Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Shane Grey's Shameless Self Promotion...


2104 is upon us. So it's time for me to peddle some of my short stories and ebooks. I should be completing my first novel this year, it's about 68,000 words in. I know a lot of you folks got awesome tablets and phones this year for xmas. This the perfect opportunity to check out some of my work!

You can download them to iBooks on your iPad or iPhone. If you have a Kindle or Nook you can download them as well! I'll post a complete an easy guide below!
 
 
 
 
Android, Blackberry, Kindle users can find my books and stories via this use this link and scroll down to the story you want to read: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/shanegrey


Nook users can click here: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/all-kinds-of-girls-shane-grey/1111299074?ean=2940033203130

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-last-story-i-will-ever-write-about-her-shane-grey/1109155843?ean=2940033043859

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/sincerely-me-shane-grey/1110197175?ean=2940033117369

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/phoebe-shane-grey/1110621902?ean=2940033165933

Sunday, November 10, 2013

The Rage...


There is a rage but when the rage comes where in the fucking world shall we direct it. There are already too many wars, too little jobs, too much death. The little children suffer, they starve. There is so much rage and who is to blame?

The birds in the summer time air, they infuriate. They have it so simple. The bugs and creatures that lurk in the night know only instinct.

What do we know?

You know how to use your smart phone. A phone that is supposed to be smart but all it does is connect you to dumb things. The phone that is supposed to be the future but intelligent minds weep for a day when we could be left the fuck alone.

It is all heroin, straight into the veins of this world, of this mortal coil. We are happy to be sheep and graze on status updates, we are content at being cows led to the slaughter and hanging on every little status update, every little tweet, and yes, every little blog.

Where shall we direct our rage smart phone companies? When our revolution comes we will spare no device, no gadget, no gizmo. Our pens and paper are mightier than your fucking iPad. Our thoughts and ideals are stronger than your updates. Our moral code holds more value then what you live tweet.

When the rage can't contain itself any longer there will be an uprising. When it comes you should run. Be sure to take the sim card out of your phone. You don't want the rage to find you.

Let us hope the rage will not be taken out on those who will no longer be able to form a sentence without a screen in front of them. Let us hope there be no blood sacrifices. And let us believe in a brighter future without the chains of a smart phone, tablet, computer.

Write a fucking letter. Use a pen. Use your brain. We all know you aren't using your tablet for books. But if you do keep me in mind.

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Indie Authors and Agents

I will start this by saying fuck money. Now, those who have clicked away, good. Those of you still with me I'll tell you what I told the love of my life today. I said, “I don't care about having extra money to play around with, I just want my bills paid.” To any indie author reading this, you may be asking, “Whoa, are you able to pay your bills being an indie author?” The answer is, “OF COURSE FUCKING NOT.” But as someone who once was(and I guess still is)a punk rock guitarist. I have this to say.

The indie music uprising is what made all the record companies shit their pants when the underground punk scene started to become mainstream. I don't look at being an indie author as being free or just unpublished by the mainstream.

I look at is as a revolution. We are not the next Bukowski's or Hemingway's or Salinger's We are the next Ramones, the next Sex Pistols, the next Runaways. We are the punk rock equivalent of Hemingway or Salinger. Of course we aren't writing to be in the big book stores. But if Big Agent Demon offered us a deal we'd be creaming in our pants. We'd leave CBGB's for the large stadiums and we'd give up the stenciled spray painted shirts for the screen printed ones.

The thing is that the agents who would find the great bands(or now indie authors)don't care about prose. They want the next fifty shades of semen or twilight or hungry games.

When those record producers or scouts were searching the clubs for bands, they wanted something fresh, new, different. With the agents and publishing companies they want all the same shit that the housewives, divorcees, and unmarried women like to read. They want meaningless pop culture diarrhea. I am sorry for that. It hurts my soul that even thought I scour the Internets and ebooks and ibooks and robot books and alien shit, I still can't find anything like Bukowski, Salinger, Fante, and I guess Hemingway.

The fact that I only know how to write one way. The fact that I learned from Bukowski, Fante, Salinger, Palahniuk, Kultgen. The fact that I learned from these fine men is the only solace I can take for the future of punk rock writers. Make some fucking noise with your literature. Make it your graffiti. Make it your knife to the throat of the authority. Make it your screams of misery alone in your bedroom at 3am. If you feel you can't write or ever be a writer, then good! Write more! If you read back and second guess the story, the prose, the content, then submit it! Let's take back our craft. Flood submission emails with your writings. Print them and snail mail them to agencies, who gives a fuck if they throw it in the trash, someone will find it! We will be read! No one can tell us what to do!

Let us ruffle some bow ties! Fuck them all and make them open a blind eye to our words! We Will Not Be Fucking Ignored!

And above it all, have fun! Write what you want! A storm is coming and the publishing houses and agents won't know what fucking hit them!
 

Read all ebooks via this link:

Monday, October 21, 2013

The Truth is...

