![[tone·milazzo]](https://tonemilazzo.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/logo.png){kind=logo}
San Diego writer of speculative fiction in prose and comics. Author of the YA urban fantasy Picking Up the Ghost, the upcoming E.S.P. and espionage novel The Faith Machine, and the upcoming graphic novel Dead Woman.
Open to freelance work punching up stories or homepages, script-doctoring, beta reads, or other opinion vendings. Represented by Cherry Weiner
Stories have been with us since the first hunter told another about the one who got away. Stories are what make us human. Stories lead to understanding. Stories are cooked. Fiction, religion, biographies, gossip, gaming, and history it all goes into the pot and out comes as fiction. To those ends I’ve been around, professionally speaking. Marine, taxi driver, teacher, scientist, and coder. This breath of experience has given me a little knowledge about a lot of things, good and bad.
A good story reaches beyond the scope of its words.
Big Talk/Small Business Podcast
John Husler, Co-owner Lestat’s Coffee Houses
John Husler and his partner Jamie have been in the coffee shop business for over twenty years. First with the store in the Normal Heights neighborhood of San Diego. Now with two other shops through up town. Find out how they started, how he hires, and how he’s adapted to technology though the decades.
Lestat’s / Facebook / Twitter / Instagram
Recent Posts
NaNoFailMo
I tried and failed at NaNoWriMo last month. That’s fine, most experiments fail. I went in hoping for a kick start on the third novel, Alejandro’s Ocean a post time travel story about feeling unappreciated. 3100 words in and the problems were pretty clear:
- The backstory was more interesting than the story itself.
- The supporting cast was a collection of stick figures.
- What little I had, was written toward a theme.
The consequences of rejecting the outlining process and of putting theme before character and plot. Lesson learned. It’s outlines from here on out, and actions will make the message. This book isn’t for me to write. On to the next one.
Russian Espionage Agencies Have Terribly Boring Names
With The Faith Machine and the ESPionage property I draw a lot from the weird history of Cold War parapsychology. US agencies like Stargate Project, MKUltra, and the First Earth Battalion are the backbone of the setting and inspired my own creations; Project Dead Blind, MKIntra, and Task Force 21.
And then there’s Russia; the land of literal and uninspired nomenclature. According to Parapsychology in the USSR, released by the CIA in 2000, there was The Russian Society for Experimental Psychology in 1870, the Institute for Brain Research in 1921, and the Special Laboratory for Parapsychology founded under the Soviets in 1961. Yawn.
There’s an unposted appendix of 27 other Soviet institutes conducting paranormal research. I filed a Freedom of Information Act request for this list, but I don’t have high hopes that there’s any flair on that list. The only cool espionage name the Soviets ever came up with was SMERCH which stands for ‘Death to Spies.’
Graphics for a gaming podcast/YouTube channel I’m developing, Cyclops Road
