Tony Bowman's Page on Redbud Revue

So often these days, I find myself troubled over the course of our nation. Then we do something like this: an American rocket liftoff delivering a space capsule, capable of carrying a crew, to an altitude of 3,600 miles above the earth. We haven't sent a crew capsule into that high an orbit since Apollo. I am reminded of Apollo 8, which launched 46 years ago this month. It was the first manned flight to leave earth orbit, enter lunar orbit, and return. The year was 1968, a ye ar that had seen the Tet Offensive in Viet Nam, the murder of Martin Luther King in Memphis, the murder of Robert Kennedy in San Francisco, the Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia, and rioting at the 1968 Democratic Convention. It was a year of hardship and strife, but, as it came to a close, Apollo 8 gave us something else: a view of the earth from lunar orbit along with a recitation from the book of Genesis on Christmas Eve, 1968 televised to the entire world, and, along with that, hope.

Smashwords is the devil. Okay, maybe that's a bit harsh. Let me rephrase that statement: Smashwords can be darned difficult to work with. Let me explain. Like most indie authors, Amazon is my friend. It's a huge company, and they throw a massive amount of money and talent at the web software used to create Kindle books from word processor documents. My typical pattern is to write my book directly in Createspace format in Microsoft Word. When the final edits are done, I simply upload my Word document to Createspace and let it churn out the print version. I then take the same Word file, tear out the fancy formatting I sometimes do, drop caps for example, and upload the file to Amazon. Churn, churn, churn - Kindle edition ready for the masses. Life is good, life is serene, and I can go watch The Walking Dead in peace. Recently, I decided to venture beyond the safety of Amazon and offer my books on Smashwords. Why? Amazon is great for print versions and...

I stink at math. Always have. In elementary school, I did fine until division. Addition, subtraction, multiplication - that was all good, but division and I were like oil and water. My Mom worked with me for hours after school trying to help me with it. What got me over the hump with division was when I was finally able to visualize the actual operation of division in my head: seeing the top value divided into parts by the lower value. What I didn't understand at the time was that I am a 'Visual Thinker', one of the myriad fun possibilities of falling on the Autism Spectrum. I don't think in words, symbols, or sounds, I think in pictures. I learned at an early age to form words to describe the moving pictures in my mind, which has served me well over the years. When it came to math, division became a visualization of a machine. Put the bottom number in slot A, top number in slot B, and keep turning the crank for the proper number of decimal places. Si...

My latest novel, Nine Fingers, is now available on Amazon.com . The Kindle version can be ordered  here , or you can order the paperback  here . Something horrible is killing people on central Virginia's Blue Ridge Parkway. Is it a rogue bear? Or, is there a serial killer on the loose in the small town of Bedford? Ward Rickman has come to town looking for an old friend. When he finds him, he hopes to kill him before more innocent people die. Because, Ward knows the parkway killer isn't a crazed animal or a serial killer. He knows his nemesis is a mixture of both. And, he knows something else: only a werewolf can stop another werewolf... Only $3.99 for Kindle, $12.99 for paperback. Also, for the next five days, the prequel short story, Nine Fingers: The Tucson Ripper, is available for *FREE* on the Amazon Kindle - get your copy here .

  Once while walking, I came face to face with a tiger. No, seriously, I did. And, no, I wasn't in Asia. I was on the north end of Charlottesville, Virginia. I attended Engineering School at the University of Virginia back in the 80s and, on weekends, I liked to walk. I would usually start out in the morning and walk five miles to the mall (it was the 80s, man). I'd hang out at the mall till evening, then walk halfway back to take in a movie at one of the theaters off Hydraulic Road. I'd usually get back to my dorm after midnight. If you saw me back then, you would have thought I was a hippy. I had long curly hair down to my shoulders and a beard almost to my chest. And, there was a very good possibility I was barefoot on the sidewalk. I remember walking up route 29 toward the mall one day in 1984. I guess I was pretty dishevelled looking. A guy was walking on my side in the opposite direction, and he looked like a thirty year older version of me. He said,...

