HIRSCH TODOROVICH, A Writing Partnership

Andre & Vaysha Hirsch Todorovich in 'the Mid-TwentyTeens,' Qualicum Beach, BC

WISHING ALL CREATIVES A BRILLIANT NEW YEAR 2020! THE 20'S ARE HERE AGAIN; MANIFEST 'UNIQUE' WITH YOUR INTUITIVE LENS...

These photos were taken during the first half of the TwentyTeens: An interesting side-note is that the vintage polka-dotted scarf Vaysha is wearing over her hair, turned out to be the garment we would be hand-fasted with, just a few years later in Carmel, California, 2017. The heritage of the vintage polka-dotted scarf is that it once belonged to Vaysha's Oma. These Qualicum Beach photos preceded my ring proposal to Vaysha Hirsch in 2015, in the Tower Room of Craigdarroch Castle, Rockland Victoria.

AN UNDISCOVERED NEURAL PATHWAY

SQUARRIORS: SUMMER by ASH MACZKO & ASHLEY WITTER

Author's Creative Brand:
Genre: Allegorical Dystopian Graphic Novel
Length:f 13 pgs.
Publisher: Devil's Due Entertainment

1. World's Immersion:

The gateway to SQUARRIORS: SUMMER inevitably rips another snippet from the cataclysmic past events of 1985. The moment is a deeply emotional wound, and the blood of that traumatic feeling, flows directly into the dystopian world of 1996...and that first reveal is a savage, animalistic one.

When I first picked up the SPRING mini-series, the arenas of Ash Maczko's delineated world were shown sparingly, except for the iconic image of the Tin Kin's runaway train wreck. Here, now, in SUMMER, with the sun scorching, we are brought right inside the fearsome Amoni stronghold. The visions do not disappoint.

A Tower was taken in Spring (was it a wind-mill?), now a Maw encampment. This is one of the landmarks shown, to represent the war brewing, across the wild rural forests of Illinois. And isn't that fascinating? What we refer to, in a world we humans would know - of course! Illinois! - has been utterly reduced to a savage land, where no creature is ever safe, but scrambling for shelter, and the redemption of their ways of life.

W.T.M.B.a.w.c.k. EXCERPTS #37-42

EXCERPT #37: "Living strange...is motivated by an intuition to open 'random doors,' to touch some closer truth within."

EXCERPT #38: "Burn a fire inside this space and send the smoke up through the top, communicating a dream to the world."

EXCERPT #39: "Orange light dapples in the cab through a leafy canopy overhead; dreamy glints on a drowsy, mid-afternoon."

W.T.M.B.a.w.c.k. EXCERPTS #31-36

Andre Hirsch Todorovich in Craigdarroch Castle; Photo by Vaysha Hirsch

EXCERPT# 31: "Life is flux. Only the most consistent signals penetrate this ephemeral x-factor of an on-going story."

EXCERPT #32: "Together with the dreamers, misfits, beautiful, homely, unbalanced; the promise...to explore being human."

EXCERPT #33: "Trees gesture elegantly, mountains form with arcane insight, clouds shape up like someone dreaming them up."

W.T.M.B.a.w.c.k. EXCERPTS #25-30

Andre Hirsch Todorovich in Qualicum Beach; Photo by Maria Chantelle Tucker

EXCERPT #25:
"This is a playpen for bad men.  I remember not to play too loose where I am likely to be zeroed in on."

EXCERPT #26:
"When I hear how the words flow, I instinctively know if they work. No one on the planet can say otherwise."

EXCERPT #27: 
"The instant chill is encoded in my neural pathways, down ancient branch-ways in my soul, awaiting a trigger."

AFTER RESONANCE with TEAM ASH

Team Ash, 2015; composite photo provided by Vaysha Hirsch

ASH MACZKO is the creator and writer of the SQUARRIORS comic book serial for Devil's Due Entertainment.  He is also the creator and organizer of the pop-culture event known as "Count-I-Con" in Grayslake, Illinois.  Ash lives in the Northwest suburbs of Chicagoland.

ASHLEY WITTER is the illustrator for the comic book serial, SQUARRIORS. Ashley recently worked with Yen Press illustrating and adapting the graphic novel of Anne Rice's INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE: CLAUDIA'S STORY, and THE WOLF GIFT.  Ashley is also an illustrator for the FANTASY FLIGHT card game, NETRUNNER, the comic book series BLOOD THIRSTY: ONE NATION UNDER WATER, and her own original comic book, SCORCH. Ashley graduated from Madison Area Technical College with a degree in Animation and Conceptual Development.  She grew up in Madison, Wisconsin.  

1.  How did the two of you meet ~ event, purpose, or accident ~ and what happened?

ASH:  A random encounter at Nocturna, in downtown Chicago.

