My Life As A Blerd

Many of you know me as an athlete as well as a writer. Though I started lifting weights when I was twelve, being an athlete was a fairly late development in my life. Before that, I was just a big gangly kid who read horror novels and comic books and wrote poems. I was an awkward kid. I had growing pains that kept me from running track or being much use on a basketball court or a football field. Besides, I had only a rudimentary understanding of those games and even less interest in them. I was shy, so I was often teased, despite (and often because of) my freakish size, six-two by the age of twelve and six five by the time I was fourteen. As a kid, I was the guy who'd rather read a horror novel or watch Creature Double Feature than watch a basketball game, who'd rather watch Star Trek than the Super Bowl, whose breath could be taken away by a Renaissance painting, but was bored to tears by baseball. I was the kid who left the party early because there were drugs and alcohol there, preferring to spend the evening curled up with a Stephen King novel. I was more excited by the latest issue of Discovery Magazine than Sports Illustrated. I watched PBS and listened to NPR. I didn't play Dungeons and Dragons, but my best friends did. I collected comic books. I dreamed of owning a telescope and a science kit and wanted to build my own robot. I cried while listening to Prince songs. I couldn't rap or breakdance or dance like Micheal Jackson, but I spent hours in front of the mirror trying my best. But I could barely pull off a decent two step with a twist until I was damned near twenty. I could kick ass, but other than that, I was a nerd. And I still am. Living in Texas these last few years has hammered that fact home.

I'm a writer, an artsy-fartsy liberal. I don't hunt or fish or have any desire to own a pick-up truck or build anything with power tools. I still don't get the attraction of Sunday night football or spending a day drinking beer on the back porch or the couch. I'd still rather read a book or watch a horror movie. I love boxing and MMA and being an ex-fighter keeps me from having my man card challenged, but I still get the looks.

People are still surprised that a guy my size never played basketball or football in high school. I went to Creative and Performing Arts High School where I learned to write poetry and angst-ridden Existentialist prose instead of how to slam-dunk or tackle a quarterback. I grew up in the ghetto during one of the most violent decades in history, but I was never a gangster. I didn't use or sell drugs. I didn't carry a gun. I fought for fun, and because you had to fight to survive, but I never killed anyone. I did what I had to do, but I didn't glorify it. I was the good kid.

Growing up in Philadelphia as a young, Black, male who wasn't interested in sports, who read Tolkien, Asimov, King, McCammon, Barker, Nova, Scientific American, every Marvel comic I could get my hands on, wrote poetry and short stories while dreaming of getting published in magazines like Cemetery Dance, Twilight Zone, and Night Cry, watched horror movies and Kung Fu flicks obsessively, and listened to Prince like it was a religion, I could not have been more different from my peers if I'd had a dick growing out of my forehead. I was an outsider and I still am.

When they hear that I am going to a horror convention, my co-workers snicker and ask me if there will be people in vampire costumes there, equating KillerCon with news clips they've seen of ComiCon and DragonCon. They invite me to spend a weekend with them at "the deer lease" hunting, and I politely decline. Frankly, I'd rather be dipped in shit. They ask me if I'm playing in the company softball, golf, or fishing tournaments, and again, I politely decline. I'm just not that kind of guy. They talk about spending the weekend working on their truck or the new high-caliber assault rifle they spent half their paycheck on and I talk about the new limited edition Jack Ketchum or Ed Lee novel I picked up to blank stares. That's cool. I'm used to it. It's all lovely. I know who I am and I am comfortable with it. I am the former US Heavyweight  Muay Thai Kickboxing Champion. I trained the former UFC Heavyweight Champion. I am the writer of The Resurrectionist, Succulent Prey, Yaccub's Curse, Pure Hate, and a dozen other novels and novellas. I have run marathons, acted in action films, been a runway model, dated runway models, and read poetry in the nude. I am the husband of Christie White, the father of Sultan, Isis, and Nala, the son of Floretta White, and I am a nerd. I am a Black nerd, a Blerd, and I'm damned proud of it. I wouldn't have it any other way. Word to the motherfucker.

To The Death

So, I have an update on my zombie novel, now a zombie novella. Severed Press has picked up the novella and will be publishing it next year. I am currently doing a complete rewrite, adding fast zombies and increasing the ferocity of the kills. This is going to be one bloody book. I've already gotten through the first 25,000 words of what will end up being around 35,000 words and it is quite a nasty piece of work. Here's a brief synopsis:

In a village in Uganda, The Lord's Revolutionary Militia decimates an entire town and buries the bodies in a mass grave. Two days later, a ranger squad enters the same town and are attacked by hundreds of undead corpses, infected by a strange purple fungus. General Nwosu, leader of the Lord's Revolutionary Militia, with advice from a strange red-haired businessman named Bill Vlad, devices a plan to use the "dead ones" to take over all of Uganda. 