A lot of people hate Facebook. I have to say, I have days when I don't want to look at it. People fight and argue - and, I'm just as guilty as anyone else. But, then, there are days like today. Baptism in Bull Creek circa 1919. Bull Creek Old Regular Baptist Church, Buchanan County, Virginia. Courtesy of Forest Stiltner. My cousin, Forest Stiltner, posted a picture of a baptism on Bull Creek in Buchanan County, Virginia, from around 1919. The church was the Bull Creek Old Regular Baptist Church, and, when I saw the name, I was transported back in time. Not to 1919 - I'm not that old. But sometime in the 1960s. You see, I used to go to that church with my mother and grandmother. I've been to many churches since those days: Southern Baptist, Methodist, Episcopal, Lutheran - but, the experience of that church when I was a child has stuck with me my entire life. The building was small and simple. And, I was never there when it wasn't full. You'd arrive ...

I love independent authors. There are a great many undiscovered Kings, Bradburys, and Faulkners in the world. I'm proud to be on a first name basis with several of them. These folks will be legends if they get about five minutes of attention from a publishing house. You can find them on Facebook hocking their wares and/or selling their books on Amazon at the obligatory $0.99 or $2.99. Take a chance - you might become a fan. I keep an eye on the author groups on Facebook, and I've found some real gems. Over the weekend, I stumbled across the synopsis of a book with the associated ad copy that really caught my eye. The premise was phenomenal! A little fantasy, a little horror, a little alternate history - it was a great idea, and I rushed to Amazon to get the book. Five pages in, I understood why there is a need for ghost writers. Five pages... of narrative. An action scene, related in narrative. The action scene was told in a single paragraph ten lines long - a singl...

This morning at 4:00 AM, our daughter finally decided to go to bed. Now, many of you are probably saying, "What an awful parent! Make her go to bed." Heh, heh, yeah... Sara is autistic. There's a laundry list of symptoms that go along with the Big "A". I really wish we could have ordered them a la carte: "Hmmm, let's see. I'll have the OCD and phenomenal memory, please." Trust me, no one would ever say, "Oooh, I'll take the insomnia!" For the first five years of her life, Sara slept no more than three hours per night - and that was on a good night. Those three hours were rarely in a row, and they never began before about two in the morning. My wife took the brunt of this, I confess. I sleep like the dead. Literally. I die in my sleep about ten times per hour according to the sleep study. Laurie was up with her constantly. In Vegas, we had a Little Tykes swing with an attached sliding board in the house. The theory...

The story of Nine Fingers does not begin in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, it begins in the south side of Tucson, Arizona. Rodrigo Diaz has gone insane. At night, he prowls the streets of the south side, ripping his innocent victims to shreds in back alleys. During the day, he torturers and devours others he has abducted. The police believe he is a serial killer. But, he is actually something far worse: Rodrigo Diaz is a werewolf. Ward Rickman has come to Tucson to track down an old friend - track him down and kill him. Because Ward knows something the police don't: It takes a werewolf to stop a werewolf. Nine Fingers: Tucson Ripper The lead in novella to Tony Bowman's terrifying new novel Nine Fingers. Available soon for free download on Amazon, Goodreads, and http://thattonybowman.blogspot.com. Sample first scene from Nine Fingers: Tucson Ripper Loud noises bothered Rodrigo Diaz. He hadn’t always been so sensitive, but that had been before. Everyth...

Our daughter, Sara, has moderate autism. She has difficulty forming complete sentences to express herself, and she sometimes uses the wrong word to describe an emotion. "Angry" always comes out "Scared." I don't think she's actually frightened when we pass by K-Mart without stopping for magic markers, but I'm fairly certain she's angry. Many people who are deep in autism-land fixate on inanimate objects (e.g. magic markers). Sara also fixates on TV. It started with a hideous creature known as Caillou. Yes, that cute little bald cartoon character on PBS. My wife and I know every line of dialog ever spoken by Caillou in every episode. We know his little sister, Rosie, is terrified of clowns. We know he is afraid of the dark because of the "Scratchy monster." I've thought about writing to the government of Quebec (where Caillou is made) and begging them to please make it stop. We also know every verse of every Wiggles song. ...

