Invasion of the Quad Punks

Every summer, in Earth's northern hemisphere, quadra-wheeled pinhead punks erupt from the bowels of the Earth and cover the entire world with their terrible numbers...

TC

A Sucker for a Summer Song

It's been 40 years since I walked barefoot in the warm sands of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, but my most memorable stroll on the sand was around midnight the following year. That was the night I kissed a beautiful girl my own age under the moonlight on the beach at Stone Harbor, New Jersey. We were both 19.

She had long, thick, black hair that fell nearly to her waist and her favorite breakfast food was plain white bread without the crust and black coffee. She'd locked herself out of her motel room earlier that evening and, while I stood on the shoulders of a friend, I removed the window screen, squeezed in through the open window and unlocked her door.

What I got for my effort was only a kiss that night. But it was a kiss on the beach in the summer moonlight. A kiss I'd never forget.

There was no music when I enjoyed my first romantic kiss with the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen. Just the soft rush of the incoming tide and the gentle flapping of the cool ocean breeze against us. But, if there had been music playing, it would have been in my head and it might have been one of these four songs. Or all of them.

1. Theme Song from A Summer Place (the 1960 instrumental version by The Percy Faith Orchestra)
2. Telstar (the 1962 song by The Tornados)
3. Surfer Girl (from the Beach Boy's 1963 Surfer Girl Album -- a vinyl album I still own)
4. Your Summer Dream (Surfer Girl album)

Even today, I'm still a sucker for a beautiful, romantic, summer song.

Hopping Through Hoops

Hmmm. Hopping or Diving?

Last month Amazon.com tossed out one of my favorite hoops, the Amazon Connect hoop. I'd hopped through that hoop way back in February because it gave me a place to blog on Amazon and I never saw a hoop that didn't make me want to taking a flying leap right through it.

Last month Amazon.com replaced that Amazon Connect hoop with the Author Central hoop and, hesitating at first, I hopped through that one, too. I and Jonco Bugos, my alter ego and literary pen name, held hands like two starry-eyed youths and hopped right through, expecting Wonderland on the other side or something to that affect. What we'll probably find are more hoops to hop through as we explore that realm. We certainly hope so.

Oh, well. At least Jonco and I haven't run across a big white rabbit yet, all frantic and late for a very important date. But, if we do, we'll help him out, too. And if he holds out a great big hoop for us, we'll hop right through it without hesitation.

By the way, this is the first time Jonco and I have posted anything on a blog together. We're just determined to be ourselves and to make sure everyone knows that this author "hoop hopping" is all they'll ever get from us in the way of a dog and pony show. Nobody owns us because we're independent authors.

And, besides, we really like hopping through hoops. So we do.

Amazon's Michael Casher Page

Amazon's Jonco Bugos Page

Back to Basics

This month I begin my eighth book, now that my seventh book is finally completed and published. Book #7 is a novella called Blind Fool Running that I wrote under the pen name Jonco Bugos. As usual, Lulu.com will be publishing this novella. This book is literary fiction but it's still part of my "Science Fiction for Thinkers" collection because of the metaphysical themes involved.

Now, back to the writing desk.

Author's Note: No, "Blind Fool Running" by Jonco Bugos has nothing to do with the Jonco Bugos blog. Jonco Bugos (my alter ego) is the pen name I use for writing literary fiction and for writing the Jonco Bugos blog and the Think-A-Holic Lounge blog.

Pimping Myself 101

I may be a science fiction author by trade but I'm not a city slicker by any stretch of the imagination. I've been to big places like New York, Philadelphia and Boston and I lived in Atlanta (and really enjoyed it) for a while when I was younger but I'm really a country boy at heart. That means a lot of things. Like I'm more at home eating lunch in a small town diner than suffering through a fine-dining experience in a puffed-up, over-priced restaurant.

It also means that I'll never pretend to be a savvy self-promoter with all the tricks of that trade at my fingertips. What I like to do is write. Everything else is just nuts and bolts and, being an aging hick from Appalachia, sometimes I forget where I put my wrench, although I'm pretty sure I can remember how to use it when I find it.

What it doesn't mean is that I'm willing to just remain a hick. A big part of me wants to finish out my life in some place like Hawaii or the south of France. Living the same way I've always lived and doing the same ol', same ol' until I die sounds very unappealing to me. There are times when I'd like to chuck the barn coat and ball cap and don soft summer clothing and eat most of my meals on a terrace somewhere. Preferably my own lanai. Then I'd never go back to being a hick, not even for a day. I wouldn't feel phony at all. I'd feel like I was finally evolving into the person I really am.

One thing readers and followers will never get from me is anything besides the real me. Yep, that's the guy in the tan ball cap and brown barn coat standing in front of the old slaughterhouse. But it's also the guy who dreams of putt-putting around Rome on a Vespa or having lunch with a lady companion while overlooking the Mediterranean. Both men are the real me.

Saving Thinker's Corner

Thinker's Corner was my very first blog. I started writing it way back in May 2005 when it was located at Lulu.com, where my paperback books are still published.

As of February 2009, Lulu.com will no longer support blogs. There was no way to import a non-Blogger blog to Blogger so... I migrated Thinker's Corner to Blogger, post by post, with all the original Lulu post dates intact.

I hated to scrap my very first blog. But I didn't migrate all 70 posts because some of them are duplicated on Thinck Tank, my second-oldest blog, located here at Blogger, and some were just no longer relevant. A little more than half of them survived.

It took me two days.

"Blind Fool Running" is a completed novella.

I finally completed Blind Fool Running as a 31,000-word novella. This is my seventh book, the first book under my literary pen name Jonco Bugos and my very first novella.

I plan to publish this book in 2009.

Author's Note: No, "Blind Fool Running" by Jonco Bugos has nothing to do with the Jonco Bugos blog. Jonco Bugos (my alter ego) is the pen name I use for writing literary fiction and for writing the Jonco Bugos blog and the Think-A-Holic Lounge blog.

Mike the Obscure

There's another side of me that first showed his inscrutable face in 1994. I call him Mike the Obscure. This is what he looks like:

He has a quirky habit of putting everything that happens in life into neat little nutshells. Mike the Obscure started ghost writing a blog called "25 Words or Less" in 2007 that is supposed to be written by me and I can't seem to stop him. So, I simply indulge him.

25 Words or Less

My Favorite Greeting

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Little Green Man

Much like the character in The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, one day I woke up completely transformed. But, instead of becoming a cockroach, I had actually become the thing that I have dreaded all my life. The inner me was now a flesh-and-blood reality, only most of me was green.

Little Green Man from Mars

Happy Holidays!

Michael Casher is taking a break from blogging until after the new year. He wishes everyone a safe and happy holiday season.

New Book Covers

I've been working hard this month designing new book covers for all six novels in the Science Fiction for Thinkers collection. They're my own design and I just added them yesterday and today. Unfortunately, I had to create new editions for the first five novels in order to do that. For Little Green Man from Mars, I just had to "unpublish" it and then republish it.

I think the series has a whole new look now and a much better one.

New Business Cards

The new business cards for Science Fiction for Thinkers arrived a few days ago and look really great, matching the theme of my official website, Science Fiction for Thinkers.com. These new cards replace the old michaelcasher.com business cards that I'll now use for writing grocery lists on the back of and for marking pages in books.

Now, if I just had a scanner to post an image of the new cards. My old scanner is not compatible with my new computer.

But I'll settle for for some curious people who want me to send them one.