The Official Site of Author, Joseph D. Newcomer
The DEAD STAR PRESS website is officially live. Our brand new independent press is now fully operational. Please go to DEADSTARPRESS.com and check out our first promotional release, Thought & Other Absurdities (a compilation of my blog posts and a few extras), our call for submissions, and our logo merchandise. Get a free bookmark with [...]
We are getting very close to being ready to publish our first promo book. Our LLC is officially approved and we have a bank account. It's like DEAD STAR PRESS is all grown up. But we could still use all of the help we can get to offset startup costs. Please click below to donate [...]
When someone mentions “The Good Book,” I always assume they are speaking of Slaughterhouse-Five. I think the world would be a kinder, gentler place if we based more of our morality on Vonnegut’s works rather than the books many of us revere. He passed in April of 2007, but I think of him whenever I read or write. Sometimes, I consider what he would have said about things I’m trying to put words to.
Vonnegut probably would have said that people are Mistake Machines. We all make mistakes, and we are as prolific and proficient at making them as we are at making anything else we have ever made. He also may have said that the best Mistake Machines of all are also fantastic Apology Machines because, while we cannot avoid making mistakes, seeing as how we are Mistake Machines, we possess the ability to admit when we are wrong. The best Mistake Machines can avoid continuing to make a particular mistake once they are aware of the mistake they made, and they can right their course through history. Some of their mistakes have also been their greatest achievements, but Mistake Machines find the greatest source of their humanity and their humility in their own apologies.
Apology Machines make the best kind of Mistake Machines… the best kind of people.
I am asking for donations that will provide the start-up capital needed to realize my goal of growing DEAD STAR PRESS LLC into a competitive, independent publisher of Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction, Social Commentary, and anything weird enough to abduct the mind. My goal is not only to publish my own works through the press [...]
Looks like some of us will have to hunker down in the interest of the greater good for a while. So many of my friends and so many people, in general, are being affected in ways we haven't been forced to have to consider before now. I thought some of you might need a distraction, and [...]
Joseph D. Newcomer 