The authors of Constellate Creatives and Constellate Publishing are going to be out and about this summer, talking about our books, our publishing journey and our quest to find new authors to bring to the reading public.
Here are some of our events:
I’m not crazy about my latest iphone upgrade.
Or my new coffeemaker, for the matter.
Let me explain.
As I write this, Word – a needy little bitch if ever there was one – is notifying me once again that I should update. Nevermind that I see these pleas when I’ve opened Word on my Macbook Pro and I’m trying to get some work done so no, I don’t plan on updating now.
Not to mention the number of times Google Chrome asks me to update.
I wouldn’t mind the updates if I thought they’d have a good outcome. But too often lately it seems like companies update their products – I’m not even talking about just tech products here – based on bad design.
Example: I had to buy a new Mr. Coffee coffeemaker recently when our old one – about seven years old – began leaking water I’d poured in. I got a new one because I didn’t relish the idea of getting electrocuted before I’d had my coffee.
So I picked out the basic model, which seemed to be the same 12-cup coffeemaker as I’d had and began using it. Immediately I noticed that the water level indicator is tucked away on the side, presumably to make the coffeemaker more narrow and more sleek. (Nevermind that I could only find it in black, which might hide coffee stains better than white but is harder to tell how much water you’ve poured in.) If I want to double-check how much water I’ve poured in, because of the place Mr. Coffee is tucked away in our tiny kitchen, I have to pull it forward on the counter and turn it to peer at it.
More annoying is a recent upgrade to my iphone – I bet you wondered wtf I was going to get to that – changed the way you can turn off notifications like the alarm indicator you see above.
In the past, the phone has offered a single button to tap to end an alarm or notification. Now you have to slide the notification.
No one at Apple thought about how hard this was to do with one hand. I can’t any longer turn off a notification casually with a single tap. Now I have to hold my phone in one hand and “swipe” with the other.
This change seemed to occur right about the time Apple introduced liquid glass, its “unified visual theme for the graphical user interfaces.”
Yes, by all means, you techboy schmucks, make apps and labels on your products transparent and harder to see.
You’d think someone could get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars – maybe millions in stock – to advise these companies on how not to piss off their low-vision or low-dexterity or low-mobility users?
Maybe I should apply for the job.
I’m not sure what I’d be doing if I wasn’t writing.
Talking about that possibility with family members in town for a visit yesterday, one of them wondered what I’d be doing if I hadn’t kept writing when I took a buyout from the newspaper business seven years ago. I went on to write three novels, a couple more true crime books, 73 or 74 pieces for CrimeReads, 55 for another site, eight or 10 for another (now defunct) site, a few for a couple of other sites … plus dozens of press releases, short stories and more.
What would I do if I wasn’t writing?
Well, reading, of course. That’s been the oldest constant in my life (other than breathing and eating), from the Marvel Comics a friend gave me in the 1960s to books and stories aimed at young people.
But I can’t imagine a life without writing.
It seems to me that writing is not only the dominant optional privilege in my life but it could be the privilege that anyone can enjoy.
(This thought goes hand in hand with my belief that ir you write, you”re a writer, regardless if you are published or even disseminated in any way.)
The fundamental act of writing changed me. Decades of news writing made me think better and all the qualities that go with it, especially the ability to look at a circumstance critically.
I don’t think I’m a great writer. I think I am, at best, a clever writer and a sympathetic writer. Sometimes. Writing helps make me that.
And the best thing about writing is that you can do it at very little cost. Of course, thinking about writing is writing, in my opinion, and I’ve got this (aging) MacBook that lets me put together words.
But really, if I didn’t have that tool, i could write in a notebook or even scraps of paper.
Writing isn’t precious. Writing doesn’t care how much money you can afford to write.
For me, writing is in some ways the most consistent thread in my life. In many ways, it’s the most satisfying, but it’s certainly the longest-running and the one that feels among the most important.
I think there are few writers who enjoy asking other writers and book influencers for blurbs, quotes and reviews.