In San Francisco, Elgin Washington finds the body of former MMA legend, Hollister McCoy, in a dumpster. His body is badly decayed and covered in an unidentified purple fungus. His neck is broken and there is a gunshot wound in his forehead. Both wounds were delivered postmortem and there is evidence that Hollister's brain was still active at the time, several days after the rest of his body had begun to decompose.

Agent Emmanuel Stern was with the ranger squad in Uganda when they were overrun by hundreds of the living dead. He barely escaped with his life. Half their squad was decimated, killed by living corpses reanimated by a purple mold spore that had taken over their entire central nervous system. Days later, while preparing to return to Uganda amid reports that a local warlord was using the fungus to create an undead army, Agent Stern receives word that a corpse has turned up in America, in a major city, covered in an unknown purple fungus.

Tyler Payne has an anger problem. He used to deal with it by fighting on the streets and getting himself arrested. Then he found mixed-martial arts and his world changed. Now he had a legal outlet for his aggression and he did quite well, quickly rising through the ranks of the fight world. But when Tyler's anger began to ebb, he lost his edge. He began to lose. When a shady underground fight promoter named Bill Vlad invites him to fight in his "Terror Combat League" making more money than Tyler ever dreamed, he jumps at the opportunity. Soon he finds himself battling undead former martial-arts icons. Fighting the dead brings out Tyler's old killer instinct. After a few successful bouts, Vlad offers Tyler the fight of a lifetime, $750,000 dollars to fight Lester Broad, the former World Heavyweight Champion, a two-hundred-and-eighty-pound monster who knows no fear, feels no pain, and has only one drive... hunger!

To The Death
by Wrath James White

Coming 2013 from Severed Press!

400 Days of Oppression

More than five years ago, I began working on a novel about interracial relationships and the struggles of mixing cultures that have have been historically in conflict. I have stopped and started this manuscript many times, not because I couldn't think of how to finish it, but because I couldn't imagine who would publish it. It is is one fucked up story and doesn't fit neatly into any one genre. It is too erotic to be horror or a thriller, despite many horrific elements, and doesn't have the requisite body count. Yet it is far too twisted and disturbing and lacks the typical formula for a true erotica novel. Too intelligent and thought-provoking. But I knew I had to write it. This was my chance to let out a lot of different thoughts and emotions on the subject. My very first relationship was with an Italian girl back in 1984 and the heartbreak I went through back then as a result of all the prejudice and bigotry we faced left some serious scars. I came through it all right, eventually, but imagining how all that adversity at such a young age might have warped and twisted me, what a monster I might have become, intrigued the hell out of me. I had to put that to paper. In walks Blood Bound Books.

When Blood Bound Books came to me with the proposal to publish one of my novels, I knew I had to pitch 400 Days. My wife had been bugging me to finish it for years. In a way, it was both of our stories, because she was just now getting used to the stares, the naked hatred and prejudice directed at her from those who disapprove of our relationship. I'd had more than 25 years to get over it and learn to ignore it. Even the day to day prejudice a Black man faces in this country is so normal to me now that I barely notice it anymore. My wife, on the other hand, is continually shocked and appalled when some security guard follows me around a department store for fear that I might steal something or when someone makes an off-color remark. I had to write it for her. I knew my readers would love it too. 

Sure, some of my readers just want my typical gore-fest, and I've got a lot of wet stuff coming up for them next year to satisfy their thirst for carnage, but a lot of them also read me for my fucked-up perspective on the world and whatever insights into the human condition there are to be gleaned from it. And, of course, there are those who read me because I can write one hell of a sex scene and they are going to go ape-shit for this novel because, what it lacks in twisted violence, it makes up for in twisted sex. I just couldn't find a publisher with the balls to handle it. Well, that's how I looked at it anyway. The reality was that cross-genre novels can be a bitch to promote and in a touchy publishing environment, taking a risk on an unknown product can be... well ... risky. But Blood Bound Books went nuts for the idea. So, what was my idea?  

The idea was to take the controversial topic of interracial romance and lay it out raw and bleeding for all to see and to make it even more controversial by adding a few sexual taboos and stirring up some of the most contentious racial issues. So, I wrote a story about an interracial couple that is heavily into bondage, domination, and S&M, who decide to try an experiment. If she can go through the entire Black experience in America, one day for every year suffered by African Americans, Kenyatta, a black man and, most importantly, the man she loves, will marry her. Kenyatta, a master manipulator, convinces her that this is the only way she could ever really relate to what life is like for Black people and the only way she could ever really understand him. And so she agrees.

The oppression of African Americans lasted 400 years, from the beginnings of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade through the Civil Rights movement, Natasha only has to last 400 days. If she can make it, Kenyatta will marry her. But if she can't, if she uses the safe word, a word so reprehensible she couldn't imagine herself ever uttering it aloud, the experiment will end and their relationship will be over.  