ASHLEY:  Yes, the odds of us meeting were incredibly random.  I had just finished work on the Twilight graphic novels, and took a trip down to Chicago on a whim.  When I met Ash, to put it simply, we were kindred spirits.  We were certainly good at combining our efforts to get things done.  Hence, we're now known as Team Ash.

SQUARRIORS by ASH MACZKO & ASHLEY WITTER

Author's Creative Brand:
"Squarriors" issue #1
Genre: Allegorical Dystopian Graphic Novel
Length: 32 pages per issue / 4 parts
Publisher: Devil's Due Entertainment

My 9 Reader Hot-Button Considerations:

1.  World's Immersion:

Read the lit sign on the bar/eatery that opens up page 1 in rural Illinois:  'Good Friends, Good Times,' burnt-out to simply "End Times."  When we walk inside that bar and witness what happens there, the unsettling understanding becomes:  resources are scarce, and the strong shall take them; fast-forwarding a decade later, we are ejected from lingering human out-posts and immersed directly into the weeds.  This world is a sprawling microcosm of conflict on the earthy level, down in the senses, literally, animals scrapping for survival.  This microcosm, to the animal denizens of this world, has its own parameters, delineated from the chaos into an order of warring tribes:  Squirrel-Warrior / 'Tin Kin' Tribe, the Cat 'Amoni,' the 'Maw,' the 'Sursha'...merely introduced, yet to be fully revealed.  We follow the Tin Kin into their compound / shelter, discovering the apt origin of their tribe's handle.  The kinship is housed inside the tin hide of a train-wreck, which clearly jumped the rails, lying in a ruined heap; this is a visual metaphor for the crash of old-world order, swallowed up by the wild...

AFTER RESONANCE with WRITER BRAD ABRAHAM

Brad Abraham, somewhere in his 'hood, NYC 2014

BRAD ABRAHAM is best known as a screenwriter whose best work includes the films FRESH MEAT, STONEHENGE APOCALYPSE. and miniseries ROBOCOP PRIME DIRECTIVES.  He is also writer and creator of the acclaimed comic, MIXTAPE.  His current and upcoming film-TV work includes the Sci-Fi thriller THE PICCO INCIDENT and the TVO kids series NOW YOU KNOW.  He's also been a prolific journalist, most famously as a long-time writer for Rue Morgue Magazine, and his work has also appeared in Fangoria, Starburst, and Dreamwatch magazines.  A  graduate of the prestigious Image Arts program at Ryerson University, he makes his home in New York City.

What was the process of thought that brought you to the MIXTAPE concept and format?

BA: There’s two answers to that. The first can be found on page one panel one of Mixtape #1. It was while packing up my things to move to NYC that I found an old box full of mementoes from my teenage years. There were yearbooks, there were copies of SPIN and Rolling Stone magazine, there were letters from friends, photo albums ... and mixtapes.  Lots of mixtapes.

MIXTAPE Vol. #1 by BRAD ABRAHAM

Author's Creative Brand:
"Mixtape"
Genre:  Comic Book / Young Adult Existentialism
Length:  issues #1-5, 22 pages each; 110 pages in total
Ardden Entertainment

My 9 Reader 'Hot-Button' Considerations:

1. World's Immersion:

Garrison Creek is the small town where our characters have grown up together.  In this microcosm of the world, friendships have remained close and familiar through the formative years until now...teens about to forge outward by the end of the summer and high school graduation, entering young adulthood.  School hallways of commiseration, house parties of socialization, and the cars some of them are now driving, extend out from the insular bedrooms lined with band posters, and beyond the head-phones of personalized soundtracks.  One of their group has burst the bubble, traveling beyond the Creek.  At this key juncture she has just returned from Europe.

The chosen music in each character's own headspace, defines their moods, following them through the developments in their lives.  This is an early 1990's period piece and writer Brad Abraham has designed stories of expanding YA awareness through the importance of what each young mind was listening to in that time; music as emotional guideposts/gateways of expressing just how big all their personal worlds were becoming...beyond what they knew to be safe.

W.T.M.B.a.w.c.k. EXCERPTS #19-24

EXCERPT #19:
"Unaware of the weight coming to break my body, I lay back on innocent elbows gazing at limitless Universe."

EXCERPT #20:
"Caresses like sun-kisses from within, and kisses like head-rockets firing into stratospheric heights."

EXCERPT #21:
"Karma.  Things continue working things out," she shrugged.  "Chaos.  Things co-mingle, create something more."

W.T.M.B.a.w.c.k. EXCERPTS #13-18

EXCERPT #13:
"It's a midnight symphony, orchestrated chords to every solitary, biting, billowing pang."

EXCERPT #14:
"I was like a fresh sheet of paper, ball-point just beginning to swirl a penmanship across my consciousness."

