Gunslinger, P.I. – My “Next Big Thing”

Posted on February 23, 2013 at 2:30 PM by Greg Sisco

lI guess a lot of indie writers who also blog play this game where they tag each other in this little questionare about your “Next Big Thing.” I was tagged by Autumn Christian, whose “Next Big Thing” is the novel We Are Wormwood, and whose books are here (and whose novel The Crooked God Machine is excellent, by the way). I don’t think I have anybody to tag, but I would at least like to answer the questions.

So here’s a bit of info (including a rather long story about my personal life) on my fourth novel, which I’m currently working on the second draft of, and which I would guess will be released around three months from now.

1: What is the working title of your book?

The title is Gunslinger, P.I.

2: Where did the idea come from for the book?

Okay. I’m going to tell a long story, but there’s a car crash in it so hopefully it’s not too boring.

Let’s jump way back. When I was 17 years old I wanted to be a filmmaker (still do; and am) but I didn’t really know what I was doing and I wanted to teach myself. I wrote a goofy movie about a time-traveling cowboy detective with a talking car. It was about 60 pages long and pretty silly, lighthearted, and family friendly. Something I could watch with my mom and have her say, “That was so good. I’m so proud of you.” In those days, that was one of the big things I thought about with my creative work: What will my family think of the fact that I made this?

Then I was in a car that my friend crashed off a cliff over a bunch of jagged boulders and landed upside down in a frozen over river fifty miles from the nearest hospital. Paramedics had to cut my clothes off because they were freezing to me. They had me on oxygen in the ambulance and they were afraid of my low body temperature. Somehow neither I nor the two other passengers suffered serious injuries.

In the rather religious area where I grew up, everyone told me I had a greater purpose. That God spared me. That there was an angel in the car. Yeah, I don’t buy it either. God didn’t spare the little girl who got hit by a drunk driver that day, and I’m sure she would’ve had a purpose if He had.

But it got me thinking about the idea of fate as well as my own mortality, and the idea that everything in life can happen for a reason as long as you make one up. So I made my brush with mortality have meaning. And a funny thing happened. I stopped giving an effing fuck whether anybody but me liked my writing. I suddenly realized I wasn’t making the kind of movie I would rush out to go see if it came out at the multiplex down the street. I was just making the stupid thing I could watch with my family and get easy praise heaped on me by loved ones. So the second draft, more than double the length, was packed with profanity, full of anger and emotion that would have embarrassed me a few months prior, it attempted to say something, and—most importantly—it was fucking mine.

As far as I’m concerned, the second draft of the screenplay for Gunslinger, P.I. was the first real piece of writing I ever did.

I produced and directed that movie on a few grand I saved up at age 18 and you can see it for free HERE. It’s okay. It’s flawed, because I had no idea what I was doing, but it has its moments. Every year or so, I start wishing I had it to do over again knowing what I know now. I probably never will. But as a book, I can update it a little bit. It’s an important piece to me since in some way I feel it marks my birth as a writer. I’d like to take a crack at cleaning up the ‘young writer’ problems in it, and I’d like to get it out to a few more people, and a novel makes a nice way to do both of those things.

3: What genre does your book come under?

No idea. Humorous thriller/mystery/present-day-western/fantasy with a twist of romantic sci-fi/neo-noir. And also there’s a talking car.

4: Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

I did make it once. I played Gunslinger. If I had it to do over on a large scale budget… pff… I don’t know. I like that Michael Shannon guy. Fucker’s got serious intensity and makes it look easy. He might be good.

5: What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

After getting warped into the twenty-first century by a meteor and falling in love with a talking car, a notorious cowboy-turned-private-eye struggles with a nihilistic worldview as he tries to solve a murder for an Irish mob boss.

6: Is your book self-published, published by an independent publisher, or represented by an agency?

It will be self-published. A big part of why I turned so much focus to novels at this point in my life was the constant approval filmmakers have to seek from distributors and venues in order to make back the money they spend. With a novel, the fact that nobody has to tell me it’s okay is enormously freeing for me.

7: How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

The original screenplay I sweated over for the better part of a year when I was 17. The first draft of the novel, using the screenplay as a roadmap, took one week. But the first draft needed a lot of work. It’ll be a couple months all-in, I think. It’s been a cake-walk considering I had my own work to use as source material. It was the same thing with One-Night Stan’s. I’ve decided writing a screenplay first and using it for reference to write the novel will probably be what I do from now on. It works wonders for me.

