David Dubrow

Author

  • About Dave
    • Interviews
  • Dave’s Blog
  • Dave’s Fiction
    • The Armageddon Trilogy
      • The Blessed Man and the Witch
      • The Nephilim and the False Prophet
      • The Holy Warrior and the Last Angel
    • The Appalling Stories Series
      • Appalling Stories: 13 Tales of Social Injustice
      • Appalling Stories 2: More Appalling Tales of Social Injustice
      • Appalling Stories 3: Escape from Trumplandia
    • Dreadedin Chronicles: The Nameless City
    • Get the Greek: A Chrismukkah Tale
    • Beneath the Ziggurat
    • The Ultimate Guide to Surviving a Zombie Apocalypse
  • Free Stories
    • Hold On
    • How to Fix a Broken World
    • The Armageddon Trilogy Character List and Glossary
  • Social
    • Twitter
    • Facebook
    • Google +
    • Amazon
    • Goodreads

Appalling Stories 4 Cover Reveal

November 27, 2019 by David Dubrow Leave a Comment

The short story anthology Appalling Stories 4: Even More Appalling Tales of Social Injustice will be released in December 2019.

This installment of the series has got a tremendous line-up of authors telling stories that the woke gatekeepers of traditional publishing would find problematic at best, and, well, appalling at worst. From disturbingly hilarious tales of body horror to hardcore action to sci-fi adventure, you’re bound to find something that trips your trigger. Includes my newest story in the world of the Bee-pocalypse, with a first-contact twist that you’ve never seen before!

Here’s a sneak peek at the table of contents:

And here’s the awesome cover, illustrated by J.WAR:

I’m honored that Denise McAllister, cultural commentator and author of What Men Want to Say to Women (But Can’t), wrote such a terrific foreword to this book; she’s incisive, clear-thinking, and a terrific writer.

Appalling Stories 4: Even More Appalling Tales of Social Injustice will be ready in time for the holidays, so save room under the Christmas tree (or next to the menorah) for your copy!

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: appalling stories 4, cover reveal, me me me, short stories

Armageddon: Know Your Drug Dealer

November 22, 2019 by David Dubrow Leave a Comment

(You are looking at my Chirper feed, aren’t you? It’s like Twitter, but so much better!)

I included stigmata in my Armageddon trilogy because I figured that if you were going to describe a Biblical apocalypse, with demonic possession, angelic visitations, and holy relics, you should also throw in associated supernatural/Judeo-Christian phenomena, like people afflicted with the Wounds of Christ. For storytelling purposes, it wasn’t enough for those with stigmata to just bleed: the agonies they felt also gave them psychic abilities like prognostication and knowing when a holy relic or demonically-possessed person was nearby. The Wounds always hurt, but the pain increased in proximity to the supernatural.

Once I got that squared away, I had to decide who to give these Wounds to. I wanted those afflicted to be a kind of living holy relic, highly sought-after by the forces of both Hell and Heaven. Some religious people would get the stigmata, certainly. But I also wanted to inflict stigmata on other people: ones you might consider undeserving. Unlikely. Non-believers.

To make things interesting, I decided to have my stigmata-afflicted character be a drug dealer, and I named him Ozzie. From the outset, I wanted Ozzie to go from a bad person to a less-bad person. He would become a hero, of sorts, and a believer in Christ through sheer pragmatism. The third book in the trilogy is called The Holy Warrior and the Last Angel for a reason: Ozzie becomes the titular Holy Warrior. The least likely holy warrior you could imagine. A murderer and thief, a peddler of drugs, a gang member who would kill you for looking at him the wrong way, or even the right way. A cruel man who never smiled, not once.

His transformation throughout the novels is something to be read rather than described. But in creating Ozzie, I had to work out who he was. You could just hang a label on someone and call it a day: he’s a killer. A gangbanger. Whatever. But it doesn’t invite you to look deeper, and as I needed Ozzie to be an important character in whose head you’d be staying from time to time, I had to work out his details and background.

Okay, so he’s a drug dealer. What does that mean? Where does he deal drugs? How does he get them? What does a drug deal look like, exactly? It’s not like you go to the mall and pick up crystal meth at a kiosk. And if he’s in a gang, what kind of gang? How is the gang organized? What’s his role in the hierarchy?

