Angry Ghosts, an eBook at last

Four years have passed since our first release. Seems like forever ago. And in that time, there’s one question we’ve heard repeatedly:

“For frigg’s sake, why don’t you guys put Angry Ghosts out on eBook?”

Our answer was always,

“We did! We licensed it to Eirelander Publishing under the title, Wraiths of Earth.”

Eirelander is a great little press. Really is. There’s a lot of industry experience there, and we at C.O.P. were glad to have a knowledgeable partner for our first release. But Wraiths didn’t thrive there, which is too bad, because Lee Morris and Pierre Roustan did a lot of work cutting, shaping, and cleaning what was admittedly a very rough manuscript.

In life you try different things. Some work, some don’t. So to Lee and Pierre: thank you both. Your efforts made Wraiths a significant improvement over our first printing of Angry Ghosts.

Now that electronic rights are back in-house, we’re plugging that gaping hole in our line up. After giving it one final round of polishing, we are overjoyed to announce that Angry Ghosts is finally available as an eBook. To celebrate, we’re giving it away for free over the next five days. For anyone who read the first printing, come back and check out the revised cut. It’s worth it.

What’s that you say? That’s not the only hole in the line up? Funny you should mention it…

We’ve got Farnham lashed to his MacBook again. Work begins on the final installment of the series, working title, PLASMA RAIN.

Oh and should we mention? There’s another book beaning around in that gin-addled brain of his: something dark and awful about the desperation of winter starvation. No idea where he came up with that. Or…

Wait, didn’t we leave him locked in the office for Christmas break last year?

We did?

Eh, he’ll be all right.

-C.O.P.

Being Strange

Yes, Paul, I’m wearing a raincoat.

So there you are, you’re chatting with someone you recently met, and you’re comfortable. Seems like they get you, and your guard comes down. After a drink or two, you’re feeling good and relaxed. Until you realize she isn’t saying anything back anymore. And the look she’s giving you is accusatory. Like you just used her father’s casket as a urinal.

Whoops.

You know what you meant. Totally innocuous in your mind, because you weren’t at all serious. You merely slipped into that familiar sarcasm that makes your friends all groan or grin. The sarcasm you’re known for. Except she doesn’t know you. And now, she isn’t ever going to know you. In one silken, graceful movement, she slides out of the booth you’re sharing, reaches into her purse and somehow dials her best friend’s phone number before the phone even leaves the brown leather bag. At least, you think it’s her friend. In awe, in confusion, you watch those long legs carry her out of the restaurant, into the cab, and out of sight.

And then you play back the last thing you said in your mind. Sounds fine. So you tap a stranger at the bar and ask him if what you said was so bad. He shows you the hilt of his knife and suggests you move along. Hands up, you ease back and make your way home, where you get blitzed and write about it in your journal.

It isn’t until a few days later that you flip back to that entry. There, in black ink, is the last thing you said to her:

“People tell me I remind them of Patrick Bateman a lot. Thought it was ’cause of the hair or the way I talk or something. But no. It’s ’cause they think I’m a serial killer.”

Hands, meet face.

It’d be all right if this was a once in a while thing. But it isn’t. Somehow, I manage to find that magical word combination that skips the countdown and gets right to the explosion. I find that one raw nerve in someone and then I stand on it. With both feet. Such is my skill.

It’s a kind of hyperactive honesty that teams up with well-honed observations–things that make great characters in a book… But timing is everything, I know, and blurting out what I’m thinking is often misunderstood. So making new friends is hard. And that’s because I’m strange. Always have been. Always will.

When you’re strange, people are strangers. (Sorry, Jim, you almost had it.) At first, it’s rough. But then it gets easier. And then it’s a gift. Perspective. Independence. Freedom.

“The rain and the sun, the changing seasons are true friends. Solitude is a hard-won ally–faithful and patient.”
–Henry Rollins, I Know You

We Remember the White Rose

Euer Denkmal bleibt in unserem Herzen.

Cynicism

I heard on the radio that Martin Luther King, Jr. was 39 years old when he was killed. Always seemed to me that he was older. Maybe because it’s taken me so long to get my own life sorted out that I couldn’t imagine having accomplished so much before the age of 50.

That one man (with a lot of support) could instigate, build, and sustain such a movement by the age I am now… Got me thinking pretty hard about what I had done with my life.

When I look back, I see someone reluctant to grow up, someone mired in a gloom of things gone bad, someone determined to self-sabotage at each new opportunity. Seems like a kind of madness to me now. So why?

Because I was a cynical bastard. By my early teens, I knew the world was shit, and every anonymous face I saw had made it that way. Misanthropy gave me serrated edges, which I honed every solitary night.

In my twenties, I wasn’t so much falling asleep as passing out. Booze was the valve, and my journals the sink for ugly thoughts, righteous indignation, and pestilent platitudes. (I’ll make them public someday. They’re a hoot.)