As members of The Society of "O", the nation's second oldest BDSM community, Natasha and Kenyatta had experimented with bondage and domination before, but the depths of pain and humiliation she will undergo over the course of the next year, will go far beyond the safe and sane. The "simulations" Kenyatta devises will test both the limit's of racial guilt and the power of Natasha's love. 

This book is designed to be both intensely erotic and profoundly though-provoking while at the same time being thoroughly fucked up. No matter what side you fall on, on issues of race, you will find something to love and something to hate in the pages of this book. It will stir your passions one way or another. You fuckers are gonna love it.

Coming 2013 from Blood Bound Books.

Doctor Trevor Adams is a genius by all accounts. His ethics, however, leave a bit to be desired. When the Aphrodite Aesthetic Reconstruction Clinic hires him to create a genetic weight-loss treatment, Doctor Adams uses a synthetic retro vir

us to transport pygmy shrew DNA into clients willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars to be able to eat whatever they want without gaining a pound.

Pygmy Shrews have metabolisms so fast they don't store fat cells and have to eat every two hours, twice their body-weight in food every day, or they will die. When they are hungry, they will attack and consume prey more than twice their size. They have fangs tipped with a red iron ore, saliva that contains a paralyzing neurotoxin, are the size of a quarter, and are considered to be some of the most vicious animals on earth. When Doctor Adam's clients begin burning more calories than they can possibly consume, he is afraid he has made one terrible mistake.

Coming 2013 from Sinister Grin Press

Can't Hack It

So, a year ago, when I was in-between jobs and desperately needed the money, I signed a contract to write a series of zombie novels. I've always wanted to dabble with writing Dystopian fiction, particularly involving zombies, however a three book series seemed like a lot for a genre already saturated with carnivorous corpses. What new twist did I have to offer?

I came up with the idea of a mold spore discovered in Uganda by a notorious warlord that slows the rate of decay in infected corpses and keeps the infected's central nervous system and skeletal muscular system functional, just enough to allow the corpse to attack and thereby infect others. The warlord uses it to create an army of the undead who maraud across Africa with his army cleaning up in their wake. The book also features the return of the sinister businessman/ conman, Bill Vlad, who discovers the mold and uses it to turn washed-up MMA stars into zombies for his underground fight league. Not a bad idea. Crazy. Original. Possibly even enough to build a series around. As I wrote it, I started getting into it. There's a lot of gore to be had in a book about zombies, warlords, and MMA fighters. Here's the problem though. The publisher wanted them to be Romeroesque zombies of the slow-moving variety. That made it harder for my idea to work.

As I got further into the book, I realized I was writing myself into a corner. At some point I was going to have to explain how one of these shambling dead things in a cage would be much of a fight for anyone, let alone a trained fighter. A hundred of them could overwhelm an opponent through sheer numbers, but one slow-moving assailant? A real fighter would tear it to shreds. Glossing over that huge plot hole and not coming up with an explanation would just be dishonest. The other issue I had was that I quickly realized this book would be one awesome novella or one meh novel. I pride myself on taking risks with subject matter, this was one crazy idea to begin with, but dragging this story out into a full length novel, make that three full-length novels, would mean taking a risk with quality and that was something I just couldn't do. It brought up all my fears of becoming a hack, churning out mediocre books just to pay the bills.

 So, I contacted the publisher yesterday and told them I just couldn't do it and that I would be returning their generous advance. They could not have been nicer or more understanding, which was great because I'd never done anything like that before and was feeling pretty bad about it. I'd always delivered on every contract I'd ever signed, but these things happen sometimes in the creative world. Sometimes projects just don't turn out as planned.  It was just the first time it had ever happened to me. Yes, I could have really used the money, but no, it was just not worth turning out something I wouldn't have been proud of. Now, I will probably finish the book (working title "To The Death") as a novella with fast zombies that are absolute hell to contend with.That would solve that little plot dilemma and make for some truly terrifying action. In the meantime, I am also finally finishing a book I've been wanting to finish for a couple years now, 400 Days of Oppression, a twisted, BDSM, erotic, mindfuck of a novel. I should have a contract on that one any day now and it will hopefully hit the shelves this Spring. My apologies to those who were hoping for a full-length zombie novel from me. Sorry, I just couldn't hack it.

Explaining My Hypocrisy

Recently, I have lost over twenty pounds. I now hover between 236 and 240 depending on the day. I would like to get down to 230. I have Tweeted several times about how much better I feel about myself at this weight. I even mentioned that I can finally stand to look at myself in the mirror again naked. I recognize myself again. Sounds like I was experiencing some self-hate when I was walking around at 260. And that, as one friend pointed out, sounds like one of the female characters in my books that I deride for not loving themselves and he's right. It does. So, how do I explain my admonitions against women who complain about their weight and my call for them to love themselves and my own uncomfortableness with weight gain?

