Rish Outcast 298: Balms, Sears, & Publishing

Rish talks about his longest work, the newly-released book "Balms & Sears." He talks about the idea behind it, the reason it got so long, and the many challenges of producing the audio.

You may buy the text HERE, and you may buy the audio version HERE!

If you want to download the episode, Right-Click HERE.

If you want to support me on Patreon, click HERE.

Logo by Gino "Balms & Jeers" Moretto.

A Balm For What Ails You

Already up on Amazon, the audiobook version of my novel "Balms & Sears" is finally available on Audible.  

As you know (Diane), B&S tells the tale of Alec Ewell, who is a Balm, and has the ability to heal people who are injured, or sick, or suffering.  Alec just can't help using his power, prompting his grandfather to move him to a new town, like the one  in Colorado they just arrived in.  Gramps wants the boy to keep it a secret, to leave well enough alone, and just try to be a normal boy...something Alec finds impossible to do.

I do the narration/performance, and it's the longest work I've ever managed.  It took me a while to get it out there, trying to get it perfect . . . when I was fully aware it could never ever be.

To my delight (and hopefully yours as well), the final edit ended up at a very unusual/pleasing number:

Anyhow, art is never finished, it simply escapes, and you can buy it HERE!

Rish Outcast 297: You're In Good Hands 4

So, here we are, the last segment of the 2019 "Lara & The Witch" novella.

Lara Demming has been targeted by a supernatural enemy, and what's worse, he now knows where she is.

Here's a link to the Collection Volume 1 audiobook, now available!

If you want to download the episode, Right-Click HERE.

If you want to support me on Patreon, click HERE.

Logo by Gino "You're In Wood Stands" Moretto.

2024 Goals - How Did I Do?

Well, we're a month into 2025, and I had this post just hanging around . . . I might as well release it.

So, a year ago, I created my list of goals/New Year's Resolutions for 2024.  I did a couple of blog posts looking at how I was doing, but I should've done it more often (because out of sight is out of mind, and I am completely out of mind).  But the year is done, and so, let's see how I did.

1.  Exercise 222 Days
Hmm.  I managed to exercise 301 days in 2024.  By my math, that is 135% of my goal.  Not bad, kid.

2.  Put out 5th audio collection

Sure, that one's done.  And it's available to purchase AT THIS LINK. 

I got the introduction from Big, so that means it's all on me.

3.  Release "Balms & Sears" novel

Yes, and it was more work than I've ever done, both in the writing and the recording/editing, on a book.

You could buy it HERE.  If you wanna.

4.  Clear out my room . . . a bit
Epic fail.

5.  Finish "Melancholy Christmas Night" story
Yep, finished it in February. 

6.  Write "Sins of a Sidekick" novella
Yep, that one too.

7.  Write 10 stories (and finish them)

1.  Melancholy Christmas Night

2.  I Got A Secret

3.  The Day Before The Day Before Christmas

4.  Your Partner On The Road

5.  Happy Birthday Mister Cundy

6.  Witchcraft Fair Story

7.  Slightly Used/Slightly Cursed

8.  The Second Biggest Star Wars Fan In The World

9.  Faithfully 

10.  Family Christmas Story 2024

11.  The Grand Tour

12.  The Last Christmas

8.  Put out 10 episodes of The Podcast That Dares Not Speak Its Name
Yes, I did get ten episodes out in 2024.  On my Patreon.  All the more reason you should go HERE.

9.  Sell Trypticon

Nope.  I only went to four or so toy sales the whole year, and the one I took the big Transformer to, nobody was interested.

10.  Avoid retail price, wait for clearance
I didn't avoid it completely, but wow, way more than had been my track record.  Except for at Ross toward the end of the year, I'd say I bought fifty to sixty percent fewer toys in '24 than in '23 or '22.  Oh, and even though it was my goal last year and not this year, I bought so few G.I. Joes in 2024 that the number could be rounded down to zero.

11.  Do 3 things that scare me
a.  Putting out physical copies of my books scares me, so I think this qualifies.
b.  Applying for a new job, even though I didn't think I was qualified for it ABSOLUTELY counts.
c.  And along those lines, having to be an authority figure, having to tell homeless people not to lie on the floor, having to confront troublemakers, that has been scary to me, and it still scares me, but it's going to get easier the more that I do it.

Marshal and I Experience THE TERROR

Unca Marshal and Cousin Rish over at the Outfield Excursions have reviewed the Roger Corman, er, "classic," THE TERROR, starring a pre-fame Jack Nicholson and a post-fame (sorry) Boris Karloff.  A lost French soldier encounters a spectral babe, a witch, a bird of prey, an old and paranoid Baron, a dude who becomes a dummy, and a Dick Miller on his way from a lonely stretch of beach to a castle and back again.  I'd tell you the name of the director, but I only have so much space on my blog.

Even if you don't care to hear us talk about THE TERROR, surely you want to hear my Karloff impression, no?

Check it out HERE.

