IT’S my personal pleasure to announce that THE EDGE OF MADNESS (Aignos 2020) by Raymond Gaynor is not only an Amazon Genre BESTSELLER, but recently received award recognition at the San Francisco and New York Book Festivals! By way of celebrating, I’ve asked the publisher to drop the price of the printed version from $16.95 to $12.95, and the Kindle eBook version from $7.95 to $2.99 for the rest of July and August (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0999693859)! Celebrate with me throughout August...

WHAT really drives the global economy? Money? Power? Energy? Nope. It used to be whale products: oil, baleen, and ambergris. Then it was rubber. So what are today’s felled Amazon trees being replaced with? What’s really driving the contemporary world economy other than drugs, war and human trafficking? Palm oil.

According to Wikipedia, “Palm oil is an edible vegetable oil derived from the…fruit of the oil palms…Palm oil accounted for about 33% of global oils produced from oil crops...

TODAY is the outdoor on-location filming for the K. Simmons Productions’ The STATIC Movie Honolulu (https://kspllc.media/the-static-movie) at Lunalilo [Rest] Home. An anticipated nine hours with the possibility of even more depending on the weather, which currently looks like it’s planning to cooperate. Nonetheless, eighty-six degrees in the hot Hawaiian sun with only a smidgeon of trade wind. I’ll be bringing hat, sunglasses, umbrella (for sun not for rain) and hand-fan. For me, playin...

I’M often asked in author interviews what I think makes today’s literature “contemporary.” Has it changed over the decades I’ve been authoring? The simple answer is, “Yes, it’s changed and especially so these last couple years.” There is, however, one thing that hasn’t changed: the need to appropriately address and express violence and sex, two intrinsically human issues, if not obsessions. There is so much trauma, or put in a more general way, violation, or, if you prefer, ...

AH, perhaps you’re already wrestling with this title as a metaphor for writing or authorship? Nope. I am an author, but I mean the question quite literally. It’s a contemporary question up there with how come so many drivers ignore the speed limit on freeways, and how come things AI-digital increasingly seem to take more time and effort than human face-to-face? But I digress…

You must admit (if COVID hasn’t damaged your olfactory system) that many foods, but especially fruits, today ...

IT’S true! There are rare “Ah-ha!” in-your-face-and-body, totally mind-blowing, moments of ecstasy in life that result from a concerted combination of prolonged devotion, discipline and action. I know it, because I’ve experience such a moment. The first happened one day during my 20 years of competitive-style dancing at a lesson. I was dancing with my coach, and suddenly, I wasn’t in the studio anymore. I was flying along effortlessly in a state of pure bliss. And yes, it was better...

Authoring, in general, and THE EDGE OF MADNESS (Aignos 2020) by Raymond Gaynor (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0999693859), specifically aside for a moment, the cast of K. Simmons Production of The STATIC Movie Honolulu (https://kspllc.media/the-static-movie) did our first script read-though for this weekend’s filming on location at Lunalilo Home. It’s the last of the “big” (meaning many lines to deliver) scenes after which there will be two more short, but emotionally intense “on street...

HUMANS are social animals. We thrive on physical contact and savor intimacy. It’s what makes the human world go ’round, and books as well as movies play a big part in satisfying our human need for intimacy. Books have to totally engage the reader’s mind to be “successful,” acting like a basket within which readers place their own experiences that fit into the literary basket’s unique shape. It’s up to the reader which “monkey see, monkey do” neurons are activated. It’s a d...

YEP! Going bananas over the different kinds available in Hawaii right now. Alright, you already know about the long, chalky-tasting Cavendish available in most grocery stores. But in Hawaii, right now, there’s plantains, baby-finger bananas, apple-bananas, ice cream bananas and more. My favorite (I’ve tried them all): those short, stocky but oh-so-sweet apple-bananas grown right here in Hawaii! Where to get them? In some “local” grocery stores, but the best tasting are ones purchased ...

AS you know, I’m a San Fran man; however, over the years I’ve become enamored with a second literary home: Honolulu, Hawaii, USA. Both Southern Temperate Mediterranean in climate; both Asian-American in flavor, though Hawaii has that unique Polynesian element as well. Both are ideal for a reclusive author, providing just the right mix of the international with local that favors, at least for me, comfortable, quiet time necessary for writing.

One item of interest in both SF and Honolulu, ...

