Writing Again: From the Desk of R.P. Kane

No. Not blogs. Not articles. Or the usual fare I have been writing for several years now. Fiction. Horror fiction to be exact.

I used to do it all the time, writing short stories and novels since I was eight. It has always been a passion of mine, but admittedly something I largely got away from. I suppose one just eventually finds other ways to fuel their passion for writing anything at all, and politics and talking about money just sort of took over.

But fiction has remained something I still like to do from time to time. But it's mostly just for me and my own enjoyment, exploring my imagination and what creepy things I can conjure up. Some of it I actively publish. Most of it I tend to keep on the sidelines.

I have decided to change that a bit.

Back in the 1990s, I introduced an online monthly horror fiction magazine to the world, taking on the persona of Ivan S. Graves, editor in chief, and calling it FrightNet. Despite the world of the Internet being entirely different back then, the magazine was nearly an instant success.

The aim was to make it look and feel like a traditional, in print publication. And it did that. You'd click on the cover, and it would take you into a table of contents, and from there there'd be articles and editorials, and of course, the main course, short stories.

The magazine eventually wound up including many popular talents in the horror field. Jack Ketchum, Peter Straub, T.M. Wright, Douglas Clegg, Michael Laimo and countless others.  And it also led to a horror anthology being published around 2001 or so, called Dark Whispers.

The magazine eventually ceased. It was hard to monetize back then, and Ivan S. Graves bid his farewell, even cancelling plans to publish a second horror anthology called Chillers. Mort Castle once said of me, "You will be one of the greats." But I essentially left horror behind.

It's not that I abandoned the persona of Ivan S. Graves entirely, though. There were several times when I made an appearance or two in certain circles, even writing a foreword to R.K. Finnell's short story collection, Grue Tales, in 2018. I have also maintained connections with several of the writers I had the pleasure of working with, and even occasionally still write a book review here and there.

The persona of Ivan S. Graves was never considered to be a writer. He was an editor. Someone to advance the genre and offer an outlet for authors to have their work published. He did write, though. And if you dig really, really deep you can find some of his work still hanging around in places.

The writer side was R.P. Kane. 

Even the persona of R.P. Kane was mostly intended to be a practice author. In other words, the real writer's name behind Jim Bauer (my real name) would be more of a secret. That writer's name remains to be that way today with almost no one knowing who he is.

And I'm still not talking.

R.P. Kane's work would sometimes be tossed into the pages of FrightNet, and when I did it, I never let on to anyone that Ivan S. Graves was actually R.P. Kane. Though there were a few curious contributors who would sometimes recognize something in Kane's style that resembled the monthly "Letter from the Editor" that appeared in every issue.

Kane also took on a bit of a more sinister nature in what he wrote. And so, the persona offered me some liberties to try different things in the way of style and delivery, and even subject matter.

Tests. Practice. A way to hone the craft and share it at the same time.

By the way, sometimes that's the real reason many writers write under different names. It's not just because their real names might be boring, or not quite fit the genre, like mine. It's that you can do things with one name that you can't do with a more known name—it gives you some separation and allows for a little bit of experimentation.

Nonetheless, I have decided to begin sharing some of R.P. Kane's work, both old and new, on a blog on this very platform. Not within The Journal. But in its own space.

It is a work in progress as we speak, and to date there is nothing to share other than that I am doing it. Stay tuned.

Like the way I write or the things I write about? Follow me on my Facebook page where I share posts from this blog, as well as all the other places I write, and where you will be able to find links to the future publishings of R.P. Kane.

An archived copy of FrightNet, #13, June/July 1999

Pink Flamingoes Anomaly

I often get a kick out of an album I released a few years back that is on several streaming platforms, including Spotify. If I take accumulated totals of streams of all the songs I have released, both on that album and singles, the one that gets the win is the signature song on the album, Pink Flamingoes.

Now, you do have to bear one very important thing in mind here, and that's that music (if you want to call it that in my case) is entirely a hobby and nothing more. I do not perform live, am not in a band and never was, and it's all just for fun for me.

That being said, my style, whatever what one considers it to be is definitely mine and my songs are all quite a bit "different" and I would also say, "quirky."

I don't like to conform to a certain given format or rules. And of course, I don't have to because they are my songs, and I can do what I want with them. So long as a handful of people enjoy them, that's all that matters to me.

But Pink Flamingoes, misspelled on purpose by the way, is particularly "weird," I suppose especially in the long outro where I start singing about pink flamingos flying—which most people would say, "What the hell does that have to do with the theme of the song?"

Do songs always have meanings or are they sometimes just a combination of things the artist feels just "sounds good?"

The pink flamingos flying at the end I suppose could suggest just accepting who you are and what you are and not being afraid to be that. In reality, it was just "practice singing" in a section where I had no real lyrics to add, on a song I never intended to release. 

