopped to put it down. I highly recommend it.

Bang Bang Bang

And you’re dead fucker

Trouble Is My Business

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 22:46:19 GMT

It’s that time again. Yep, you guessed it—Raymond Chandler worship time. I recently read Trouble Is My Business, a collection of his early short stories. This is the pre-1940, the era when the pulp veins were still thrumming hardcore. And it is this period—along with the WWII years—when Chandler was at his best.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I can see that, when it was written, Chandler was still trying to get his Marlowe character down pat. Little details—like the kind of sidearm he wears—changes from story to story. But overall it’s minor. The stories are all quite good (4 in all), but I enjoyed “Gold Fish” the most. I won’t try to do any regurgitation of plot, but all the stories involve murders, money, and gun-wielding dames that may or may not have a heart of gold. And of course, all of them are narrated by the quintessential private eye, Philip Marlowe.

I don’t have to tell you what I thought of this book. Of course I thought I was the shit. If Raymond Chandler was alive today, I wouldn’t go as far as actually sucking his balls, but I would buy him a nice hooker to do it in my stead—if he was so inclined.

I made a god out of blood

The MAX

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 02:10:59 GMT

The next stop on the “Hard Case Crime” train ride is a book called The Max. It’s written by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr, two award winning novelists in the crime fiction genre. The title character is a man by the name of Max Fisher. He is a small-dicked, short, fat, middle aged man with delusions of grandeur. In the previous novel, Max and his mistress, a woman named Angela, knocked off his wife using a former IRA hired killer. Max then set up shop as a drug dealer—a horribly deluded, inept drug dealer, but a drug dealer nonetheless. He was arrested and convicted for his deeds and sent to Attica. Angela, for her part, fled to Greece where she laid low by partying, boozing, and sexing it up with locals and other vacationers.

In the story, Angela runs into a spot of trouble (killing a man who raped her) in Greece, so she hot-foots it back to the States. Max, through sheer dumb luck, becomes a big shot in the joint (through the spread of the erroneous rumor that he once cut a man’s dick off). The prisoners stage a riot, and during that time, Max and his cell mate make an escape. Angela, back in the states by this time, aids them. However, they run into trouble when she is tracked down by the cousin of the man she killed and an English grifter who looks amazingly similar to British author Lee Child. The story ends with every single character dying except for Max and the Lee Child look alike.

The style of the story is simply amazing. The tone is completely tongue-in-cheek, totally satiric. All of the characters are deluded with their own self-importance, and the authors convey their attitudes with precise and amusing effect. It’s most definitely dark humor, but it’s still hilarious. The authors aren’t especially spectacular in their plot-crafting abilities or even their diction, but the tone they have down pat for sure.

The book was a good read, but honestly, it probably isn’t for most people. The characters are just too a-moral to appeal to the casual readers. Still, it’s not like it wasn’t fun. You just have to be in the right mindset when you read it—that, and go into it without expecting too much.

And on I read

Until the day was done

Californication?

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 13:16:45 GMT

I’m posting now from beautiful Monterey, CA. I’m here attending an IT Security conference. Per my company’s wishes, over the course of the next six days, I’ll be undergoing a ritualistic hazing known as the “Security Essentials Bootcamp.” Twelve hours a day of rigorous, mind-numbing security training designed to whip me into shape—from an IT nerd’s perspective, anyway. All together, it will be a good experience. I’m lucky to be with a company that actually wants to spend money to train its employees. But it’s going to suck like a Bourbon Street tranny getting through it all.

I flew into San Francisco Airport yesterday, obtained my rental car, and promptly got lost in the middle of the city. I drove through a couple streets full of strip joints and nudie bars, then passed into Chinatown before stumbling onto US 101 and following it out of the city. It was about an hour and a half before I finally found my way to the Pacific Highway. I stopped in Pacifica for a bite to eat and trucked on down CA-1, enjoying Cliffside vistas of the Pacific Ocean as I drove. I stopped in Santa Cruz and tooled around their downtown area for an hour or so in search of a used book store. I found little fulfillment in that regard, but I did buy the new Slipknot album. After that, I hit the road and headed to the hotel, which was in Monterey about an hour further south. After a stop a the SaveMart for essentials (read: beer), I made it to the hotel with little trouble and checked in. In California time, that was 9 o’clock. I’d left my home at 8 a.m. Thursday morning. So I’d been traveling a whopping 14 hours that day. I was beat.