I don’t know that I’ll continue to seek out marketable opinions of my books, if I continue to write books, but I’ve been blessed with insightful comments from people who’ve had a chance to read my books – in advance for inclusion as blurbs like the one shown above by wonderful author and friend Emily J. Edwards – and after the books are published as the most marketing-heavy element of book marketing.
I’ve had only one author say they’ve been too overwhelmed with their own work to take the time to read the book for a blurb or review.
How this process went for me:
Of course, we all know what reviews are, but blurbs are those little snippets of opinion – inevitably praising – that you see on book covers and inside. They attest to the value of the book and, sometimes, of the author.
With my first published novel, THAT OCTOBER, I waited until almost too late to ask. The book was slated for self-publishing on June 1, 2025 and I probably didn’t ask people until March or April. Every person I asked except for one hugely busy person was able to read the book and provide a blurb.
With SEVEN ANGELS, I was a little more organized and asked weeks, months, earlier, well before its June 1, 2026 publication date. I did so politely and with the understanding that they were probably too busy to do it, but they all did. One author who’d said she wouldn’t be able to blurb the book emailed later to say she’d begun reading it and wanted to blurb it. I’m not sure I got a higher compliment than that.
Each of the authors got a copy of the manuscript and I told them that there would be no substantial changes to come that might affect their opinions.
The blurbs were included in the book, most inside and one by Claire Booth on the back cover. My friend and cornerstone of Constellate Publishing Jill Blocker decided the positioning.
Afterward, when I had copies of the book, I asked a handful of people, friends and online tastemakers, who I provided either copies of the proof or copies of the book to. I stepped gingerly with my request here: “If I sent you a copy, would you consider reading it and possibly posting about it?” This was a step I didn’t take with THAT OCTOBER.
In the five days (as of today) since SEVEN ANGELS was published, I’ve encouraged people to post reviews on Amazon or other sites like Goodreads. And of course people I don’t know who might read the book might do the same.
It’s a ticklish process, for sure. You have to assume that the people you’re asking MIGHT like the book and be willing to say so publicly. If they don’t, though, at least they gave it a shot and shared their honest opinion.
Because years from now, if I’m lucky, someone might have an opinion. If it’s positive or negative or mixed, it’s still a sign that someone found the book and connected with it.
Okay, I should just acknowledge that when you’ve published a book, the promotional push for it is never over.
But it feels like we’ve reached something of a milestone as my new crime novel SEVEN ANGELS is published tomorrow, June 1, 2026, by Constellate Publishing, a publishing imprint of Constellate Creatives, a company founded by my longtime friend Jill Blocker and for which I do some editing and other work.
By way of noting that promoting a book is never ending, I’ll say that I’ll be darkening your doorstep plenty even after the book is published.
A few quick words on how I got here:
I wrote a few crime novels back in the early 2000s that weren’t completely baked and I didn’t pursue publishing them. A few years later, sometime before 2010, I outlined a book called SEVEN ANGELS, a crime story about a fictionalized version of the little town in Tennessee where my parents grew up.
(I was still about 14 years from being a Tennessee resident myself, but I’d been down here plenty of times, visiting family.)
After I outlined SEVEN ANGELS, I set it aside. I didn’t write a book-length project again until my first true crime book, co-authored with Douglas Walker, was published in 2016. Three more true crime books followed. It turns out that writing and co-writing and editing those books was essential for me in figuring out how to write a book-length manuscript. I’m a plotter and outliner, and turning out an outline – one paragraph per chapter, outline length in total 15 or 16 pages or more – is a step I can’t imagine skipping.
In 2019, I took a buyout from my newspaper job and finally felt I had time and focus to write novels. In a few years, I’d written SEVEN ANGELS, GHOST SHOW and THAT OCTOBER. The latter was the first to be published (self-published) in 2025.
I’d gone back to SEVEN ANGELS almost every year since 2019, fleshing it out with new characters and I hopefully made it better.
The blurbs and comments and reviews have been laudatory and I appreciate it.
For a few months now, I’ve been actively compiling ideas for a new novel, including using some elements from an aborted novel from 2025. (I’ve mined those early 2000s books for a number of ideas and characters, and I’ve done the same with GHOST SHOW, so nothing ever entirely goes to waste.)