But then, I suddenly felt a burning intolerance for the way I was living. Maybe it was the inventory I took of my life as I sat alone on my twenty-eighth birthday. Maybe it was the motorcycle accident a few weeks earlier that proved I wanted to live, after all. Pretty sure it wasn’t the bourbon.

Do I backslide? Oh, sure. Every time I see a documentary about our farming practices, I switch off and yearn for painful tumors to start growing in the head of Monsanto’s CEO. Every time I read a story about the real damages done by Wall Street, I become sympathetic to the idea of crucifixion. Cynicism is second nature to me, and it’s like an old friend, sometimes. I can always count on it to be there, familiar and comfortable as old socks. But it’s so negative and self-defeating, nothing good will ever come from it.

At heart, cynicism is cowardice. It’s capitulation. Giving up. Letting the wrong people win without a fight. And the more cynical we become, the more dead and useless we become. If all we’re going to do is scowl and curse at those who are polluting our world with noise and smoke, we might as well get on the melting ice floes and make some room.

This is what happens when greed wins.

And this brings me, at last, to my point. There will always be those who will try to take what they can get away with. So long as greed exists, there will be those soulless voids who serve it at the expense of all others. There will be those who try to subjugate, intimidate, rape, kill, and torture. These people absolutely depend upon a population disinterested or distracted enough to let it happen. They rely on us to stay cynical, believing this world does not belong to us, and that it’s just how things are.

Bullshit.

It’s hard to imagine what Dr. King faced as a leader of the African-American Civil Rights Movement in the 60s. It’s even harder to imagine someone with greater cause to be cynical. There must’ve been many nights when the doubts were crushing, that real change would not last, if it came at all. The risk to self, family, and friends for an uncertain goal…most would have left it, I think.

Risking all to erase division, to unite as one people…that is greatness. It’s inspiring when you see it. Not the false, jingoistic versions Hollywood loves to sling out, but the total commitment to an ideal that uplifts all people, even if it means not seeing it realized in your lifetime.

I’m shamed when I recall my years of sullen apathy. I’ve wasted time, which is the greatest sin any of us can commit. But I’m not dead yet. And there’s plenty to do in the meantime.

What does MLK Day mean to you?

-Allen Farnham

Pride

You know it when you see it. And if you could see us now, you’d see an assemblage of gin-soaked nerds more proud than Bill Gates on his first date. We simply could not be any more pleased to announce that our new book, The Exhausted Dead, is finally available in print and eBook.

Took us a long time getting here (for which we’ve frequently hazed our author) but now at Journey’s End we can sit back, relax, and share with you what we’ve been building, cutting, and shaping over the last two and a half years:

For a Cadre Operator, there is no retirement but death.

Thompson, Argo, and Beckert limp back to Cadre One in a stolen transport. The reconnaissance mission to occupied Earth has left them broken, barely alive. But the truths they discovered beneath the rotted concrete of Washington, D.C. cut deeper than Blueskin knives…

In the terabytes of raw data from Earth, Cadre Techs find evidence of another covert research station called, ‘Cadre Two.’ If it exists, could it have escaped the genocide like Cadre One? Could there be survivors?

Cadre Operators quietly don their gear and prepare for rotation. Beneath their stoic exteriors, they know Cadre Two could be a burned out shell. Or, it could be a trove of lost technologies, possibly a refuge should the ancient machinery at Cadre One fail…

…if the saffron-eyed alien hasn’t found it first.

We’re trying out Kindle Direct, so pop over to Amazon for eBook. You can also get yourself a print copy, while you’re there.

For anyone who’d like a signed copy, First Editions purchased direct from us at COP will have Farnham’s chicken scratch on the first pages. Let him know for whom he is signing. If he’s too hungover, we’ll prop him up, jam a pen in his hand, and tell him he’s late for his college finals again. Be prepared for a list of likely economic spin-offs from Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative or a rambling treatise on Big Oil and Agribusiness in South America.

So we’re hoisting our glasses in celebration, toasting another cycle completed. If you’re local, come on by. More the merrier.

And speaking of merry…May Santa bring you all something good this year.

Ever forward.

-C.O.P.

All Hallowed Eve

Happy Halloween from all of us at C.O.P.!

Got some good news for a change. In about two weeks, we’ll be receiving inventory of The Exhausted Dead. We’ll also have e-Book available about the same time.

We know you’ve been waiting a long time for this one. Expectations are high and rightly so. Farnham delivered.

No doubt he thinks that will get him off the hook… Eh, no.

Now that we have everything we need out of him, it’s time to settle the score. One of you came up with a beauty of an idea: a ball-slugging machine that could be either cranked or attached to a motorcycle engine. We really wanted to…But mechanical ineptitude precluded such a magnificent device from materializing. Not to fear!

Sometimes the best things in life are the most simple.

Ah, yes. A sanguine sacrifice for All Hallowed Eve. What could be more fitting?

Well, we’re dragging our sloth-like author out to celebrate. To our friends in Salem, watch out for the crazies.

Ever forward,

-C.O.P.

Moment of Silence