Unspecified is a new collection of poetry I’m publishing, by South African author Yoshira Marbel. We hope to publish it by October, 2011, but in order to create a print edition we need to raise some capital. Please visit http://modernevil.com/kickstarter/ for more information and to pledge your support. Thank you.

Untrue Tales From Beyond Fiction – Recollections of an Alternate Past, Book Six: Waking To The Truth -or- Explanation and Supplication -or- How To Resolve An Apocalypse, episode 10: In which the various futures of Trevor and Toni, Nirgal and Neyal’h, Jessie and Stan, Majel and the AIs, Christianity and The Radiant Empire, are briefly described, along with one explanation for the books you’ve just finished.
 
This is the last new episode of the Modern Evil Podcast for a while – I’ve podcast all my books, and then some! I’m researching now for my next pair of books, which I’ll probably begin writing in the Fall, and I may update the podcast with new essays or poetry if/when I write any, between now and then. Until then, please be sure to check out the archives – there are 15 books’ worth of episodes here, already. Thanks for your understanding, -Teel

Untrue Tales From Beyond Fiction – Recollections of an Alternate Past, Book Six: Waking To The Truth -or- Explanation and Supplication -or- How To Resolve An Apocalypse, episode 9: In which Majel decides to become a living human, and shows Trevor and the others how they can use the same technology to bring anyone they like from the simulation to real life.

Untrue Tales From Beyond Fiction – Recollections of an Alternate Past, Book Six: Waking To The Truth -or- Explanation and Supplication -or- How To Resolve An Apocalypse, episode 8: In which a representative of the Radiant explains the events that led to the near-annihilation of humanity, then Trevor and Toni have to decide how they’ll respond in light of the new information.

Untrue Tales From Beyond Fiction – Recollections of an Alternate Past, Book Six: Waking To The Truth -or- Explanation and Supplication -or- How To Resolve An Apocalypse, episode 7: In which the remnant of humanity follows Trevor across Ersetu’s skies, taking in the extent to which the Radiant have rewritten their world, then face off against the Radiant at the foot of the Seal.

Untrue Tales From Beyond Fiction – Recollections of an Alternate Past, Book Six: Waking To The Truth -or- Explanation and Supplication -or- How To Resolve An Apocalypse, episode 6: In which Trevor and Toni are finally reunited with Nirgal and Neyal’h, explain what’s really going on, and everyone wakes up from stasis.

Untrue Tales From Beyond Fiction – Recollections of an Alternate Past, Book Six: Waking To The Truth -or- Explanation and Supplication -or- How To Resolve An Apocalypse, episode 5: In which Toni describes how she stumbled upon the facility’s secret location, as the Devil’s frustration continues to grow, and Majel describes how Trevor and Toni’s changes to her systems turned into a galaxy-spanning nano-network.

Untrue Tales From Beyond Fiction – Recollections of an Alternate Past, Book Six: Waking To The Truth -or- Explanation and Supplication -or- How To Resolve An Apocalypse, episode 4: In which Toni describes her parents’ death, then Trevor and Toni continue with the story of how they survived the Radiant and ended up at the location of the underground facility.

Untrue Tales From Beyond Fiction – Recollections of an Alternate Past, Book Six: Waking To The Truth -or- Explanation and Supplication -or- How To Resolve An Apocalypse, episode 3: In which Toni and Trevor describe how they met and fell in love, then how things went bad for humanity at the hands of the Radiant and how their wedding took them by surprise.

Untrue Tales From Beyond Fiction – Recollections of an Alternate Past, Book Six: Waking To The Truth -or- Explanation and Supplication -or- How To Resolve An Apocalypse, episode 2: In which Trevor and Toni describe the initial appearance of The Radiant Empire on Ersetu and the changes to everyone’s lives they began systematically to make.

Untrue Tales From Beyond Fiction – Recollections of an Alternate Past, Book Six: Waking To The Truth -or- Explanation and Supplication -or- How To Resolve An Apocalypse, episode 1: In which Jesus describes the events which led to the development of the simulation they’re all taking part in.

Untrue Tales From Beyond Fiction – Recollections of an Alternate Past, Book Five: The Bloodless Battles -or- Conscription and Revelation -or- How To Break Into Prison, episode 10: In which Jesus confronts Pretana then finds himself continuing his search of the Oubliexxe sans Toni and Trevor, who meanwhile end up discussing the fate of the universe, of humanity, and of Nirgal & Neyal’h with an old friend who has new information.

