Monday, November 22, 2004

From Murder to Immortality, Author Biff Mitchell Offers Both

For Immediate Release

Summary: Author Biff Mitchell, who recently ran an eBay auction for the privilege of being murdered in one of his novels, is offering immortality of sorts to the best reviewer of his soon-to-be-released print version of The War Bug.

“In Murder by Burger, I’m killing somebody off,” said Mitchell. “This time, I’m giving somebody the chance to be immortal by appearing on the back cover of the print version of The War Bug.”

The War Bug, available as an ebook from Double Dragon Publishing and most online bookstores, will be released in bookstores across North America in June 2005. To promote the release, the author and publisher are running an unusual contest.

“There’s no entry fee,” said Deron Douglas, president of Double Dragon. “But people will have to buy the ebook version of the novel and read it. Then they write a review of the novel and submit it to Double Dragon. Part of the winning review will appear as a jacket blurb on the back cover of the book along with a picture of the reviewer.”

“The winner will be on the cover of a book,” said Mitchell. “It’s sort of like being immortal. We’ll also be giving the winning reviewer an autographed copy of the first copy of the book to be printed.”

The War Bug is a satiric science fiction novel set 200 years in the future just before the collapse of the Internet from a deadly war fought with computer viruses between huge online citystates that dominate the online world. In the midst of the chaos, Abner Hayes has just hours to find his virtual wife and daughter before the Net crashes and he loses them forever. The only ally in his quest is the computer virus that started the war.

When the novel was released in ebook format in March 2004, it was featured at Fictionwise.com and made the EPIC bestseller list.

“Ebook sales of the book have been good enough to justify a print run,” said Douglas. “The offbeat sci-fi nature of the book fits into the direction DDP is going. Plus, Biff has shown keen marketing savvy and the energy it takes from an author to help boost sales.”

“Deron told me he was putting together a list of ebooks he wanted to publish in print in 2005,” said Mitchell. “I begged him to include The War Bug and he asked me if I believed that I could market it enough to sell a few paperbacks.”

“He told me he could market the hell out of print version of The War Bug,” said Douglas. “So I told him he had me 99% convinced. I told him I’d send him a contract sometime in the future.”

“He sent the contract by email 5 minutes later,” said Mitchell.

Four other reviewers will receive autographed copies of The War Bug, plus have their names mentioned in the acknowledgments at the end of the book. All winning entries will have their reviews along with their pictures appear on the author’s web site. The final date for review entries is February 28, 2005. Winners will be announced on March 31, 2005.

“The War Bug has received excellent reviews from both readers and critics,” said Douglas. “One of them called it a fusion between Douglas Adams and Philip K. Dick. We’re looking forward to the reviews generated by this contest.”

“All reviews entered, both good and bad, will be published on the Double Dragon web site,” said Mitchell. “So it should be interesting to see what develops.”

Details about the contest are posted at www.biffmitchell.com. The War Bug will be distributed in the USA by Ingram and in Canada by Double Dragon Publishing. It will also be available through all major online stores.

Double Dragon Publishing is a leading publisher of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror titles with an impressive line-up of best selling and award winning writers.

Biff Mitchell is the author of three novels, Heavy Load (eBookAd and CyberRead), Team Player (soon to be released by Double Dragon), and The War Bug (Double Dragon). His novellas, The Baton and Smoke Break, are available in ebook format through Echelon Press. A book of short stories and two books of poems are available free on the author’s web site and at Memoware.com.

Contacts:

Deron Douglas, President Double Dragon Publishing info@double-dragon-ebooks.com Web Site: http://www.double-dragon-ebooks.com/index.asp

Biff Mitchell, Author biff@biffmitchell.com 506-455-3678 (evenings 6:00 PM AST) Web Site: http://www.biffmitchell.com

Monday, November 15, 2004

The Day Hell Stood Still

The dust has settled in Boston. After a trillion years (if you measure years by misfortune, pain, cruelty, and shattered dreams), the curse is broken. Truly broken. Across the alarming surface of the world, the message traveled through the air, the ground and under water, over mountains and through valleys, across deserts and farmlands, through the fast food takeouts of the world, the beer stores and the couch athletes parked in front a legion of television screens. And the message was: The Bo Sox Bucked The Babe’s Blight.

But I’m not going to get into the play-by-play and the players and the coaches and the games. I’ll leave those for the 27 episode epic movie that surely to God someone is already planning. I’ll just say…they did a good job. A great job.

Fact is though, the players were not, and have never been, the true heroes in the comeback of baseball in Boston. The true heroes have always been, and will always be, the Boston fans from Nunavut to Timbuktu. Never in the world of sports have so many suffered so much for so little return and still remained loyal to “their” team, whether they be from Boston or Shanghai.

I write these words with the wisdom of a man who really doesn’t give a rat’s ass who wins the pennant.

But you have to respect a stubborn horde of fans that can stay that fanatically focused for nearly a century (or a trillion years in the terms listed above) and never lose faith. They’re like the husband who said when his wife told him she’d been sleeping with every guy on the block since 1918: “That’s OK, dear. We’ll do better next season.”

