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Since starting this blog up again with a fairly serious post, thought I should next do something cheerful and frivolous.

My brother has a podcast and I'm on the first episode!
The theme is reviewing animated shows based on a comic book character.

So, if you'd like to find out what I sound like or just hear me babble about Superman for a half hour, check out episode #1 of 'Matt Spectro thru the multiverse'

available at the apple podcast store.

If he gets lots of listens, he'll ask me back and I really want to talk Spider-man and his amazing Friends!

So, most of you who read these things will probably never have heard of Derrick Ferguson.

He was a writer too.
More prolific and successful than me, but not a household name.

He was one of the guys who got me into getting my writing out there.
First, by befriending me on a message board and encouraging me to submit some fan fiction, and later encouraging and giving me advice on getting published.
He was a great guy to talk with, wether it was about writing, movies or just shooting the breeze.

We had drifted, as life got in the way, and I hadn't talked to him in a couple years, but kept thinking I should drop Derrick an e-mail.

Unfortunately, I missed my chance, as Derrick passed away a month ago.

If you see this, if you knew Derrick, or if you must need a good, pulpy distraction from this crappy year, go check out some of his stuff.

We didn't get to talk half as much as I wish we could have.
Gonna miss you, man.

...and they will all tell you to get some writing done!

Happy holidays to everybody and anybody who has read my babbling, sent a question, liked a review or read any of my published work.

Been a crazy year and I for one am pretty tired of letting the crazy get in the way of my writing.
So, Christmas is gonna be a much needed rest and then 2020 is going to be more productive.

Might be published stuff, might be just fanfic, but i need to start getting more words on paper.

Talk to you soon

So, here's the update I was hoping to do before reality decided to kidney punch me.

The novella I was working on for kindle worlds is now in limbo, as amazon has shut them down.
Which sucks, as I was looking forward to writing GI Joe, but Jeff Bezos probably needed to save money so he could build some robot dolphins or a domed lair under a volcano...

On the bright side, this gave me the push I needed to send a story pitch to a small press publisher I'd been looking at for awhile.
It was both exciting, as they had some themed anthologies that looked like fun, but at the same time, they had no idea who I was so I had to write an introduction that made me sound professional, as well as put together a resume'.

that done, I now play the waiting game.
And check my email every 40 seconds...hold on...nope, nothing yet.

I am still a regular contributor to Blackout Press. They ain't getting rid of me without using a restraining order or a chainsaw.
Have an idea for a time travel story, which is slowing me down, as it involves research.

And, as mentioned before I am still doing fanfic based around marvel and DC characters.
It's fun, as my editor lets me get away with a lot so I'm able to work with characters I love while trying all kinds of things story-wise.
It keeps me creative while providing a needed de-stresser.

And that's what I'm up to.
Questions?
Comments?
You can drop me a note here or feel free to wander over to amazon and find something with my name on it.
If you don't feel like buying, just 'ooh' and 'ahh' over how many publishers have foolishly included me in their books.
That's what I do.

This was going to be a very different post.
I'd been writing a lot of fan fiction and am planning to take a break from that and spend the summer focusing on writing stuff for people who might actually give me money for it.

Finally, after months of ignoring my blog, I was all set do a 'state of union' and talk about my writing and where I was going etc...

and then Anthony Bourdain died.

He was one of my heroes.
He's part of the reasons I am so obsessed with food and travel as well as being on the long list of writers that inspired me, to write more, to read more and to think about writing.

He reminded me of my Dad

He was my cynical, tactless, romantic spirit animal

and I'd barely gotten over Leonard Cohen, damnit!

At a time when the world seems to have gotten mean and insular, he was someone that showed you there's good stuff out there, go see it, go taste it, go find it!

He, to borrow one of his own phrases, did not suck.

Okay, pop culture needs to be more diverse.
Every kid should be able to find a comic book, movie or video game and be able to see someone who looks like them, that's important and it's the gate way drug to getting kids hooked on the vast array of amazing geeky stuff out there, but do we have to do it by taking a random white character and changing their race?

It's lazy, it tends to cause more problems than it solves and to be honest, it's faintly insulting.
Here you go kid, you don't get your own super hero, but we'll repaint this hand-me-down and let you have it.

and it's never a main character. Race swapping gives kids sidekicks, supporting characters and villains.
They don't deserve their own superman, but they do deserve their own Jimmy Olsen?
Captain America can't be black, but we'll have the Falcon dress up kind of like him and that'll be close enough, right?

Plus, as a writer, I love the idea that writers got it wrong and thank goodness someone came along to fix things.
Obviously Stan Lee wanted Peter Parker to be a gay Asian, but the mean corporate overlords wouldn't let him!

I get that creating new characters is hard and economically risky for publishers and studios, but it's the way to go.
White is not the default setting, it's a race and culture too.

