William Mangieri's Blogs: The ORIGINS of Even More Things I Could Get OUT OF MY MIND (and a Smashwords Coupon for the Collection)

At the end of each of my collections, I include a section in which I touch on WHERE each story came from, and since this week’s coupon is for my third collection (Even More Things I Could Get OUT OF MY MIND), I thought the ORIGINS would make a good blog posting. Enjoy!

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Writing is a risky proposition. What I’ve read about it is that, if you’re doing it right, you’re putting your own innermost experiences, feelings and thoughts on paper for criticism and rejection. Each story contains some personal revelation – you’re putting your heart and soul on the line.

How can this be, you might be asking yourself right now. If you’ve gotten this far into the book, chances are you’ve now read all six of the included stories. How could any of these things have even a remote connection to my life and who I really am?

You be the judge.

“In Robert’s Memory” started out with the idea of a sort of Titanic in space, awaiting rescue after a calamity. The pun of a title may have been the germ of the story – but I’m not sure. This is a story about a ship’s computer whose memory becomes contaminated by human inhabitants. In a way, he loses himself while trying to save them, but grows into something more. Has this happened to me? Not hardly, although I have been thrust into situations I didn’t want to be in, with people I didn’t want to deal with, and grown from the experience (no, I’m not going to name names.)

I wrote “My Reality Show” because I just talk to myself too often to believe that there isn’t someone else there, and I’d graduated from doubting that to wondering why any other consciousness would want to be in there. I have not fallen into the obsession with “reality” television that’s come about in the last few years – that fascination is as alien to me as, well, some of the voices and ideas I hear in there. How would you react if you realized that someone was invading your privacy like this – AND FOR FREE?

I’m stretching here to try and offer an explanation for where “The Body” came from. If you neglect people in your life and only pay attention to what YOU want, don’t expect those people to sit idly by without exercising their own, alien agendas. Admit it – for most people, it’s all about ME (without some degree of selfishness, ME would not survive THEM), and anything going on outside us might as well be an alien invasion.

I love time travel stories, especially the variety of theories on how it could work (if it could work – I’ve heard that the idea is now discredited, and should be moved from science fiction to fantasy. Snobs.) We all have things we regret about our lives, and that we wish we could do over, but there is no do-over in life. Have you ever gone back to a place you used to live after a few years and tried to reconnect with the place and the people. Your relationship isn’t the same as it was, no matter how much you want it to be. You can’t jump in and out of ( a place/a time/people’s lives ) and recapture what you’ve lost. We all have to live life in sequence – You are not the same person you were before the problem that you now want to avoid. None of us have the option of “Choosing the Right Time.”

“The Sheila Wulf Chitinoid Sessions” is NOT about problems with space crabs. I just wanted to play with the mistake we make about assuming that other life (and people) have to be the same as us, looking and behaving like something familiar to us instead of something alien. And if we can have tools and tricks to help us communicate with them, why can’t they?

Derangement is rampant in our world – people persist in believing in things with no evidence. What if believing in those crazy ideas was actually an advantage on a job application. How would you answer the questions in “Thank You for Your Interest in XenCorp”? (Admit it – as much as the world has been turned on its head lately, don’t you wonder whether space aliens could really have something to do with it?)

Just saying…

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This week’s coupon is for Even More Things I Could Get OUT OF MY MIND (the collection described above) - here’s the link: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/419552?ref=NoTimeToThink

Use coupon code ZM35Z to save 80% off the list price at check out on Smashwords (that’s right – all six stories for only $1.00!) The coupon is good through October 26^th. Enjoy!

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My next ePublication will be “And Yet Still Even More Things I Could Get OUT OF MY MIND” (my sixth collection, containing “The Red Barrens”, “Dempsey’s Debut”, “Look Both Ways”, “The Final Ending?”, “Close Enough”, and “The Wolves Will Come”) – follow or like whichever of the CONNECT WITH HIM SITES below you prefer and you receive notices and coupons and such…

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William Mangieri’s writing (including his latest ePublication “You Can’t Question the Dead”) can be found in many places, including: