Coming October 1: Seismic Sedition

Has 21st Century life ever left you feeling like you’re the only sane person in the room? In our current pandemic, it’s been easy to feel like the world is upside down and truth has shifted from something that is knowable to a flickering chameleon casting shadows on a cave wall.

In other words, it’s easy to feel like you’ve been taking crazy pills.

I know I have, so I poured every last ounce of that tension and uncertainty into Seismic Sedition. It’s not a satire about the pandemic. It’s a satire made of the pandemic.

In it, we follow Professor Terry Joyner, who history will judge as a monster greater than even you or me. He’s a seismologist working at a Chicago university, and he’s tracking something awry beneath the city. When BOOM. An explosion rocks the town.

He’s close to figuring out what happened, when he’s summoned to a “Blue Ribbon Panel” of the greatest academic minds in the state of Illinois. That’s when things go full 2020.

Check out a sample of the book on my website.

Or scout it out At Amazon, Nook, Apple Books, and other quality e-book stores.

Seismic Sedition? Criminal Seismologist? Which title appeals to you most for my next novel?

It’s official! I am now close to entitling my next novel and you can help me pick the best title.

Please see the synopsis below and pick the option below that you find the most intriguing!

Where the heck have I been?

Howdy, everyone!

It occurs to me I have not posted in a while, but I have much news!

Firstly, we welcomed our first son to the world in September. This has kept things very busy around here.

So, when we found out we were expecting last March, we decided we needed to move from our 100-year-old 750 square foot lake cabin. Last summer was a long, moving adventure. We sold the old place and doubled our square footage.

Since moving, we have been remodeling, putting in fences, putting in gardens, while our little guy rolls around in his play area and yells "Rawwwwwwr!"

He has teeth now and everything!

Long story short, this has not left a ton of time for writing. SBR2 stands at about 20k words, and has a lot of El Asno's backstory. 

But, I did find time to write a short story that is now hitting the presses! It is part of a compilation called The Event: The Chicago Rust Yards. The idea is a fun one. Several colleagues all used the same prompt: An explosion in an industrial part of Chicago. Each one of us approached the story in our own idioms and on our own timelines. And the result is a good one, combining the works of Steve Metcalf and Robert S. Miller with my own.

My contribution is called The Blue Ribbon Panel of Academic Experts, in which a seismologist has a theory about the event and is summoned to a panel of academics charged by the powers that be with explaining the disaster. Here is an excerpt from Lieutenant Governor Morganford explaining their objective:

So let me give you the long story short,” Morganford continued. “The President is scheduled to call the Governor in,” he paused while checking his wristwatch, “thirty or forty minutes. And the Governor and I, we need to throw the President a bone. A big fat honkin’ bone.

Morganford elaborated with his arms folded. “As you know, we got a lot riding on federal funding in the state of Illinois right now. Pending federal funds, mind you. We got a two-hundred million dollar grant for a new football stadium for Western Illinois University on the line. We got a matching five-hundred million dollar grant for a Soldier Field re-renovation on the line. We got three-hundred million on the line for a University of Illinois football stadium expansion. And we got another four-hundred and fifty million dollars in federal funding for a new fantasy football stadium on the North Side of Chicago on the line. There is a lot riding on this phone call, people!”

The Lieutenant Governor paused as he put his hands on his hips for dramatic effect before bellowing, “We will not go down in history! Go down in history as the Got-damn administration that failed the great sport of football! Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes,” the professors meekly chorused from their chairs.

Lieutenant Governor Morganford scowled. “Then good. So get me a Got-damn narrative pronto!” Then with a stomp of his foot he barged out the same way he had barged in.

The Event was a heck of a fun project to work on. And I hope you enjoy what you read!

Here's a link to Amazon page for the book. 

The Music of Slow Boil Rising: The Future Sound of London and Spaghetti Westerns

The Music of Slow Boil Rising: The Future Sound of London and Spaghetti Westerns

 

In the year 0039, the world of Slow Boil Rising is firmly planted competing worlds. This is the case both in terms of time and setting.

In terms of time, 0039 is a nightmarish future with all sorts of gadgetry that does not presently exist. On the other hand, this environment is grounded in what we have today.