Untrue Tales From Beyond Fiction – Recollections of an Alternate Past, Book Five: The Bloodless Battles -or- Conscription and Revelation -or- How To Break Into Prison, episode 9: In which Trevor’s team does an exhaustive search of the Oubliexxe, reaching the black hole without finding Neyal’h and Nirgal, and just after they cross the event horizon, Pretana’s ship shows up outside with shocking news.

Untrue Tales From Beyond Fiction – Recollections of an Alternate Past, Book Five: The Bloodless Battles -or- Conscription and Revelation -or- How To Break Into Prison, episode 8: In which Trevor’s crew makes final preparations, then head into the Oubliexxe and begin their search for Nirgal and Neyal’h.

Untrue Tales From Beyond Fiction – Recollections of an Alternate Past, Book Five: The Bloodless Battles -or- Conscription and Revelation -or- How To Break Into Prison, episode 7: In which the exile army takes on the Oubliexxe’s defense forces while Trevor and his shipmates follow a prison transport ship seen leaving the prison after dropping off the latest batch of prisoners, hoping to get some useful information.

Untrue Tales From Beyond Fiction – Recollections of an Alternate Past, Book Five: The Bloodless Battles -or- Conscription and Revelation -or- How To Break Into Prison, episode 6: In which Trevor and Jesus describe what they know about the Oubliexxe to the small group who will be heading inside to try to find Nirgal and Neyal’h.

Untrue Tales From Beyond Fiction – Recollections of an Alternate Past, Book Five: The Bloodless Battles -or- Conscription and Revelation -or- How To Break Into Prison, episode 5: In which Trevor’s fleet of ships discovers that the entire Kuiper Belt has been made into a defense network of hundreds of thousands of automated drones, armed to the teeth and set on preventing the escape of the exiles.

Untrue Tales From Beyond Fiction – Recollections of an Alternate Past, Book Five: The Bloodless Battles -or- Conscription and Revelation -or- How To Break Into Prison, episode 4: In which Trevor talks with the exiles already on his ship, taking special time to discuss plans with Maheu’le and the other oversized exiles.

Untrue Tales From Beyond Fiction – Recollections of an Alternate Past, Book Five: The Bloodless Battles -or- Conscription and Revelation -or- How To Break Into Prison, episode 3: In which Trevor heads back to his high school with Toni to try to reconcile with the tall man, and discovers that his classmates and teachers have lost all their magical abilities.

Untrue Tales From Beyond Fiction – Recollections of an Alternate Past, Book Five: The Bloodless Battles -or- Conscription and Revelation -or- How To Break Into Prison, episode 2: In which Trevor and Toni head to Heaven to convince God and the Devil to accept their lost memories and then to join the exile army & the fight against the corporation.

The final two poems from Worth 1k — Volume 2, both written from a place of frustrating, life-is-too-hard please-make-it-stop depression.

Untrue Tales From Beyond Fiction – Recollections of an Alternate Past, Book Five: The Bloodless Battles -or- Conscription and Revelation -or- How To Break Into Prison, episode 1: In which Trevor and Toni return to Earth to try to recruit the other exiles to fight back against the corporation, beginning with the twins, whose life’s work Trevor destroyed handily (in Book Two) less than a day ago.

Two poems steeped in depression – both written within days of my birthday, just like the entirety of Worth 1k — Volume 1. The first about excuses for gluttony, the second about crying myself to sleep.

Untrue Tales From Beyond Fiction – Recollections of an Alternate Past, Book Four: Explorations of Ridiculous Realities -or- Corporation and Collusion -or- How to Subvert Corporatocracy, episode 10: In which Toni explains how their centuries of arbitration resulted in Trevor’s exile to Earth, then they reach their rendezvous with Pretana, head of the guild, whose petulance and power create a new challenge for Trevor to overcome, and he comes up with an equally challenging solution.

This single poem actually ties directly to the dedication of this collection of poetry: “for love, still,”

Untrue Tales From Beyond Fiction – Recollections of an Alternate Past, Book Four: Explorations of Ridiculous Realities -or- Corporation and Collusion -or- How to Subvert Corporatocracy, episode 9: In which Sam and Bresk show Toni and Trevor the basics of the Di-Chroma harvesting operation, then the class one AIs make Trevor and Toni’s life worse while making the lives of everyone else in the universe better, and Bresk’s inability to love Sam dooms Toni and Trevor to centuries of meaningless arbitration.

