Monday, June 1, 2015

Yet Still Even More Things I Could Get OUT OF MY MIND Preview (and This Week’s Coupon)

My 5th OUT OF MY MIND short story collection  is ePublishing this Friday, June 5th (remember – if you like and follow “William Mangieri’s Writing Page” on facebook, at: http://www.facebook.com/NoTimeToThink , you will receive notification when it’s available, AND the coupon code for smashwords.)
As a preview, here's the section that's included at the end of each collection in which I discuss where the stories came from. Enjoy!

ORIGINS

This is my fifth OUT OF MY MIND collection, and in each one I have this ORIGINS section to try to give some insight into where my stories come from, or what I might have been thinking (if I was thinking) during their creation. Knowing that I would be doing this for each collection (and ultimately for every story I write), you would think I would have made notes while each was still fresh in my mind.
WELL, HA-HAH! YOU’RE WRONG! (See the skill with which I momentarily throw the failure onto you, dear reader?)
The fact is, as I have become more prolific in my writing, I have also become less conscientious about taking notes. Instead, I am relying on sketchy references and my own faulty memory (everyone’s memory is faulty, as I note below, and yours may be less faulty than mine, but I can’t rely on yours – YOU WEREN’T THERE - so this is the best we’ve got.)
There may be some advantage to “remembering” through the fog of time – there may be more emphasis on where the story wound up than on where I was trying to take it (because let’s face it, in my stories, I am not generally in control of where they’re going, and THEY don’t bother to let me know what THEY’re thinking, either.) This gives me a chance to alter the past (or at least my memory of it) and make it seem like I might have had something to do with where the stories wound up.
All this thinking about thinking (intellection) may be a disturbing place for some, but it’s a  fascinating place for me, so let’s go with it. Here’s what I think I was thinking when these stories were making themselves known to me.
Artificial Intelligence is on its way; I believe it may actually be here already, but it’s not widespread or commonplace as it will be. Just about every invention eventually escapes from its creator (patents only last for so long, and we as humans are always building on the work of others), so it will only be a matter of time before AI evolve beyond what we intend. That’s why there’s “Mutiny on the Star-Bound.” The carnival scene at the start played out like a movie in my head and set the tone nicely for me. I’m particularly fond of Martin Henshaw; when we finally do go into space as we should, it will be down to earth humans like Martin who will make it real.
Memory is very interesting to me – that grey matter isn’t stone, and we all seem to remember things a bit differently from each other, and even from the ourselves of a year ago. All memory is unreliable – it takes some strength to admit this, and some work to compare multiple memories of the same event to weed out the added layers and find out what really happened. If you were the type of person who needed everything to be concrete instead of “grey and squishy” like the brains it’s stored in, you might want to do something to correct those “Reconcilable Differences.”
“New Antiques” was yet another go at a little bit of time travel, but I wanted to play with the mundane wonder of being a kid, having to deal with how fantastic reality can be. I saw this one play out visually like a movie as I wrote.
“Dead End Jobs” is a flash fiction that I planned to write in a somewhat different direction than it wanted to go (I’m not telling where that was, because I still think it would be a good destination if I can force it where I want it to go next time.) It is still related to the original intent, but this one emphasizes the application process rather than the actual job.
I give a lot of thought to dementia and Alzheimer’s. It could be because my wife has an aunt with the latter, or due to hearing of prominent people (Ronald Regan, Terry Pratchet) who have wound up with it. Then again, it’s more likely on my mind because my own memory always seems to be in continuous decline. I wondered about a different, fantastic reason for all the confusion. What if you lost track of which of the infinite alternate realities (and memories) was yours. “The Re-Entanglement of Grant Decker was the result.”
“Anti-Social” came from thinking about how we are losing personal contact as the internet and social media evolve. We’re also creating ridiculous quantities of data. What if in the future all data is transitory - statisticians determined that there will always a copy of anything somewhere (a PC, a server, a phone), so permanent storage becomes obsolete – it’s more efficient if storage moves with use. Some things will disappear, but if it was important it would have been kept. Everything is searched and streamed. The majority of society is this way - socially wired, and open to sharing everything. What happens to someone who falls off the grid? And is this necessarily a bad thing?
As we continue to evolve and invent new worlds for ourselves, we need to remember that we are still human. Try to keep things real.
Just saying…
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This week, “My Brother’s Keeper” is our couponed feature (Posession, or just another way of life? You decide…) Here’s the link: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/380717?ref=NoTimeToThink
Use coupon code QB72Q to save 50% off the list price at check out on smashwords. The coupon will be good through Monday, June 8th. Enjoy!
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William Mangieri’s writing (including his latest ePublication: “#InWhoseReality?”) can be found in many places, such as:
Connect with him, go to “William Mangieri’s Writing Page” on Facebook (and LIKE and FOLLOW), at: http://www.facebook.com/NoTimeToThink
Or on his Goodreads author page: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6893616.William_Mangieri

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