We have armored vehicles, but powered by fuel cells. We have jet-engine combat aircraft, but flown entirely by computer and armed with air-to-air lasers. We also have ubiquitous unmanned drones scouring the countryside to feed targeting information back to command centers while people listen to cheesy pop music about getting high in the club. (Okay, maybe that last sentence perfectly describes 2016 too.)

In terms of setting, Slow Boil Rising winds through the Unified Society of America, which is starkly divided between the Designated Habitation Zones (DHZs) and the Uninhabited Zones. Legally, the only places in which people are allowed to live are in the Urban DHZs or designated communal farms. Tall razor-wired fences separate DHZ inhabitants from the places they are not supposed to go, and proper security clearances are needed to travel beyond the zones without an entry/exit visa. DHZ dwellers believe the fences are there to protect them from the savage “Intolerants” who live out in the countryside.

Antiseptic, totalitarian, overdeveloped, and cold are the concepts that come to mind when I write plotlines set within the DHZs.

In contrast, the Uninhabited Zones have a much more post-apocalyptic feel to them. After all, the Uninhabited Zones were officially depopulated and abandoned, returning them to a state of nature.

Here is how it went down according to First Sergeant First Class Hamilton:

… The problem of infrastructure continued to plague the Department of the Internet. This problem came to an end after the Broadband Affordability and Availability Act of zero zero thirty, affectionately known as the BAAA. Subparagraph two hundred and nineteen of the BAAA required all persons in the U.S. who lived in communities of less than two hundred thousand people to relocate to urban centers or designated U.S. farms, where they would have greater access to the services our government provides to them free of charge.

Long story short, anyone who refused to leave their home and report to a DHZ was declared to be an “Intolerant,” or an outlaw. Eventually, a rebellion developed and the countryside turned into a battlegrounds. Small towns were either abandoned to nature and overrun with feral chickens or they were destroyed by the central government through brutal bombing campaigns. As a result, the countryside feels like Mad Max meets High Plains Drifter in my mind.

It is a bit of a challenge to switch between the competing settings of urban dystopia and rural post-apocalyptica. But that is where my favorite tool comes into play: music.

I’ve said it before, and I will say it again. Music and writing are completely intertwined for me. And I’ll share a hodgepodge of tunes that help me switch from urban dystopia to post-apocalyptic countryside.

Rural Post-Apocalyptica

First off, we’ve got the tried and true Spaghetti Western music from the ‘60s and ‘70s courtesy of Italian film composers who did a marvelous job capturing the grit and feel of the Great Not East (as it is referred to by DHZ dwellers). I geek out go into more detail about my feelings for Spaghetti Westerns in an older post here.

But for juxtapositional purposes, I will share a couple of my favorite tunes. Here is “Fuga Dall'Ovest” by Bruno Nicolai, from the soundtrack to Corri Uomo, Corri (Run, Man, Run). My favorite part of this track is the changeover that happens about 90 seconds in. So stick with this one:

And here are “Side Saddle,” “River Bed,” and “Tumbleweed” by Piero Piccioni from the Minnesota Clay soundtrack. This soundtrack is one of the deepest Spaghetti Western soundtracks out there, and I have been known to listen to the whole thing on repeat while hammering out chapters featuring El Asno, Hackberry, Beetle Johnschild, and company.

Contrasting Dystopia in the Designated Habitation Zones

Hyper urban, hyper modern, crowded, and paranoid. These are the things that come to mind when it comes to what the Designated Habitation Zones feel like.

You’ve got ubiquitous surveillance, a corrupt government, and thousands of people around you, many of whom might break into a protest chant at the drop of a Department of Protests official’s hat.

The feel and vibe is remarkably different from what is going on in the Uninhabited Zones. The constant threat of death by drone or by rattlesnake is replaced by the constant threat of violating a law you never heard of and being sent off to a camp of one sort or another.

I rely on many bands to get into the headspace of the DHZs, but one that gets played in my MP3 player more often than not these days as I write volume two of Slow Boil Rising is The Future Sound of London, a British duo who have been pioneering electronic music for nearly 30 years. I first got turned on to FSOL in college, with their thumping beats paired with ambient harmonics coupled with soaring melodies. For a while, I wanted to be these guys despite not having a fraction of their musical abilities.