My idea  of the perfect writers group. Ask authors about writers groups, and you're likely to get some strong opinions. Some people swear by them, some people swear at them. Personally, I love them. And, I especially love critique groups. Over the past twenty years, I've been in at least nine from North Carolina to Pennsylvania to Las Vegas. There's no better place for a beginning writer to improve their knowledge - notice, I said knowledge, not skill. Skill comes from doing. It comes from writing everyday, even if you're just writing curmudgeonly blog posts like me. But, knowledge, such as "What the heck is an Oxford comma?" That's something you can learn from a writers group. Most critique groups follow a similar format. At each meeting, a few members are scheduled to present their work. The author is expected to provide copies in advance for the other members to read and comment on, and, usually, the author reads their work in front of th...

The noble Catahoula in her natural habitat: hiding under the kitchen table in the  hope someone will drop bacon. We share our house with a red wolf / mastiff hybrid known as a Catahoula Leopard - the state dog of Louisiana. I say share our house because she isn't a pet. Starla is a member of our family, although she would most likely argue we're actually part of her pack. She's a powerful dog, a little over a hundred pounds of muscle with inch long fangs and curious webbed feet. She has hooked claws for climbing trees. Ranchers use Catahoulas to herd cattle, hunters use them to track bear and wild boar. We use her to fetch rubber balls, sticks, and to play tug of war with pieces of rope. She's a sweet natured gentle giant. Sometimes we play tug of war and she'll accidentally touch my hand with one of those inch long fangs - it gives you pause. When she senses this, what follows is a deluge of slobbery licks, "Didn't hurt you, did I?" Giv...

Okay, so I'm not the greatest proponent of the Young Adult (YA) genre on the planet. What I write gets a solid "R" rating most of the time, though I suppose "Turning the Darknes s" would have landed a grudging "PG-13" from the powers that be. I tried to read a Harry Potter book once, but I fell asleep. (Yeah, that's right, bring it - I refer to Tolkien as "Bored of the Rings" as well.) I thought "Hunger Games" was lame, film and book version. And, "Twilight"? Don't even get me started. Now don't get me wrong, there's good and bad in every genre - my buddy PT McHugh  writes some kick ass fiction in his "Keeper of the Black Stones" series. It's great stuff, and I would recommend it to anybody out there. But, in my view P.T. is a voice in the wilderness of teenage angst. Last night, my wife and I were looking for something to watch on television. Since we ditched cable, we have to pick our ...

Over the weekend, my wife and I took our daughter to a drive-in theater near our home in Raleigh. Not many drive-ins left in the world, which is a shame. This particular theater was built in 1949. The screen was made of sheets of corrugated tin painted white. The panels had been repaired numerous times over the last sixty-five years - this is t ornado country after all. The combination projection room, bathrooms, and snack bar looked pretty much unchanged from the Harry Truman days. The only nod to new technology was in the form of an FM radio transmitter to replace the corded window speakers. Amazing the number of people who used to drive off with the speaker still in the window - must have cost the old theaters a fortune. With FM, the movie sound is piped right through your car stereo. Admission was seven dollars per person to see a double feature of Planes: Fire and Rescue and Guardians of the Galaxy. Did you get that? $3.50 per movie, folks. And, every dime of that went direct...

A couple of weekends ago, I was in K-Mart with my daughter. We were in line to check out, and these two upstanding proponents of free speech were in line in front of us. One of them was wearing a tee shirt with the slogan "I eat <deleted> like a fat kid eats cake". Now, I have a sense of humor that takes the occasional foray into the gutter, and I must admit ...  I snickered. I also distracted my daughter (Ooo, look, more magic markers!), so that she wouldn't see the shirt. The more I thought about this, the more I realized I am truly a libertarian. Here was my take on it: Einstein there had every right to wear his shirt, good taste aside. I had every right to call him a jerk - again, free speech. K-Mart had every right to ask him to leave. They didn't, but they could have: their house, their rules Everybody in the store had the right to laugh. Everybody in the store had the right to be offended. In the end, we all went our separate ways. Libertarians ...