Rish Outcast 296: New Year's 2025

Better late than never? Rish looks back at his 2024 goals, and sets new ones for 2025.

Happy New Year to all!

Download the file directly by Right-Clicking HERE.

Support me on Patreon HERE!

Logo by Gino "New (Zealand) Year's" Moretto.

Lara and the Audiobook

It took a minute, but I got the audio version of the Lara & The Witch: Volume I collection finished and out there.  I went through the first four stories like a fine-toothed comb, cutting out mouth sounds and finding a couple of flubs I had previously missed (I published "Here To Help" in 2024, so I skipped that one, for better or worse), so it took quite a while longer than the text version, but it's out there now, if you want to listen to it.

Shrooms . . . they're supposed to be shrooms

As I've said before, it includes the first five stories (chronologically): "Like A Good Neighbor," "You're In Good Hands," "Made Just For You," "The People We Touch," and "Here To Help"* and comes to just over ten hours of audio, which ain't too shabby.

In listening through these, I discovered a couple changes I wanted to make, and came up with a couple of ideas for new stories (currently writing a Mother's Day tale, and trying to determine the fate of the little glowing ball Lara gets in "Made Just For You," since it never reappears).  Trouble is, once those are done (as well as "Accept No Substitutes," which I still don't know how to end), they will all fall between the fourth and fifth stories in this collection, so what's a boy to do?

In the meantime, feel free to buy the collection on Audible HERE, and if you do, I'll make putting out the next stories more of a priority.

*There's also a little bonus extra called "A Short Interlude" in between the second and third stories.

Shameless Self-Promotion

I have a Facebook friend who flogs his books on the site as relentlessly as I flog my--  Er, he does it as relentlessly as any author I've ever seen, posting about one book, then the second, then the third, and back to the first again, almost like he's got it set up to do automatically (and maybe he does).  I am not thrilled with this, but I recognize that it is an important and vital thing for indie- and self-publishers to do.

So, let me once more plug "Balms & Sears," my novel about the teenager who has the power to heal.  You can currently find it on Amazon HERE.

But Big did send me a square version of the cover art to use for the audiobook, so I got started on that.  I took a screenshot as I was uploading files (the darn thing doesn't start with Chapter 1, but with a prologue, so the automatic numbering was screwed up from the start.*  But that won't stop me.  

I'll have it finished and completely uploaded by the end of the month.  And Audible has been good (recently) at getting these books available for purchase quite quickly after submission.  The final runtime will be just over eleven hours . . . can you imagine?

Oh, but I still have to come up with a five minute sample for it.  Hmmm.

*Meaning, I had to change Chapter 1 to Prologue, then Chapter 2 to Chapter 1, and so on.  I thought I was clever, though, by creating twenty chapters, then changing the LAST one to the missing chapter, and pushing Move Up fifteen or so times until the renamed chapter was where it was supposed to be.  It's tedious work, but it's still end level Tetris compared to actually editing these chapters.

Rish Outcast 295: You're In Good Hands 3

Rish talks about his car problems, and shares the third segment of his "Lara & The Witch" story.

Lara Demming has started to mistrust Holcomb and her power over her. Does her magical pendant work or not?

Buy "Lara: Volume I" at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CVKZX9S9

To download this episode, Right-Click HERE. 

To support me over on Patreon, click HERE.  Go on, I won't tell.

Logo by Gino "Yer In Good Glands" Moretto.

Crack For Kids

Several years ago, someone interviewed Joe Quesada, then Editor-In-Chief of Marvel Comics, and asked him about the appeal of the medium.  He (somewhat infamously) said, "Comics are so addictive.  Put bluntly, they're crack for kids."*

And yeah, I know of which he speaks.  I was absolutely ADDICTED to comic books in the late eighties and the start of the Nineties, and kept having singing lessons my Junior and Senior year of high school (despite never being a good student) just so I could borrow my mom's car to go to the lesson, and sneak over to the comic store afterward.  Every spare dime I had went toward comics, and I still only got about half of what I wanted.**

Anyway, cut to today, when I went to the local comic book shop for the first time in ages (I assumed it had been since 2019 or '20, but the cashier said I'd last made a purchase in 2016).  I really just wanted to talk to the employee about comics and collections and his advice about what to do with my old books and hear his stories of widows or grandchildren bringing in their dead loved ones' books and finding out they had something of a goldmine on their hands.  I love those kinds of stories (and not to get off on another tangent, I spent an hour listening to a comic seller at a con tell me moving stories of people blindly discovering a book they had would pay off their house and the like, as inspiring as any church sermon).