(Thankfully, I found writing as an outlet, which has spared the world more goofy lo-fi stuff like the Ballad of Alexander Hamilton. “Oh my God, Aaron Burr. You shot me. You shot me in the eye!”)

Have a listen to some of these tracks to hear the vibe FSOL has made famous over the years.

“Vertical Pig” from the Lifeforms album.  This track works for both urban and rural dystopic settings.

“Smoking Japanese Babe” from the ISDN album. This track captures the spirit of Danbill Sulla, staring at the bottom of a glass in a smoke-filled 0039 speakeasy.

Here are “Kai” and “Amoeba,” also from the ISDN album. These track really conveys a sense of urgency. I blast these tracks often when it is time to write action sequences.

Check out “Snakehips” from ISDN. I love that this track samples the great Isao Tomita’s album Snowflakes are dancing, which is a collection of Claude Debussy tracks on moog.

I’ve talked mostly about FSOL’s older songs, as they are from a time when I first got into the group. But they are still making quality music to this day, music with a killer ambient vibe. Take for example “Point Of Departure” from the Environments Five album.

Despite flying under many people’s radars, FSOL is one of the greatest musical groups in terms of creativity and creating cohesive albums that are melded together like a fine alloy. I look forward to blasting them as I write a chase scene in the Seattle DHZ later this week.

The Postscript for Slow Boil Rising

The following is the Postscript I've added to Slow Boil Rising today, on the seven-month anniversary of its release.

Postscript to Slow Boil Rising

 

D.T.E. Madden: 75 January 2016

I thank you for reading Slow Boil Rising. It is the culmination of about 13 years of writing, mulling over, and mulling over some more. It was 13 years in which short stories grew into long stories, which in turn grew and collided with each other to form the universe you just witnessed.

You can see passages originally outlined by lantern light in autumn woods as fish fried and whiskey warmed by the fire. You can see passages written under the influence of basic military training. You can even see the law school phase of the work that now appears largely in the appendix, as I grappled with the often absurd, pretzel-logic of the law.  

I know there is much left hanging with this story. Needless to say, I will not leave you hanging for 13 more years while I hammer out a sequel.

A sequel is indeed steadily coming together.

As I write passages featuring purple men, the origins of El Asno, the fate of Bowperson, the mania of Danbill Sulla, and a few new characters you have not met yet, engaging with you keeps me going. Your feedback keeps the writing energy flowing.

With that in mind, please connect with me via my blog on dtemadden.com, on Goodreads, on Amazon, and via the Slow Boil Rising page on Facebook.

I thank you again for joining me in the year 0039 and look forward to joining you again there soon.

D.T.E. Madden

March 15, 2016

Spy Tech in Slow Boil Rising: Shortwave Numbers Stations

I'm doing some writing of the sequel to Slow Boil Rising this evening. I'm writing a bit of a flashback/origin plot line, set about four years before the events of SBR1, back in the year 0035. 

As I write, one of the main characters is receiving coded instructions via a "Numbers Station." A numbers station being a radio station that does nothing more than broadcast a voice reading numbers in sequence. Believe it or not, it was fairly easy to find them back during the Cold War. But they still exist and a few are broadcasting as you read this.

Have you ever heard a numbers station?

I'll never forget the first time I tuned one in. It was a late October hunting trip back in 2007. I was in between law school and a real job, so I decided to go be a hermit and eat what I could shoot for a little while in the woods of Whetstone Creek Conservation Area in Callaway County, Missouri. I had not seen another human being for three days, and my only social contact had been with a pack of feral dogs who tried to steal my squirrels. 

On a very cold and windy evening, I had just finished eating some unfortunate varmints I had encountered earlier that day, and I was settling down by a hickory fire with a metal mug full of 100-proof bourbon.  (What can I say? It was cold out!)

I fiddled with my dial, and came across something that sounded very much like this recording of one of the most famous numbers stations of all time: The Lincolnshire Poacher.

My jaw dropped, and I began to worry that I had procured some poisonous whiskey. The numbers just went on and on.

When you hear the recording the of the Lincolnshire Poacher, what do you think is going on?

