Mel C. Thompson – författare

Our protagonist hears from his friends in Costa Mesa that a kind of personality-cult leader is currently trendy among the higher social circles of Orange County. Because he views himself, despite his age, as an aspiring socialite, he insists on meeting the man who goes by the name Solomon Wedge. (The name is a hybrid of the Solomon of the Hebrew scriptures and the dangerous surfing spot off of Newport Beach called The Wedge.) Our socialite is not a believer in superstitions new or old, but agrees to a kind of initiation rite in order to be on the inside of all things Orange County. Although the initiation consists of merely walking the length of Harbor Boulevard over the course of a week or so, the protagonist is nonetheless too insecure and cowardly to endure the enterprise alone, and so he brings along an inscrutable friend who is never quoted directly, but only spoken about by our hero. In spite of this annoying limitation, the partner is a kind of force of nature, or perhaps an alter ego. The story is driven forward by stark personality divergences in the two traveling companions and by the fact that Solomon awaits them at the end of their quest. Whether what they encounter has nothing to do with Harbor Boulevard or everything to do with it, only the reader can decide. Like an empty container, perhaps the street has the potential to be filled with anything we put in it. The street in the story seems at least twice as long as the actual one is, but its true length is anyone's guess.

Joseph Smith The Twenty-Fifth, a new Mormon prophet, emerges in Salt Lake City, much to the displeasure of the official LDS church. He brings with him a cadre of Apostles, not the least of whom are ones named Brigham and Jason. "e;JS25,"e; as he is called by those close to him, like his predecessor from the 1800s, engages in polygamy, but with a twist. He doesn't have sex with his wives. The tale also features two men having problems with their dull, married sex lives and JS25's attempts to aid them. In this book, as in other books by this author, the reader can look forward to sympathetic depictions of blasphemy, substance abuse and truth-telling.Smith pursues a female journalist working for the Deseret News. Meanwhile, through a conduit named "e;The Guru,"e; he is being sought by a young female BYU student who has lost her faith after being exposed to her Agnostic fiancé's library of anti-Mormon literature. Also seeking his help is a Buddhist space-time traveler named Sensei who suffers from existential angst. The book is a short tale of healing, revelation, spiritual experiences and hopes fulfilled. One more than one occasion we also see interesting interventions by the President of the official LDS church. As always, there are no good guys or bad guys, just ecstatic, unresolved complexity.

You are always in some combination of medieval Japan or modern Los Angeles. At every turn there is someone leading you either to the highest transcendent state or into inexcusable vice, or some combination of both. In the final analysis, ancient Kyoto and current Santa Monica are one reality. Inebriation and iron-willed discipline are of one substance. Story after story carries you forward into questions that haven't changed for millennia and answers that change every moment. Nothingness and emptiness are far warmer than you could imagine. Samsara and Nirvana are one and the same state seen from different lights. To get the story told, there will have to be some violence, some illicit romance and excessive indulgence in every sinful self-defense. Every story will seem vaguely familiar and reassuring, but turn strange and unsettling at a whim. Come ride with discredited priests, monks and holy men and women as they enshrine the ordinary as sacred and blaspheme the sacred as substandard.

Many of these stories are perfect reading for Halloween, but they are also good genre-fits for goths, punks, or those who like the moderate side of horror. The work contains an assortment of vampire bats, angry pumpkins, insatiable zombies, whimsical gods and ill-natured UFOs. These short stories cover the range of paranormal and Halloween-oriented lore. There are mailbox ghosts, unemployed movie monsters and deranged poets taunting the world. The book's evolution has been continual. It first started out as a short pamplet for Halloween poetry readings in the Bay Area; but then, as time went on, more and more stories were added, some that verged on being adult themed. Hence this book has been moved to the adult category (just as a precaution).The stories range from truly infantile to broadly philosophical to somewhat erotic. None of the works are r-rated or x-rated, but some are more suitable for young adults than others, though, in today's world, the whole thing might get a g-rating anyhow. The book is perfect to bring to Halloween parties as most of the stories were designed to be read aloud at spoken-word readings in under five or six minutes, some are as short as two minutes long. For a voracious reader, the whole thing would take less than an hour to read. (But recently, some longer stories have been added, some up to ten pages; and some of the later works verge on social commentary; and there are overtly anti-PC messages toward the end.) In print format, the work is over a hundred pages now.Many of the ancient horror-creatures in this book are updated to a modern environment with some of the monsters even having cell phones and jobs to attend to. And while many of the musings are tame compared to violent Hollywood horror flicks, there is still enough blood and violence to placate the restless reader. As the author is more known for his philosophy works than his genre work, the characters do end up musing about the meaning of life and worry about the direction their lives are taking (however, as with real life, most end up failing to arrive at any firm conclusion).Note: Most of the works in this book originally appeared in poetry form, and this is still the case with the paperback version of the book. The Smashwords version you see here was rewritten entirely for a prose-oriented audience and some of the plots were changed once the strictures of verses were put aside for this special edition.