The truth is one day you will wake up, you will look in the mirror, on that day you will realize that you are a less successful, less attractive, less passionate, less excited version of yourself. You will find validation in things like “keeping a steady job” and “having a steady income.” Maybe you will own a home. You will find validation in ownership.

It is possible at this point in your life you will have a long term girlfriend or wife. You may even have children. You will find validation in your children. You will find validation in your marriage or long term relationship. Society will tell you you're doing great, society will remind you in media and their recycled words and proverbial pats on the back will also validate you.

You will have lived a life of mediocrity. This will be OK with you. You will surround yourself with others that have done the same thing. Those among you who chose a different more unpredictable path, a not so safe path, those who are out of their twenties but still live like they are, you and your group will shun them.

You and the group of underachievers will validate each other in a big circle jerk. Saying things like “you've done pretty good for yourself” and “you're the luckiest because you've got a great woman, great kids, great job.” These things will keep you from going insane.

But late at night, when you're alone with your thoughts, you will have regrets. You think of the jobs you had that you loved, you think of your passions, the ones that others called hobbies. You think back to it all and maybe you will cry. Maybe you just take a deep breathe and focus on all the validation you receive. Maybe at this point you've already convinced yourself that you wouldn't have done anything different.

You remember back to the days when you had a choice and you realized you were good at nothing. You had very limited talents and skills. Everything you wanted to great at, you were just OK at. You were never going to be the next Kobe Bryant, Kurt Cobain, Stephen King, Bill Gates. You knew that so you pursued comfort.

Once you had comfort it seemed impossible to get away from. Now the walls were closing in. You saw the others around you. Perfectly content on being just plain. Keeping the wheel spinning. Worker bees. You saw their spirit and thought, “Only ten months until my first vacation.” You realized that in this world you had to take vacations, you needed something to look forward to.

Suddenly every punch of the time card became like a bullets through your flesh and closer to the vacation. The vacation would be the band aid for your bullet wounds. It would relax you just enough to not take your own life, but not enough to go back to work happy.

You saw yourself in the mirror then and realized this was it. There was nothing else. You figured it was time to settle down because everyone else around you was doing the same thing. You used your coworkers as a yardstick to measure where you should be. You met a girl, it was love, all that jazz. Then you married, then you had kids, then you paid bills, bills, bills. Then you woke up and realized you still worked at that place.

You woke up and looked in the mirror and almost a decade had gone by. You didn't notice. You took your wife and kids to barbecues so that you could get more validation, more reassurance. You needed it now more than ever and on all levels. You despised your boss because he didn't pat you on the back at all. Your life became about what others think of you and trying to get them to think something high of you.

When you look in the mirror you see nothing worth thinking high of. You think of missed chances, opportunities lost. You wish you were younger. You wish you had more time. You wish just once you could come home to an empty house. You wish the bills would pause for just an extra day.

At the barbecue you have an extra couple of beers. At home after dinner you have a few drinks. On the weekends you try to get as much drinking in as possible. You try to avoid sex or physical contact with your wife. You dream about the times when you could have any woman.

And you wake up and look in the mirror, and you see nothing. No one in the mirror is anyone you know. And you understand that life is long, for the first time ever you fear death.

Then you go to work.
 
More of my writing can be found here: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/shanegrey


Shane Hates You All

I'm just kidding. It's a joke from season one of Californication where Hank Moody started blogging. Anyway, I digress. I have not blogged in a long time and I realize that as an Indie Author I should be doing so as a way to promote my ebooks.
However, this is not a commercial for my ebooks. I will tell you this. I don't understand a lot of things. I mean people put lots of time and effort into all sorts for different shit. Me, I have no idea how many hours I have racked up with just sitting down and writing. For example, some people watch the Big Bang Theory, I have no clue as to why this is. Maybe the pretty lights and colors, or maybe some people just plain don't want laughs in their comedy.
I digress again. I wrote a series of short stories on a small yellow legal pad. All the stories were probably written within a span of a year. They were my first short stories. I was damn proud of them and to be honest, aside from being weird, sexual, or violent, they're not half bad.
For those of you out there that went college and have some sort of degree, certification, license, sense of entitlement. Good. I am proud of you. Those of you who have a fancy degree and are published authors or authoress's and that's how you pay your alimony, fuck off. Also tell your friends with their fancy degrees about my blog.
But those of you reading this who want to make it in the world as a writer. As in, it will pay all your bills and buy you cars and women. DON'T DO IT! At least already be a doctor, lawyer, or Laker. But do not and I repeat do not hope that your voice, your opinion, your prose, your life experience, any that will get you paid and laid.
Furthermore, click the link to my ebook All Kinds of Girls. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/156220 You can read 20% of it for free on any device. And if you like it, you can own it for 99 cents. Don't look at it as buying my book, look at it as me asking you if you have any spare change and you hand me all the change from your pocket and that change equals 56 cents. It's actually much closer to that.
Thank you all the readers, doctors, lawyers, Lakers, and fancy degree types reading this. I will not use your 56 cents to buy booze or drugs, at first.