Within the past few years, I’ve had the better fortune of running across a numbers station while also having access to the interwebs. I Googled the frequency, and bingo! Online research shed a bit of light on the phenomenon. 

There are a decent amount of working theories on how these stations operate. What these theories have in common is the use of a shared cipher between the people doing the transmitting and the people doing the receiving. The most uncrackable of which is a "one-time pad" that is custom made for the code. Cruder versions involve translating the numbers directly into letters.

The method I am writing about in SBR2 is a combination of a numbers station and "book code." In other words, the repeating sequences of numbers are directing the listener to specific words on specific pages of a specific book  to construct a message.

Now if you want a real treat, listen to the UVB-76, otherwise known as The Buzzer.

Sweet dreams!

From the garden to the cellar: How to can your tomatoes

This summer has been an excellent season for growing. We've had a bumper crop of tomatoes. We have very badly lost count of how many we picked, but my best guess is around 50 pounds this year from our 12 plants. And last weekend, we had about 16 pounds of them sitting on our counters.

These tomatoes are Roma tomatoes that are a bit of an heirloom variety. These are great-great-grand-children of tomatoes I planted in 2011. I've selected plants that are both cold-hearty to survive Minnesota springs and falls as well those that are delicious.

STEP 1: Prep for peeling

Peeling tomatoes is not as ridiculously hard as it sounds. But removing the peels is ridiculously important when making soup, which is what we had going on that day. As a first step, we took off the tops, then cut tiny X-patterns into the bottom.

STEP 2: Peel!

This step involves a boiling pot of water, a bowl of cold water, and approximately 500 strainers and colanders of your choice. Simply toss your cut tomatoes into the boiling water and let them boil just long enough for the cut skin to peel from the heat. Once that happens, toss the tomatoes into the cold water. This will cool the tomatoes down enough so you can pull the skins off the tomatoes with ease.

In the background, you can see the lids for the Mason jars simmering to sanitize them. But more on sanitizing later.

STEP 3: Put your skinned tomatoes in a massive stock pot

This step is somewhat self-explanatory. You put the skinned tomatoes in a big honkin' pot.

But from here is where the proprietary cooking magic* happens! depending on what you are making, you add spices and other vegetables. Youngeun combined these tomatoes with onions, basil, and celery to make a delicious chunky tomato soup. 

*Proprietary cooking magic is the intellectual property of Youngeun, who has an incredible talent for turning whatever she has on hand and whatever I am growing into something delicious.

STEP 4: Sanitize Jars

While all this other work is going on, we were adapting my brew kettle and its false bottom for the purpose of a hot water bath for the Mason jars. Boiling the jars and the lids creates a germ-free environment to store your food.

For those sophisticants of you not enlightened enough to own a brew kettle with a false bottom, there are pretty nice and specially designed canning boilers out there for not a ton of money.

This is admittedly a terrible photo of jars in six gallons of boiling water. But in my defense, there were six frickin' gallons of boiling water in my face.

STEP 5: Cook a really long time then pour into Mason Jars

While your tomato soup or sauce is still hot, pour it into your sanitized Mason jars. A wide-mouthed funnel and a metal ladle makes this work go by quickly. In fact, I recommend using a full canning tool set (the green trinkets in the foreground) every time you can your food. It makes life much easier when it comes to grabbing very hot items and pouring very hot liquids. 

When pouring, make sure to leave about 1/2 to 3/4 inches of head space in the jars if you intend to pasteurize your cans.

Seven quarts of delicious soup stood as the end result of our 16 pounds of tomatoes. 

Theoretically, these cans above would be good enough to store in a refrigerator, but we were canning for winter, and we don't really have seven-quarts-worth of space in the fridge. So there is one last step.

STEP 6: Pasteurize your jars

This is the fun part. And by fun, I mean the slightly nerve-racking part the first time you do it.

After all, it is not a natural act to boil closed jars full of food you just laboriously peeled and cooked for hours.

Loosen the screws on your lids just a little bit, because your jars are about to experience some rapid expansion of air. The lids are designed to let air out, but not in.

And boil boil boil like hell!