Two desperate temp agency workers struggle to make rent in San Francisco. Their economic desperation drives them to specialize in working with clients who need short-term white-collar criminals to carry out their schemes. The perks are substantial, but the risks are high. Not only are the criminals being followed by federal agents, but the federal agents are being followed too.

A lust-crazed religious teenager is slowly driven to distraction by the hot babes that inhabit his evangelical, Texas youth group. Unable, due to his strict adherence to chastity, to have sex, and unable, due to his lack of financial status, to attract the top-shelf women he craves, he is forced into being the b-actor of romance awaiting a lucky break in the lottery of love. There is more than one surprise as the wheel of fate turns.The book was intended to be a kind of manual by a one Marvin Godwin Plinkers of Lake Compromise, Texas, (an admittedly mythical city). In responding the pleas of a besieged youth counselor who cannot figure out how to deal with the beta male orbiters that come to him, Marvin decides to write a series of lectures which contain all of the suppressed truth about these lost souls. However, the book quickly becomes half-confessional, a text in which seemingly dry treatises are interspersed with true romantic confessions. The lines between genres become hopelessly tangled. Marvin refuses to agree with either left-wing propaganda or right-wing propaganda regarding romantically unsuccessful men. He himself is that lovelorn Jesus freak who, at least seemingly, could not quite make it in any area of life.The book begins with a letter in which Marvin attempts to deal with the youth counselor who has contacted him, but the body of the book quickly degenerates into a series of dating failures and didactic mini-treatises. A recurring theme in the book is the slow loss of innocence, both theological and sexual.The book is situated in the very-transitional time of the late 1970s and early 1908s. And because every ideological and identity politics group wants to conveniently explain-away the existence of beta-male orbiters, the book is made to be ruthless in its refusal to let anyone's narrative prevail. It's universal message is that our social bedtime stories are all false. Life cannot be controlled by them, but surges forward unwilling to ever be tamed by our belief systems. Love and sex will never be bow to human attempts to manage it.

Sensei, a man accused of laziness, malingering, sexual misconduct, alcoholism, blasphemy and depression, wanders in a netherworld somewhere between modern Los Angeles and ancient Kyoto. He appears under many names and in many guises, and often belongs to many religions or no religion. He also seems indifferent to politics, long-term employment and monogamous relationships, leaving him open to the charges of agnosticism, amorality and nihilism. He wanders from temple to dive bar, and from holy lands to inner cities. Going from job to job, sometimes serving as a priest, sometimes forced into emeritus status, and at other times wandering the streets homeless, he always seeks, though his adventures, to wreck any attempts at smugness or certainty. Whatever beliefs his interlocutors are holding on to, even if it's Buddhism itself, Sensei will, through his escapades, unearth the unfounded assumptions that guide most of his questioners through their predictable days. Sensei is, above all things, unpredictable, and one can never tell whether he will respond to a given situation with a most transcendent gentleness or the most explosive violence. In the Bodhisattva tradition, he uses different medicines to cure different illnesses, as the old sutras used to say.

Eddie Smith, a passive-aggressive career-failure moves from Orange County where he faces social oblivion and flops into Santa Monica hoping to merely postpone doom. But the fates drag him into countless sexual and vocational circumstances that are far out of his league. Though self-pitying and seemingly unwilling to change his fate, he is thrown into a head-spinning sequence of dating adventures and job opportunities which he finds himself ill-equipped to handle. Reliant on alcohol, caffeine and prescription medications, he roams from doctor to doctor seeking medical help. Having fallen out of love with his family who tires of his weakness and dependency, he comes to rely on the whims of others for almost everything. Lacking a true sense of direction, he compliantly agrees to enter virtually any situation he is told to by any friend, enemy or stranger with a forceful enough will to push him this way or that. He is confronted more than once about his character and is told he is an undeserving embarrassment. He makes little effort to change people's opinion of him, but merely sets out on any quest that strikes the fancy of those who guide him. Unable to conquer his shallow impulses, he haplessly follows beautiful women around until something happens. And way too much seems to happen. But, in spite of his fecklessness, he keeps managing to eke out some sort of existence.