So here I am with a promise: I’ll be working on the next novel, along with articles and short stories.
And I’ll be promoting it all, so forewarned is forearmed.
The folks behind the BAD INTENTIONS anthology, publisher Literary Garage and anthology editor Michael Downing, have revealed the cover for the collection, which comes out July 7.
And that cover is a gem, as you can plainly see.
If you’re a compulsive watcher and reader of credits, like me, you know that Frank Vatel, a writer and artist, has turned out some beautiful work and this is another example of that. (Frank is @vatel1675 on the former Twitter.) He really captured the mood of the 15 stories in BAD INTENTIONS.
I’ve got a story in the anthology: “Sunset Stakeout” is set in 1979 and is about three increasingly desperate men – a producer, a faded star and a film school screenwriter – as they face the extinction of their show, “Sunset Stakeout,” a “Rockford”-esque action/drama in a time when TV viewers loved sitcoms.
How desperate do my characters get? You can find out July 7.
I wrote the story as a love letter to Los Angeles as the 1970s were about to become the 1980s. I sent a lot of time in L.A. in the 1980s, visiting a friend who worked in the movie business, and I based the characters on people I met through him. Zevon’s song “Looking for the Next Best Thing” inspired my story.
I hope you like it – and there are 14 other stories by great writers in BAD INTENTIONS.
Best of all, proceeds from the anthology go to Philabundance, a non-profit food bank working to help people facing hunger.
You’ll find BAD INTENTIONS in paperback on Amazon and the usual booksellers as we get closer to July 7.
We’re living in the opening scenes of every dystopian science-gone-mad sci-fi story ever, even though most of them never included as a plot device some mundane but infuriating circumstances like billionaires’ Artificial Intelligence stealing our writing.
But we definitely find ourselves in the beginnings of dystopian tech-gone-amok sci-fi stories with this AI girlfriend thing.
There’s plenty of science fiction, books or stories or movies or TV, that rely for drama on the devaluation of individuals or a class of people: just to cite one example, remember the “furniture” in “Soylent Green?” That was the term for a rich man’s female sex companion.
But rarely have we seen “sex bots” that are not as stupid as the dumbass guys who are going to pay to use them.
I’m certainly not the first person to equate where the world is today, under the leadership of malignant and greedy oligarchs and their toadies, to say we’re entering dystopian science fiction territory. All we have to think about is the wanton destruction of democracy, our climate, our oceans, our natural habitats, the devaluing of people and originality and creativity and the wholesale assault on privacy and the rights of women.
And yes, I’m sure I left something out.
But in recent days, in the wake of reading many articles about AI and the pollution and water use for data centers to run AI servers and how the technology is devaluing so much of what’s important, I started seeing ads like the one above, in my Instagram feed in particular. There are others, but that’s the most blatant.
The illustration shows a “sexy” AI woman, like most of the ads, but this one is very explicit in what’s likely to be the most appealing aspect of these AI girlfriends to many men:
“I never say no.”
Talking to friends about these ads, they note – rightly so – that there’s always been an element of rape culture to AI sex. “Control your AI girlfriend” says one ad that I saw, along with enticements to make her look how the user wants – skin tone, hair color, figure, etc.
Certainly there’s always been a destructive undertone – sometimes overtone – to porn. (There can be in any kind of real-life relationship, of course. It’s how humans, especially men, function. But with two actual people involved, there’s always a chance for people to learn to treat each other better.)
But without a real woman in the mix in these AI girlfriends, other than the environmental destruction caused by AI-generating data centers, the greatest destructive effect is to the idiotic men who pay to use these programs. They’re stupid. And sad.
I didn’t expect to be telling other guys, in effect, “Dude, just go find some porn. You’ll feel like less of a fool. Maybe.”
Having said that, maybe these AI girlfriends will keep them busy so they don’t spend quite as much time destroying everything else.
It’s crazy how much time we spend – okay, how much time I spend – on social media. And even crazier is how influential social media is in our lives. It’s fractured in many ways from what it used to be and while I’m on most of the social platforms, I spend more time on BlueSky than anywhere.