Two poems, a short one re: feeling awful, and a slightly longer one about having an actual work ethic.

Untrue Tales From Beyond Fiction – Recollections of an Alternate Past, Book Four: Explorations of Ridiculous Realities -or- Corporation and Collusion -or- How to Subvert Corporatocracy, episode 8: In which Trevor enjoys a terrible, nearly-inedible meal with the citizens of 77 Di-Krustos, learns that making love with Toni has exposed an unwitting citizen to a dangerous thought crime, and then he and Toni are shown to the Di-Chroma fields by Sam and Bresk.

Two poems; the first about the dreariness of having to face going to work on Sunday mornings, the second about realizing my failure in identifying the poetry in this collection only by the time and place I was at when I wrote it.

Untrue Tales From Beyond Fiction – Recollections of an Alternate Past, Book Four: Explorations of Ridiculous Realities -or- Corporation and Collusion -or- How to Subvert Corporatocracy, episode 7: In which Trevor reconnects with class one AI after over a hundred years of being turned away, shares some intimate experiences with them, then arrives at 77 Di-Krustos, another class five colony in need of assistance.

Three poems, one not very good one about living in a fantasy land of unrequited love, the second about living with physical pain as a constant companion, and the third about the difficulty of making it through life under the weight of a debilitating depression.

Untrue Tales From Beyond Fiction – Recollections of an Alternate Past, Book Four: Explorations of Ridiculous Realities -or- Corporation and Collusion -or- How to Subvert Corporatocracy, episode 6: In which Trevor assists Bill with filling out paperwork and ends up accidentally creating a new class of artificial intelligence in the process.

Just one poem this week, this one about how close to the edge I was in 2007, how any little thing could push me to the edge, almost push me over the edge, and into the abyss.

Untrue Tales From Beyond Fiction – Recollections of an Alternate Past, Book Four: Explorations of Ridiculous Realities -or- Corporation and Collusion -or- How to Subvert Corporatocracy, episode 5: In which Trevor and Toni learn about the work and the local culture of Waterstone Five, and offer to try to assist them with some of the paperwork standing between them and a better quality of life.

One poem about a lack of love poems, and of love, in my life. Another about the quiet at the end of the workday.

Untrue Tales From Beyond Fiction – Recollections of an Alternate Past, Book Four: Explorations of Ridiculous Realities -or- Corporation and Collusion -or- How to Subvert Corporatocracy, episode 4: In which Trevor and Toni meet the people of Waterstone Five, a class five corporate colony, get a tour of their unusual amenities, and learn about their day to day work.

Two poems written over lunch at Outback after several painful days – on the unusual occurrence of a day of feeling good.

Untrue Tales From Beyond Fiction – Recollections of an Alternate Past, Book Four: Explorations of Ridiculous Realities -or- Corporation and Collusion -or- How to Subvert Corporatocracy, episode 3: In which Trevor learns how to access the universe’s knowledge from any terminal, Toni picks a few planets to visit first, and Toni talks about their first impressions of the universe-spanning corporation and its planet-spanning bureaucracies.

Four poems about the experience of having a migraine at work.

Untrue Tales From Beyond Fiction – Recollections of an Alternate Past, Book Four: Explorations of Ridiculous Realities -or- Corporation and Collusion -or- How to Subvert Corporatocracy, episode 2: In which Trevor and Toni attempt to visit a museum, and find that even such a simple experience is marred by the bureaucracy of the corporation, then purchase a space ship and set out into the universe.

Two poems: One late at night, waiting, wishing for sleep. The other the next day, facing the struggle of music versus poetry.

Untrue Tales From Beyond Fiction – Recollections of an Alternate Past, Book Four: Explorations of Ridiculous Realities -or- Corporation and Collusion -or- How to Subvert Corporatocracy, episode 1: In which Trevor, Toni, their daughter, and Nirgal briefly meet the captain of the ship which abducted them from Earth, then Toni begins to tell the story of how she and Trevor first began to explore the universe.

Two poems, one about the memory of something resembling love and loss, the other about the same sensation of the memory of loss recalled at the sight and sensation of the rain.

These two poems were written during the same, long, dull workday. One while getting started up, the other when the only thing keeping my mind going ended up shutting down.

A friend of Mandy’s was in from out of town & we decided to head to the Phoenix Art Museum and then out to dinner afterward. These two poems are … that.