In a desperate attempt to avoid too much scrutiny, the Cayman Islands pretends to be searching for oil. They build dozens of massive oil rig platforms under the pretense of having found massive reserves. They pretend to be surprised when the geologists "e;turn out to be wrong."e; Then they create an overseas territory and give it autonomy. This creates a new kind of state. Since the Caymans is an overseas territory of the UK, Platform City becomes and overseas territory of an overseas territory. This proves to be sufficient to keep regulators and law enforcement off the scent of all the new money flowing through the new micro-state.Also, there are people with issues to work through about relationships, fame, peer pressure, religion and power politics. Sometimes the going gets a bit rough, and other times major conflicts are smoothed over. Whatever you're looking for, you might find it, or become disillusioned by it, if you hang out in Platform City long enough.

Break the ice at any party with this fun book of one-liners and short jokes. The first section is all drinking jokes that everyone can relate to, and the second section is a massive collection of my comedy gags from back in my social media days. The third section is a small selection of jokes I did back when I was a part-time on-air personality at a rap station in San Francisco. And the fourth section is a take on the classic Russian fictional character k---- who, of course, is "e;renowned"e; for his unrelentingly-dark humor. These jokes maintain an edge, and so no one is safe from being teased. The work is non-partisan, so everyone comes in for a solid roasting. And while the first section can apply to drinkers of all types, it was written largely under the influence of wine, mostly Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon. Publishing Notes: The section on k---- has been written recently and added to the manuscript, making this 2024 update to the book longer than previous editions. And I tried my best to remove as many typos from the previous version as I could (considering I must work without an editor, proofreader or designer). Furthermore, the hyperlinks have been updated and a primitive table of contents has been added into the text itself. Due to a programming glitch, you may have to manually scroll to the first chapter as it might not be included in auto-generated table-of-contents version presented by the distributor.

Did you ever want to take over a country but didn't know how? This short play serves as a brief beginner's guide on how to start your own banana republic. Now everyone can have their own tax haven.The action begins when ICC prison escapee George Summers and his money-laundering friends land on Reconciliation Island. They hatch a plan with the idealist-turned-tyrant, Gracia di Romanique, a well-intentioned UN worker who goes rogue.There's plenty here to keep you amused: right-wing insurgents, Marxist guerrillas, underworld financiers, international weapons dealers (and a little romance on the side).Who knew so much could happen in eighty pages? This book is the perfect gift for that politically incorrect friend of yours who likes a little cultural appropriation sprinkled over his daily serving of dark humor.

Saint John, a bipolar saint with multiple-personality disorder, and his sex-crazed pagan priestess, Helen, have quite a romance going on. Athenodorus, a perennially-single island-resort owner, finds himself hosting Helen and John as their erotic, religious and accidentally-political adventures ensue. The island's doctor, Pantheonus, a physician with a deep interest in psychology, tries to care for and analyze John, the poet, prophet and madman, as his life and fate drags everyone around him into deeper and deeper peril. The book is written in modern-day conversational motif, and, as was briefly a fashion in cinema, is written in a style that pretends not to notice many modern references occurring in a supposedly-ancient setting. Because of the book's heavy use of traumatic matters and dark subjects, it may be difficult for some readers to view the work as the comedy it really is. Further complicating things is the fact that the book is an unabashed effort to get other authors to work on creating a modern-day mythology to replace some of the now more hopelessly-irrelevant mythologies we've been stuck with. The book is written with cinema in mind and moves more like a movie than a novel. The possible dates of the scenes in this story are blurred to include possible comedic-revisionist allusions to such figures as Nero, Caligula, Augustus Caesar and Constantine. I deliberately refrain from saying whether the island where much of the action takes place is in Greece or Rome. (To push the date, time and continuity problems to the limit, I include a character from my other works who time travels between the modern United States and ancient Asia in order to carry on with his history-disrupting adventures.) The student of history and theology will notice my tacky use of precisely twenty-two chapters, the number of chapters in the actual Book of Revelations. In spite of these "e;lofty"e; considerations, the book steers clear of anything like goody-good-ism and fights, at every turn, to inject shock-value subjects and hair-raising horror so that the reader is never allowed to sink into any kind of bedtime-story certainty about any proposition, whether historical, philosophical or social. These effects are not so hard to achieve, since I am myself a continual border-crosser, moving myself from profound Agnosticism to credulous believerhood and back again. The work invites the reader to decide everything for themselves and seeks only to offer a wide array of confusing and unresolvable options.