When you are done boiling, use your tongs to grab your ridiculously hot jars and bring them out of the water. Depending on what you are pickling, you may want to crash cool the jars in ice water. I let these cool slowly in a tap water bath.

One last step

Admire the look of pure joy on your garden gnome's face.

Hops Harvest 2015

Hops!

Here there be hops! They are the flowers of a hearty perennial vine called Humulus lupulus.

2015 was a good year for growing things in Minnesota. We had periods of rain, periods of sun, and it was generally warm.  What made this year especially good was that it was generally only cloudy when it rained. So the clouds did not often get in the sun's way for no good reason.

My hops plants were no exception to the positive 2015 trend. And I wanted to share some of the photos Youngeun snapped of me and the hops during part of the hops harvest this fall. She has a great knack for getting me and the hops from only the best of angles!

Taking a step back, I grow hops to use in my own homebrew. (When I am not writing on the weekends, I am often brewing.) I grow two types, Cluster and Cascade. The images you are seeing are of the Cluster variety.

Cluster hops are the first variety of hops that were able to survive in North America. As such, they were the primary bittering agent in most pre-prohibition styles of beer. And I am fond of bringing 17th, 18th, and 19th century recipes back to life with these Cluster hops.

Now, every fall, usually in late August or early-to-mid September, it is time to go out and pick the hops. Here's the pics:

Yes. That is a laundry line repurposed as a hop wire. And there is nothing better for picking hops than a cardboard box tethered to your neck with some jute twine.

Tiny scissors make the work go by nicely. The hops can really wind up around each other.

And after about an hour of picking, here was the end result:

Recently picked hops.

Hops do need to be dried before you can store them, so I created this contraption out of the card board box that brought me my first shipment of Slow Boil Rising books.

As the saying goes: Reduce, reuse, recycle, and poke lots of holes!

Hops drying box Mk0.95b.

Lastly, but not leastly, a picture of the lake, just because it was pretty that day.

Tiny blueberry bushes in their first year in the foreground. The lake in the background.

Seed Art

For many, the Minnesota State Fair is a great occasion to eat fried food on a stick and walk around with other people eating fried food on a stick. I am among this demographic, but one of my favorite parts of the fair is the Seed Art contest. It is a perfect combination of the cheesy and the sublime.

Here are some snaps of what, in my opinion, were the best exhibits of seed art this year. 

And just because you can never have too much Hall and/or Oates:

The Music of Slow Boil Rising: Thievery Corporation

In the first post on the music of Slow Boil Rising, I started sharing the sort of music I used to invoke the mood or setting I needed to fully get into the writing groove. For the scenes that happened out in the Great Not-East, music from Spaghetti Westerns fit the bill. That last post barely scratched the surface of the cowboy music in my collection, and I definitely need to revisit the topic someday.

But not all of Slow Boil Rising happens in the Great-Not-East. A huge chunk happens at Fort Freeperson and the Designated Habitation Zones, or DHZs. And these places have a very different feel from the campfires, the smoked fish, the clicking of lever action rifles, and the clacking of hooves endemic to the Not-East.

The DHZs

The DHZs have an arid, antiseptic, feel to them. Much of the music I used to get in the headspace for an ultramodern urban dystopia was the ultra-modern, ultra-clean music, of Thievery Corporation, a band I really started to get into in the early aught-aughts. They have an impressive catalog of albums you can view here.

An interesting facet of their music is every Thievery Corporation album has a very specific vibe or theme, often completely different from other TC albums. Many albums sound almost like reggae or dancehall music. For the purposes of getting into the senses and feelings of DHZs in the year 0039, I gravitated to their albums of a more electronic, international sound. Specifically these four TC albums: Mirror Conspiracy, The Cosmic Game, The Richest Man in Babylon, and Outernational Sound.

For example, back in 02, when I was writing what would become the chapter called “A WELL-ORGANIZED PROTEST: 23 JANUARY 0039,” (available on the sample page) I vividly remember blasting the Mirror Conspiracy album. To this day, when I re-read the passages of the Honorable Horus T. Anderchild and his immaculate protest formation, I often hear these tracks playing in my head.