EXCERPT #15:
"A descending base-line, catching sight of cranberry hair pulled into girlish braids just brushing her shoulders."

W.T.M.B.a.w.c.k. EXCERPTS #7-12

Pursuit is a compelling mind-set; one could pursue tangible objects, distant destinations, monetary sums, or any number of other desirous attractions...a fantastic spread of delectable foods.

My own pursuit is in chase of those wonderful IDEAS floating the unconscious ether.  I care to map the inner worlds, qualities of dreams, nightmares, from the silence and into descriptive illumination.

I have always been attracted to the idea I would eventually render a body-of-work that only I was "meant to render in just that way."  There is something undying about a note-perfect or chaotically beautiful rendition from the stuff of dreams.  Immortality may be found in a book which captures some marvelous visions, universal truths, or honest feelings about being alive...since we're here. One may as well have their own unique "say."  Ernest Hemingway published his first novel, "The Sun Also Rises," over eighty years ago, and long after his passing, that vintage volume of thought he cared to write, sits on my bookshelf.

I wish to express myself through writing to other thinking, dreaming minds, sharing what storms and streams about inside my imagination.  Since I was a child, I have understood this desire.  Through all those winding, challenging branches in the random road, this guiding light has never left me.

W.T.M.B.a.w.c.k. EXCERPTS #1-6

W.T.M.B.a.w.c.k.:  

MY NOVEL-IN-PROGRESS

240+ pages and counting...

Published Excerpts #1 - 6

My Vintage Underwood Typewriter

Gifted and photographed by Vaysha Hirsch

I've released these random excerpts from within my novel as tasters.  These are from the outskirts of my inner world, as mysterious puzzle pieces.  No plot-points from my emerging book are touched on.  No key characters are revealed.  No true notion as to what sort of story I am writing, can be gleaned.

What I do share, are examples of my writing voice from the novel, my first steps toward making contact with eventual readers of the finished work.  Little tidbits of cathartic sharing from this author.

There is an artful limitation to the 140 characters of a tweet, and creating quality sentences in full, non-truncated words, is a challenge; The bite-sized structure, influenced choosing these pieces.

I have collected the six excerpts here on My Indie Book preceding the eventual arrival of the rest...

SUMMONED by RAINY KAYE

Celebrating the New Release of...

SUMMONED
A Debut Novel by RAINY KAYE
with Immortal Ink Publishing
237 Pages

MY IMPRESSION:

Great hook for the title.  Rainy has taken this mythology for her own, revised and re-envisioned.  That is what it takes, to rise above the derivative and own what has been done before.  And yet, has this concept been done before?  I think this concept, in its incarnation, is fresh.  In a paranormal author universe of vampires, witches, and werewolves we have mostly seen time and time again, Rainy Kaye has summoned a rendition of the Djinn or GENIE that transcends cliche visuals and assumptions we typically have in our minds, for this sort of being.  Of the many paranormal concepts that I have become aware of over the last few years, SUMMONED struck me as one that is of an instantly recognizable originality.

I have not been reading indies for review, lately.  In fact, my reading, when I have had time, has been in classic genres.  I have yet to read SUMMONED but on my short-list of indie must reads, this book is definitely on my mind.  I believe Dimitri will strike his own unique paranormal accord with readers...

AFTER RESONANCE with AUTHOR J. SCOTT SHARP

Author Bio:  J. SCOTT SHARP has been writing for much of his considerable life, but only just now, decided to take it seriously at 47.  This makes him a little crazy.  He lives in Arizona with his wife and two dogs, where he splits his time between watching TV on DVD, working,  and writing.  He is the author of short stories, Not Even There, Three Blackbirds, and Cold-Blooded.  The List of Five is his first novella.

1.  How have role-playing games or comic books shaped or inspired your imagination as a kid, and later, the process of story or character-building?

JSS:  I already had an active imagination as a kid, and I loved anything that helped me get that imagination going.  However, role-playing helped me to realize that no one is purely evil and everyone is doing something toward a goal and because of a certain paradigm that has been nourished in them.  This is important in character-building.  Everyone has a reason that they do things. The other thing that role-playing helped me with was that I was severely introverted (and still am).  Role-playing helped me to become less shy.

2.  During the years you wouldn't allow yourself to write, how did the impulse insist on showing up or revealing itself to you? 

JSS:  I have wanted to write since I was 3.  Now I'm 47.  Over the years, I would have a story idea come to me, fully-formed, and think that I should sit down and write it.  Psychologically, I just couldn't because I was afraid that people wouldn't like it.  I am never without story ideas.  They always come to me.  It just took me a long time to decide that I wasn't going to let anyone hijack my life anymore.  I took my life back, and when I did I started doing the one thing that was always in my heart to do.