This is, however, a story about two platforms from the detested Meta stable of social media, Facebook and Instagram.
I really don’t like the Meta platforms and I like their owner even less. But they’re where the eyeballs are, unfortunately. Facebook still drives far more traffic to newspaper sites, for example, than any other platform. Many, many times more.
Two examples from my recent postings prove that the platforms have a long reach.
I follow the actress Sarah Herrman on Instagram. She’s funny and posts videos not especially related to her film work, which included the recent film “Chili Finger,” but posts videos of her attempts at baking and cooking. Those videos often feature, off-screen, her mother, who appears to have an acerbic wit.
In a recent video, Herrman tells her mother that she received two requests from followers for pictures of her feet.
“Only two?” her mother replied, with a tinge of “you can do better than that” in her voice.
In the comments, I quoted her mother in a two-word-and-two-word only comment: “Only two?”
So far, 4,296 people have “liked” my comment.
Crazy.
More recently, I found copies from the mid-1970s of the “Star Trek Log” books, in which author Alan Dean Foster adapted the “Star Trek” animated series into short story and novella form.
I posted my picture on the Facebook page “Vintage Paperback Books.” It was my first post, so it’s not like I’m a favorite of the page’s followers.
But those vintage “Star Trek” fans are fans of the books, apparently. As of right now, since Saturday the post has accumulated 503 likes.
Again, crazy.
Those are examples of social media’s reach. There are other, better, more important and relevant examples.
But those kinda boggled my mind.
So I’m scrolling on LinkedIn – yes, it’s come to that – and I see an ad for AI-generated headshots and I think mine came out pretty damn good, don’t you?
Of course, that’s Exeter from the classic sci-fi movie THIS ISLAND EARTH. My tan isn’t nearly that nice.
Anyone who follows me on social media – bless you dear folks – knows that I’ve been promoting my new crime novel SEVEN ANGELS, which publishes June 1 from our own Constellate Publishing.
When I wrote SEVEN ANGELS in 2019 I was living in Indiana but had a history with Tennessee: My parents were from the little town I based Seven Angels the town on. And I had family members in Tennessee and still do. More than three years ago, I moved from Indiana to Knoxville, where the finishing touches of the novel were written.
I didn’t get to hear “Southern Comfort,” a song by the sister blues/rock/country duo Larkin Poe, when I was writing SEVEN ANGELS, but I’ve grown to love the song and feel it relates closely to SEVEN ANGELS with its story of a woman who returns to her home place.
There’s a verse in Larkin Poe’s “Southern Comfort” that struck a nerve:
Left my soul in the Nickajack
God willing, I’ll find my way back
Counting down, my days are numbered
Gimme, gimme that southern comfort
But what is the Nickajack?
There are more accomplished historians than me – I’m not one at all, really – who can tell you better what the Nickajack is or was, but it was basically parts of two states, Alabama and Tennessee, that didn’t support the Southern ideal of slavery and whose leadership considered secession from the Southern secession movement.
The Nickajack would have been a state of its own, independent of Tennessee and Alabama, and an ally of the North. Leaders of the Nickajack modeled their secession plans after West Virginia’s exit from Virginia.
It never came to that, fortunately or unfortunately, because that would no doubt have cost lives if hostilities had broken out.
And the defeat of the South by the Union meant that the boosters of the Nickajack’s statehood movement dropped their plans.
So when the Lovell sisters of Larkin Poe sing about leaving their souls in the Nickajack, they’re talking about a pro-Union, anti-slavery part of the country, made up of parts of Alabama and East Tennessee, where I live now and where SEVEN ANGELS’ main character is from. Gloria Shepherd is a prosecutor’s investigator in Knoxville as the story begins but she returns to her home of Seven Angels in Crockett County, where much of the story takes place.
So now you know at least a little about the Nickajack. There’s more out there, especially about the Native American history of the area and the African American history of the Nickajack, and I’ll link to that below.
Credit to the Justin Brown and the Battleground substack for a lot of history and for that illustration of the Nickajack above.
https://battleground.substack.com/p/statehood-nickajack
And more info here:
keithroysdon 