Oh, and on a side-note, did you know that there are a ton of homeless people in every major California city? Evidently there are no laws against pan-handling here. Back where I come from, the cops will throw you in the clink for a night and three squares if you don’t move along when they say so. And Asians! The only place I’ve seen so many Asians in one place before was a Jackie Chan movie. Who knew?

Jokes aside, I’m really excited about this trip. I don’t know if it has come through in my writing, but I’ve never been to California before. Hell, I’ve never even been west of the Mississippi until now. It’s probably a good thing that I got to drive around the city for a little while, since it gave me some insight into a place I’d never been before. It’s a helluva thing trying to write a book about a place you’ve never been. Per my wife, that shortcoming isn’t very discernable in my writing, so maybe I’ve read enough L.A. Noir to fake it. But that’s still no replacement for the real thing. It’s kind of like trying to write an erotica book without ever having had sex and only having watched tons of porn. You don’t have to have experienced every little nuance of sexual perversion, but it helps to have a basis to work from that’s grounded in reality. And in the same way, vicarious scenery can’t replace the real thing. If I’m going to write about California, I need to go there at least once. It won’t be as good as living there or having grown up there, but it’s the best shot I’ll have for understanding the atmospheric nuances that make a piece of writing seem real. So that’s one of my goals for this trip.

Another of my objectives is to get some serious writing done. This may or may not be possible given the rigorous training schedule, but I’m going to give it the old college try anyhow. On the four and a half hour plane ride over here, I finished the rough draft of Chapter 20. 20 is a sex scene, as I may have mentioned in previous posts, and though it should have been the most fun to write, it was one of the hardest in a while. I’m not sure why, but it definitely wasn’t for lack of motivation. I think part of it had to do with getting the characterizations right. There’s a million different dirty directions you can go with a sex scene, but it’s a totally different thing to go in one direction and at the same time stay true to both established characterization and plot goals. It would be great fun to add a lesbian scene, but as the main character is a guy and given and most narration is given from his point of view (3^rd person limited, though), it would be harder to pull off. I could have Diamond and Vasquez DP Eileen while wearing clown makeup and whipping her with polish sausages, but that would be just a tad outside the bounds of the plot. And the setting. So you see the challenge.

But all that whining is moot. I worked through it as mentioned earlier and hammered out a fairly nice draft. I’ll polish it up and post it before the weekend is out. Wish me luck in reviving my brain long enough to do so.

My generation’s for sale

It’s a steady job

Personal Grooming

Sat, 25 Oct 2008 02:23:14 GMT

Between posting dirty stories and reviewing recently read books, I thought I would take a moment to talk about something else—something that I think most of us can, if not relate to, have at least thought about. It’s a certain sexual practice that has come to permeate sexuality in the 21^st century. I’m not talking about bisexuality or fake boobs or piercings or even the still infamous anal sex. I’m talking about shaving—and not the kind involving your face or your legs.

Now, I know the practice isn’t unique to modern times. The “style” of grooming preferred in that general region has varied from era to era. For instance, I have it on good authority that the ancient Egyptians were enamored with set of perfectly smooth genitalia. And art of the 18^th Century and even the Renaissance show a decided lack of “bush” in many nudes—probably because they were attempting to emulate the Greek and Roman masters of old, most of which had some of the same hairless fetishes as we do today. Even some erotic photographs from the 50s and 60s show noticeably hairless genitalia. They’re admittedly rare, but they are out there.

The current trend, I believe, started with porn in the 90s. Bald fun parts gave a more unobstructed and cleaner view of “the action,” so naturally the actors (and directors) in those films strayed toward hair styles that would showcase their naughty bits more fully. As the morals in society loosened, so did the popular attitudes about porn, and—whether by accident or intentionally—people began to emulate the sexual icons on the screen. I realize that not everyone who’s shaved downstairs got the idea ‘cos they saw Ass Masters 9 and said to themselves, “You know, I think it would be fun to look like a sex-crazed whore. I want that.” But I do think that the images on screen played a part in our societal concept of what is sexy.

But I digress. The point of this whole post isn’t to dissect cultural trends in the realm of sexuality or tout pornography as a great mover and shaker in our society. What I really want to know is what the rest of you think about the practice. Do you prefer a bush that you’d have to tackle with a weed whacker, or a snatch bare as a baby’s ass? Or, like me, do you prefer something somewhere in the middle? Do you like to dye it weird colors and shave it into shapes like hearts, unicorns, faries? Are your preferences the same for both men and women? If you or your partner does a little landscaping in that vicinity, how do you mow it? Give us a little insight into the state of things “down there.”