Last night, I was privileged to be interviewed on Whispers in the Dark along with several of my fellow Terror Train Anthology alums - check it out! http://www.blogtalkradio.com/viktoraurelius/2014/07/31/terror-train--horror-anthology-show-1 The entire show is two hours. I'm third on the interview list after author Stuart Keene and publisher James Ward Kirk - right around the twenty-eight minute mark. The entire show was a blast featuring other fantastic authors: Jeremy Mays, Alex S. Johnson, and Jim Goforth. Viktor Aurelius also read two poems from the anthology by Lori Lopez and Mary Fortier Schutz!

I always read my stories to my wife first. My typical pattern is: write a chapter or short story, revise, read out loud. This habit has served me well - I'm fortunate because my wife is an honest reviewer. This wouldn't work if she just told me what I wanted to hear. She's great at judging whether what I just wrote 'worked', and I respect her judgement. She's got a great ear. But, just because it 'works' doesn't mean she would want to curl up with it on a cold winter night. Some of the things I write frighten her. One of my projects I hope to release later this winter is a book about witches that absolutely terrifies her. She can't listen to it because it gives her nightmares. And, for a horror writer, that's a good thing. It means I'm doing my job. This summer, I wrote a dark little short story called Night Train (most of my short fiction is very dark, not sure why). After reading it aloud, my wife just gave me 'the look'. ...

I love werewolves. To me, they're the epitome of cool. Whether you're watching Lon Chaney, Jr. glue some yak hair on his face back in the 30's or Dee Wallace animatronically wolfing out during a newscast in The Howling, there's something about the primordial draw of getting in touch with your animal side. In short, it's sexy. I enjoy writing about them in stories because they are interesting - full of urges and conflicts. Werewolves have the upper hand when it comes to charming the opposite sex. Lon Chaney, Jr. wasn't a great actor, and he was a bit on the chunky side. But, he always got the girl - Dracula couldn't, Frankenstein's monster couldn't, but good ol' Larry Talbot the tortured werewolf always got the girl. Larry Talbot: "Oh, Mary, you don't understand. Tonight, the full moon will come out, and I will become a hideous monster. I'm afraid I might hurt you." Mary: "Oh, Larry, you poor dear. I don't care if ...

Nine Fingers, my horror novel about werewolves and responsibility is nearing the 1/3 complete mark. If all goes well, we should be going to press in mid-August. And, no, my werewolves aren't fluffy. Here's a very short sample:     Hayden stood up and cupped her face in his hands, “Your husband hurt you, Karen. He betrayed you, and you’re never going to have peace until you confront him.”     “You’re not talking about confronting him. A confrontation is just an argument, a few harsh words. You and I, we don’t do harsh words anymore, Hayden,” there were tears in her eyes as she spoke.     She felt as if his eyes were tearing into her soul as he spoke, “He used you for twenty years. He used your body, your emotions. And, then, when he felt like you were used up, he tossed you to the curb for some slut half his age. He demeaned you, disrespected you, and left you with nothing.”     Her tears fell, but she felt so...

A disclaimer before I begin: I have a story in Terror Train. However, narcissist that I am, not even I would have the audacity to award myself five stars. My review is for the other 95% of the book, which is a wonderful mix of excellent short stories and exceptional poetry, masterfully edited by Grabowski and Keene. Each piece is tied in beautifully to the Terror Train theme, and together they weave a tapestry of horrific beauty. It's very hard to pick favorites, but the stories I connected with most were: "Summer Train" by Brigitte Kephart - a yarn about adolescence and a train filled with cadavers. "Training the Unfortunate" by Jim Goforth - a very novel solution to the homeless problem. "Enter the Corruption" by Leigh M. Lane - a different kind of zombie story. I also especially loved the poems "Midnight Train" by Mary Genevieve Fortier and "Viper" by Lori R. Lopez. Terror Train is an excellent read. Believe me, you w...