These three poems are about the effect unrequited love, the effect which deep longing, can have on my ability to express myself, to be creative, to even write effectively about what it feels like to be in that place of longing. They’re about the effects even a brief telephone conversation from the object of one’s affection can have on one’s mental state, though not necessarily fixing things, it changes one’s frame of mind and feelings for a while.

A poem about one kind of frustration, borne of other people failing to do what they promise, followed by a poem about my own -often impossible- promises and goals I set for myself.

This story gives merely a glimpse of two young people who fall in love at first sight, and of the time-bending company they both work for: Chronomatics. Learn about Chronomatics’ unique services, all of which make use of a form of time dilation to either seem to add more hours to your day (relative to the world at large) or allow you to skip over whole decades of time as though only a single night’s sleep had passed. Learn about the challenges, one after another after another, which spring up to test the strength of their love as though to see whether it can be lost as easily and quickly as it was found. Your conceptions of love and your understanding of time may be challenged by Buying Time.

This is the final pair of poems from the ordeal of construction and failure that played out in Pine, AZ while I was keeping this journal.

This story is about the inventor of a revolutionary new technology embodied in a device which allows stable wormholes to be created in spacetime, linking any two of them together. Such a device would allow humanity to travel to space for next to no cost, and herald a new age of expansion into the Solar system. It could allow humanity to contact an alien race and attempt a peaceful relationship. But first, before the technology is ever tested, it gets used by a future version of the inventor to create a wormhole backward in time, intending to alter history and prevent a terrible future from ever occurring.
 
In part 1, Robert Weyth’s future self comes back in time and, while others from the future begin to carry out their plan to save Earth, explains to himself the history of the future he’s trying to prevent.

More poems about my trip to Pine, AZ to work on building a wall with my family. First a poem about the terrible quality of sleep I got on the first night there, then two poems about the experience and difficulties of the first real day of work.

This story is about the inventor of a revolutionary new technology embodied in a device which allows stable wormholes to be created in spacetime, linking any two of them together. Such a device would allow humanity to travel to space for next to no cost, and herald a new age of expansion into the Solar system. It could allow humanity to contact an alien race and attempt a peaceful relationship. But first, before the technology is ever tested, it gets used by a future version of the inventor to create a wormhole backward in time, intending to alter history and prevent a terrible future from ever occurring.
 
In part 1, Robert Weyth’s future self comes back in time and, while others from the future begin to carry out their plan to save Earth, explains to himself the history of the future he’s trying to prevent.

For a year or two, I lived in Pine, AZ with my grandparents. These two poems are about some of the feelings I had upon returning to a space and situation I hadn’t occupied in a few years, and to seeing my grandfather -as near to dying as my grandmother had been while I’d lived there- in that too-familiar place.

In this brief essay, I address the narrative style wherein an author, usually at the last minute, cancels out everything else they wrote and makes the entire experience a waste of time. I also ask for your financial support, in the form of buying copies of the Untrue Tales… series, to buy me time in coffee shops for writing the rest of the series.

These are the first two poems from the several-days-long ordeal my father, brother, and I went through, insulating and installing drywall on an interior wall of our warehouse in Pine, AZ. The wall was about 30 feet tall and we initially intended to do a section about fifty feet wide, and we were largely working with recycled materials.

This story follows the actions of a couple who seem to have been together forever, who want to be able to create children of their own, and who will stop at nothing to do so. Involving stem cell research, cloning, mind control, human sacrifices, eventual success … and what comes after, this story isn’t afraid to touch on sensitive issues to get where it wants to go, or to take things even further from there.

Two relatively unrelated poems today. First, a poem about my emotional-overeating reaction to the previous night’s insomnia, then a brief poem (based on an email) which both pretends I can sleep and diminishes my self-worth. “…I am furniture…”

This story follows the actions of a couple who seem to have been together forever, who want to be able to create children of their own, and who will stop at nothing to do so. Involving stem cell research, cloning, mind control, human sacrifices, eventual success … and what comes after, this story isn’t afraid to touch on sensitive issues to get where it wants to go, or to take things even further from there.

This poem is about a particularly difficult and painful night of insomnia: tossing, turning, sweating, and hurting.

This story follows the actions of a couple who seem to have been together forever, who want to be able to create children of their own, and who will stop at nothing to do so. Involving stem cell research, cloning, mind control, human sacrifices, eventual success … and what comes after, this story isn’t afraid to touch on sensitive issues to get where it wants to go, or to take things even further from there.