And yes, the players did well too.

And yes, even I feel good about hell finally freezing over.

Way to go Boston.

Tuesday, November 09, 2004

My Film Debut 2

I can’t believe what a fat head I am. That’s what I look like on the big screen. A fat head. But I guess that’s better than being dead, or worse yet, deader. So it’s just a matter of accepting the truth about myself and embracing fat headedness in all its fat headed glory.

But it wasn’t really all that bad.

Nobody laughed at me. Not even when I tried to bite my way through a locked gate. Nobody screamed, “This is an abomination! Death to Biff!” and tried to stab me, blow me up, or otherwise make me inanimate.

And then there was my daughter, Cassie. She was brilliant. She made the audience laugh. She made them cry. She made them experience out-of-body states of being. I think they spared my life because of her.

It started in the hall of Tilley Hall. The experimental short movies in the Fourth Annual Tidal Wave Film Festival were being shown at the scene of some of my most grueling college experiences, the lecture theater with the most uncomfortable chairs in the world, reason for missing so many early morning classes (along with sex, drugs, booze, rock n roll, and general confusion about where I was supposed to be, at what time, and the exact location of where the hell ‘where’ was. It was a different world back then.). But that was OK. It was the film debut for Mitchell and Mitchell. Me and my daughter.

It started in the hall. Waiting for the 7 o’clock movie to end. Cassie and I arrived unfashionably early. I’m not really an actor. I’m a writer. I like to get there early and watch other people arrive. Observe them. Make mental notes. Unfortunately, I invariably forget those mental notes. Maybe I’m just unfashionable. Friends started to arrive. Jeffx and his lovely wife, Hope. And their compelling Bohemian beauty of a daughter, Amanda. Margaret from my old high school was there. She was wearing her graduation hat. Then FeltTop Phil arrived holding a pool cue along with Beth, who was taking bets. We all talked nervously. Someone mentioned that the 7 o’clock movie was running late. We all made mental notes and continued to talk nervously.

Others arrived. People we didn’t know. They all looked artsy and Bohemian. Not as Bohemian as Mandy though. They all talked nervously. Made mental notes of the lateness of the 7 o’clock movie. Someone in authority, a man dressed in nothing but a Tidal Wave Film Festival T-shirt told us to line up in the hall to the left. This made complete sense to the people facing north, but caused much confusion for the people facing south, there being no hall to their left capable of holding more than half a dozen people. So everybody crowded into the small hall so as not to let the people facing south look like complete idiots.

About this time, Joe Blades showed up and cut into the line. Joe’s a poet. He was displaying poetic behavior. Maybe a little too much though. Someone set him on fire. Hey, what the hell, we were waiting to see experimental films.

Denise DeMoura, the director and producer of the movie Cassie and I were in, wafted by like a brisk brief breeze, nodded hello and went to the end of the line, about five feet from the front of the line, which was getting a bit crowded since Joe had been set on fire. Then Fossil showed up. That was it. The pin that punctured the pickle. People started seeping into the walls.

People with confused eyes were starting to arrive for the 11:45 show. The doors to the theater flew open over an hour late. Thousands of overly serious people in gray suits swarmed out of the theater. They had gone in dressed in flowers and paisley, watched four documentaries in a row and come out looking documented. Give me experimental any day. I like my hula-hula shirts.

About a thousand of us cramped into the little hall formed our own little tidal wave and washed over the floors and flowed into the theater. The memories of those gawdawful seats sprayed over my brain and butt like large caliber slugs from the past. They called to me. “Biff. Oh Biff. We want to stop the flow of blood in your butt…just like we did a hundred years ago. Come to us, Biff.”

Being in that theater seemed to have triggered more than just memories.

I sat between Cassie and Amanda, the two most beautiful and Bohemian in the theater. Nervous chatter bounced off the walls of the room, collided with wiring and fan sounds from the ceiling. The man with only a T-shirt on said something about sponsors and introduced the directors, all of whom turned left instead of right and left the building before they could say anything about their movies. The lights went out. Everyone shut up. The movies started.

All I could think about was how fat-headed I am and how my the blood still hasn’t started flowing in my butt after all these years away from Tilley Hall.

The rest I’ll save for another time.

Monday, November 01, 2004

Random Thoughts 1

I love Kenny G’s music. It allows me to think without being interrupted by anything I have to think about.

One night, in a land and place far away and long ago, when I was a bartender (and a good one to boot, I might add), a priest who had been watching me work my bar for most of a semi-busy-semi-lazy Thursday night approached me at the end of the evening and said: “I think you listened to more confessions in one night than I listened to in the last month.” Might want to increase the amount of wine in certain ceremonies? Just a suggestion.

One thing you can say about Europeans, they know how to make war…and chocolate. Watch out when they stop making chocolate.

We spend too much time trying to define ourselves and not enough time just being ourselves.

In the not-to-distant future, God says to a man named Noah: “I want you to build a canoe.” Noah says: “Shouldn’t it be an ark?” God says: “There’s not that many worth saving.”

Told you they were random thoughts.