I was so pleased to hear that KS Media Group Inc has purchased THE EDGE OF MADNESS for manga, animation and/or cinematic treatment. Despite my reservations regarding incorporation of some of the elements (the characters, for example, are largely unclothed in the work), I was assured that pre-production plans were already underway. 

Already an Audible audiobook read by the incomparable Peter Pollock

An Excited Raymond Gaynor

Author of THE EDGE OF MADNESS (Aignos 2020) by Raymond Gaynor

Co-au...

WHILE eating brunch today (as actor Daniel S. Janik always concerned about weight, aka sedentary author Daniel Janik/Raymond Gaynor/Gary Martine), I found myself pondering the quintessentially classic question: Which is “more betta,” the knife, fork or spoon, which being as my partner is Japanese, immediately expanded to include hashi (chopsticks) and, in deference to America’s love affair with fast foods, fingers?

Given the universality of finger use early in life, it’s environmenta...

PROMISED by Reds and Blues alike for decades, but especially after the COVID “shot across the bow,” updating our nation’s infrastructures has been much hooted, but barely addressed issue that is now beginning to impact all citizens more and more.

Take the internet, for example. The key to doing business in the future is a necessary shift from “in-person crowd sales” at brick and mortar stores, to “individual service via distance online” stores. The problem: the internet. What u...

AH, you thought I was about to post on how AIWs (Artificially Intelligent Whatevers) have changed the way we humans think in terms of human sex and gender. Nope. Couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m talking more in terms of determining the sex and gender of your personal AIWs. You know, your trusted computer, cell phone, home alarm system, self-driving program.

It all started the other day when, based on a computer incident, I began to wonder what sex my computer was. Male or female, ...

Ernest Hemingway once said, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” After 5 decades of writing, or more precisely authoring (meaning writing for a specific readership), I feel as if my life is a perfect testament to that. That veil between what I feel compelled to say and what I actually need to say, grows fainter with each passing year. I’ve been asked several times, “About what do you have so much to say?” — admittedly a paraphrase — bu...

PLEASED as punch to hear that William Maltese’s “edge of the seat” romance, DARE TO LOVE IN OZ (Savant 2009) — https://savant-bookstore-honolulu.square.site/product/dare-to-love-in-oz/100 or https://www.amazon.com/dp/0984117547 — available in printed, digital and audiobook versions, is now a screenplay, ready for manga, animation and cinematic treatment by KS Media Group. “Romance and adventure collide in Australia’s exotic outback as a deadly storm and a deadly killer wreak hav...

“IF it flys like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a…” Personally, I enjoy likening this to the infamous children’s question, “What black and white and red/read all over?” So what’s para-duck-sicle about the first statement, and ‘riddled’ with double-entendre in the second, that both have in common? They’re both riddles. Or, some might say, they both are, in a broader sense, conundrums.

According to Dictionary.com, a riddle is “a question or s...

AS promised, today’s post follows on yesterdays. Talk is cheap as some would point out; action is something else altogether. Still, both come together in Plato’s famous (or infamous) REPUBLIC depending on your point of view. The 10-book “series” is is a Socratic dialogue, on justice, the just city-state, and the just human. According to Wikipedia, Socrates talks with various Athenians and foreigners about the meaning of justice and whether a just man is happier than an unjust one. In ...

WELL, as the real “The Last Bookstore” in Los Angeles, California states on its incredible website, “We’re not really the last bookstore – thank goodness – but we are the largest new and used bookstore in California. Plus, we’re the only one that’s 22,000 sq. feet with a record store, comic book store, 5 art studios, an epic yarn shop, a famous book tunnel, a mammoth head, and unexpected nooks of funkiness. Also we are in a hundred-year-old bank building, so we have vaults and...

HEY, we’ve already had two and survived, supposedly better for the experience. At least, that’s what I’m often told. But, hey, we’re better today. More experienced. More technologically advanced. More mature. And, the world’s overpopulated, anyway, and we who are doing the overpopulating just can’t stop. So what’s so bad, really, about another world war? After all, it would definitely be good for the world’s worsening financial situation. Always was, supposedly always will be....

THIS is a gripe: Whenever I travel the highways nowadays, everyone seems to be speeding except me, creating a definitely dangerous situation. I mean, when the sign says “Speed Limit 55 mph” does that really mean minimum speed? What’s with the need to speed far in excess of the speed limit not just on freeways (hey, is this really Germany and the Autobahn?) but in urban and even suburban areas. Is it really a 3 year olds responsibility to watch out for speeding cars? Or is everyone on sp...

YEP! If you’re literarily inclined, it’s definitely so! Writers (people who record things for themselves) and authors (errant writers who write professionally for a target audience) both know the Big Three C’s: Clear, Complete and Concise. Clarity is a given and always takes first billing. Completeness is next, and, while one of the Big Three C’s deserves second-most attention, is more of a guideline than a hard and fast rule (the whole mystery genre is based on almost but not quite c...

THERE are so many aspects of authoring versus writing that it can feel like a unscalable chasm separates the two. And yet…one thing that they have in common is the sometimes exciting, sometimes inspiring, sometimes relaxing, but always appreciated edge-of-consciousness sounds of moving creative new ideas from within, to resilient but editable, enduring publicly shareable stories as books, ebooks, audiobooks, screenplay-novels, screenplays, manga, animations, television programs and/or motio...

PEOPLE are often generous in advice as to how to “get the most out of life,” humans being mortal and life being finite. But what is it that one should “get the most of” while alive? People who’ve lived in poverty would likely tend to say, “Money!” People whose lives have been determined by overwhelming events, like war survivors, would likely tend to say, “Power!” People who’ve lived their lives and never respected themselves or felt self-satisfaction, would likely say “...