I’ve decided to keep the poems in Worth 1k — Volume 2 in the order they were printed (for the remaining poems, as I did with W1kV1 for the last several months), and to group them not by length, to try to hit close to 2 minutes, but by meaning (as much as possible). This poem is my dealing with my grandfather’s (then) impending death. There are more poems on this subject in the book.

An essay about a possible interpretation of God’s perspective of time, relative to the “seven day week” of creation and our place in it. On the nth readthrough, I realized that I summarized much of the entire Bible in a few short pages, providing yet another iteration of the fractal story of creation. Which may make sense after you hear/read this essay.

This is the last two poems from this collection; one still clinging -briefly- to taking in and documenting the beauty of my journey, the other succumbing to the stress of being at the end of my budget and still 500 miles from home… and thus unable to buy myself a nice dinner for my birthday. Unable to find anything in between cheap and way-too-expensive in an unfamiliar city.

In a future where processing speeds allow computers to predict the future and advancements in genetic engineering allow people to design custom children, what happens when these technologies -and a couple who haven’t kept pace with post-singularity advances in technology- are combined to try to create a family? When one can not only select for simple things like gender, eye color, and hair color, but also for likely future outcomes like when and where your child will have their first kiss, or what career they’ll be drawn to, how far would you be willing to go to create the child of your dreams? In this short story, Harold and Anne are faced with questions like these in the wake of the devastating loss of their first child – created and born naturally, rather than technologically.

I wrote these four poems while at Hearst Castle in California. It hadn’t been part of my plan, but since I have some knowledge of Hearst & his legacy, I couldn’t resist the roadsigns pointing me there. It was an experience both worth having and -when I can make the time and find the money- worth repeating; I’d like to return to Hearst Castle with more time and money (and my wife) someday.

In a future where processing speeds allow computers to predict the future and advancements in genetic engineering allow people to design custom children, what happens when these technologies -and a couple who haven’t kept pace with post-singularity advances in technology- are combined to try to create a family? When one can not only select for simple things like gender, eye color, and hair color, but also for likely future outcomes like when and where your child will have their first kiss, or what career they’ll be drawn to, how far would you be willing to go to create the child of your dreams? In this short story, Harold and Anne are faced with questions like these in the wake of the devastating loss of their first child – created and born naturally, rather than technologically.

I wrote these two poems at Pier 39, in San Francisco, California. They are about food, and about money. This far into my trip, I was increasingly worried about money, so what may seem like small things to you were big things to me. My budget for the trip was next to nothing, and I’d exceeded it with days left before home.

This essay is a personal exploration of my own unusual relationship with time. It touches both on my mind and body’s disconnection from a “normal” circadian rhythm and on my imagination and creative mind being six months (to many years) ahead of the pace of technology.

Two poems at one beach then, after a drive I couldn’t find a good place to stop amidst quite a bit of beauty, another written from my recollections of same. All on the Pacific Coast Highway in California.

Imagine you could change the direction you travel through time and actually go backward in time. In this story, Brent finds himself able to do just that and, along with his brother Charlie, explores some of the possibilities that ability creates. Together they look at problems of ethics, causality, and the possibility of doing heroic deeds and making themselves vast amounts of wealth very quickly.

Two poems written at two different “Vistic Points” along the Pacific Coast Highway, half a day apart. This far into my road trip, you can begin to sense I’m growing weary, losing my sense of vision. Luckily my choice of locations to drive to & through was beautiful enough to wake me back up again.

Imagine you could change the direction you travel through time and actually go backward in time. In this story, Brent finds himself able to do just that and, along with his brother Charlie, explores some of the possibilities that ability creates. Together they look at problems of ethics, causality, and the possibility of doing heroic deeds and making themselves vast amounts of wealth very quickly.

Another poem written in Eureka, CA and two from the Avenue of the Giants in Humboldt Redwoods State Park, CA. If you ever get a chance to visit this part of California, I definitely recommend it.

Imagine you could change the direction you travel through time and actually go backward in time. In this story, Brent finds himself able to do just that and, along with his brother Charlie, explores some of the possibilities that ability creates. Together they look at problems of ethics, causality, and the possibility of doing heroic deeds and making themselves vast amounts of wealth very quickly.