8: What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I honestly have no idea. The influences for it were in film, and I remember at the time that Quentin Tarantino and Wes Anderson were the two guys I wanted to emulate, though I don’t feel it’s too much like anything they’ve done. When the movie Kiss Kiss Bang Bang came out (an underrated masterpiece, by the way, and I recommend you watch it immediately) I felt like Shane Black did a lot of what I wanted to do except without the more fantastical elements.

9: Who or what inspired you to write this book?

See the answer to question #2.

10: What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

It’s a pitch black comedy about a cowboy from the past with a talking car for a girlfriend rambling about philosophy as he solves a brutal murder for an Irish gangster who is pretending to be Irish. If that doesn’t sound appealing, there’s probably nothing I can say that’s going to change your mind.

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The Wages of Sin: A New Blood Brothers Novel

Posted on January 21, 2013 at 5:18 AM by Greg Sisco

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Hello again. Been a while.

I’m in the midst of a new and strange adventure, teaching English in China. I’ve actually got a bunch of funny stuff I could share about that, and I plan to, but not today. Today I’m only bringing you the first chapter of my new book. Hit the jump to give it a read. (Confession: I don’t know what the hell ‘hit the jump’ means. I just wanted to sound hip. The chapter’s coming in a second though.)

If you follow my Facebook page, you probably already know that The Wages of Sin, the sequel to Thicker Than Water and book two of the Blood Brothers vampire series, released a few days ago. Hopefully some of you out there are already reading it. If you’re not, I bring you a taste.

The Wages of Sin picks up a few days after Thicker Than Water leaves off. At just over 50,000 words, it’s a quick read, but still slightly longer than Thicker Than Water. I don’t think it’s essential that Thicker Than Water be read first, but I’d certainly recommend starting with book one. Both are available exclusively in the Kindle Store, Thicker Than Water here, and The Wages of Sin here.

The Wages of Sin marks the second book in the series, and while I haven’t started to put pen to paper (er, black pixels to white pixels) on the third book yet, I am still expecting the series to come in at four books by the time all the bodies are accounted for.

Okay, enough yammering. Here’s chapter one:

There is a subtle humor in the way a human begs. Once you’ve heard it enough times and from enough people, you have to laugh at the inherent similarities.

Begging, at least by human standards, is an act characterized by an emphatic overuse of the word please, the repetition of words and phrases as though they carry more weight on second or third use, and an abundance of promises no person could be expected to keep.

Demonstrated by a nineteen-year-old girl named Samantha, begging sounds like this:

“Please. Oh God, please, I don’t wanna die. I don’t wanna die, oh God. I know this isn’t you who wants this. I know it’s your boss. You can tell him you killed me and he’ll never know, and I’ll just go away. I’ll move away and he’ll never know you let me go, okay? He’ll never know. Please. I swear I’ll never tell anyone. I’ll never mention any of this to anybody. I’ll pretend it never happened. I’ll do anything you want. I’ll give you anything. I’ll do anything. Just please don’t kill me. Please. Please don’t kill me…”

This particular knee-slapper of a speech was delivered to Thor on a mid-December night in 1999. Samantha had recently become an involuntary resident in the building, one of the drains the Blood Brothers kept on stowaway. There were three rooms in the little palace where Loki and Thor lived that locked from the outside and didn’t have windows, and Thor did his best to keep the inhabitants of these rooms at home.

The prisoners were kept in preparation for lazy nights when Loki and Thor felt like staying in. One could not be expected to go hungry out of a disinterest in leaving the house, so the girls were there if they were needed. But more than anything, they were there to make use of the rooms. The house was so big, after all.

It was also a hobby of Thor’s, and good practice for manipulating the emotions of humans, to attempt to keep a person happy in circumstances where it was exceedingly difficult to do so. For this reason, whenever they had a home like this one with space to keep stowaways, Thor tended to them often. He composed them beautiful meals of filet mignon, kindai maguro, Hot Pockets, or anything else they requested. He brought them expensive wines and extravagant cigarettes. Somedays he played them songs on his guitar or kicked their asses at Risk. He considered them pets, and pets were not worth having were they not given the proper attention.

Each of their rooms contained a shower complete with various soaps and gels, a toilet, a refrigerator stocked with cola and snacks, a minibar, a queen-sized bed, a leather couch, a big screen television, a stereo with CDs handpicked by Thor, a treadmill jokingly referred to as an exercise wheel, an electric toothbrush, and various sets of comfortable clothing including silk pajamas and a bathrobe if they just felt like lounging around.

