The Works of Robert Madsen

Not a lot of updates.  The details are too numerous and mundane to bother retelling.  Everything’s a ways off.  As of the moment, I’ve got my face buried in the creation of a video game, a set of pulps, and a new, edited, and amended compilation of the two books of my publication–Sagas of the Iron Hearts and Goliath Thunder.  The latter will include rethought universe development, stranger technologies, and frankly an undercurrent of metaphysics.

See above. I’m also working on a video game.

Past few months have been interesting–the slow realization of both the nature of my craft and the industry in much greater detail whilst countless minute but meaninglessly menacing dangers throttle their talons about my door.  I do have a knocker.  Good lord.  Anyways, what I mean to say is that my expanding knowledge of my discipline has forced me to constrict or cease certain projects and alter other projects altogether.  I am not convinced that a good living can be made by an author of common quality working altogether or predominantly upon novels.  Traditional serials were also functionally a dead end.  As for the latter, there’s simply no large established method of dissemination.  For the former–novels–the competition is vicious, and they can easily outspend you. A lot of work intended for another Goliath Thunder collection is being transformed into a Goliath Thunder novel.  I don’t know when it’s going to be released.  I don’t know when it’s going to be finished.  Even once I get that figured out, I’d have to work out the marketing, and while I do have something in mind, that’s not exactly going to be a picnic to plan out.  In all honesty, expect any future Read More …

I think on some level that this is obvious.  I would begin at once to condemn the idea that was so uniform when I was a kid, that we were all unique and special.  Frankly, in all my years of schooling, I’ve probably met two genuinely brilliant people.  But back then, “self-esteem” was the sort of buzzword that was considered so important to the fostering of a functioning adulthood ethos.  Of course, the damage that attitude has done is obvious even today, but I think that most people still esteem themselves worthy of greatness, just waiting for that special moment when their real life will finally begin.  Of course, do they consider that their current middling, miserable lives could be their real lives, that these are the things that they must either accept or correct to be happy or are they entirely oblivious?  I will genuinely err that people do wonder, people do know, deep down at least in the moments before sleep robs us of our awareness; I have that much faith at least. Perhaps a year ago I presented this picture with a short caption on Twitter.  Now, I’m not important enough to find offensive, but the response Read More …

Moths frequently appear to circle artificial lights, although the reason for this behavior remains unknown. One hypothesis to explain this behavior is that moths use a technique of celestial navigation called transverse orientation. By maintaining a constant angular relationship to a bright celestial light, such as the moon, they can fly in a straight line. Celestial objects are so far away that, even after travelling great distances, the change in angle between the moth and the light source is negligible; further, the moon will always be in the upper part of the visual field, or on the horizon. When a moth encounters a much closer artificial light and uses it for navigation, the angle changes noticeably after only a short distance, in addition to being often below the horizon. The moth instinctively attempts to correct by turning toward the light, thereby causing airborne moths to come plummeting downward, and resulting in a spiral flight path that gets closer and closer to the light source. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moth#Attraction_to_light

It’s difficult to get women.  You have to make some sort of performance; you have to impress them, certainly if you’re trying to impress more than one.  And there are many different types of women in the world, nearly as many varieties as there are means and strategies for seeking their bountiful affections, but those women impressed by material things are the simplest and most straightforward to impress assuming material things you have the material to afford.  Devil knows.  Jules wasn’t much of a mariner; his boat wasn’t even his own.  His father, a retiring stockbroker for a large financial firm had purchased the vehicle a few years previous but admitted in private he never had the time to take the girl out for a ride, much in the way you would maintain a riding horse. But Jules wanted to take the girls out for a ride.  He frankly didn’t know them, only the initials of one carved with iron ink into the crack above her oblivious ass, and the first name of another–at least so he thought; “Sally” she seemed but in reality her name was Florence, though she preferred to go by “Krystal.”  Of a high quality is Read More …

I’m reworking the first two books I wrote in the Goliath Thunder series.  Further work in the series just seemed to make it a necessity as the universe became more and more fleshed out both before my eyes and within my imagination.  You should see the reams of notes clogging up the arteries of my workspace. But I haven’t been sitting on my hands, either.  There’s loads of new content on the way.  In fact, I’m sitting on so much of it that my ass hurts and I’m suffering from a lack of oxygen while I watch in realtime the imaginary flights of SR-71 Blackbirds.  Some of that new content will be completely new content in the upcoming books.  Some of its shit that’s a secret held between only myself and whatever perverted voyeur deities deign to see me emerge in my Neanderthal glory from the steaming shower. Don’t think too much about it.

Little man lives big for a moment, for some moments, for a few minutes, perhaps an hour, too big to suffer being a joke between the ears of others even as he can glimpse the guffaw of laughter over the rumbling engine’s din. But he’s stronger than you are.  He knows he’s being laughed at, but it doesn’t bother him; he doesn’t care.  Just look at the determination in his eye even a mere millisecond before the moment of impact. He’s stronger than you are.  He knows it and he doesn’t care, and you don’t know a damn thing at all. Not fundamentally different, but fundamentally enough, he suffers under a presupposed curse that cannot be remedied by diet or surgery.  Assuming you could climb in the car, could you endure what you would consider public humiliation? Or would you own it?

Creative people have creative habits, by which I mean that creative people have bad habits–not so much in the application and prosecution of their craft inasmuch as their own personal habits.  You could argue that creative people don’t reserve much of their consideration for themselves after they’ve spent it all in their work.  This is to avoid altogether the discussion of what constitutes a creative person, which I would tend to mean as anyone who creates, specifically as a sort of sole proprietor in a personal obsession with a certain craft. It’s apparently a sort of personality trait.  There are some kind gentle souls who put others and the world before themselves.  And then there are other people who can’t be bothered to take care of themselves because they’re too busy writing or painting or whathaveyou.  In truth, I wouldn’t ascribe to it anything glorious or romantic; I see it rather differently.  There have been many bright minds and shining stars struck down amidst the height of their profession because they didn’t care for the consequences.  All different names of scientists, writers, some painters, and certain even very professional performers.  This condition seems to strike men far more than it Read More …

This is something I started writing some months ago, but I never finished it.  I’m just going to leave this here as is. I had a dream where I was trying desperately and unsuccessfully to get Milo Yiannopoulos to keep his clothes on. You know, I’ve never really had what I’d called a “Writer’s Block” problem before.  Sometimes I was at a loss for ideas, but I was always able to get things on a page.  But recently, just looking at my own writing evokes a preternatural terror I can neither relate nor understand.  To be honest, I don’t think this is something that others haven’t experienced before, and I don’t think it’s a phenomenon specific to writing; anything you do as your primary vocation might be able to elicit this reaction.  The really interesting question is “Why?” I am so fucking far ahead of my work schedule, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.  I’m pushing two year’s of content completed that is completely unreleased.  There can be no anxiety about the deadline; I’m not even willing to consider that possibility. I have been knocked down a few pegs.  A good part of my job is marketing my Read More …