Where, Oh Where Has Master Vyle Gone? ...BEWARE, I LIVE!

Nothing like having a good laugh over Newsweek's poorly researched article about the white collar woman's desire for BDSM, that proved their research into BDSM was just as poor as 20/20's research into it, and E.L. James's.

The sound of silence (at least in print).  For anyone who has dropped by this blog as of late it has become a common sight.  "Visual silence"... ummmm... quietness.  No updates, no reviews, just the same old... since that last post... way back, when I announced my Man's World Interview with The AfterDark World.  And I'm sure for some maybe it's been just a little disconcerting.  Just where is Michael C. Laney?  Where is Master Vyle in this world of uncertainty?

 

 

These are uncertain times after all.  I mean there are so many things I know you fiends, fright fans, freaks, perverts and sickos are just dying for me to weigh in on.  I mean, in a nation where Congress shall make no law against the right to freedom of speech, ...mmmm, except in the Michigan State Congress.  I mean, come on!  You know if that had been me I would have jumped up on my little ledge and grabbed my crotch and yelled, "Jump up my bloody cunt, you in public homophobe, under your desk getting blown by you male page, closet cross-dressing, pro-life, give religious nuts the right to protest at the funerals of soldiers you'd sent to die, give tax cut to the rich-benefits cuts to the poor, I'm not a racist I know a black person, LITTLE BITCH!  YEAH, CENSOR AND CENSURE THAT MOTHER FUCKER!"

 

 

Now, I'll bet you're looking at that thinking, would you have really have said that if you were Michigan State Representative Lisa Brown?  Well, the answer in an emphatic, HELL YES!  Because, you see, I am Michael C. Laney, Master Vyle, the guy who's not afraid to say shit.  You see my brain, and the First Amendment, well they like to get FUCKIN' BUSY, and after they do my mouth and fingers give birth to shit that make the late Senator Jesse Helms pop right up out of his grave like a zombie loaded on crack and bath salts with a coffee table book cataloguing the complete works of Robert Mapplethorpe jammed up his ass.

Oh, my!  What happened to that guy?

The truth is fright fans, as of late, things have been really crazy.  I have had a battle with migraines that has been pretty much ongoing since the end of October, and for a while I felt as if they had pretty much shut me down.  Then once I was on a medicine that had them pretty much under control my allergist put me on a new medication to help with something else, and let's just say the side effects made me more vyle than usual.  In the midst of all of that there were work schedule changes, and volunteering at Four Coroner's Charter School, and attempting to purchase a new house, just running all over Hell, the stuff that the nightmares of a writer with OCD are made of, the kind of shi...  I'm sure you get the gist, none of it's been very conducive to writing or reviewing, and I've been doing fairly well to get any reading squeezed in.  Currently my college student and his girlfriend are here for the summer, so it's vacation time as well.  Healthwise I'm pretty much back on track, however the scar tissue has returned in the lady vyle's airway, and in a couple of weeks she will have to go in and have the blockage cleared, so for the moment my writing and blogging are pretty much on hold and at a crawl for a few more weeks.

That doesn't mean that I don't have a backlog of reviews I want to get to.  Nor does it mean that there isn't a lot of bid'ness I intend to address.  Some of you may remember that at the first of the year, good old New Year's Resolution time, one of my main resolutions was that I was not going to hold back, about anything.  I said that and a lot of people were like, "YAY!  Woohoo!  Give 'em, Hell, dude!"  Then after about the second review I posted I had some e-mails and messages, of varying degrees, and I will add sent with the best of intentions, that were sent because my friends were concerned that I was going to damage my reputation as a writer or that I might be perceived as a "flamer".  And to the latter I have to say, People have been calling me a flamer since middle school, long before I began to admit it.  Hhehehehehehe.  That aside, this can be taken as a joke or it can be taken seriously, but being in a "flame war" with about 99% of the people I would give an awful review to isn't a concern, mainly because (and this could be the EGOMANIA talkin', BROTHER) they don't have the tools to respond to anything I've written in a awful review of their work, hence that would be why the review is awful.