I'd much rather see everybody get their own versions than just hope they're happy with whatever scraps we toss them.
Almost nobody was happy that Jimmy Olsen is now black, but they are thrilled that Luke Cage got his own TV show.

Every culture is unique and taking a pop culture trope and filtering it through that culture is going to create something interesting and different.
Let's have Bollywood super heroes, Asian westerns, Mexican spacemen, Middle eastern vampire hunters and African time travelers.

Cause honestly, I want to read all that stuff and I can't write it myself. Not enough hours in the day.
You guys are going to have to help me.

So, you may be asking yourself "He hasn't done a blog post for awhile. I wonder what he's been up to...?"

Glad you asked.



This anthology is basically 'Power Rangers': a band of teenagers with attitude piloting robotic dinosaurs to defend the earth from an alien threat!
The big difference is the teens are scattered across the globe, each one defending a separate country.

My story features the pilot of the yellow pterodactyl, a teenage girl who lives in rural Africa.

Feel free to check it at, contribute is you'd like or just tell all your friends.

Okay, so my writing plan went off the rails almost five minutes after I announced it, the boring responsible adult part of my life got very hectic and crazy and I went a couple months without writing more than two sentences that fit together.

It wasn't fun and so I had no enthusiasm for updating this blog, as it would have been a lot of 'Well, I still suck as a writer..."

Then, I got an invite to submit some stories to a fan fiction site, which really got my brain going again, as all they wanted me to do was write for fun, no stress about being published or it being for money.

So, over the summer I did that, wrote three stories for various Blackout Press anthologies and finally took the plunge and got myself a Kindle Worlds account, submitted a story and feel like I'm back and have something worth blogging about.

Not sure how regularly I'll be doing this, but as I'm pushing myself not just to keep writing, wether stories or just some of my ramblings, I figured this would be a good way to go when I need a break, between stories, as well as a way to let my three dedicate fans know I'm alive and do a little cross-promotion:



If you are a fan of the marvel universe, or just want to see what I've been up to, this is a good place to start.
Lots of good stuff to read, besides mine and the editor David Golightly was a big help in getting me back on track and would appreciate more readers.



and this is where you can find my other writing.
I'm in the Kurt Vonnegut section. You should be able to search my name.
So, far I've only got the one story, but I have plans to try some of the other worlds.
So, if you own an ebook reader and have a spare .99 cents kicking around, give it a try.



and here's the good folks at Blackcoat Press.
They have a bunch of my stories and have started doing e-books as well as the old fashioned paper kind.

So, it was a busy summer, life in general, as well as writing-wise and maybe I'll do some entries talking about the specifics of what I've been writing.

Who knows?
Hope there are still a couple of you out there to read this.
Not that I'm not used to talking to myself, but it's nicer to think somebody is out there and, self-promotion aside, I like recommending books to people.

Very sad, one of my writing heroes is gone.

While described as the 'Douglas Adams of fantasy', he was more like 'The Douglas Adams of Fantasy, if Douglas could make a deadline.'

He was some kind of amazing mix of Tolkien and the Marx Brothers.
He blended humor, fantasy and was also able to make you think.

He created one of my all time favorite literary characters, the Luggage.

On the bright side, he wrote 40 Disc World novels, and I've only read about ten, so I have plenty of books to console myself with.

2015.
A good sci-fi sounding date.
If this is the year the apes or robots rise up, I for one, would not be surprised.

While I wait for the collapse of civilization as we know it, I've been doing a lot of thinking about my writing: what I've been doing, what I want to do and what I want to do differently.

I want to try some new things as well as set some goals. I'm aware that the odds of me selling the movie rights for an obscene amount of money is not a likely scenario.
( sorry, if you are disappointed to read that, Scarlet Johansson)
Money trickles in, but not enough to let me quit my day job.
And that's okay.
I've got about a dozen stories floating around out there. Most of them I've gotten paid for, a couple I just got my comp copy.
I've gotten to write about characters I love and create a few of my own. I've met some nice folks and occasionally been treated like a real life professional author type person.

So my goal for 2015 is to finish a story every month.
Eleven stories, some for the publishers I'm currently working with, a couple as attempts to get my foot in the door at new publishers and a couple bits of fanfic, just for the fun of it.
Yeah, I know a year has 12 months, but january was insane, so I used that to get a rough idea of a plan in mind.
Maybe I will get wildly ambitious and get 12 stories done, but if I do that's a bonus.

I'm also hoping to use this blog to keep track of how I'm doing, shamelessly plug projects and when I need break and want to step away from whatever story is stressing me out.

So, that's the plan. I hope all five of my fans will stick around, keep an eye on me and maybe even drop me a note of encouragement or even a 'have you lost the flimsy grip you had on reality?!' note.
Either way.

So, wish me luck and thanks for listening to me babble.