She-it by M Brace DeFreak

A classic piece of Southern Gothic literature. History and trivia twist into a humorous tale of survival. Gibsonton, Florida, the home of various circus folk, is home to a dwarf, like no other. Maenads, the madwomen of myth, exist and a guy, kidnapped by this gang of Femme Fatales, struggles to survive the tortures of his sexually deviant kidnappers.  The author dares to compare his magnum opus with Voltaire’s, Candide and James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake (though more readable). In the author’s’ first novel, Factions of a dWARf, readers discovered an eclectic group of women who form the Cabeiri cult and this follow up novel, the madcap adventures of the Cabeiri cult continue. When She-it yells embrace the freak, Kal finds he has no choice and neither do you.

Buy She-it on Amazon

Lack of Readers

My book isn’t perfect, but it has some very good stuff. Attracting readers is the biggest problem. I hate Facebook and Twitter, so my social media presence isn’t good, I’m more comfortable with WordPress, but this blog attracts to few readers.

How to convert a jpg or png image to PDF for an Amazon book cover for free

LibreOffice and OpenOffice are opensource word-processing apps which can open image apps and save to PDF. I followed the instructions on this site but LibreOffice has the Page menu beside the Format menu rather than within it. Go to Properties in the Page menu and set to Landscape then set the dimensions and place all the margins to zero right click the image and go to Align and to Top then Left and the image should fit properly on the canvas below. If you have the ratio right, but over-sized–you will get an error but Amazon says it can adjust and it can.

Ways I tried but didn’t work:

The Photos program can print to PDF but you can’t adjust to the needed dimensions.

A program available in Windows Store puts a watermark on the image.

Online converters all seem to be shady.

Ways that might work

Using the opensource image program, GIMP

Calibre is a ebook management app and may work

Band Name Origins

Less Than Jake, a Florida band took the name due to a parrot being top dog in the drummer’s household–everyone else was less the Jake, the bird.

Lynyrd Skynyrd named their band after their gym teacher, Leonard Skinner.

Limp Bizkit comes from a sick game, where the loser eats a biscuit soaked with circle-jerk jam.

The Doors  borrowed from  Aldous Huxley‘s book The Doors of Perception, whose borrowed from a William Blake quote.

Marilyn Manson obviously come from a mix of Marilyn Monroe and Charles Manson.

Blondie, also has an obvious origin.

Backstreet Boys isn’t due to what you might guess, the name comes from a flea market.

Steely Dan stole the name of a steam-powered dildo in William S. Burroughs book, Naked Lunch. Burroughs has a connection to Florida,

I’m only interested in Florida links, but for more– Wikipedia has a huge list.

The Flying Burrito Brothers have a funny name but I can’t find the true origin.

Analyzing the Gadfly

I mythology, Hera becomes a gadfly to pester Io after the latter metamorphosed into a cow. In my novel, Ionia is patterned after Io. Flo represents the gadfly because the gadfly symbolizes menstruation (flow). A social gadfly annoys people and women generally own this archetype because women use social pressure more often then men. Men physically bully women more often socially bully others. Queen Bees, as portrayed in the Movie, “Mean Girls’, rely on peer pressure: while, a social gadfly is the stereotypical nag. Men nag, too, but they tend towards less verbal means to aggravate.

Little Keg of Dynamite

The pornstar most commonly called ‘Bridget the Midget’ was recently arrested for stabbing her boyfriend with a butter knife and a handful of other charges. A dwarf can wield much more dangerous of weapons and can do great harm, but a butter knife wouldn’t be a very dangerous weapon in her hands. She should have lesser charges drawn against her. Cheryl Murphy (her real name) seems brash in her interviews and a strong emotional response isn’t surprising. She was obviously still emotionally attached to the guy, though the guy might have moved on. This type of domestic disturbance happens often and the charges should be of similar nature, but realizing this wasn’t a deadly attack.

I write about a dangerously psychotic dwarf and people shouldn’t laugh about how dangerous a dwarf can be. A sharp knife or a gun can still be used to dangerous effect.

Soundtrack Nomination

Guardians of the Galaxy movies have great soundtracks and Little Sheba by .38 Special would fit right in. It’s a song made for female action sequences. Anyone creating a soundtrack for]such a scene should give Little Sheba a listen.

The First Guitar in the US

St. Augustine holds the moniker of ‘America’s Oldest City,’ but this statement lacks the specifics to make for actual truth. Pensacola was settled by the Spanish before Menendez founded St. Augustine and Fort Caroline in Duval County was settled by French Huguenots before St. Augustine and Puerto Rico’s status as an US territory muddles things up further. My Native American ancestors obviously came way before The Europeans, so St. Augustine is just the oldest continuously occupied settlement of European origin in the continental United States. Saying the first guitar in the US came from St. Augustine–is technically untrue for many reasons but let’s forget the specifics and just consider Florida the home of the first American guitar.

Wikipedia says, “In Spain, Portugal, and Italy the vihuela was in common use by the late 15th through to the late 16th centuries.” The vihuela branched off from lutes and these instruments branched off into violins, guitars, and other instruments. A vihuela looks like a guitar and being the father of the guitar–they fall in the guitar family. Florida was settled in this period of time in which the instrument was popular, so St. Augustine certainly had vihuela players amongst its colonists.

Good historical movies don’t come along very often, so a film depicting the early Florida history may never happen but I can hope. The next book I publish has the recipe for interesting movie because the history can be handed out in small doses due to my use of genetic memory–a much better and more historically true version of Assassin’s Creed. My novel is comedic which differs from Assassin’s Creed, but the video game movie uses the same–genetic memory devise.

The Goddess of Seeds

If you’ve ever eaten a pomegranate  you know they have bunches of seeds and the pomegranate is a symbol of Persephone. Demeter the mother of Persephone would also fit. Maize/corn goddesses in the America fall into this category for the same reason. Chicomecōātl for the  Aztecs. Cherokees have Selu. Iyatiku is the corn goddess of the Keresan Puebloes. Flowers, fruits, and various types of vegetation come from seeds, but I doubt any would rank higher than the types above,

Debbie Harry, Fluffer

Debbie Harry, the lead singer of Blondie, made an appearance in Fluffer. From the picture, you can surmise the fluffer refers to a gay male. My novels often feature allusions, and my blog is a method of tracking these allusions. Debbie Harry was born in Florida, and Florida is a main theme of my novels. Legally, I can use titles in my novels, and I hope I edited out non-titles.  Call Me is one title which I use; which, comes from her time with Blondie.

Harry was adopted and left the state soon after, but it seems likely her parents had a connection to Florida. My heavy use of Johnny Depp occurs because he had a solid connection to Florida and his Huguenot heritage as fits because many of the French who tried too colonize Florida came, from Dieppe, the source of Depp’s name. Knowing Harry’s heritage could have given another useful coincidence. One site says her original surname, Tremble, may be a derivative  Turnbull, and Andrew Turnbull founded New Smyrna, of British Florida is mentioned in my novel, but he’s a villain, so she probably wouldn’t be proud of the connection. The name Turnbull actually means ‘turn bull’ such as in bullfighting and bull handling, in general. I may add a Harry mention, int the Turnbull chapter, if it looks easy enough to do.