THE LIST OF FIVE by J. SCOTT SHARP

Author's Creative Brand:  "The List of Five"
Genre:  YA Horror / Fantasy
Length:  125 pages
Self-published

My 9 Reader Hot-Button Considerations:

1.  World's Immersion:

We take a seat at the table of J.Scott Sharp's role-playing game of imaginative youth.  Awkward geek socialization finds safe haven in acceptance and juvenile hierarchy.  This table of clattering dice and characterization, with inference to meaningful quests brought to mundane Life, becomes the preamble bubble about-to-burst.

Arizona is a blazing hot place, both in environment, as well as in the trials of tweens growing up in a harsh world.  Parents can die on you early, cult predators can swoop in to prey on developing minds, and friends can hide intimate wounds one only notices when looking a little closer than expected.

Playing at being heroic shifts with the unraveling of a recurring dream that assaults Richie Lyons' senses, forcing the young protagonist to examine messages bombarding his brain beyond an imagination game. Heroism becomes the shouldering of psychic burdens alone, as in the silence of youth grappling with issues beyond maturing capability; finally, pain transforms into action, heading off one damning prophecy of fire...

AFTER RESONANCE with AUTHOR RACHEL THOMPSON

Author Bio:  RACHEL THOMPSON is the author of the award-winning Broken Pieces as well as two additional humor books, A Walk in the Snark and Mancode: Exposed.  She also owns BadRedheadMedia, creating effective social media and book marketing campaigns for authors.  Her articles appear regularly in the San Francisco Book Review (BadRedhead Says...) 12Most.com, bitrebels.com, BookPromotion.com, and Self Publishing Monthly.  She hates walks in the rain, running out of coffee, and coconut.  She lives in California with her family.

1.  What bands or music have been you Life's blood at various times in your Life?

RT:  I started listening to Poe's HAUNTED when it came out over ten years ago, and have pretty much listened to it at least weekly since.  I'm also a fan of female singer/songwriters like Jonatha Brookes, Fisher, and Imogen Heap.  That said, I adore 70's rock:  Pink Floyd, Eagles, Heart, Moody Blues, ELO, even Foreigner and Styx -- all the really early stuff.

2.  When you consider your books, A WALK IN THE SNARK, and THE MANCODE: EXPOSED, what were those deciding factors that told you how you wished to emerge as an indie author, and how has your creative brand been received out there?

RT:  Relationships have always fascinated me, and writing about them comes naturally to me.  I started as a blogger in 2008 and found my voice and my audience.  Humor and tragedy and structures that I've studied and worked to combine for years.  If you look at classic Greek structure or even Shakespeare, many times these elements are present in a single story.

BROKEN PIECES by RACHEL THOMPSON

Author's Creative Brand:
"Broken Pieces"
Genre:  Expressionist Cathartic Essays
Length: 113 pages
Self-Published

My 9 Reader 'Hot-Button' Considerations:

1.  World's Immersion:

"We bring what we wring."  Many authors will do everything they possibly can to write away from who they are.  Authors will wear the guise of character, subtly playing truths about what they actually know about living...not so, Rachel Thompson, with her courageous BROKEN PIECES.  The author unlatches dead-bolts to her own inner rooms, inviting readers through the door for a guided tour of her emotional dimensions.

Reading into these pages will sift deeply into the terrains of a damaging, addictive love.  The throes of heated passion spill over into shards of hurtful confusion.  A quirky fragility blossoms into womanhood, plucked at by the stalking, and untrustworthy.  An examination of ignorance or psychological terrorism...also finds those moments of transformation when trust renews, and hidden strengths stand up and over the shadows.

We will recognize these interconnected places of the heart.  When we admit to ourselves that we have walked in our own darkness...how we have tripped and fallen in awkward uncertainty of ourselves...and why, when the pain hurts in that strangely exquisite way, do we go back for the ecstatic bruising of a dangerous allure...these are the intersects where we meet Author Rachel Thompson in her brazen honesty.

SELF-PUBLISHING CHALLENGES "LITERATURE"

There has been a firestorm of reaction sparked over the viewpoint expressed by Good E-Reader's Editor in Chief, that "Self-Published Authors are Destroying Literature."  An outrage from independent authors weighed in on the inconsistencies of the editor's incendiary opinion.  What followed has been expression in a wide range of indie validating angles and inspired observations.

In fact, despite a condescending gauntlet cast by the Good E-Reader editor, inspiration may be found in this re-examination of what the e-book revolution means to traditional Literature. What lasting effect will this self-publishing paradigm swing have, to the overall quality or literary lifespan of The Book?

Taste is highly subjective, and in publishing, more a reflection of individual editor or company parameters, than being emblematic of public consciousness. Even with 'educated taste,' classic rejections from the gate-keepers of traditional publishing, have at times, nearly blocked some of the most worthy novels from ever reaching appreciative eyes of the reading public...