I never bought drugs outside of a pharmacy, so I had no personal experience to draw from. So I had to do research. As this is a fictional character who happens to be in a fictional gang, I drew the vast majority of my cues from fiction: books and movies. New Jack City. Training Day. American Gangster. Blood in, Blood Out. Colors. I pored over news articles and interviews of drug dealers in and out of prison. Over time I got a vague picture, but the details eluded me: I couldn’t just borrow characters and situations from other people’s work.

So I had to make it up. I created a New York City drug gang, from the boss of the city to individual territories within certain boroughs. The territory bosses had free rein within their turf, but had to send their monthly cut to the borough boss. Independence with limits. Once I had the hierarchy, I could plug in various characters, who then had their roles to play, including Ozzie.

Some readers told me that they found the gang stuff to be pretty realistic, but I didn’t tell them that I made it up myself, according to how I’d run an illegal drug operation. In the end, it worked: it provided the necessary framework for both character motivations and story, and how things turn out for Ozzie was dependent on how he started out as a territory boss in Brooklyn, New York. Ozzie, being a cunning sort, used his clairvoyance and precognition to great personal advantage until…well, you’ll just have to read about what happened in The Blessed Man and the Witch.

And if writing doesn’t work out, I may have career options in the field of extralegal intoxicant distribution. We’ll see how it goes.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: armageddon, me me me, the blessed man and the witch, writing

News 10-30-2019

October 30, 2019 by David Dubrow 1 Comment

I’ve had a love-hate relationship with Twitter for some time, in the same way a drug addict has a love-hate relationship with heroin.

In August of 2014, I wrote about my somewhat naive observations of Twitter a couple weeks after joining the platform.

In June of 2017, I described how Twitter is the worst thing ever devised, calling it “the mirror of my worst self.”

In November of 2018, I advised readers not to quit Twitter.

Today, I quit Twitter. Actually, I did it last week. More specifically, I stopped reading Twitter except for DMs. Twitter is a time-sink, it doesn’t sell books, and it’s horribly poisonous. I contributed in small part to this toxicity, but no longer. When you find yourself arguing with teenage wannabe transsexuals about anything, let alone the disturbing confluence of gender and politics, you’re in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing. I’ll still have my site post to Twitter, but that’s the extent of it. I very much enjoyed kibitzing about non-book/non-political issues with friends, and I’ll miss that. But I don’t miss the rest of it.

—

The print version of Appalling Stories 3: Escape from Trumplandia is ready for purchase in the Amazon store. If you have even the smallest hint of a sense of humor, you will laugh at least a few times reading this short novel, written by Ray Zacek and yours truly. There’s sci-fi action, Native American culture, searing political satire, and almost fifty rude names for the President of the United States. Love Trump or hate him, you will dig Escape from Trumplandia. And if you don’t, Amazon offers a money-back guarantee! I think.

—

Appalling Stories 4: Even More Appalling Tales of Social Injustice is on track for a December 2019 release. I’m really excited about this one. Here’s the back cover copy:

Buy this book before they ban it!

With Woke Progressivism corroding every American cultural institution, there’s only one place to find the best of the new literary counterculture, and that’s here: the Appalling Stories series.

In Appalling Stories 4, we skewer the left’s sacred cows and make burgers from the carcasses. You’ll find tales of hilarious Hollywood degeneracy, disturbing dystopias, Green New Deals gone black, old-school treasure-hunting, and much more. Triggering, microaggressions, macroaggressions, punching down, punching up, punching Antifa: like the old spaghetti sauce commercial says, it’s in there.

And it’s all fun to read. We’re not preachers or pundits: we’re entertainers, and we keep you on the edge of your seat, glued to every page.

Just don’t ask us to unstick you.

Closer to the publication date I’ll give you a sneak peek at the Table of Contents and let you know who wrote the kick-ass foreword.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: appalling stories 3, appalling stories 4, escape from trumplandia, me me me, social media, twitter

Podcast Interview: Another Bleeping Podcast

October 8, 2019 by David Dubrow Leave a Comment

I was recently interviewed on a podcast titled Another #@%*! Podcast on KLRN Radio. This was a live interview, no do-overs or editing.

Despite that, I killed it, of course. I discussed my Armageddon series, the Appalling Stories series, publishing in general, and some of the inherent problems with conservative media that prevent books like Appalling Stories from getting wider distribution on the right. Plus, as an added bonus, I described, for the first time in any public forum, what I’m working on right now!

Click here to listen. It’s the best 30 minutes of audio you’ll hear all day!