You see I'm really, and I mean (once I get back in the swing of things) really , really not going to hold back.  For example it was recently brought to my attention that the Indie Book Collective (whoever the fuck they are) wanted to create a "Mark Of Excellence" to help readers, I guess, find well written independently published eBooks and distinguish them from all the crap and drivel flooding the market and giving all us independent writers a bad name.  Uhh-huh.  And just who the fuck decides what an excellent book is Indie Book Collective?  A bunch of back-biting ass sniffers and self-praisers, "You vote for my shit, and I'll vote for your shit," just like at CatLiterotica, FlushStories and XNFullOfViruses.Com?  Well, I got news for everyone, friends, foes and "The Indie Book Collective", I'm an independent author... No, scratch that, INDEPENDENT author.  I write, I edit, I do the cover art (shittily bad, awful cover art), I do all the promotion, publishing and distribution. (And by publishing and distribution I mean I send it to the big boys directly.  I don't wait for Smashwords.  I don't hem and haw for days with any third party.  I don't break out a champagne bottle and pop the cork because someone sent me an e-mail and told me my book was up on Amazon like that was a big deal.  In fact, when I publish I submit to Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else I intend to sell through at the same time and announce a publication within 48 hours.) 

 INDEPENDENT!  I get the job done and I shake my head at other people who want to struggle and pay other people to do what it so simple when they could do it themselves and save the money they're spending on a book broker for artwork and advertising.  However, I am getting away from the point I really wanted to make, and that point it this, first and foremost I am a writer and I write the stories I want to tell and I write them for myself.  After that those stories go to readers, who as I have said in the past, do me the honor of buying them because they felt they were interesting enough to spend their hard earned money on.  Beyond that it is their opinion, and only their opinion that matters.  So my writing isn't tailored to appeal to critics, or book reviewers, or even other independent authors, and it damn sure will never be tailored for the "Independent Book Collective" and their "Mark Of Excellence".  In fact if anyone from there is reading this please, oh please, let there be a "Mark Of Shame".  I dare you to stamp all of my eBooks with it, because negative publicity sometimes works wonders, yo.  I bend over in front of the Independent Book Collective, spread my ass cheeks wide open and yell, "ASS-simulate THIS!"

Of course all that shit being said I can admit that not everything comes out perfect the first time around.  It has been no secret that as soon as I actually had a Kindle and started reading it on it I found several errors in my first published novel, Heather's Journey: The Sound Of her MASTER'S VOICE, which was the reason I slashed the price to the bone (because $1.99 for a 900 page novel is to the bone believe me) and promised not to raise it to normal price until it was finely edited.  Fortunately one of the things I have actively been working on is editing The Sound Of her MASTER'S VOICE, as well as enhancing the interior in ways I was not savvy enough to do, since I did rush to convert the manuscript for publication, and it was my first eBook.  I am going slow, and am still avoiding projected date, however I do hope to relaunch the novel by the fall with wider online distribution and possibly in a print edition as well.

Here's a look at the revised cover for Heather's Journey: The Sound Of her MASTER'S VOICE

As far as other projects.  Well,  I have so many ideas running around in my head that I don't really want to speculate as to what it coming next.  I can tell you that The Creeper was coming along until I became derailed, and I did begin work on another (yes, yet another) collection of more "family friendly" (as family friendly as I get, Hhehehehehe) stories dedicated to the memory of Dr. Paul Bearer (Dick Bennick, Sr.) titled In The Name Of Creature Features.  With this school year the Q-Man starts high school, so it will be yet another schedule change for me, so I am going to wait and see what it does to my writing time and how much more it opens it up, if indeed it does, before I begin to plan on what I am actively going to work at publishing next.