SAVANT Books and Publications, a traditional “no-cost-to-author” full-service book publisher, was recently purchased by K. Simmons Productions, a Hawaii-wood based manga, animation and film production company. With the purchase, writers whose manuscripts are accepted for publication are now afforded the opportunity of seeing their work in printed, electronic and audiobook as well as manga, animation, television and cinematic formats. So what should such an author be called, the panoply of...

YEP! Yesterday’s rant about airlines, applies equally to trains, buses, events, grocery stores, churches, tourism, hotels…all those businesses that depend on “crowd sales” and haven’t yet begun to make the move to “individual service.” Can’t say I feel sorry for businesses that can’t make the transition. Savant Books and Publications made the transition 12 years ago, before the pandemic’s “shot across the bow.” I keep wondering how many recurrences are necessary for bu...

I was asked the other day what “sign of the times” I believe is the most significant one so far in this decade. After pondering the usual unusuals, I have to say that it’s what’s happening “in the gnus” (ha, ha) or more correctly how we get the news. But first, a bit more levity: (1) “No gnus is good gnus” (I’ve already labeled that “fake gnus”); (2) “Read only what’s gnus-worthy” (hey, they don’t call them wildebeests for nothing); (3) “any day a call may come...

IT can’t be only me. I mean, how is it that “everything’s returning to normal,” when countries are still closing, citizens are protesting (more vociferously that ever) and half of people still social distance and wear masks (despite the “other half”) due supposedly to COVID? Being a pragmatic scientist type, I rather think everything’s NOT returning to the “old” normal, or, if this is normal than the life I lived pre-COVID must be a fiction. I’m not complaining; just tired...

ALMOST everyone has approached water — in a well, around a fountain, under a bridge, in a brook or stream — and made a wish. But today, I want to muse about not the wishing well, but simply wishing well. Doing it right. Yesterday I posted about needs, wants, hopes and desires. Now it’s time to talk about how to wish well.

I don’t say this lightly. Not because of magic or compelling people to make a wish come true, but because, in the most basic sense, making a wish is all about direc...

“IF wishes were horses, then beggars would ride” is a popular saying, so, given that billions of people make wishes every day, why aren’t there more horseback riders? And don’t just say, there’s a shortage of horses. According to that fount of information, Wikipedia, “a wish is a hope or desire for something. In fiction, wishes can be used as plot devices…In fiction a wish is a supernatural demand placed on the recipient’s unlimited request [list]. When it is the center of a t...

HISTORY (“his” “story”) is a strange animal. First, it’s the victors who generally write it. Second, it’s almost always steeped in the hopes and expectations of the dominant culture. Third, it’s not scientific (i.e. not repeatable in the technical sense since it involves group activities based on contemporary norms). Fourth, it’s not academic, fiction and non-fiction often being published interchangeably (think of the “novel” here — typically an historically-based work w...

WHAT the heck is happening to book readership? More importantly, what the heck is happening to publishing? Is it the Great Fight of the Big Guys (in this case Barnes and Noble, Ingram and Amazon)? COVID-delta? Nationalism? Global Economic Restructuring? Or perhaps printers are finally running out of virgin trees to make paper and not recycling? Is it Universal Greed and resulting Uncontrolled Inflation? Is it that no one wants to work anymore? Is it global mass migration? Is it that propagand...

THESE are the times that try [hu]man souls, for sure. With COVID-delta cases once again seizing control of medical facilities in state after state in USA and around the world, I sense another Magrathea, the illusory planet in THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY that went into closure, on the horizon. It’s not a pleasant sight. The world, USA and San Francisco are still reeling from the effects of COVID-null. Another local or, God(dess) forbid, national lockdown, like several nations are ...

OKAY, so you’re reading this because you’re an author (hopefully, or an avid reader at least) wondering about what it all means. The “short of it” is about the myriad frustrations with publishing. Publishing wasn’t doing exactly well when bookstores started disappearing (remember Borders, Crown, Waldenbooks, may the rest in peace?), the last behemoth bookstore chain Barnes and Noble was bought out by UK hedge fund Elliot Advisors, distributors, well, began having trouble distributin...

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...

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, ...

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...

I’VE often heard that the storyline, narration, dialog and outstanding editing are what make a successful book. Of course, I have to agree. Makes total sense. And yet…there’s something, almost intangible, that elevates a well-authored and edited story to something, well, more. It’s the difference between a great performance and one that elicits goose bumps. It’s having just the right “edge.” Something more. One of my publishers, Savant Books and Publications | Aignos Publishing,...

THERE is an interesting conundrum, a fluke of human nature, that is challenging humanity’s shared perception of reality, whether it be the cosmos, physics, science, the humanities, the human story, romance, love, gender or amorous eroticism: It isn’t so much that seeing is believing, but that we see what we believe, want or can see through our cultural blinders. That “seeing is believing” has already been highjacked, this time by politics, in that after spreading an opinion as factual...

IN a recent 30 April 2021 CNN opinion article by Chandran Nair entitled “The Covid disaster in India shows that the future is biological, not digital” that little artificial mole I mentioned in yesterday’s post abruptly reared it’s legs! Nair aptly places emphasis on the importance of preparing for COVID-20, -21, -22 and so on, rather than depending solely on technology to protect us. In my world, I took this as a call for fundamental infrastructure change. Be it government, ethics, f...

WRITING writings; carefully wording one’s words; creating creative stories — it’s all about judiciously avoiding the irreverent epizeuxis, pleonasm and, God(dess) forbid, semantic satiation. And doing it without losing the occasional congenial, sometimes gratifying occurrence of alliterative consonance or onomatopoeia. Rat-tat-tat went the machine gun. Quack said the duck. Forsooth mouthed the itinerant forsoother.

In truth, as an author, I do enjoy employing semantic variety — a sor...