A crippled, anxiety-ridden, precocious, apostate youth minister leaves his ministry to become a motel desk clerk in a sometimes tacky / sometimes upscale tourist motel in suburban Orange County. He lumbers around in a full-length walking cast as his fragile leg-bones are resistant to healing. His unkempt red hair is down to his shoulders and his wispy, unsightly beard make him look like outcast hippie. In fact, he is a nerdy Philosophy student at a nearby college. His reactions to the wide range of unsavory characters and upright citizens he's exposed to on this job reveal him to be alternately socially clueless and sometimes socially adept. Ever at war with his work-ethic-oriented employer from Taiwan, and always having to adjust to the odd resident managers he works with, there is no end to the debates, the conflicts and the moments of rapturous joy. It is a window into a shady, questionable, but fully-lived life, the outcome of which history may or may not opt to judge kindly. In a cry for understanding, the author cites the immortal line from the movie "e;American Hustle:"e; "e;You know, sometimes in life, all you have are fucked up, poisonous choices."e; And even so, the author and the reader are left to guess which of those choices are the least destructive. The protagonist tries his best, and the results are mixed.

In this fantasy, "e;the gods"e; allow the former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to go back in time to fulfill a wish that had been denied him when visiting the U.S. The original plot was the brainchild of a history buff who said to me on the phone one night that it had always bothered him that when Khrushchev visited the United States, it was determined that having him go to a place a complex as Disneyland was too great a security risk. He wished someone would write a book 'righting this wrong.' And so I decided to write that book. This book creates a mythology that makes not only that fantasy come true, but many other things not included in the original idea. The book is full of theological comedy, where the Atheist Khrushchev is confronted with a series of Buddhist and Hindu entities and finally Jesus Christ Himself, along with the Virgin Mary. The book presumes that each "e;all-powerful"e; creature is not as all-powerful as we might have believed, and that the cosmos itself is run more like an unruly bureaucracy in which all players are subject to rules over which no one person or thing seems to have final control. The outcomes are rather the "e;bargains"e; or "e;compromises"e; reached as each character seeks to get his "e;job"e; done. Like all of my works, the fiction or poetry is not "e;pure art"e; in and of itself, but always has the ulterior motive of clouding the philosophical waters and moving everything into a state of uncertainty, divine uncertainty, where not-knowing again makes all things plausible, at least theoretically, if not practically.

Wage Slave is born deformed to a family of heavy drinkers. His mother is a paranoid schizophrenic. He is mentally ill and disabled, but he is can't afford good enough doctors to make his disability case, so he lives in the netherworld between unemployment and disability. The pressure of not being strong enough to lift himself out of poverty, and being labeled a malingerer unworthy of aid, finally drives him over the edge. When psychiatric treatment, and the surgeries he needs, finally come, it is already too late. He spirals into a dark path of downward mobility.Discredited and abandoned, he drifts from job to job, each new job often as bad as, or worse, than the previous one. His first wife cuts him off. His first two families run away without leaving a forwarding address. He is forced into a third family which he eventually abandons, believing they will never understand him. He attempts a second engagement, but the pressure of working while disabled results in another hospitalization. He realizes his mental health is so bad that he is unable to marry and work. Utterly lost, he drifts from relationship to relationship, his health, and therefore his personality, deteriorating as he loses access to consistent health insurance and safe and clean housing.The plight of Wage Slave is both big news and no news, big news because his fate is shared by countless millions of people, but also no news because, in spite of how many people live under identical circumstances, the overall topic of his life is still taboo. Even the words used to describe his story have been purged from the English language and have been replaced by the language of denial. As the linguistic tsunami of Positive Thinking, Religious Science, New Age Healing, Positivity Coaching, Affirmation Training, The Prosperity Gospel, and A Course In Miracles, washes over the landscape, indulging in Wage Slave's story has become a social crime for which the punishment is instant cult-like shunning, disfellowshipping and interpersonal excommunication.You can speak of the story of those murdered, of those tortured, even of whole populations suffering genocide, but Wage Slave's story is still off limits. This cuts across political lines; and, if you try to talk about it, you will find your Democratic congressperson every bit as hostile to you as your Republican senator. Why? Because everyone lives with the subconscious fact that Wage Slave's story could easily become their own story. It is as if each American were navigating a thin trail on the top of an endless mountain ridge with thousand-foot drop-offs on either side. In such a world, the one forbidden topic would be that of possibly falling. It's simply too close to home to admit into the conscious mind; and so we plod on, unreal to each other, as we deny each other, face to face, the opportunity to tell our real life story, since that story points to, at every turn, a possible plunge into Wage Slave's fate.