Refuse to be Afraid: The book

This will be the first Richardson & Bluhm book from the 21st century. The Imaginary Bomb and The Adventures of Myke Phoenix are things we found in the attic and said, "Why didn't these get into print in the 1990s when they were written?" But Refuse to be Afraid is where I've been going since I first started these little scribblings 33 months ago, and I hope to have it in your hands on or about the third (!) anniversary of my first, tentative post.

How do you like the cover? Too stark? Too bland? Right colors? Horrendous colors? Your constructive criticism is more than welcome.

It took only a few weeks after I launched Montag for the predominant theme to develop, and I'm building longer pieces around the "unfinished essays and spontaneous eruptions" of this little corner of the Web. (And thanks for the phrase, Wally!) A couple of excerpts from the opening chapter:

As this book heads to press, the United States is waste-deep in a presidential campaign. As in all other political campaigns, it seems, the issues are our fears. One candidate plays on our fear of being unable to make ends meet, of living from paycheck to paycheck, and the terror of what might happen if the paychecks stop coming, of what might happen to our loved ones if anything were to happen to us. Another candidate plays on our fear of those terrorists, of the people with difference faces than ours who want to destroy our way of life. Both candidates promise that if we will turn ourselves over to them, we will be safe and secure.

There’s really only one place where you’re totally secure: A jail cell. Surrounded by four walls with barred doors and windows, you can’t be hurt. (We’ll set aside your fear of earthquakes for the moment.) Government leaders who promise you safety from outside influences can only deliver by caging you – by stripping your liberty away, either one freedom at a time or all at once.

Benjamin Franklin was right, presuming he really said these words attributed to him: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety” ...

The book is called Refuse to be Afraid, but you’re not human if you’re not afraid from time to time. What I hope to encourage you to do is to keep your fear at bay. Don’t let it control your thoughts and actions. I’ve been writing about Big Fears, the fears that lead to airport checkpoints and surveillance cameras and sometimes even to wars, but little fears make us miserable, too. We don’t speak out for something we believe in, because we’re afraid of the repercussions. We don’t ask that attractive person for a date, because we’re afraid of being turned down. We don’t start writing the Great American Novel or quit our jobs and start that business we really want to start – because we’re afraid it won’t work out. Worse, we’re afraid of the changes success will bring in our lives.

When I say, “Refuse to be afraid,” I’m not telling you to deny that anxious little feeling or that paralyzing terror. The fear is real. I’m just suggesting that the thing that terrifies you can’t possibly be as awful as the paralysis. And yielding control of your life, i.e., your freedom, is likely to produce scarier results than an environment where everyone is free.

For now, tidbits like these are only available by browsing this blog. A good place to start is down there on the right, with the list I've immodestly labeled "B.W.'s Greatest Hits." Come summer, you can sit in the hammock or at the picnic table and enjoy this stuff out in the sun. R&B doesn't yet have the capability for advance orders, but once we figure out how to get that done, you know we will.

While you're waiting, nothing is stopping you from enjoying the little bits of light reading we've produced for you thus far. Click here and you're on your way.

Another lull in the action

Seems to me I read somewhere that somebody spent a bunch of our money and concluded that a lot of people spend Sunday night and the early Monday morning hours dreading to go back to the wage-slave job after a couple of days' rest. No foolin', Sherlock. And thanks for spending our money on another investigation of the obvious.

The last few days around here have been largely spent on omphaloskepsis and the editing of a couple of upcoming books I've told you about — but it doesn't hurt to remind you that The Adventures of Myke Phoenix should appear shortly and Wildflower Man a couple of weeks after that at this handy location. Tell all your friends and lovers — viral marketing is the only marketing I can afford at this stage in my career as an author and publishing mogul.

Once those are out of my way and (hopefully) in your hands, most of my free time will be devoted to preparing Refuse To Be Afraid for a July release, and that will involve a great deal of thoughts that likely will bring my mind back to the themes of this blog. I expect the posting will pick up as that work develops.

Richardson & Bluhm update: March

Sorry I've been a bit of a stranger in these parts; I've been working on the book project planned for April 15 release with Warren Bluhm's name on it, and the project has been altered a bit over the past few days.