Thor told them they were part of an experiment and they wouldn’t be kept too long. He would bring them any movie, album, book, video game, or toy that they requested. It was a sort of bourgeois prison cell for sorry chaps and chapettes—mostly chapettes—to live out their days in a quiet, blissful solitude made bearable by mind-numbing entertainment and alcohol before the shadow of death closed in. Most of them gave up begging after a week or two and chose to endure, trying their best to enjoy captivity. Even those convinced they were condemned to die here would eventually accept and find themselves playing The Legend of Zelda until their time ran out.

Really, the bourgeois prison was how humans lived anyway.

Samantha had only been here four days and was still in the agitated phase. She would never make it past this phase because her room was to be cleared for the arrival of a special guest tonight.

“Listen,” Thor said forcefully, clamping a hand over her mouth. “I’m going to help you, but you have to shut up. My boss is going to hurt you if you stay, but if you keep quiet and do what I tell you, I can get you out of here.”

Thor believed obedience from humans was gained with a precise balance of comfort and fear. Too much comfort made them afraid to take a chance, and too much fear made them stupid and unpredictable. That said, in an ideal environment the scale always tipped in the direction of fear.

Samantha counted her options. She knew she didn’t want to stay here. The question was whether to trust Thor as her guide or to make a break for safety on her own. She had seen Thor’s boss a few times and the man was a beast. Thor was sincere, even compassionate.

“I’m going to take my hand off your mouth, and when I do you’re going to stop screaming. If you keep panicking you’ll get yourself killed and me scolded. When I take my hand away, you don’t say another word until we’re out of the house, understood?”

Samantha nodded. She decided to take her chances with Thor. The house was a maze and she didn’t know how many others might have been lurking all over. She had to cross her fingers Thor and his boss weren’t pulling some sort of Good Captor Bad Captor thing. In the true spirit of Las Vegas, she was gambling with her life now, putting her neck on a roulette wheel.

Thor took his hand off her mouth and held it out for her to take, showing her his best calming expression. She stared into his face, his blonde hair hanging in a comma over his forehead and pointing down into his glamorous blue eyes. She took a breath, reached out, and put her hand in his.

No more bets.

Thor put his finger to his lips to indicate silence once more before he led her out of the room. He hammed up his performance, pressing his back to walls and peeking around corners every time he pulled her into another room. At one point he walked from a hallway into a living room, pretended to see something startling, and tugged her back into the hall at full force before pulling her into a room and hiding in a corner with one arm steadying her and the other fastened on her mouth.

“Don’t make a sound,” he told her, laughing on the inside. He held her there for the better part of five minutes before he got bored with it and thought he might be chewing the scenery.

I’d like to thank the Academy. And Satan.

It took him ten minutes to get her to the garage. They reached his Suzuki crotch-rocket and he whispered, “Help me wheel this away from the house before we start it.”

She gladly took one handlebar and the two of them crept cautiously along the dirt path outside the house. Stupid shit like this sold a performance.

He had to more or less put the act to bed when they got to the street and he fired up the bike. He could feel her on the seat behind him, hugging him and pressing her head to his back like a child.

Protect me, Thor. Save me.

He was a romantic movie hero. What a gas.

He fantasized about crashing the bike into a guardrail and sending the two of them flying from the top of a bridge into a rocky river. It would have been funny, but there was no intimacy in it. They rode until they reached a shack on the edge of the desert.

The place was a plywood tent of hammered-together boards that gave way to fifty square feet of living space filled mostly by a bed of unwashed blankets that looked like a horse had given birth on them. Thor had occasional campfires here with outdoorsy drains, and he might have liked to grab some marshmallows and a two-liter of Coke on the way, but even he didn’t have the charm to pull that off without breaking character.

Sliding the kickstand into the sand, he climbed off the bike and put his hands on her shoulders. “You’re safe now. You can let it out. Scream if you have to.”

She buried her eyes in his leather jacket. Indistinct sounds somewhere between sobs, screams, and laughter were coming from her mouth, muffled by his chest. He put his hand on the back of her head and pressed her there, stroking her hair like he was Clark Gable or some fucking thing.

“It’s okay,” he said. “You’re okay now.”

She thanked him a thousand times without moving her head from his chest. This was comfort like she had never felt.

“I can’t stay,” he said, “They’ll look for me.” He climbed back onto the bike and waited for her to stop him. She took the bait.

“Wait. Don’t leave me here.” She was a helpless damsel in distress. There were tears streaming down her face and Thor took a moment to congratulate himself on the wonderful villain-in-the-making he’d created. The traitorous bastard of a courageous hero. The horseman of the apocalypse in shining armor.

He sighed and stepped off the bike. He put his arm around her and showed her the inside of his shack. There was less than nothing to see.