Lebanese Blonde:

Indra:

Danbill Sulla

When it came time to write the passages following Danbill Sulla, I drew from another epoch in Thievery Corporation history. Now, I realize most of you have not met Mr. Sulla yet based on the fact he does not show up until the second half of the book.

But rest assured, Sulla is one character you will not forget: An alcoholic, fairly psychopathic, randomphobic, Department of Internal Security Agent who specializes in purges, distilling whiskey, bootlegging, and taking investigations into forbidden questions very seriously.

When it came to writing his passages and describing his native environs in the D.C. DHZ, I pulled heavily from the Outernational Sound, a compilation album that TC put together with a variety of artists. Here are a few tracks that helped inspire the antiseptic haze of Danbill Sulla’s existence:

The Bobby Hughes Experience – My French Brother:

Thunderball – Vai Vai:

Thievery Corporation and the Gimmicks – Ya Ma Le:

There’s quite a few other musical sources of inspiration that I’ve tapped into over the years, and I look forward to continuing this series of posts and sharing more artists and tracks with you.

In the meantime, please check out the Slow Boil Rising sample page here to get a flavor of the dystopian vibe Thievery Corp helped me create.

Slow Boil Rising now out on Kindle

URGENT MESSAGE FROM THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF FREE SPEECH:

As of this morning, Slow Boil Rising is out on Kindle. It's $8.99 for the e-book by itself. But if you have already bought the paperback version, the Kindle version is just 99 cents.

It's a pretty good feeling to have the book out in print and on Kindle. After more than a decade in the making, I think Slow Boil Rising will be a good read for you.

A Nook version will be out soon. Stay tuned!

Slow Boil Rising is officially released!

After 12 years since it first started as two short stories that merged together to form a new universe, Slow Boil Rising is officially released!

Right now, print versions are available through Amazon or through special order at your local bookstore through Createspace Publishing. And within a few days, the Kindle version will be out. (Target release is August 19 now.) 

And if you are conflicted about which version to get, we are making the e-book available for 99 cents through the Kindle Match program for people who buy the print copy first.

Thank you to all my pre-readers, and a special thanks to Heather Zehring for excellent copyediting and to Theresa Hertling for her amazing design services in creating the cover for the book.

And if you have not already done so, please check out the opening sample of Slow Boil Rising.

Cover Election Results and Sample Released

Winner!

First off, thank you to all who voted in the cover election. Between Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, we received more than 100 votes. And the winner, taking in about 63 percent of the vote was the yellow background!

Thanks again to all who voted. It was great to get your opinions and see the level of interest out there.

In other good news, we've got a sample of the opening chapters released on the website. Check them out here. 

These opening passages will give you a good feel of the world of 0039 and the freedoms unique unto the General Will.

Decision 2015: Cover design for Slow Boil Rising?

We've been working with Theresa Hertling, who is an outstanding designer and illustrator, to come up with the cover for Slow Boil Rising. 

She has come up with many awesome candidates, but we have narrowed it down to these final two options.

Please share which one you would like to see on the cover. You can comment below or you can join the discussion on the Slow Boil Rising Facebook page.

The Music of Slow Boil Rising

To me, writing and music are completely intertwined. The process of writing Slow Boil Rising was no exception to this proposition.

With that in mind, I am going to start a series of blog posts highlighting some of the music I listened to for inspiration while writing the novel. This also happens to be music I recommend listening to while reading it!

Now, much of the plot in Slow Boil transpires out in the "Great Not-East" as it is called in the year 0039. And much of the plot feels and smells like a grainy cowboy flick from the 1960s with a bunch of guys in hats riding horses and chasing after treasure or bad guys or revenge. That the plot has that grainy, arid texture in places is no accident, because I frickin' love Spaghetti Westerns. 

So in this first musical post, let's cover the Spaghetti Western aspect of Slow Boil.

A good rule of thumb is if El Asno or Beetle Johnschild appear on the page, this music was cranking in the background!

(And a brief timing update, things are looking very good for a mid-August release. Cover design and copy edit are both proceeding nicely!)

A brief poem to open Slow Boil Rising

                     Frog

                         thrown into boiling water

                          attempts escape

                        Frog in water

                         then brought to boil

                          accepts fate

                           -   After the Apocryphal, 20th Century