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: appalling stories, armageddon, interview, me me me, podcast

Escape from Trumplandia: The Inside Story

August 29, 2019 by David Dubrow Leave a Comment

While the anthology Appalling Stories 2: More Appalling Tales of Social Injustice was still in its planning stages, my friend and fellow writer Ray Zacek offered to show me a piece of writing he’d done. It was fragmentary, just a few chapters, and he asked if I could help him flesh it out. Maybe we’d include it as a novelette in Appalling 2. I said sure, I’d consider it, and read what eventually became the penultimate chapter of the satirical novella Appalling Stories 3: Escape from Trumplandia.

What Ray had written was extremely funny, defying genre conventions the way good satire can, but it was unfinished: the punchline of a long joke. We worked on it for months; the cooperation spurred us to complete a narrative that said what we wanted to say in the way we wanted to say it. Ray’s a surprising writer and came up with things I didn’t expect; for example, the intimate encounter near the end of the book was, for the most part, his creation, and I found myself cringing while reading it. That made it perfect. If a piece of satire doesn’t take you out of your comfort zone every once in a while, it’s worthless.

Satire often fails because the writer hates the characters or issues it lampoons, and the reader always picks up on that. It’s why most political humor today is aggressively unfunny; we get hostility to other points of view through news and opinion pieces all day long, so why should we seek it out in fiction? Ray and I wanted you to like the characters in Trumplandia as much as we did, and, more importantly, we wanted you to understand them. Even when they do things that make little sense. If you can’t identify with them, even a little, then you won’t care what happens to them.

We worked hard to ensure that no nickname for Trump was used more than once; even if we didn’t hate him, the protagonist did, and that had to come out in the story. I think there are about 45 rude names for the president in there, which fits, considering he’s the 45th president. Orange Abhorrence, Dolt 45, Cheeto Benito, etc. If a Trump nickname was juvenile and even a little bit funny, it made it into the book. Orangeback Gorilla is probably my favorite.

Some time after Escape from Trumplandia‘s release, I wrote about how Denise McAllister got booted from some conservative publications for getting angry on Twitter. For pushing against the tide of righteous outrage, I made a lot of people mad. One of them got so incensed he wrote a negative review of Escape from Trumplandia, lying about its contents and quality when he obviously hadn’t bought or read it. This is what happens when you stick your neck out. Not a big deal, but it is something that conservative writers have to deal with.

Below the fold is an excerpt from Appalling Stories 3: Escape from Trumplandia.

[Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: appalling stories 3, escape from trumplandia, me me me, politics, satire

Paladin Stories: Combat Knife Throwing

May 15, 2019 by David Dubrow Leave a Comment

One of the most memorable shoots that I directed as Video Production Manager of Paladin Press was on combat knife throwing. Paladin was a small publisher and we did books and low-budget, high-quality instructional videos; my job consisted of everything from contract negotiation to directing, producing, shooting, editing, and marketing. I kept busy.

I was the only full-time employee in Paladin’s video department at that time, but in a small business everyone wears many hats. For this shoot I took someone from Marketing to do second camera and someone from the print-on-demand shop to help with miscellaneous production tasks. Usually I only had the Marketing rep, but Paladin’s owner/publisher, Peder Lund, wanted me to show the print-on-demand guy the video ropes. We referred to him as FNG until a new FNG came along, as you do.

This shoot took place in late spring on the author’s family property in semi-rural Tennessee. Beautiful country. Hot and humid as all get-out, particularly for us Colorado boys who loved the dry air. Yes, we did make the occasional Deliverance joke, up until we tried to find the turnoff to the author’s place and, after driving up and down country roads for half an hour, had to stop at a ramshackle convenience store to ask for directions. As it turned out, the entrance to his property was a slightly wider gap between two trees that we’d driven past a bunch of times, so we turned the minivan around (Marketing guy hated that I always rented us a minivan, but it was cheap and it fit all the production equipment) and eased our way deeper into the woods.

The enclosing trees spread out a quarter mile down the road to a clearing that provided a breathtaking view; I did the best I could to capture it on video. On a typical shoot, the day we fly in we drop off our personal luggage at the hotel, go meet the author, and plan the next day’s work. The author (Ralph Thorn), however, had different plans: unlike us, he was not an early bird, and wanted to do some shooting in the late afternoon/early evening sun. So we got to work.