“Try to get some sleep. I’ll come back in the morning, after sunrise.” He felt weird saying this. “I’ll get you on a plane somewhere. Just wait for me.”

“Why did you help me?” She held onto his jacket and looked up to his eyes.

Thor gave a sigh and a dramatic pause before he answered. He wished he had tear ducts to sell the sickening melodrama he was about to let loose.

“You remind me of my wife. I couldn’t help her, but… I couldn’t watch her die again.”

Now it was her turn to hold him. This poor brute. This confused and wonderful hero. This beautiful, beautiful man. She wanted him to hold her safely here forever. She knew—or thought she did—that despite his unsavory present, the result of the hell through which life had dragged him, at some point Thor’s wife had been a lucky woman. There was someone so caring and true just beneath his surface. This blond-haired, blue-eyed angel had bruises on his wings.

Thor went for broke. “I’m so sorry. You don’t know how hard it is. This life. I… I want out. You don’t know what it’s like to wake up every day and know you’re hurting people, Tara. It’s horrible.”

“My name is Samantha,” she told him, but she was pretty sure she knew who Tara was. He confirmed it for her.

“Sorry. My wife.” He breathed unsteadily, like a human trying to bury the memories of a painful past in a shitty movie from a Nicholas Sparks novel. “I should go. I don’t… I…”

The character he was playing lost control and kissed Samantha. He grabbed her thick, brown hair and tilted her head back so her mouth could meet his and he could gently taste her lips with his tongue the way he wanted her to think he had his wife so many times in the past. She didn’t make a move to resist. She could see the good in him. She wanted to help him forget his pain. As they kissed, he slid his hand from her back and up the curve of her hip, along her belly and up to her chest. His fingers tightened around her breast for an ephemeral moment before he ripped his hand away. He cursed and called himself an idiot. This is what humans did after a kiss on stage and on screen. It spelled romance for some reason.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m really sorry. I’m so… I’m just so…” What fun it was to play seducer with such a meek character.

“It’s okay,” she assured him, putting her arms around him and resting her head on his shoulder. She kissed his cheek.

Thor let her have it, that moment of human ecstasy. He kissed her again and let his character throw all his inhibitions to the wind. Finally a little of the real Thor took the stage and they fell back onto the bedraggled sheets.

She kissed him. He was courageous and handsome and wonderful and it was raining in his heart.

She kissed him. He was a beautiful blue-eyed angel delivered by God.

She kissed him. He was the closest real life got to the storybook hero.

He kissed her. She was sold.

No one would find the body out here for at least a few days.

Once again, The Wages of Sin is available here.

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Indie Writer Chat Show – Autumn Christian

Posted on October 11, 2012 at 9:32 PM by Greg Sisco

Hello there.

It’s taken a bit longer than I originally anticipated to get the first episode of this new chat show released, but here it is. My first chat is with Autumn Christian, author of the novel The Crooked God Machine, which is a hell of a cool surreal horror-fantasy thing about religion and taxidermy and babies who eat their own hands and other horrifying shit. It’s not easy to describe, to be honest, but it’s definitely worth reading in any case. I was impressed.

Anyway, here is the video. We talk about looking like a psychopath, coming out as a lesbian versus coming out as a writer, receiving story ideas from Japanese demons via Ouija board… you know, that kind of thing.

You can read more on Autumn at her website and you can buy her book on Kindle here.

The next chat, with Jessica McHugh of Rabbits in the Garden should be posted sometime next week. Hopefully I’ll be able to put these together faster once I’ve developed the format a little better and gotten more used to it.

I’ll be putting together a page on this site where all of the episodes will be posted in the future, but since this is the first one, there’s obviously only one there right now.

And of course if you’re a fiction writer and you’re interested in talking with me for a future episode, send me an email at GregSisco@GregSisco.com.

So what do you think of the conversation? Did we say anything entertaining or interesting, or are we just a couple of assholes?

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The Indie Writer and Artist Chat Show

Posted on September 4, 2012 at 12:40 AM by Greg Sisco

The other day I posted an update mentioning an idea I had for a chat show I wanted to start doing on this blog. I wanted to talk about it in slightly more detail.

Starting in the next couple weeks, I’m going to be conducting chats with other artists for this blog. These will be video chats conducted using Skype. I imagine we’ll talk for 20-40 minutes, I’ll put all the most entertaining and interesting bits together in an 8-10 minute YouTube video, and then I’ll post it here on the blog.

I already have a couple of guests lined up, but if you’re a writer/artist (more on the “artist” thing in a minute) and you’d be interested in participating, send me an email at GregSisco@GregSisco.com. I’ll likely conduct the first few discussions starting in a week or so and I want to have at least one edited and posted before the end of the month.