AS a professional author, I must admit that I look forward to those end-of-the-year royalties many of my publishers pay. However, this year — the second year of the Global COVID Plague — based on quarterly sales reports I’m seeing, I’m anticipating a number of those “your royalty for this year was less than $50 so we won’t issue a check” notices. Okay, so sales of THE EDGE OF MADNESS (Aignos, 2020) by Raymond Gaynor (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0999693859), especially audiobook sa...

WONDERING about the first word, “editing,” instead of “tripping?” Well, yes, I am an amateur ballroom and latin DanceSport competitor, but with dance competitions and dancing in general most on hold till COVID runs it’s course, I’ve been working hard with Savant author Vern Turner (https://www.amazon.com/Vernon-Turner/e/B089Y14KZY) to edit his recently accepted manuscript entitled THE IMMIGRANT’S GRANDSON. Personally, I can’t think of a better way to keep up my own authoring s...

RELEVANCY, the “state of being closely connected or appropriate” is a…well…double four-letter-plus-one word, especially in today’s Trumped up style of global dis-integration. And yet, relevancy is what life’s all about, isn’t it? It’s what makes a good book or a good movie truly outstanding. Not surprisingly, in today’s world, it’s often about running against the pack.

Take the Amazon genre bestseller, THE EDGE OF MADNESS (Aignos 2020) by Raymond Gaynor (https://www.amazo...

AFTER the last post, I thought it time to update those following The STATIC Movie (https://kspllc.media/the-static-movie) on 10 July 2021’s outdoor on-location shoot in Chinatown, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA. Here’s the unofficial set photographer’s photographic/video montage:

https://youtu.be/mSe79VkNe6M

This was our “trick” shoot, focusing on one scene with two special incidents: a skateboarder “hit” causing me to drop my cane, and my losing my hat when I bend down to pick it up. ...

IN these days of repetitious mass shootings, lackluster gun control and unbridled impulsiveness, I find it consoling that the cast and crew of The STATIC Movie Honolulu are about to experience another planned weekend shoot, this time on location in the streets of Chinatown. It’s the third of basically five location filming, the final two being outdoors with me, Will Gardner, pounding on what I think is the door to my house but is actually a neighbor’s (think Alzheimer’s Disease), and a ...

I don’t know if you have those once-in-a-while angst days like I am having today. It’s not so much a “bad” day as it is that everything seems to have a hidden meaning, and they keep popping up everywhere. A teeshirt phrase, a sign on the side of a passing bus, the here-to-fore “new” meaning hidden in the title of an old book. But it’s not really about all those potential “ah-ha” moments and whether I’m willing and ready to “see” them. It’s not really about my angst. ...

AS the author of THE EDGE OF MADNESS (Aignos 2020) by Raymond Gaynor — TEOM — I’m often asked what PRIMARY genre this Amazon Genre BESTSELLER should best be listed as. What should be an easy question is, if not complex, at least deserving of a post. I list it on social media as a work of Sci-Fu (Science-based Futuring) rather than Sci-Fi (science fiction) or Sci-Fan (science fantasy). TEOM is based on current technologies and social concepts which are simply projected into the future. S...

THERE’S really only two issues at the heart of human existence: plants and, I’m guessing you already guessed it, water. Without these humans can not exist. The heck with petroleum, nuclear energy, money and power. The first two represent limitations of contemporary knowledge, the latter two, human illusions. But plants, which regenerate air, potable water and provide basic food for all things animal, and their principal product, namely, organically enhanced potable water, are and will rem...

RUSH to your nearest bookshelf dictionary, or if you prefer, online one, but you’ll still have to guess a bit to ascertain what today’s post is about. HINT: It’s about how global citizens sometimes feel in today’s dis-integrated world. Think insignificant and another cog in a massive, complex, karmic wheel, as if there is nothing an individual can do anymore that, as Rick says in the classic movie Casablanca, “amounts to a hill of beans.”

But differences come in many sizes and fl...

TIMES have changed. It’s no longer a sheep or a Daniel thrown into the world of finance’s lion’s den of yesteryear. It’s a bear these days, though in two opposite meanings. First, a bear willing to slice, thrash and carve out it’s own piece of the financial lion’s den, but second, a transitory bear in the sense of a bear rather than a bull market. It’s commando-style business that makes the millionaires these days. And that seems to be increasingly true of authoring and publishi...

IT started with “fake-news,” then progressed to “fake-products” and has now evolved into “fake service.” You know what I mean. Make a customer service call and experience the “fake” firsthand: difficulties finding a phone number to talk with a “real” person, especially of one’s primary language; complex, irrational auto-phone-trees that only another A.I. (artificial intelligence or 10 year old can understand); the one-hour “valued customer” waits; the customer servic...