Thank You

A big fat Thank You to everyone who made it out to Borders in Long Beach for the reading tonight. Saw quite a few familiar faces, and I just have to give a few special shouts out to Jim and Sonay, both of whom I haven't seen in far too long a time. And one more for Brianna who really impressed my mom.

And I don't want to sound ungrateful or anything, but doesn't Borders usually provide a table to sit at for the signing portion of the evening? I felt kind of funny signing books standing up. And I know I'm really pushing it here, but isn't bad form to do a big announcement on the PA system while an author is reading? Okay, that's it for the downside. Everything else was really cool, and the guys who worked there were really terrific. And it felt really good to be the guy reading instead of the guy watching somebody else read in one of my favorite bookstores.

So one more time, thanks to everyone who made tonight a success! Next stop--the AKoIS Buying Event on July 1! I'll see everybody at high noon!

Deposition

So like a year and a half ago, me and Dave and the rest of us were walking around Naples Island and just as we were coming back around to Second Street. A Toyota Prius clipped the rear end of a Ford Escape and the Escape flipped over onto it's roof and slid about a hundred feet. The Prius took off. A Hit-and-Run. Apparently everybody was okay. I was the only good citizen on the scene, though, the only one who gave my contact info to the responding officer.

Hence, today's deposition. Gotta go up to LA and talk about it. I'm worried because I don't even remember what I saw yesterday, let alone a year and a half ago. There's no way I can wind up in jail over this thing is there? Wish me luck!

Five Stars

It's official, everybody. My first Amazon review is up, and AKoIS is not only rated five stars, but also the best book of the year! Here's the whole review:

"Tyler Dilts has created a masterpiece with his debut detective novel, A King of Infinite Space. Set in Long Beach, California, Detective Danny Beckett and Jen Tanaka must solve the case of a brutally-murdered English teacher. Through painful mastery of image, dream, characterization, and story telling, Tyler Dilts excels at showing the effects that murder cases have on the detectives investigating them. Using sadness as a measure for goodness, Dilts explores characters in a way that is true, whole, and touches deep down into the reality of a person. I highly recommend A King of Infinite Space not only to anyone who loves reading mystery novels but to anyone who can empathize with pain, loss, and the haunting quality of dreams."

Who says you shouldn't believe your reviews? Thanks, Alicia!

Stick It To The Man

Hello Infinite Spacers!

Big news! The book is now available on Amazon! Woo Hoo! They tell us the whole process of including all of the bells and whistles and making the book fully available takes about ten days. We are in Day Three, but the book is already in stock and ready to go!

The long-awaited AKoIS Amazon Buying Event will take place in early July. Stay tuned for the exact date and details.

What, you might ask, is the AKoIS Amazon Buying Event?

First and foremost, it's a means of Increasing AKoIS's profile on Amazon, and as we know, higher profile=more sales.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it's our valiant effort to further the democratization of publishing. By organizing an event such as this, when a large number of people agree to purchase a book on Amazon on the same day, we have a significant impact on sales numbers and cause the book to spike on Amazon's sales charts. This is a grass roots way of bypassing the publishing industry's marketing machine and showing the industry that what you want to read is more important than what they want you to read.

So by participating in the AKoIS Amazon Buying Event, you're not just getting a good book and doing me a solid, you're also sticking it to the man. And who doesn't want to stick it to the man?

And stay tuned, Infinite Spacers, because we'll be announcing the details of our first two (that's right, two!) contests very soon!

As always, thank you for all your support!

Whew!

What a crazy week. For starters, it was the second week of summer school, the toilets backed up again, the refrigerator motor burned up, the termites came back, and I had two readings and conference.

Damn.

I'm tired. But I'm surprisingly revved up and raring to go, to. I'm gonna spend at least two hours working on the THE PAIN SCALE tomorrow. The California Crime Writers Conference in Pasadena got me really psyched. Listened to lots of people talk about lots of stuff, but mostly it was the two homicide detectives, Kevin Gomez (of the Pasadena Police Department) and Michael DePasquale (of the LAPD) who were incredibly gracious and generous, and who said enough and answered enough of my questions to really make me feel like I got enough right with Danny Beckett to keep it up (DePasquale even told a story about a detective bagging another cop's shoe as evidence at a crime scene to teach him a lesson! If that doesn't make sense, wait until you have a chance to read Chapter One of AKoIS).

So a ginormous thank-you goes out to every one involved in the conference (especially the Southern California Chapters of The Mystery Writers of America and Sisters In Crime, with special shouts out to Les Klinger, Laurie King, Robert Crais, and the incredibly gracious and supportive Naomi Hirohara).

Thanks, everybody!

Postmark Atlantis

Since we're all about poetry these days, has anybody read Paul Tayyar's POSTMARK ATLANTIS yet? If you've heard me talk about Tayyar's poetry (his two previous collections are EVERYDAY MAGIC and SCENES FROM A GOOD LIFE), then you've heard me marvel at his ability to write happy poetry. I don't really understand happy poetry and honestly I don't get the purpose of it. Usually I even find it a little bit annoying. But somehow Tayyar makes it work. Perhaps its his ability to find just the right image or turn of phrase to keep the work honest and rooted in reality rather than sentimentality. Whatever it is, he has a gift for it, and it's cementing his reputation as poet.