Here are a few stupid questions:

So… wait… this will be, like, an interview show, or… what?

I use the word “chat” because “interview” carries a phony, formal vibe. I’ve seen a lot of “interviews” with authors and they’re dry and uninteresting. I just want to bullshit with other artistic-minded people about why they do what they do, whether they think art is important, how fun Jetskis are, whatever the hell comes up. “Interviews” feel like they’re always the same shitty questions: “What authors do you like?” “How long have you been writing?” “You usually write [good genre]? Why not [stupid genre]?” Blah, blah, blah, fuckin’ blah. I’m more interested in doing a show about “hanging out” with authors where viewers feel like they’re actually meeting us.

But… video? Why video? That’s like… I don’t get it. Why not something different?

I know a lot of writers are more comfortable hiding behind their written words than they are appearing on video and having to rely on their actual biological voices to express themselves. Honestly, I’m among these writers. The fact is, there are a hundred blogs doing interviews where they hand a writer ten one-size-fits-all questions and she tries to pretend she’s enthusiastic about answering them. The questions are never interesting and as a reader I don’t feel like I really get to know the author from reading her answers to a few generic questions. I want readers/viewers to get to know us. The ideal atmosphere as far as I’m concerned would be “A night out with Greg Sisco and [guest] having a couple beers and talking about writing.”

So… you’re saying I should get drunk before I do the interview?

Hell yeah! Why not? I mean, it’s probably best you don’t get plastered, since I’m not sure anybody wants to read a book written by that blathering, pissed-pants lunatic who just spent fifteen minutes screaming into a webcam about boobs, but a few drinks before or during the interview is certainly acceptable, encouraged even. Hell, they do it in Hollywood. They just don’t tell you about it. Those coffee mugs on late night talk shows, they don’t have water in them. (Shhh! That’s a secret.)

Hey, you said artists, but, like, you keep talking about writers. What the hell, dude?

Okay, if you’re an indie filmmaker, or an indie musician, or an indie actor, or whatever, I might be up for a talk. I’m interested in the world of indie art, though I’ll definitely be focusing first and foremost on fiction writing. I want at least 80% of guests to be writers. That said, I’m only interested in indie artists. So if you’re famous, you need not apply. (Just kidding. Please apply, famous people. It would help me out enormously. Nobody knows who the hell all these indie people are. You’re my only hope. I’m begging you.)

So, like, then… what kind of questions will, like… be asked, or whatever?

If you have a book you want to discuss, send me a digital copy of it and I’ll do my best to read as much of it as I can beforehand. As a general rule (guideline, really), I’m interested in keeping everything based around the very broad topic of “art,” but if you want to talk about badminton or string theory or the Gettysburg Address, feel free to let me know beforehand or just bring it up during the interview and we’ll talk about it. I’ll also Google you beforehand, do a bit of research, and jot down a couple things that I’m interested in talking to you about. The interviews won’t be run live, so if part of the conversation doesn’t work I’ll just cut it out in editing.

Wait! What the hell is Skype?

It’s basically an online phone call. If you don’t have it, you can download it for free from Skype.com. As long as you have a webcam, we can make it a video call. I’ll record everything and do the editing. All you need is a webcam (most modern laptops have a built in one) and Skype.

You’re a badass, Greg. When can we do this?

I know I am. Just email me (GregSisco@GregSisco.com) to let me know you’re interested and tell me a little about yourself and your art, and we’ll try to set up something soon.

Plenty more info to come. Watch for the first episode late this month. For up-to-the-minute info, ‘like’ me on Facebook.

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New Chat Show and CommentLuv Premium

Posted on September 1, 2012 at 6:00 PM by Greg Sisco

Hello boys! I’m baaaaaaack!

I haven’t posted in a while as I’ve been tied up for a couple months with some contract gigs you wouldn’t be interested in, but that’s all over now and I’m back to work in the indie fiction world. As far as writing goes I have a few things in the works, but my big priority right now is the second Blood Brothers novel which I’ll be trying my damnedest to release by Halloween. I still have a lot of work to get it to a point where I’m satisfied with it, but I think I can manage in time for October if I work my ass off. Wish me luck.

Now, a couple announcements:

First off, a quick technical blurb for any blog enthusiasts among you. I recently paid to install CommentLuv Premium on this blog, so all of your comments will now generate backlinks (“dofollow” links) to your own blogs. You also get to leave a link to, and a mention of, any one of your last ten posts from your own blog, and you can tweet to your followers where you just left a clever comment. All of this, of course, can help to give your own blog plenty of wholesome, nutritious SEO juice.