Originally a collection of short stories named Wildflower Man, I told you last month it would feature two stories he wrote in the mid-1990s about a superhero named Myke Phoenix. Well, the ongoing archaeological dig in his attic revealed three more fully-realized stories, and the tone of these tales is so different from the other short stories that we've spun the book into two projects.

Thusly, we plan to release a 120-page tome called The Adventures of Myke Phoenix, which will feature four "full-length" adventures and a related mini-story, along with a shorter, and therefore more inexpensive, collection called Wildflower Man. Depending on a number of factors, they'll either come out around the same time or within a few weeks of each other.

Listen for more details in the long-awaited Uncle Warren's Attic #48, which ought to be finding its way into a podcatcher near you sometime later this week. And the Richardson/Bluhm projects scheduled for later in the year are still on course.

Of course, while you're waiting for all this, you can always purchase or download your own copy of my Imaginary Bomb, which is certainly the publishing sensation of 2008.

Richardson & Bluhm update

Listening to: Kingdom Comes, Sara Groves

As I told you last month, the plan is to release four books during 2008. The easy one, The Imaginary Bomb, is already available at Lulu.com, and why the bejeebers haven't you ordered your copy yet? You know you've wanted it ever since you finished listening to Uncle Warren's podcast of my inaugural interstellar romp. And thanks to those who've already purchased it to sweep The I-Bomb up to #34,223 at the Lulu marketplace!

The hard one has been the fourth one. Despite a promising start, all I had until a few days ago was a cast of characters — actually a small list of archetypes — and a general feeling that I wanted to write about freedom, revolution, nonviolence and the Zero Aggression Principle. This, my "Great Freedom Novel," is on the plan for release Oct. 15.

Then I realized something important about the early returns on The I-Bomb: Some of the people who really, really like it are bright young men (I know they're bright because they like the book) in that 8-15 age group. I started thinking about Robert Heinlein's so-called "juvenile" fiction — not that I compare myself to Heinlein, but it doesn't hurt to think about his audiences — and wondered what I would want to say to that "young adult reader" audience. Suddenly, as I wrote to a couple of these guys' moms, my brain exploded.

I didn't intend to return to the time of imaginary physics, but here I am. This is not going to be another story about Bob Whelan, Pete Wong and Baxter Hetznecker, but the novel is set in their universe, and it involves Sirius 4's declaration of independence, which plays a key role in The I-Bomb. The working title: The Imaginary Revolution. (A quick search turns up another book with the same name, but I'm guessing they would not be confused with each other. Still, I expect the writing process will suggest an alternative to me.)

A couple of quick notes about the other projects.

+++ Warren Bluhm's collection of short stories is still more or less on track. Working title: Wildflower Man, a collection of short stories. Maybe that'll be the final name, maybe not. Most of these are scribblings he created in the early to mid 1990s, with the major exception of a new short story he just started working on.

Another interesting highlight: Once upon a time he wanted to update and revive the concept of the dime novel, inventing kind of a hybrid between the old pulps and comic books — few or no pictures, but shorter stories. The farthest he got with this concept was a superhero named Myke Phoenix — he actually had two years' worth of stories plotted and several issues in various stages of completion. The book will include the two most fully realized Myke Phoenix stories: "Our Best Hope: The Origin of Myke Phoenix" and "The Strange Ultimatum of Quincy Quackenbos." Target release date: April 15. Gulp!

+++ Our dual-bylined book Refuse to Be Afraid is more or less on track for its target release date of July 15. The main news on this front is UW continues to threaten to record a new collection of his songs for public release, some of which you may have heard on his "Uncle Warren's Attic" podcast. One song you have not heard would be the title song of his collection, which for obvious reasons would also be released July 15: "Refuse to Be Afraid."

The plan today is to sit down and map out a way to get all of the above accomplished by the indicated target dates. One important thing I've learned about goals is that when you make the deadlines public, it generates a real incentive. So as I write this, I have no idea how we're going to get it all done, but I'm telling you now to further my goal to have at least five items on the Richardson & Bluhm homepage eight months from now. Thanks for listening!