So I was surprised to delve into his new collection, POSTMARK ATLANTIS, and find something different. Something darker and more haunting. Something Omar ZahZah, writing in the THE CHIRON REVIEW, calls "a mythic world of breathtaking beauty." It is that and more. As genuinely heartfelt and moving as Tayyar's previous collections are, there are layers of depth and complexity in POSTMARK ATLANTIS that reward me in ways that his previous work has not. Don't get me wrong. There are still a number of the author's trademark moments of hope and beauty, such as this from "The University of San Francisco": "You want to make love to each of their dreams/You want to tell them the church of their bodies/Is where faith begins." And it is into these moments of everyday magic that the darkness creeps. In one my favorite poems, "Grace," Tayyar begins to allow hints of this darkness to surface: "And when she showed you/How to carve the moon from the sky/Like a rumor from a tongue/you lay down beneath her in the darkness/And told her where it was you hurt."

He doesn't stop his descent there. Images of darkness and of the night itself are ever present in this collection. In poems such as "Night" and "Night Parable" and "Night Swimmer," the titles themselves are evocative of Tayyar's engagement with these ideas, as he heads into this new and uncharted territory.

In POSTMARK ATLANTIS, Paul Tayyar shows truly impressive range as a poet, depicting a landscape in which "Darkness is a god" and where all that can be seen "Is the silhouette of the damned." It's a world I hope he'll continue to bring into the light.

And Now, A Poem

the fundamentalist agnostic

says
i don't know
if god exists
and neither
do you.

Upcoming Events

Howdy folks,

Two big events to tell/remind you about next week.

First up, on Thursday, June 11, I'll be reading from AKoIS at the UCLA Extension Writer's Program Publication Party. Steve Cooper, also on the CSULB faculty will be reading, too, along with a number of other instructors from the program. It should be a good time! It's at 7:00 at very classy Skirball Cultural Center.

Then on Saturday, June 13, I'll be reading at ARTMATTERS LONG BEACH. This one sounds like fun, too. Here's a quote from the press release: "Devin O’Neill hosts series of dynamic and engaging presentations about the role of art in our lives, communities, and social dialog." It starts at 5:00 in The Dome Room (528 E. Broadway, Long Beach).

Come on out and have some infinite fun.

I Knew It!

marriedtothesea.com

Thank You!

A big, fat "thank you" to everyone who made it to the reading and made the evening a huge success. I can't tell you how rewarding it was to have such a large and welcoming crowd in the Beach Auditorium for the kick-off of A KING OF INFINITE SPACE.

And another thank you to all my Facebook friends who've joined the official A KING OF INFINITE SPACE group (Over three hundred so far! Woo Hoo!) If you're on Facebook and haven't joined, I hope you'll consider it. And if you have, I hope you'll invite any friends who might be interested. With your help, I think we can hit five hundred by the time by the book debuts on Amazon.

Around the same time AKoIS hits Amazon, the new website will be up as well. We'll have book samples (and a few audio samples of readings), a video or two, some other writing of mine (including 'Frequently Asked Questions') and a whole bunch of other fun stuff. But until we get it up and running, the Facebook group will be the online home of A KING OF INFINITE SPACE. So stop by and leave a comment on the board.

It's On!

Hey everybody!

Mark your calendars. I'll be doing a big reading on May 8 at 7:30 p.m. on the CSULB campus. I'll be reading from A KING OF INFINITE SPACE and doing a Q&A. Maybe I'll even throw in a few poems. It's gonna be in the University Student Union in the Beach Auditorium. Woo Hoo! So be sure to come and bring a bunch of friends because it's got a lot of seats and I don't want to look silly. See you there!

Look at Me!

I'm all famous on the Youtube! Go here and look. Well, listen. Just do both, okay?

A Cartoon, Like the Funny Kind, Only Different

marriedtothesea.com

A Poem (in progress)

Hey Everybody! Gonna have some big book news soon regarding readings and signings and fun stuff like that, but for now here's a bit of a poem I'm working on.


THE LOVE SONG OF J. ZOMBIE PRUFROCK

Brrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnsssssssssss.
Brrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnsssssss.
Braaaaaiiiinnns.
Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnssss!
Brrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnssssss.
Brraaiinnss.

Brains.
Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinn?
Brrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiinsssssssssssss.

Mmmmm mmmmmm mmmm. Grrrrr.

Party On

marriedtothesea.com

Check Up

marriedtothesea.com

Gobama

I know I can be critical, but sometimes Big Irish makes me happy. Like when he says stuff like this:

"I know that the insurance industry won’t like the idea that they’ll have to bid competitively to continue offering Medicare coverage, but that’s how we’ll help preserve and protect Medicare and lower health care costs for American families. I know that banks and big student lenders won’t like the idea that we’re ending their huge taxpayer subsidies, but that’s how we’ll save taxpayers nearly $50 billion and make college more affordable. I know that oil and gas companies won’t like us ending nearly $30 billion in tax breaks, but that’s how we’ll help fund a renewable energy economy that will create new jobs and new industries.

"In other words, I know these steps won’t sit well with the special interests and lobbyists who are invested in the old way of doing business, and I know they’re gearing up for a fight as we speak. My message to them is this:

"So am I."

The righties are calling it class warfare. I really and truly hope it is.

Thank you, Jebus

FDA Approves Depressant Drug For The Annoyingly Cheerful

Adjuncting Toward Bethlehem

Happy Valentine's Day