Secondly, I have a new project that I’ll be using this blog for in the coming months, which should be able to help other fiction writers, as well as me (I’m not that selfless), to get our names and personalities in front of a few extra people. Very soon, I’ll be doing video chats* with writers and other creative people, talking about art, inspiration, the creative process, alcohol poisoning, the death of the soul, and all that other silly shit people in the art world deal with. We’ll talk for thirty or forty minutes via Skype video chat and I’ll record the conversation and edit it into what I find to be the most entertaining and enlightening ten(ish) minutes, and then I’ll post it here. I’ll put up a more detailed post about that project on Monday but that’s the basic idea. I’m hoping to start doing interviews in a week or two and to release at least one before the end of this month.

*Note: I’m using the word ‘chat’ instead of ‘interview’ for a very important reason. I’m interested in being informal and fun and presenting as much personality as possible. In my mind, an interview is where you have to dress nice and act charming, intellectual, and phony. Whereas in a chat, you’re allowed to drink six beers and say the word ‘motherfucker’ all you want.

In short, I should have plenty of new stuff coming for you now that I’ve got some free time again. I’ll talk to you soon.

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A Farewell to Workaday Life

Posted on June 26, 2012 at 10:30 AM by Greg Sisco

From the balcony at my apartment here in Orlando, Florida I can see the fireworks from Disney World each night. Every now and then a fog rolls in and sits over the pond at my complex, and the lights give the fog an ethereal glow, and the jogging trail that circles the pond is turned into a nineteenth century London street where Jack the Ripper might leap out and drag you away to carve your body to pieces and decorate the room with you.

I’ll miss that.

I have two bags now. One is a laptop bag that has my Kindle in it, along with paperback copies of each of my novels and George Orwell’s 1984, which I keep just in case it becomes any more true than it is already and it’s decided that I can’t own it anymore, but I digress. In the other bag, there really isn’t much — some clothing, a toothbrush, a blowgun, just the essentials.

The point is, these two bags, they’re everything I own now. These are all of my worldly possessions, and I can carry them all at once. Nine months ago I had a collection of 500 DVD’s, dozens of books, a badass Mac desktop, a queen-sized mattress, a MiniDV camcorder, and what I considered to be a pretty nice car. Now I have two bags filled with about fifty pounds of stuff.

And I cannot tell you how good that feels.

Tomorrow I’m getting on a plane to Cozumel, Mexico, where I’ll be living for the next six months. After that, I’m thinking maybe Phuket, Thailand. After that, I don’t know.

I don’t make a whole lot of money as a fiction writer yet. I make a little, but not as much as I did fighting for hours as a movie theater projectionist and getting verbally abused by coworkers on a day-to-day basis. But to work that job I needed to live in an expensive city (at least compared to most of the world’s cities), own a car, burn fuel driving back and forth to work, get my suits dry-cleaned on a semi-regular basis, and do a dozen other things that cost me pretty much all the money I was making.

In the end, it ate up 40 hours of my week plus the time I spent commuting, it gave me no satisfaction, and it barely afforded me a pretty unimpressive lifestyle.

What I’m getting at is fuck workaday life.

With a little Internet income, a lot less than what is considered to be a good job in the United States, I think I can live what could be a pretty fantastic lifestyle in different fantastic locations around the world over the next couple years. And I can do this without sacrificing those 40+ hours each week that my god-awful job used to take from me. It will afford me the opportunity to spend an extra 40 hours a week writing, which seems like an easy decision to me.

It’s not very hard to do this. Right now I’m making a little over $500 per month, and it should be enough to get by. If I can crank that up to $1,000 over the next couple months, I’ll live like a king.

I’ll be around, so if you follow this blog or my Facebook page, I’ll let you know how this experiment pans out.

In any case, if you happen to take a cruise through Cozumel between now and the end of the year, look me up.

Posted in Writing | 4 Comments

“One-Night Stan’s” Free for the Next 3 Days

Posted on June 12, 2012 at 2:25 AM by Greg Sisco

One-Night Stan’s isn’t just the dirtiest, most offensive and disgusting, sex-and-sleaze-filled story I’ve ever written, it’s also my favorite. I’m ridiculously proud of this book. I think it’s a hell of a lot of fun and I’m surprised I was able to write something I enjoy this much because I’m pretty damn critical of my own work.

I want this book to find its audience. I want the word of mouth to spread, so for the next three days (June 12-14), I’m making it 100% free from Amazon. Please download it, please read it, and please share this post to help me get it to as many readers as possible. If your mind is dark, disturbed, and fucked up, you’ll have a good time. If you’re offended I just used the word “fuck,” you’ll want to stay the fuck away from this book.