Monday, April 8, 2013

Red Wine and Blurred Visions. A true short story

Red Wine And Blurred Visions
by
Shane Grey

When I was a kid my mother used to do an extra turn around the block if there was a song she liked on the radio. If we were pulling down the street of our house, the radio blared some pop song she loved, the car would pass right by our house. I always watched the house pass and wonder what she was doing. The first few times she ever did it, I told her she missed our house. I had to tap her on the arm because she was in a trance. The music seemed to enfold her. Years later when I was playing guitar in bands and constantly blasting music in head phones and ear buds, I never once thought that maybe my love for music stemmed from those times in the car with the cars stereo cassette player. Today I do that. I will do a couple cruises around the corner to finish up a song, or sometimes even play a few extra songs I love to drive with and I'll cruise the city streets. Today though, as I write this, it was a warm Summer day. I drove one city over to run some errands and the a few songs came on that got me thinking emotionally. Then while my forearms burned from holding too many items in the checkout line at Wal-Mart. Something happened. I saw a girl two checkout lanes over. She looked like HER. Not my mother. But HER. The one that I had forgotten about, not really, but the one I tried to convince myself I needed to forget. You see I am crazy, so I think. My mental disorder is love sick. Love ill, the idea of being in love makes me want to vomit. But other days, deep in my soul, I want it. I want to hold hands. I want kiss under willow trees. I want to take  walks on a cool beach night. When I want those things, I want them with only one person. So because I don't want to hurt a hundred billion other girls feelings, I will not name that person here. Now, some who have read my previous writing may think they know who I mean. They would be incorrect. No matter. I saw this girl in checkout lane at Wal-Mart. My heart skipped a beat and got a rush of adrenaline. It was not HER, but it looked like her. Same lips, eyebrows, nose, hair, glasses, body type, skin tone. But the actual eyes, different, darker. Not like the melted chocolate eyes of HER. Seeing this imposter along with all the songs on my iPod, it caused a mental overload of thoughts. All the thoughts about her. I knew that tonight I was going to need red wine. Beer does not hold the power to mask these kinds of thoughts. Those of you reading may wonder who this person is? If not, and you're just reading, well thank you for doing such, but I feel the next paragraph is important. SHE was not my girlfriend. SHE never kissed me. SHE never held my hand. SHE did however not agree to go on a date with me. SHE never spent the night. SHE never walked on the beach with me. So because of that, most of my thoughts consist of 'why?' or 'why should I care?'. I have even been told by others to let it go and get over it. This was sage advice but far easier said than done. Why as humans must we pine over what we cannot have? I know I am not the first but to ever feel this way, but I feel I am the last. No one will ever feel this way ever again. Then I try to focus on HER flaws. The things that SHE loves that I would not like or that I don't agree with. It does not work. The dark sky the only solace in my insanity. Night time. So comforting. The red wine a soft kiss and blanket of safety. Seeing the imposter at the retail store offered some comfort. Perhaps there was someone out there that could be HER enough and can also love me and maybe that imposter won't have the flaws. I can turn the imposter, the fake, the impersonator into HER. It maybe wrong, but maybe that is the only way to be with HER. Turn the imposter to the REAL THING. Or maybe I have reached a new level of insane. All I know is that no other will do. I have tried and it will not work. No wonder how attracted I am to any other female. There is no urge to kiss them, hold them, walk with them even on a sidewalk let alone a beach. The dreams, oh, the dreams. When SHE makes a cameo in my dreams, it is torture. At the time of dreaming if anyone saw me, they would see a smile. That is what they call it I believe. Smile. I awoke the other night because my mouth in that position. There was a dream, it was of myself on a university campus... A university campus large and gothic looking in structures. A beautiful cloudy grey day. I walked along a courtyard. Basking in the presence of grand structures, making me feel inferior, I smiled at the beauty of such a campus. There was an archway, a dark hall to the other side. I walked through and smelled the damp smell of wet grass and wetness, the actual smell of cold. On the other side of the tunnel leading out of the archway, was HER. SHE was with friends, I smiled. Then I made eye contact with her. Like in reality, SHE didn't look up immediately, it took a minute or two, just like in reality. Only in the dream, SHE didn't acknowledge me. In reality SHE knows of me. But still in the dream I smiled, just be on such a beautiful campus, the same campus as HER. ...I awoke with that smile, which immediately vanished, I did not attend a university ever in my life. I was confused, then I lay back down, and I remembered HER. And I just wanted to be back there. The wine is my favorite mask to cover up thoughts about HER. The blurred vision caused by the wine reminds that reality can blurred. Therefore if I cannot quit HER then I will have to find an imposter. Until then, I hope this piece of writing will help get some closure and maybe I can trying to weave her into every fictional story I write. There was already a whole website dedicated to her, unofficially of course. HER. HER chocolate brown eyes. HER auburn chestnut hair. HER milk skin. HER precious lips. HER flawlessness in all my red wine and blurred vision. Goodnight, My Sweet.