Two of these poems were written while I was stopping for food, though neither is about the food itself. In between them is a poem about a tree, one of the biggest I’ve seen, a giant redwood in CA.

This essay is about an alternate conception about visualizing the shape of time. Rather than the standard circles, squares, and grids created by the limitations of paper and other physical displays, I suggest a new model which fits time better and is very reasonable to be displayed by today’s ubiquitous digital displays.

This poem is actually about some big rocks, though that might not be clear while listening to it. Go out and drive down the coast, though, and I think you’ll see what I mean.

This story is about a supervillain who -after his first several attempts to wreak havoc on and around the flying city in which he lives are thwarted, and his superhero nemesis is coincidentally erased from existence- goes even more insane than he was before. Stumbling around his high-tech laboratory, mumbling to himself, Brady experiences an epiphany that leads him to design a fifth iteration of his doomsday device. Find out what he designs, and where that line of thought ends up taking him, in this strange story about a stranger, mad man.

These three poems (and most of the rest of the book) were written while I was driving down the Pacific Coast Highway. Small towns along the coast were interesting. So were the dilapidated public parks all through OR and CA.

This story is about a supervillain who -after his first several attempts to wreak havoc on and around the flying city in which he lives are thwarted, and his superhero nemesis is coincidentally erased from existence- goes even more insane than he was before. Stumbling around his high-tech laboratory, mumbling to himself, Brady experiences an epiphany that leads him to design a fifth iteration of his doomsday device. Find out what he designs, and where that line of thought ends up taking him, in this strange story about a stranger, mad man.

These two poems are about driving in Oregon. Sometimes the view outside my windows was beautiful, but often the driving there was stressful, frustrating, and dangerous.

This story, They Stole God, is one of my favorites from this collection, delving into theology, cosmology, ethics & morality, while telling a tale that ends up containing dramatic & violent bank robberies and the violation of the sanctity of religious dogma – by force. Follow a group of monk-like religious adepts and their friends as they find that the deeper into the secrets of their religion they delve, the more impossible their escape from its clutches becomes. Some readers may want to look up the nature of such far-flung physics concepts as dark matter, dark energy, and the nature of singularities to understand the full scope of theology herein, and others will just want to know what strange plan they come up with next.

This poem is about the sometimes inconvenient and sometimes uncomfortable side effects of using modafinil, a drug that allows you to stay up nigh-indefinitely. I wrote 90% of Untrue Tales… Book Three in a single 60-hour session with the help of modafinil, and as stated in this poem, I’ve also used it to make cross-country drives without stopping to sleep.

This story, They Stole God, is one of my favorites from this collection, delving into theology, cosmology, ethics & morality, while telling a tale that ends up containing dramatic & violent bank robberies and the violation of the sanctity of religious dogma – by force. Follow a group of monk-like religious adepts and their friends as they find that the deeper into the secrets of their religion they delve, the more impossible their escape from its clutches becomes. Some readers may want to look up the nature of such far-flung physics concepts as dark matter, dark energy, and the nature of singularities to understand the full scope of theology herein, and others will just want to know what strange plan they come up with next.

Both poems today were written at Shoshone Falls in Idaho, just after the sun had disappeared and before the light was gone.

This story, They Stole God, is one of my favorites from this collection, delving into theology, cosmology, ethics & morality, while telling a tale that ends up containing dramatic & violent bank robberies and the violation of the sanctity of religious dogma – by force. Follow a group of monk-like religious adepts and their friends as they find that the deeper into the secrets of their religion they delve, the more impossible their escape from its clutches becomes. Some readers may want to look up the nature of such far-flung physics concepts as dark matter, dark energy, and the nature of singularities to understand the full scope of theology herein, and others will just want to know what strange plan they come up with next.

Both of today’s poems were written while I was driving on 84W. The first even mentions that I was going 75mph. You should see how rough the handwriting is (I’ve included scans of all the original pages of the journal in the print edition); you’d know for sure I was writing one-handed while driving.

This story, They Stole God, is one of my favorites from this collection, delving into theology, cosmology, ethics & morality, while telling a tale that ends up containing dramatic & violent bank robberies and the violation of the sanctity of religious dogma – by force. Follow a group of monk-like religious adepts and their friends as they find that the deeper into the secrets of their religion they delve, the more impossible their escape from its clutches becomes. Some readers may want to look up the nature of such far-flung physics concepts as dark matter, dark energy, and the nature of singularities to understand the full scope of theology herein, and others will just want to know what strange plan they come up with next.