Here’s the official plot description:

Welcome to Scud City, the worst town in America.

The kind of town where when a suitcase packed with money goes missing, college dimwits, punk rockers, a crooked FBI agent, a serial killer, a stripper addicted to torturing men, an un-killable Russian, and a nightclub owner who thinks he’s Frank Sinatra all find themselves in a twisted web of sex, murder, and drugs in pursuit of a nest egg none of them deserve.

And welcome to One-Night Stan’s, the worst strip club in Scud City. Where the floors are linoleum, the air is cigarette smoke, and the night ain’t over till somebody’s a corpse.

Kicking off at sunset and ending at sunrise, One-Night Stan’s is brutal anarchic fun packed with savage violence, anonymous sex, and all those other things nice people don’t laugh at.

And here is what readers are saying:

“A story meant to be read and re-read…[Greg Sisco's] words are better than alcohol, drugs, and great sex combined.”

“The author’s gifts are two-part: he really mines the comedy from this cast of incredibly vile characters and he also creates a terrific, page-turning story, rich in lowlife atmosphere.”

“A fast paced, gritty, hard hitting, roller coaster ride!”

“I do not want to tell my parents or my grandchildren that I read this book. I especially do not want them to know how much I enjoyed it.”

If you’re thinking of giving one of my books a try, pick this one. Not just because it’s free, but because if you only read one of my books, I’d prefer you pick this one. It needs more readers. So please help me spread the word. I appreciate each “share” more than you know.

Thanks, everybody!

One-Night Stan’s is temporarily available for free at the following links:

United States: HERE
United Kingdom: HERE

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Greg Sisco paperbacks now available in Europe

Posted on June 1, 2012 at 5:43 PM by Greg Sisco

Hey guys.

Just a quick post to let you know that One-Night Stan’s and Thicker Than Water are now available in paperback in the UK, Germany, France, Spain, and Italy via Amazon. So if you’re European and you’re one of those tree-hating paper-worshippers I’ve been hearing about who still doesn’t read digital books, you can now enjoy my cynicism and vulgarity just like everybody else.

Paperbacks are also available Stateside and have been for sometime, in case you haven’t gotten with the program yet. And obviously, Kindle books are available in all of these countries as well.

Here are some links:

ONE-NIGHT STAN’S
USA
UK*
GERMANY
FRANCE
SPAIN
ITALY

 

 

 

THICKER THAN WATER
USA
UK
GERMANY
FRANCE
SPAIN
ITALY

 

 

 

*As of this writing, One-Night Stan’s is apparently still processing on the UK Amazon site, but I expect it should be available any day now. Feel free to ask Amazon.uk to notify you when it becomes available.

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Who Is Jesse Thunderwake?

Posted on May 11, 2012 at 9:50 PM by Greg Sisco

If you have ‘liked’ my Facebook page (and if not, get with the program) you may have seen a couple posts about Jesse Thunderwake: American Icon over the last few days. While I did discuss this project in detail in a February blog post about the premiere (you can also see a trailer and stills from the movie there, which I’ll leave out of this post), I think it’s time for a few more words about it.

Here’s the badass poster, a spoof of the great Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film A Clockwork Orange (the film’s protagonist is an art snob obsessed with Kubrick’s work). The poster was created by artist Cody Sims, who worked on the film in too many ways to name:

Greg Sisco Jesse Thunderwake independent movie poster

The film Jesse Thunderwake: American Icon was released yesterday via Amazon On Demand and is available for purchase ($9.99) and rental ($2.99) here.

Three obvious questions come to mind:

1. Who is Jesse Thunderwake?
2. If he’s an American icon, why haven’t I heard of him?
3. Why am I not watching this right now?

The answer to all three of these questions, as provided by Jim Cunningham, would be “Fuck you.” (That joke might be funny if you knew who Jim is, but since you haven’t seen the movie you have no idea what I’m talking about.)

Before I go any further, here is the official plot description:

A mockumentary comedy about a man whose ambition far outweighs his talent. The story follows Jesse Thunderwake, the world’s largest dilettante, as he makes his first film to showcase his talents in writing, directing, acting, singing, stunts, and so much more. Jesse Thunderwake: American Icon is an ode to bad art in all forms.

As some of you might know, I was a filmmaker before I was a novelist. I taught myself filmmaking with an (very) independent film called Gunslinger, P.I. when I was 18 years old, and then I spent the next few years trying to come up with a screenplay that didn’t suck for my follow-up movie. After five screenplays that were deemed either too expensive or not good enough (a film version of One-Night Stan’s among them), the character of Jesse Thunderwake was born.