Also on that note within the next few weeks I am planning on renewing my relationship with OmniLit/All Romance eBooks.  I don't really look on it as much me going back on my convictions or not proving a point as I do that no one really much gave a crap that I severed my ties with them in the first place.  OmniLit/ARe probably didn't notice.  I had a hand full of friends who were concerned enough to ask if cutting relations with a distributor was a good idea the day I made the post and that was it.  In a nutshell, it was no big thing.  Hell, I could blame it on the medicine I was taking, and it probably was, but IN A WORLD WHERE at any time eBay and PayPal still might dictate to Smashwords and any other Fly-By-Night Jabroni Press what they can and can't publish and they'll all fold up to whatever eBay and Smashwords want like the greedy, dicksuckin' little bitches they are, despite the fact that eBay looks the other way at that "bannable" stuff in its own listings... eh, why the fuck not.  And yes, Smashwords is run by a guy actually named Mark Cocksucker, and he doesn't really give a crap about anything published on Smashwords or independent authors because he likes the feel of a real book in his left hand while the right hand is takin' care of bid'ness.

Now, that said, I am standing firm that I will still refuse direct linking to Smashwords from this blog, due to Mark Cocksucker's aforementioned habit of folding up like a little bitch for eBay and PayPal, and again sorry to any authors solely distributed through Smashwords, though as you see in my man Ray Sostre's case, I got around that by linking through one of his sites.  I think this is as a good a time as any to clarify that just because I don't often support certain publishers, companies or websites because their owners or admins are greedy assholes, or their policies are stupid and idiotic, does not mean that I do not appreciate or support the talented authors who may be there.  I take this moment to give a shout out to the Dirty Martini man himself, Alan Jankowski, who along with several other authors from LushStories, were published as part of Lush Erotica: An Anthology Of Award Winning Sex Stories.  Much love Alan!  Even though I was loathe to do it I joined the FB page for the book and was the first person to comment on it, mainly because I wanted to be able to say "FIRST!!!", on it, as well as promoting it on my profile and pages.  I of course won't nitpick and say that the awards these stories won were all awards actually given on LushStories itself, the number two, umm-hummmmm, NUMBER TWO, erotic story submission site in the world.  This collection is getting much buzz, and was even highly endorsed as, "BEST BOOK!", by no less a figure than "Kim Kardashian" @Kim_Karsdashian via her Twitter account, although not by Kim Kardashian @KimKardashian via her officially verified Twitter account.  But, again, all jokes aside, and despite the fact that I have yet to read it myself, I do suggest getting a copy of Lush Erotica because it is filled with stories from a broad range of talented erotica authors I am sure many of you have never heard of.

I do, of course, have a backlog of reviews that I want and need to get to.  I have read quite a few more Five and Six Star shorts from the awesome Aussiescribbler, and it's almost a crime that I haven't had the time, or even felt well enough to share my thoughts on them.  I also had a chance to read a couple of novels from the Mistress of Dolls herself, the late, great, Ruby Jean Jensen, a pair that I had actually never read before which were not only beyond her standard fare and written close to the end of her life but I consider among her best.  Plus I had a chance to get in some Sci-Fi for a change, a little Star Wars, including Drew Karpyshn's Darth Bane: Path Of Destruction and  James Luceno's Dark Lord: The Rise Of Darth Varder, which are two of the best Star Wars novels I have ever read.

Now, not everything in Review Land is all rainbows and puppy dogs.  Oh, no.  (Or, really, oh, yes!  Because I know you're hoping it's so.)  First of all there's the matter of one James Robert Smith, @JRobertSmith on Twitter.  You may have heard of this guy.  He's the mailman from North Carolina who thinks all independent and self-published authors suck, despite the fact that his own first novel, The Flock, was initially self-published through a company which mainly publishes children's books.  He's the guy that says things on Twitter like, "STOP SELF-PUBLISHING ALL OF THOSE SHITTY BOOKS! IF YOU DON'T STOP THEN YOU ARE GOING STRAIGHT TO HELL!!!!" and "Oh. Your crappy piece of self-published shit is free. That makes me SO much more inclined to download it. Really, though... Stop it."  and "I'm not kidding. Your self-published novel sucks. What made you think your work wasn't horrible."