Being in writing mode is the most euphoric feeling in the world. Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration - but, for a writer, it ranks up pretty high. When you're writing down the bones, rattling off dialog, and plowing through the chapters, you hit this point like a runner's high - I'll call it a writer's high. However, invariably something comes along that knocks you off the rails, blows the engine, and sends you rolling and tumbling like a cartoon coyote.   At about the 30,000 word mark in Nine Fingers, I had a run in with the flu that left me on my back for a week. I didn't write a word, heck I didn't even keep up with my email.   Which is why I didn't know until late last night that my story, Night Train, had been chosen for an Editor's Choice Award by A. Henry Keene in the excellent anthology "Terror Train".   Terror Train is available from Amazon.com in both Kindle and Paperback versions.   http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KYW...

I can remember back when I first started writing with even a hint of seriousness sometime around 1993. It was so hard to find time and keep my focus. Weeks would go by when I wouldn't write a word, culminating in an almost eight year hiatus starting in 2006. We moved to Raleigh in the summer of 2006, and I threw myself completely into work. I literally wrote nothing from Spring, 2006 to January, 2014. That isn't to say the ideas weren't running around in my head - they were. I just wasn't writing them down. Over those years, my health began to deteriorate. Now, I won't say this health downturn was entirely because I wasn't writing - I had high stress jobs, sometimes more than one at a time. All I can say is this: as soon as I went back to writing, my mental and physical health improved dramatically. At this point, I can't imagine even slowing down on my writing. If I don't write at least a page every day, I get irritable. If I can spend eight hours...

Recently, I received a five star review for Vales Hollow on Amazon from someone identifying themselves only as 'Cel'. When I get a review from someone, it makes my day - whether it's a good or bad review doesn't matter. The simple fact that someone read the book and cared enough to go online and talk about it is enough to put a smile on my face all day. Cel says that they've been an avid reader for sixty years, and one of the sentences in the review got me thinking:        "What a joy to have Janey be the leading lady."   Now, for those of you who haven't read it, Janey is a sixty-three year old ex-CIA assassin and retired mercenary. Admittedly, she does have the best lines in the book.   Reading between the lines, I'm wondering if Cel is happy that a woman is the leading lady, or that a woman over sixty is the leading lady. I really hope it's the latter.   So often in novels, the heroes and heroine...

Turning the Darkness, my post apocalyptic horror novel is now available on Amazon for the Kindle. The paperback version should be available within a couple of days. Almost twenty years have passed since I started Turning the Darkness - it's taken a long time. Part of the reason for this is that the story was so massive. The novel is a story about normal people caught up in extraordinary circumstances: most simply trying to survive, one attempting to regain his sanity, one attempting to regain his faith, and another attempting to regain her soul. It's a story about witches and demons, vampires and werewolves, the forces of heaven, and the forces of hell. My heroes are sometimes monsters, my villains sometimes ordinary folks. I hope you will enjoy it. My next novel, Nine Fingers will be released sometime in late July or early August. It's a story about unexplained murders on the Blue Ridge Parkway near Bedford, Virginia. Murders with a decidedly supernatural feel. A m...

Tell us your favorite Easter candy for a chance to win one of two signed copies of Vales Hollow. Winners will be chosen Monday, April 21st. Most creative / funniest answer wins!

Turning the Darkness, my new horror novel, is around 80% complete. I'm anticipating an early May release. The novel is post apocalyptic, dealing with the aftermath of a demon invasion of the earth, and the main characters' attempts to drive the demons back to hell. Calling it 'my new horror novel' feels a little weird. I've been writing the story since 1995. For almost twenty years, I've been writing sections and then setting it aside for months - so it's about time I finished it. The current writing schedule for 2014 looks like the following: Vales Hollow (Thriller) - Four mercenaries adjust to life in a small town. Released March, 2014 Turning the Darkness (Horror) - Battling back a demonic horde. May, 2014 Nine Fingers (Horror) - Werewolves and wine in central Virginia. July, 2014 Dark on the Mountain (Horror) - Vampires and ghosts in Butcherknife, Virginia. September, 2014 Coal Fire (Horror) - Witches in Harman, Virginia set in the 1960s. Dece...

Spoke too soon... The edits went a lot faster than expected, so "Vales Hollow" will be ready for download tomorrow, March 13, 2014. Two days short of the Ides... Whew!

My first full length thriller, tentatively titled "Vales Hollow", will be available on Amazon in early April.

My science fiction short story "Protocol" is available for download on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IVRJV0Y