As I set up angles to give us good, glare-free shots of both Ralph and the target (a log), I asked, somewhat facetiously, “So, is there any, uh, local flora or fauna we need to be aware of out here?”

“Not much,” Ralph replied. “Just poison ivy. I’m immune to it, though.”

“Ah,” I said. “Is there…any nearby?”

Ralph pointed with his chin at the Marketing guy, who was adjusting focus. “He’s standing in some there.”

The Marketing guy, who wore shorts all the time, quickly stepped out of the patch and we re-set his camera elsewhere.

The next two days didn’t go as smoothly as we’d like because it was so damned hot and Ralph needed a bunch of breaks to rest. I didn’t blame him. It’s difficult enough throwing knives for hours at a time. Imagine having to teach knife-throwing on video and throw and actually get good hits on target in the hot sun.

One time during a break, while we stood under a tree with our cameras, eating Clif bars for lunch while Ralph went inside to take a cold shower and ice his shoulder, FNG said, “Who’s that?”

A little girl in a dress, maybe nine or ten, stood in a nearby meadow, watching us with eyes that wouldn’t look out of place in a Keane painting. She was very pretty, but her appearance felt strange, like she was a ghost, and when I lifted a hand to wave, she turned and ran across the meadow and disappeared behind a shed. Later on, Ralph told us she was probably one of his nieces.

Probably.

Ralph’s knife-throwing style was like nothing I’d ever seen before. The vast majority of throwers fling the knife so that it spins in the air, and you have to accurately gauge distance to hit point-first consistently. Am I close enough for a half-spin throw, or do I try for a full-spin? That’s why it’s such a difficult thing to master, and nearly impossible to do in the chaotic circumstances of an actual fight. Despite cinematic representations of knife throwing, there are no credible real-world accounts of someone being killed in a fight with a thrown knife.

Ralph, however, taught a method of knife throwing that didn’t rely on spins and fine distance calculation: you release it in such a way as to make it sail into the target point first without spinning it. I don’t know if he developed this method himself or learned it elsewhere, but he was not only very skilled, he could teach that skill with some detail.

Over a year later, while shooting a video with some high-speed combat shooting instructors who worked in security management, one man told me that he loved Ralph’s video and had learned how to throw knives from it. So we weren’t peddling bullshit. Still, when we did knife-throwing on lunch breaks at the office, we went with the half-to-full spin technique. Easier to do with minimal practice.

We spent the last shooting day with Ralph doing extra knife-throwing shots, still photos, the introduction, the conclusion, and a bunch of voice-overs. Ralph loosened up a bit at the end; we’re easy to work with, but sometimes it takes a while to fully break the ice. At the end of the conclusion, while we were setting up for the final outdoor shot, he did an Elvis impression that was absolutely hysterical. I got some of it on video, but I can’t remember if I put it on the DVD as an Easter egg or not. It seemed so out of character, but it wasn’t; he was just glad the shoot was almost over. Us, too. A typical shoot day had us working from early morning until evening, then a break for dinner, then sitting and watching footage half the night in the hotel room to make sure we didn’t miss anything or if the equipment crapped out without us knowing. Shoot days were always grueling: during them you have to be 100% on your game for 100% of the time. The author can screw up: no problem. But the crew can’t.

Even though I bitched about it, I miss it, a little.

I looked for it at home, but I think Combat Knife Throwing: The Video is one of those few I didn’t get a copy of, which is a shame.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: combat knife throwing, knife throwing, me me me, paladin, paladin press

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • …
  • 16
  • Next Page »

Elf on a Shelf Follies, Part 2:
8-year-old: I wrote the elf a note! I hope he writes back.
Me: What did you write?
8yo: I asked if he has any friends.
Me: What if he says it's none of your business?
8yo: *eyes grow dark and glittering* Then I'll...touch him.
Me: Ah. Mutually assured destruction, then.

Elf on a Shelf Follies, Part 1: My 8-year-old got an Elf on the Shelf the other day. The book it came with tells a story in doggerel about this elf's purpose, which is to spy on the kid and report his doings to Santa Claus, who would then determine if the kid is worthy for Christmas presents this year. The book also said for the kid not to touch him, or the magic would fade, and for the family to give the elf a name. I wanted to name him Stasi. I was outvoted.

Actor Billy Dee Williams calls himself a man or a woman, depending on whim; his character Lando Calrissian is "pansexual," and his writer implies that he'd become intimate with anyone or anything, including, one presumes, a dog, a toaster, or a baby. J.J. Abrams is very concerned about LGBTQ representation in the Star Wars universe. This is Hollywood. This is Star Wars. This is what's important to the people in charge of your cinematic entertainment. Are you not entertained?

