A Great Man Gets Remembered...

Yesterday, May 8th 2014, in 1983 was the day John Fante died from diabetes. He was an amazing writer. There is no other writer who has inspired more than Fante. I just finished re-reading Dreams From Bunker Hill, his last novel that was written as a dictation to Fante's wife, his vision had been taken by diabetes at that point in his life. At the end of the book I always read the little bio. It was May 9th, 2014. I realized his death anniversary was yesterday. Because I didn't know what to do in honor of the anniversary of his passing, I decided to write this.

He was one of the greatest authors that I have read as of now. I learned of his work through reading Charles Bukowski. Bukowski loved Fante. Worshipped at his alter.

I received his novel Ask The Dust as a gift. The book sat in the gift bag for months. I was put off by the year that Fante wrote. Most old or classic things carry a level of boredom. Not with Fante. He had a way with words, a charm if you will. I eat up his words far more than that of Bukowski or any other writer living or dead.

I was saddened knowing I could never be as good as he was. Much like him however, I feel my writing is a little ahead of its time. Maybe I am wrong, maybe Fante was wrong, maybe even Bukowski was wrong. Either way these two men had an impact on my soul in a way no one living or dead in fiction will ever have. And for that, they at least deserve a blog post. It's the least I could do.

If you are a fan of either writer and if you've got the sand. Check out my various stories for free at the link below.


https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/156220

Twitter: @Greyebooks

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 I don't look at being an indie author as being free or just unpublished by the mainstream.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 my short story book on Nook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/all-kinds-of-girls-shane-grey/1111299074?ean=2940033203130

Read all ebooks via this link:

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/shanegrey

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.