Ahhhh.  Apparently James Robert Smith has never read The Flock by James Robert Smith.  And they say I've got problems.  Yes, this guy is truly postal, which is fitting because he's a mailman.  He also pats himself on the back claiming he has submitted several scripts to Marvel Comics.  Humm, funny, because The Flock is supposed to be (in Smith's poorly written way) an attack on the Walt Disney Company for building the City of Celebration, Florida, and how it ruined the environment and the balance of nature and what a cruel and heartless company Disney is, in what's supposed to be that creative and disguised way writers disguise things, though Smith does it poorly.  Oh, DAMN, the Walt Disney Company owns Marvel Comics!  Ooops.  P.S. - I live in that area you wrote about and apparently know nothing about, because you're a very poor researcher.  Double Ooops.

Then there's that other "book", or "book series", whatever.  Of course I'm talking about that now infamous piece of shit 50 Shades Of Grey.  I really want to save up for the review but as a preview I can't express how much I hate this moronic drivel, and I'll go on record again as saying it makes every piece of absolute cheese that I've ever read from Ellora's Cave look good.  (And I mean really, really, really, really, really, really, really good.) Erika Leonard a.k.a E.L. James a.k.a Snowqueens Icedragon has no talent, is no writer, knows nothing about BDSM, and is nothing but a Twilight fangirl who looks like an deer in the headlights every time I see her.  Never in my life have I ever seen anyone make so much money for being able to SUCK!  All doubts that she and her fans were a bunch of total losers evaporated when I went to her official, and I am serious it was her official FaceBook page, and found it to be nothing but pictures of cookies, and helicopters and Christian Grey, and when I say Christian Grey I mean pictures of Robert Pattinson, just like there were on her old 50 Shades website before, in preparation to self-publish this crap the first time, she used Microsoft Word to replace all of Stephenie Meyer's character names with her own, and changed the title from Master Of The Universe because she was more afraid of Mattel suing her than Ms. Meyer.  LOSERS!!!

Hey, Erika, I've written fan-fiction too, and you know what, it's all exactly where it belongs, on free sites, in my closet and under my bed, and not for sale.  Plus, as someone who actually is experienced in the BDSM lifestyle in the flesh and online I figured I would point this out, since apparently no one else has bothered to yet, but your old pen name, obviously wasn't chosen at random for whimsy, now was it, icedragon?  And it would be icedragon with a lowercase i, correct?  You see it's not Snowqueens Icedragon or snowqueensicedragon, but Snowqueen's icedragon.  Right?  Which would mean you're the icedragon, little i.  Which would mean that you're someone's online bitch.  So then, who's Snowqueen?  It's a mystery.  Now maybe I am a little bit crazy for just saying that, and there's nothing to that at all, however I'm guessing about 80% of the people who just read it were laughing so hard they nearly pissed their pants.  And even if there's nothing to it, it just further goes to prove that you're a total dumbass.

But on the other side, if there is a Snowqueen and you're reading this, Snowqueen, I'd love to do an interview with you.  In fact I'm willing to pay you exactly what Mrs. Leonard paid you for all the shitty and incorrect BDSM information you gave her to use to inspire her works with, absolutely nothing.  Hhehehehehehe.

Well, that's it for now.  I'll be keeping you posted on when I'm closer to the relaunch of The Sound Of her MASTER'S VOICE.  Until then I will be doing my best to enjoy the rest of Alex and Cali's visit and our trip to St. Pete Beach next week.  I will also keep you posted on the lady vyle.  I should be clearing out my review backlog at the end of the summer.  Come back after vyle, I'll be lurking for you.

     Master Vyle

The AfterDark World: AfterDark's Interview with Michael C. Laney

Check out my irreverant, candid and at points deeply personal inverview with AfterDark's Ray Sostre.

The AfterDark World: AfterDark's Interview with Michael C. Laney: In continuation of “A Man’s World Interview” with The AfterDark World, I am proud to bring a man who takes paranormal to a whole new level,...