But the guy had none, and frankly, wanted to do anything other than talk to me.  I tried changing the subject to something he MIGHT be more interested in, like old Magic The Gathering cards I had from the Nineties, but he simply didn't need any new friends.  I know comic shop proprietors have a reputation of being jag-offs, but this guy wasn't that, he just wanted to be left alone to do his internet searches or look at his phone, and I get that.***

While I was talking to him, a kid (around twelve, I'd say, but prepubescent, so he could have been ten or younger) asked me, "Are you interested in buying comic books?"  My initial thought was, "No, I'm here for the filet mignon," but I couldn't say that because I knew I wouldn't be able to spell it in this post.  Instead, I said, "Well, yeah.  How about you?"  I thought maybe the kid would tell me about his favorite characters and the semi-valuable issues he owned, then I could blow him away with having bought the first appearances of Venom, Deadpool, Silver Sable, Jubilee, Bishop, Cable, and the living black Spider-man suit when they were new. 

But no, he opened his backpack and said, "I've got some comic books here.  Do you want to buy them?"  Immediately, the dude behind the counter called over, "Hey, you can't sell stuff in here, you know that." 

I told the kid I would look at what he had to offer if he wanted to step out to the sidewalk--and yes, having typed it out, I now realize why the police were called on me.  Whoops.****

Anyway, the boy went away, having been chastened by the Comic Book Guy™, and crossed over to the role playing game side of the store, where he started talking to the Mormon missionaries that were playing Magic The Gathering there, about Pokemon cards.  This is NOT a lie, and is sort of important to the point of writing this blogpost, okay?

He--the boy--had his eye on some Pokemon cards and while I asked the cashier how much a back issue of Dazzler was (it was early enough that Rogue was still a villain--an era I'm almost completely ignorant of), I could hear him ranking the cards in order of how much he wanted them.

Well, the back issue was surprisingly cheap, and it turns out nobody EVER buys old comics from them, to the point where the Comic Book Guy™ said that if somebody brought in an issue of Fantastic Four #1 to sell to the store, he would tell them to take it elsewhere.  (again, he really told me this)  

The child was still darting around, hanging close to the rare card case, as though he'd had nothing but sugar packets that day.  I asked the cashier, "Is he the son of someone who works here?" and she said, "No, he's just a boy who comes in and buys cards sometimes."  No idea why he wasn't in school, but hey, I didn't have a good excuse for not being at work, or why I would be in a comic book store four decades outside of my childhood, so I'm not one to judge.

I paid for my comic and as soon as I stepped away, the boy ran up to me and said, "Did you want to see my comics?"  I said, "Sure, but I don't want you to get in trouble."  He said, "I don't care; I need money for cards," and took out a stack that ranged from the Eighties to the 2010s.  One of them was Web of Spider-man 29 which, believe it or not, I was never able to afford when I was a kid.  I said to him, as softly as I could, "Would you take twenty bucks for that one?"*****

He said, "I need money for Pokemon cards.  Would you give me thirty for the whole stack?"

I said, "Yes, but I don't have thirty.  You can have what I do have, though."  He said, as though I had argued with him, "Would you give me twenty-five?"  And it was weird, he glanced back, not to see if he was being observed making a n in-store transaction and breaking the rules, but to see if the Pokemon cards were still there.  "Sure," I said, and gave him twenty-six dollars, which was all I had.  He greedily snatched it away from me, handed over the books (there were about fifteen in all, probably none of them valuable, but I'm certain he could have gotten five or six apiece for half of them), and turned and ran--RAN--to buy those cards, not at all unlike a junkie on the street.

So, though I am loath to contradict Mr. Quesada, I have to argue that while comic books may be crack for kids, there's something out there that's even worse.

R.B.O.

*To be fair, this quote may be apocryphal.  I did do a search on it, and nothing immediately came up. But cards on the table . . . it was a Yahoo! search.

**Now, with hindsight, I wish I had bought extras of the books that became invaluable afterward, but of course, nobody knew which books those would be, hence the risk of speculation.

***Right now, I want no one to approach me asking about where to find something in the library, just long enough to finish my blog post.

****That bit is a joke, but not the kind you can freely tell nowadays (I think I blogged about working on a TV show a decade back when a little kid and his mom pulled into the lot at the same time and later, when we were checking in, the boy exclaimed, "Hey, you're that guy from the parking lot!"  The assistant director said, "Say what?" and I kid you not, the child actor said, "He asked if I wanted to get in his van."  This is not a made up story, and I'm sure I blogged about it, all those years ago.

*****Not to keep annoying you with these footnotes, but I have no idea what that comic is worth (and I don't even care, really), but I was never able to read that issue as a lad, and the boy was a hustler, which I was also never able to be, then or now.  So I either took pity on him, or with three mediocre to fair income streams, I felt like I could toss a bit of cash his way.  Also, it was my turn to buy lunch today, but Jeff arrived before me and paid for my meal anyway, so I was streets ahead. 
P.S. I did look it up, and the book is utterly worthless.  Whoops.

Rish Outcast 293: You're In Good Hands 2

Due to car problems, Rish shares the second segment of his "Lara & The Witch" story.

Is Holcomb acting strangely, or is Lara's pendant not working? And if it isn't, what does that mean?

If you'd like to download the episode, Right-Click HERE.

If you would like to support me on Patreon, click HERE.

Logo by Gino "In Good Pants" Moretto.