First, you must understand that I have spent the better part of my adult life in the low 200lb range. My fighting weight was normally around 225 to 229 and I'm 6'5"! I was 218 for my first amateur fight and was 215 for most of my amateur career. I weighed 226 for my first pro fight. That is quite lean for a man my size, but that was normal for me. I remember when I thought I was fat if I got above 230. Why? Because I was an athlete, a fighter, and weight gain, to me, meant I wasn't training hard enough. There are also different expectations for athletes. We are held to a different standard. Our bodies are a large part of our identities. Tell me that it would not completely shatter your image of me were you to see me waddle into a convention 20 or 30 pounds overweight?  Not an excuse, but an explanation. I certainly realize that I am not an athlete anymore. You don't need 18" biceps to write a novel, but once a fighter, always a fighter.

The other thing is that I did not choose to say fuck it and let myself gain weight. I suffered a knee injury that kept me from running for a couple years and I just could not find another form of cardiovascular activity I liked as much as running. Now that I've had surgery and I can run again, the weight is finally coming off, and I'm starting to look like my old self again. It feels good, especially at 42 and having been retired from competition for almost five years, to be almost back to the weight I was when I was an active fighter. Yes, there is some ego involved there.

And here's for a real moment of honesty. I have always thought that men should be muscular and lean. In my mind, women are soft. Men are hard. As much as I adore a voluptuous curvaceous woman and even find skinny women, or women without curves and jiggly parts,  somewhat less appealing (Yes, I said jiggly parts and you know what I mean,) I could not stand anything on me jiggling. Never could. Men should be hard.

This is not an opinion I came to over much deliberation. No thought at all went into forming this particular aesthetic. It's not something I can rationally defend or would want to. I would love to disabuse myself of this notion. It's one of those ideas you pick up over the course of your life and they stick in your head and you don't know where they came from or how they became a part of you. It's a prejudice of sorts. Fat on a man looks womanly to me. I know, I know, it's terrible. I am trying hard to shake that perception and I apologize to anyone and everyone who is offended. I certainly understand and I do think everyone should love themselves, men as well as women. Moving to Texas has certainly helped in that regard. What barbecue and Mexican food does to the human body should be criminal. But that particular aesthetic is surprisingly stubborn.

So, yes. I did have some serious issues with myself at 260, And yes, I realize that at 6'5" tall 260 lbs does not exactly look rotund. It just ain't me. I have been lifting weights since I was twelve. I have been eating healthy since I've been an adult, cooking for myself. It is part of who I am. I am a health nut, a gym-rat, a fitness geek. I have been for as long as I can remember and that is not likely to change. Does that mean that I look down on men who are not? Not at all. As I said, I think everyone, men and women, should love themselves, love their bodies, as they are. It's just not who I am. One day, I will have to accept that my body will never look at 40 or 50 or 60 the way it did in my twenties and thirties, but that day is not today.

I guess I should also apologize to any women who have been offended over the years by my posting about love of larger women. I certainly did not mean to exclude you or imply that you were not beautiful as well. I find all women beautiful and have dated women of every size and shape. I just have my preferences. But there are not many women I'd kick out of my bed. And there are no women I'd ever want to see down on themselves for not meeting someone else's  physical aesthetic. As long as you are healthy and happy, you are good. I just need to work on being as loving and tolerant with my own sex and my own self.

And Now...

KillerCon has come and gone and it was as fabulous as a six-foot drag queen in a blonde afro-wig and 6-inch stilettos, as sexy as a stripper's bachelorette party, as informative as a graduate school Creative Writing lecture, as productive as a polygamist's womb, as wild as my bedroom in 1992. Now, it's back to writing. Currently writing my first pure zombie novel to be published by Severed Press. The novel is to be titled TO THE DEATH. It mixes the ravenous undead with mixed-martial arts. Violence ala mode.

I just finished writing a new novella for Sinister Grin Press about a beauty and weight loss clinic that offers plastic surgery, diet and exercise programs, and a genetic retro-virus guaranteed to make you lose weight faster than you ever dreamed possible. The only problem are the side-effects, a rapacious appetite, venomous saliva, and red fangs. The novella is called VORACIOUS and it is due to be released early next year.

And then there's PREY DRIVE, SUCCULENT PREY PART II. PREY DRIVE picks up where SUCCULENT PREY left off. Joseph Miles is locked in a maximum security prison, desperate to get out and resume his quest for a cure for his addiction to human flesh. To that end, he manipulates a prison guard, a long-lost family member, and a woman who may just be more violent and dangerous than Joseph Miles himself.  Sinister Grin Press will be releasing this little nightmare-maker at WHC 2013 in New Orleans.

Yeah, I can't wait either.