I'm A One Man Show, It's Nothing New

I'm a one man show, a maverick, a loner, the oddball.  It's really nothing new to me.  For days I had struggled with exactly what I was going to do, with what I was going to try to do.  In the end I had pretty much resolved myself with staying a part of what I saw as pretty much was the "Great Circle Of Hypocrites".  Pay Pal had done its thing and there was no sign of revolution or rebellion.  No backlash from the world of independent writers to say, "Hell no, we're not standing for this crap!"  Just business as usual.  So I was going to plug on and be business as usual.  Write a funny little article.  Do my story to make fun of  Pay Pal and Mark Cocksucker, and explain how I was going to stick it to the system by continuing to sell my stories through ARe and smile each time Pay Pal had to disperse a payment to me through their system for the smut I had written they found acceptable.

That was until I got home this afternoon and saw that it was Read An e-Book Week.  And wow, in honor of Read An e-Book Week I see all these other people who are left over at Smashwords who were apparently unaffected by the Great Pay Pal Purge are offering all sorts of deals and shit to drive traffic to Smashwords and get people to buy their shit.  So, I suppose all the shit these people have written are works of art that are so great and so grand they will never, ever be touched by Pay Pal, so why should they ever worry about standing untied with some dirty old porn writers?  Of course that's not to say that there aren't writers out there who aren't doing things, like passing around an e-petition I'm sure that eBay and Pay Pal will do nothing more than wipe their asses with once they're presented with it, then ask if anyone has a copy of the First Amendment they can use to finish the job with.

So not that it amounts to anything, but this writer has made the decision not to be a part of the Great Circle Of Hypocrites.  I have pulled my library from All Romance eBooks and OmniLit.Com.  I have also removed all "Featured Creature" links to that go directly to Smashwords.  I do know a couple of you are solely distributed through Smashwords, which is unfortunate.  I am willing to carry the links for those works if they are on Amazon or Barnes & Noble, but I refuse to do any direct linking to Smashwords or any other company that is going to let an outside vendor blackmail them into writing the publishing guidelines they want, when they are not a publisher, especially when the publishers in question have no backbone to stand up to those outside parties and are too greedy to hire their own internal accounting department.

I am and always have been a writer.  I wrote when the only audience I had was myself, and if worse comes to worse I will do so again, but I do not foresee this happening, because I am determined to stand up for myself and others, whether the rest of you choose to do so or not, whether you have the balls or backbone to do so or not, whether you feel the writers and works being discriminated against are worthy or being stood up for or not.  I will have an audience.  There is an e-book market for the stories Pay Pal feels are unfit, and if this whole thing is a set up to clear the market for eBay to start it own restriction free ePublishing service I promise you I will never be on it.  I've been published in eBook format for just over a year, and personally I've come too far to hold back, and I'm not going to hold back.  What's coming from me is out there, and I can promise if nothing I've ever written has never offended you before you might want to hold on to your blue hairs, granny, because there's no turning back, I had already decided I wasn't going to turn back, and the events of the past couple of weeks  have really cinched and set me on that course more than I was before.

So that's it basically.  Yes, there's still old Smashwords links on old post and reviews, but only because I'm not going to take the incredible amount of time it will take to go through and remove all of them.  Yes all those ARe and OmniLit links are there on my stuff too, but they're dead links to nowhere, because I'm done there.  I have my freedom and self respect.  Being an independent author means everything to me, they're not just casual words, I take them to heart.  I have the freedom to chose what I want to write and how long it's going to be and how far it goes.  It's never been about the money, and if it ever came down to it I would go back to Cat-Literotica or Flushstories or even lowest common denominator sites like  XN to get my stories out.  However, I don't think it will come to that, not even if I have to sell my stories as eBooks door-to-door.

Anyway, that's pretty much it.  That's what I'm doing.  Again, I may be a one man show, but again, it's nothing new to me.  I have my dignity and self-respect, and still no more and no less than I had the day before.  Everyone else can take what you want from this and do what you want, as long as you feel what you're doing is the right thing for yourself and your craft, that's all I think I can leave you with.

Master Vyle