But after some test runs of the song, everyone suggested I keep it there. They liked it. And that was enough for me to leave it there and make it the title of the song, and subsequent album, as well as added a "remake" at the end of the album of that song with a slight, new twist.

In any event, I just wanted to talk about it because the "success" of that song just never ceases to surprise me.

Pink Flamingoes on Spotify
Pink Flamingoes (The Album) on iTunes
Pink Flamingoes (Remake) on YouTube
Pink Flamingoes on Amazon Music
Pink Flamingoes on YouTube

I Write a Lot

From serious stuff to not so serious stuff, I write a lot. I am not sure if I would necessarily call myself exactly prolific, but there may be some rationale behind me saying it if I were to actually say it. While some have called me, in no uncertain terms, and usually after a long debate, a windbag, I guess at the end of the day I just have a lot to say.

What can I say?

A lot of the time I tell myself I just have to do it. It is something that is within me that I am simply compelled to write, and write a lot. I just gotta get it out, you know? The words. The thoughts. The ideas and opinions. I have to get them out.

I do wonder sometimes what might happen if I didn't do that. Would it be like holding in a fart or something? I mean, it's there. It doesn't just go away, just like words. It all has to come out eventually. Would I explode? I am not sure, and I am no scientist, so I have no idea.

So, I write. And I write a lot and I just keep on writing so long as the words continue to come and so long as I have an outlet to get it all down on paper.

Well, these days on a computer screen of course. 

A while back I decided to start a Facebook page dedicated only to things I write. People get tired of you sharing sometimes on your regular page. But I didn't really do anything with it. I didn't update it much, I didn't promote it much...

I just basically let it sit there.

Recently I decided to not do that anymore. Update it, will ya! I shouted at myself. You actually do have a fan base and because I write in so many places, maybe that fan base could just go to one central place and find it all there.

Or most of it.

But that's part of the problem. I write a lot. And so that means there is more material to share than I have room for necessarily at a given time on my Facebook page—and at the same time I don't really want to clutter anyone's feeds either. That tends to annoy people, and then sharing doesn't matter because they won't bother to pay any attention to you—and there's only so much time to read a bunch of stuff from a windbag like me.

Still, I make every attempt to share what I can. The "evergreen" stuff like this drool I am writing right now can be shared any time—and sometimes it's good filler. If I am writing more "timely" stuff, that has to get up as fast as possible, but of course I still want to stagger it all a little bit.

Either way, no matter what I just keep on doing what I do and eventually if anyone wants to read any of it, they will get the opportunity. By the way, if you happen to be one of those people, go ahead and have a look at my Facebook page and see what's over there. And always feel free to drop me a comment. I will read them and answer them.

Because that's a form of writing too, isn't it? But don't be surprised if I do comment and it happens to be a little long-winded.

You know, that whole windbag thing and all.

What The Hell Is The Point of this Blog?

I have been blogging for a long time. While when I started this whole thing—not here on THIS blog—it was a more "serious" approach that I took. My main blog, which gets quite neglected these days, The Springboard, centers around mostly politics, money management, the stock market, and as I like to call it, "the occasional random thought."

One of the things that began to distract me a bit from this more "serious" writing were sites like Bubblews, PersonaPaper, MyLot and others. You can even go ahead and toss in an old site I used to be quite active on that was called WebAnswers.

The thing is, these were sites where you could essentially write about nothing in particular, and yet at the same time still make a fair amount of money.

I am currently on MyLot doing that sort of writing.

What is The Springboard Journal? It's an experiment of sorts. It's a quest to identify if writing about nothing in particular can be effective to attract any sort of traffic here on Blogger. It's a quest to see if a similar amount of participation on other blogs can have the same effect on traffic to any post as it did, or does currently on a site like MyLot.

The point of this blog really is simply to carry over the idea that is the basis of any of those other sites I mentioned and see whether or not it can work in a similar way as it does on those sites, but to also determine whether doing it here instead of there can be more profitable.

At the end of the day it is true that many of us write blogs at all because we like to write. And because we like to write, writing about anything—or in this case nothing—is just an excuse to put words down and play around a bit with the whole process of it. But we also like to make a little bit of money too. Getting paid to do something you enjoy is always a worthwhile venture.

So what really is the point of this blog? Just to see what happens. To write about anything and nothing and just see where it lands.

While writing about nothing, I will do my best to at least try and keep it somewhat interesting.

September Rent Cometh On Schedule

Lo and behold my wife and I did in fact receive the September rent check from the tenants—or should I say the money order since that was what we established as the new policy for payment based on the most recent kerfuffle. It was on time and for the full amount, so that was definitely a plus. Now, all we can hope for is that the problem has been solved, and we will now receive the rent payments on a regular schedule. If nothing else, all I can do is keep my fingers crossed, and of course keep my 5-Day Pay or Quit notices and 14-Days To Vacate notices handy in the event I need to pursue that course of action.