The first of these two poems I wrote after spending a delightful morning & lunch with a woman I met in the tour group I took through Temple Square. We continued wandering around the various historical sites in downtown SLC, talking and having a good time, and then had lunch together before parting ways. She was in town for a convention and I was just passing through, and it was nice to be able to make a human connection so quickly and randomly. The second poem is a haiku I wrote while driving away from SLC, about a particularly striking view to be had there.

This story, Welcome to The Family, is about a strange group of cyborgs – not people with robotic limbs or organs, but whose physiology at a cellular level is a co-mingling of organic and robotic components. Cyborgs whose gross physiology bears no resemblance to the people they were before becoming members of this tight-knit group known as ‘The Family.’ This story, really, is about a boy in love, and the lengths he’ll go to to try to save the girl he loves from succumbing to the fate he himself has fallen prey to. Will he be able to protect her from becoming a member of The Family?

Both of these poems were written at Temple Square in Salt Lake City, UT – the first from outside the church’s massive walls, and the second whilst on their guided tour.

This story, Welcome to The Family, is about a strange group of cyborgs – not people with robotic limbs or organs, but whose physiology at a cellular level is a co-mingling of organic and robotic components. Cyborgs whose gross physiology bears no resemblance to the people they were before becoming members of this tight-knit group known as ‘The Family.’ This story, really, is about a boy in love, and the lengths he’ll go to to try to save the girl he loves from succumbing to the fate he himself has fallen prey to. Will he be able to protect her from becoming a member of The Family?

First a poem about literally being on the road – between Moab and Salt Lake City where, for the only night of my road trip, I’d booked a room for the night. I was exhausted when I left Moab (after a full day hiking at Arches National Park), then I drove. And drove. And drove, to SLC. The second poem recounts the disturbing wake-up-call I was greeted with, after not enough sleep.

This story contains sex, violence, bondage, pain, fear, humiliation, and death. Death by zombie.
 
This story looks at the situation at a zombie readiness training camp during its final weeks of training before a full-scale zombie outbreak. It follows the two men who are tasked with keeping the camp running while the man in charge -The Sergeant- is distracted, and how this lapse of management goes horribly awry. It also gives a glimpse of what happened with Mary, a woman totally unprepared for what she’s gotten herself into, and who goes on not only to survive the zombie outbreak, but to become one of the central characters of Forget What You Can’t Remember.

The Fiery Furnace at Arches National Park in Utah is only available for exploration as part of a paid, guided tour group – unlike the rest of the part, which you are free to explore on your own time and at your own pace and with a single (nominal) fee for access to the entire park. From the overlook, I couldn’t really see much. I certainly couldn’t tell whether it would have been worth my time and money to reschedule my entire day around the guided tour… not from the information stop where the tour signups take place, and not much moreso from the overlook. But I did write this poem.

This story contains sex, violence, bondage, pain, fear, humiliation, and death. Death by zombie.
 
This story looks at the situation at a zombie readiness training camp during its final weeks of training before a full-scale zombie outbreak. It follows the two men who are tasked with keeping the camp running while the man in charge -The Sergeant- is distracted, and how this lapse of management goes horribly awry. It also gives a glimpse of what happened with Mary, a woman totally unprepared for what she’s gotten herself into, and who goes on not only to survive the zombie outbreak, but to become one of the central characters of Forget What You Can’t Remember.

Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut – Episode 6: In which the main character and Tink are escorted through Skythia’s Great Museum by Paul, Skythia’s mayor, spend a romantic evening in an awesome room, then get dressed up and head to Skythia’s best restaurant to celebrate their 9th Anniversary, deciding to give living in Skythia a chance.

Today I have two new promos I just recorded. If you are a podcaster looking to run one of these promos in your podcast, please visit http://modernevil.com/podcast-promos/ to download them. For more information about my Kickstarter.com fundraiser you can read my blog entry about it, or go directly to the Kickstarter Project page. The short URL is http://kck.st/9j3MOe

Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut – Episode 5: In which a powerful entity rewrites the world and its history, leaving only the wonderful, creative, imaginative, and magical behind, erasing and replacing all else, and in which -ten years later, after years of love and happiness and success and creativity- Tink and the main character leave Haven and come across the flying city of Skythia.

Today’s poem is another brand new, not-yet-published (because I wrote it last week) work, related in theme -perhaps- to one of my online comics from years ago.