Here we go…

1. Who is Jesse Thunderwake?

People interested in independent filmmaking like to tell the story of Kevin Smith, who famously maxed out several credit cards and wracked up thousands of dollars in debt to make Clerks. The movie took off and earned back his money many times over, turning him into an overnight success.

It’s an inspirational story and it’s ballsy as hell but it’s also a blatantly irresponsible move, and you never hear the story about the hundreds of other guys who have tried it and run themselves into debt from which they never recovered. That’s the guy I wanted to make a movie about—the guy who tried to prove he was a great artist and fucked himself over when he found out he wasn’t.

As far as I’m concerned, nine out of ten people who create any kind of art suck at it. Jesse Thunderwake is one of “the nine” who is certain he is “the one”, as most members of “the nine” are. Likewise, “the one”, from my experience, is usually terrified that he is one of “the nine”. This is how the art world works.

I believe when you do anything creative, you are terrified that you have no talent at all and that all of the confidence you’re trying to feign is making you look all the more foolish. Especially when you’re trying your hand at several different artistic trades, you have to cross your fingers you aren’t some talentless jackass making a fool of him/herself several times over.

As I attempted to make a name for myself as a writer/director/actor/comedian/etc., I gave a name to the guy who I hoped I wasn’t, and that name was Jesse Thunderwake.

2. If he’s an American Icon, why haven’t I heard of him?

We live in a celebrity-obsessed country and a particularly fame-worshipping era. Most young people now want to be “celebrities.” Not actors or singers or brilliant artists. No, they just want the rest of the world fascinated by everything they do, showering them with more money and praise than they deserve, and wanting to have sex with them. (Is there any way I can get away with not saying “myself included” right now? I guess there isn’t.) Myself included.

Jesse Thunderwake: American Icon is something of an attack on the state of the entertainment industry. More than that, it’s an attack on the people who want to be famous. Don’t get me wrong, I consider myself an artist and artists are my favorite people, but good Christ we’re a pretentious bunch and most of us need severely for somebody to tell us to shut the fuck up and take an associate manager job at Wendy’s.

At the same time, there is a special place in my heart for really truly awful art, whether it be movies, music, or novels. I think the movie also functions as a love letter to delightfully terrible films like Birdemic or The Room.

The movie is full of dark, dry humor, a tragicomedy about about how it feels to chase a goal with all your heart—a goal that is completely unrealistic and is absolutely never going to come true for you. What some people call “The American Dream.”

It’s also a love story about a man who is desperately in love with a woman who happens to be a lesbian. If you’ve ever been in love with a person whose sexual preference is for a sex other than your own, or if you’ve ever chased after fame and fortune in any artistic field, you probably won’t be particularly surprised at how Jesse’s quest turns out, but you might feel a little better about yourself after watching his spectacular downfall. As I’ve joked several times, “Trying to succeed in the film industry is a bit like being in love with a lesbian. This is a movie about both.”

So why haven’t you heard of Jesse Thunderwake? Well, because he’s not an American icon and he doesn’t deserve to be. Not anywhere except in his own mind, just like most of us “artists.” Silly bastards, we are.

3. Why am I not watching this right now?

No kidding. Go check it out. And please remember to leave a review on Amazon. The film represents two years of hard work for a lot of people and we really appreciate knowing if you had fun watching it.

WATCH JESSE THUNDERWAKE: AMERICAN ICON HERE

WARNING: The film contains roughly 200 uses of the word fuck including one use by a six-year-old, graphic drug use, two pairs of breasts, my ass, frequent drinking and driving, some strong sexual dialogue, a maiming, brief human heads being split open, bad people triumphing over good ones, and a general dark and uncomfortable tone. It may not be appropriate for children under the age of four and a half.

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Last chance to get Greg Sisco novels for $2.99

Posted on April 30, 2012 at 3:15 PM by Greg Sisco

Hey everybody.

Just a quick post to tell anybody who is interested that today (April 30) is the last day to get my novels Thicker Than Water and One-Night Stan’s for $2.99 in the Kindle store. Tomorrow the price will be raised to $3.99, so if you’ve been considering purchasing either book, now would be a good time to buy it.

The price increase has already been submitted to Amazon and the price of either book could go up at any time, though I expect it not to happen until sometime early tomorrow morning.

Pick up Thicker Than Water HERE.

And pick up One-Night Stan’s HERE.

Just a heads up from your friendly neighborhood badass.

I’ll have a feature film and a new short story getting released in May, so expect news on that over the next few days.

Cheers.

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