The funniest thing on the internet today is the number of people angry over an exercise bike commercial. Public outrage is always funny. Always.

One of the biggest mistakes the United States has ever made since WWII was recruiting for clandestine and federal law enforcement organizations at Ivy League schools. The best talent pools were/are available from local law enforcement and military veterans, with their maturity and, most importantly, field experience. We've been reaping the costs of these terrible decisions for decades, culminating in a hopelessly politicized, sub-competent FBI and CIA.

I love Christmastime, despite being Jewish. The lights, the presents, the spirit of generosity. I do feel left out, however; my neighbors have nice Christmas lights, inflatable Santas, animatronic reindeer that crop the grass, and illuminated Nativity scenes. As Hanukkah isn't a big holiday for Jews, we just don't have those kinds of decorations. However, if someone crafts an inflatable scene of a Jewish guerrilla warrior caving in a Syrian Greek's head with a hammer, I'll buy it and put it in the front yard.

Watching Fauda seasons 1 and 2 again in preparation for season 3 to be broadcast, one hopes, in early 2020. Here's my back-of-the-matchbook review of season 2.

Every day I try to be grateful for what I have, even in the face of the petty frustrations and troubles that pockmark a day spent outside of one's living room, binge-watching Netflix. We live lives of ease in 21st century America, making it enormously difficult to do anything but take one's countless blessings for granted. Holidays like the just-passed Thanksgiving are helpful reminders. There's a reason why people call the attitude of a thankful heart practicing gratitude, not just feeling grateful. You have to practice it. You have to remind yourself of what you have. It's the work of a lifetime.

Held Back: A Recent Conversation.
8-year-old: Oh, and Jamie was there, too. He was in my first grade class two years ago.
Me: Wasn't he held back a year?
8yo: Yeah. It's because he kept going to the bathroom with the door open.
Me: No way!
8yo: And girls saw.
Me: That's not right. They're not going to hold a kid back a whole year over that.
8yo: Well, that's what he told me.
Me: Sounds fishy.
8yo: I believe him.
~fin~

It's right and good to push a raft of politically correct social justice policies on everything else under the sun, but when social justice invades Hollywood, that's just a bridge too far, says Terry Gilliam. Sorry, Terry: you helped make this sandwich. EAT IT.

Well, it makes me feel gross to be coerced into participating in a mentally ill person's sexual hang-ups without my consent, so I guess everyone's unhappy.

Let's hear it for adults taking time out of their day to help kids play team sports! Or...or not, as is the case here. I'd be pretty embarrassed if I was one of the parents, but there may be more to this story than we can see in this video.

They'll be doing Drag Queen Story Hour hosted by Desmond is Amazing in your local Chick-fil-A by 2025 at the latest.

Episode 45 of the Red Pilled America podcast is a disturbing look into a court case that raises the question: can you really tell if someone is lying?

Rob Henderson's piece on luxury beliefs will have you nodding your head over and over again...unless you subscribe to these luxury beliefs, in which case you'll get mad.

I'm late to the #FartGate controversy, as I no longer use social media, but it's a truism that when you have one asshole talking to another, you're going to get fart noises.

I've made the Saturday bread from Flour Water Salt Yeast so often that I've memorized the recipe. It never disappoints. Never. The same recipe works well for pizza, too.

Robert Lopez tells a disquieting story that suggests that there are no safe spaces for literature among the left or right.

The best part of the "Mon Laferte exposing herself story" is the wide variety of digital pasties that online outfits provide her. Flowers, dots, digital artifacts and, in creepy fashion, pure erasure.

Liberty doesn't mean the freedom to do anything you want. The true definition of liberty is the ability to choose the good. Anything less is libertinism.

“I was confused at first and then I started to doubt whether or not I should be offended.” No no, be offended. At everything.

Andrei Serban quits a tenured professorship at Columbia University because the college began to resemble the Communist country he fled from. Everything that's good and decent will be forced out in favor of woke box-checking. Are you not entertained?

Boris Zelkin elucidates a concern and proffers a solution to a problem that almost all parents of young children will have to face.

Archives

My Social Media Links

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Google +

Author Links

  • Amazon Author Page
  • Goodreads

Copyright © 2019 · Author Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in