For instance, my wife has shaved ever since I’ve known her. When we first met, it was totally bare down there. She practiced a scorched earth policy. I know a lot of guys who insist upon a totally bald look, but it’s not for me. It reminds me of a pre-pubescent girl, and that just ain’t sexy. On the other hand, an untamed jungle is decidedly unsexy as well. A little bit of hair is necessary to remind me that she is indeed a grown-ass woman. At my suggestion, the wife moved to something of a medium—which both she and I prefer. Now the only hair in that area is a single finger-wide line hovering above her pussy, better known as the landing strip.

I have to admit that I, too, am a shaver. Now, I don’t nearly take as much off as my wife. That would be unmanly, right? But I do take a razor to the balls and the base of the shaft, clearing the brush around the tree, so to speak. The rest of it I don’t take off, but I do thin it out a bit. In my book, it just ain’t sexy having a thick tangle of pubes you’d need a pitch fork to comb. Plus, the sensitivity of the “member” is enhanced as well, so to me that’s a pretty nice bargain. Honestly, I don’t think I’ll ever want to go back.

So I’ll ask you all again. What kind of hairdo do you prefer below the belt?

I don’t know what makes me hard for you

The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 17:53:55 GMT

As the cover would suggest (see below), The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont deals with a subject near and dear to my heart: pulp fiction. The Pulps were an era of American literature in which imagination really was the limit. Any kind of story you could imagine—horry, fantasy, romance, adventure, science fiction, crime, lusty tales, you name it—were churned out by a nonstop mill of writers. Sure the stories were farfetched, and of course most of the writing was sub par at best. But in the 1920s and 30s, that’s what the American people wanted. They wanted to escape their dreary, depressed lives and immerse themselves in a world full of hope and excitement. Who really cared if it was outlandish and unbelievable? It was better than reality, and that’s what mattered

But the period brought us many writers that have come to be classics of their respective genres. Robert E. Howard, Robert Heinlein, H.P. Lovecraft, and L. Ron Hubbard all came from the Pulp era. And in this novel, Malmont takes the famous authors of the period and weaves a story with them and their lives in a plot that is nothing if not pulp. The main characters are William Gibson and Lester Dent, authors of The Shadow and Doc Savage, two of the most prolific publications of the time. In their real lives, the men were entrenched rivals, competing for the top spot of the pulp food chain. Also in the story are H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Heinlien, L. Ron Hubbard, and other less-known authors. Malmont uses tidbits of each author’s personal life to craft an adventure story worthy of the pulps.

The meant of the tale doesn’t become apparent until you get about halfway through the book. A lot of necessary plot seeds are sown in that time, but most of it is just characterization and biography. Still, the story is a fairly good one, and it is definitely what I would call “pulp.”

During the time the story takes place (late 1930s), the Japanese are raping and pillaging across Manchuria. Various Chinese factions (Chiang Kai-Check , Mao Tse Tung, etc) have halted their civil war in order to fight the Japanese. The adopted son of one of these faction leaders is fighting to keep the Chinese people together as they combat the foreign invaders. In an assassination attempt by a bureaucrat, his wife and child are killed, and he vows revenge. He travels to America with a mysterious American colonel to obtain a chemical weapon that was stockpiled on a tiny island off the coast of New York. The weapon is a gas that has the immediate effect of killing its victims. Minor exposure makes the victim come back from the dead as a zombie (though only for so long), while direct exposure can turn the victim into some sort of mutated, blood thirsty monster. He plans to use the deadly gas on the Japanese to retake his country, then on Kai-Check, the communists, and anyone else who stands between him and the ultimate peace he desires. Of course, the authors get caught up in the madness and must find a way to stop the madman. As with any novel, there’s a tad more to it than that, but that’s the bulk of it.

Overall, I felt like the book was a good story. It did what it was supposed to do, which—to me, anyway—was to craft a nostalgic tale with well known authors, relive the pulp era, and show that is’ not quite dead after all. It succeeded in that regard, but I would be kidding myself and you if I claimed it to be a lofty tale worthy of world-wide acclaim. But still, it was a descent read.

The one thing I didn’t like, that kept me from immersing myself totally, was the dialogue and the language. The author didn’t do a very good job of making his characters and his world sound like they were from the 1930s. The style and syntax of it all was just too modern, and it honestly kept me from totally “believing” the setting. He did, however, do a good job of throwing in tidbits about the characters’ personal lives, their works, and other pop culture references. So I do have to give him kudos for that.

I dreamt of all that we could be