Hat tip:  Naaman Brown

Nicky published a new short story, “A Society Unpublished,” on both Book Country and Amazon’s Kindle two days ago.

Here’s the product description (emphasis mine):

2017 where the publishing industry has brought about a lawlessness that one has never seen; Nickolaus Pacione had seen it first hand as it would fall two years after he got fired from the one place he was working with. He addresses some dark subject matter and the thoughts coming to mind writing this story what if some one was published doing the act of historic crime of being a pamphleteer, the crime that Thomas Paine often got in trouble for as this story. It’s in the tradition of The Twilight Zone episode of “Time Enough At Last” as the hoodie he wears sometimes in his e-book promotional are a nod to Rod Serling. Nickolaus gives Rod Serling a very strong nod as he is a protected class in the Civil Right of 1964 and of 1991, where he seen how the publishing industry completely ignores these laws at times.

He was never an employee of Lulu or CreateSpace.  Even if he had been, firing him would not have been an act of “lawlessness.”  The other thing that made me laugh was his implied cause and effect between wearing his Twilight Zone hoodie, and writing like Lynn Venable.  I commented to that effect, here:

Wearing his Twilight Zone hoodie, which “are a nod” to Rod Serling, makes him write like Lynn Venable? It’s a pretty good bet that Nicky never read the original short story, and only saw Serling’s teleplay for that episode.

If he’s going to use the word “as” to imply cause and effect, he ought to at least make the effect part of the sentence a logical outcome of the stated cause. It would not at all surprise me if he were to write “I woke up hungry yesterday as my shoelace was untied.”

There is no “look inside” preview.  I can’t tell what the cover is supposed to be.  It looks like smeared charcoal on a gray background.  No doubt, it’s original Pacione artwork, but it doesn’t look like anything in particular — not even one of those tromp l’oeil sketches (is it a goose or a rabbit?).

Edit:  thanks to Christine for submitting the following screen shots of the preview.  They’re clickable to full size.  He looks severely constipated in that selfie.

Hat tip:  Ablert

This was published last November on Booktango.  It’s unclear to me when the Kindle version was made available, but here it is.  It’s $1.99 for an 18 page short story, which probably includes the cover(s).  I’ll get to the look inside preview in a minute.  Here’s the product description:

“We approach the much darker side of what we call the wunderkind; as the realization born within them become the depths of cyberspace. This world, well as I, Nickolaus A. Pacione, invite you into the bleak mirror within that ethereal shadow born within the fabrications that might be Stephen Glass’ nonfiction. The weird world of fan fiction being more celebrated than original ideas.

The seedy world of addicts, gang members and anti-heroes – is this reality or a horror short story where the lines are blurred to something more frightening around this season of the witch.”

The product description really is enclosed in quotation marks on the product listing page.  The description itself reads as though the words were randomly drawn from one of those clear plastic balls commonly used for charity raffles.  Spin the ball a few times, open the door, and pull a ticket.  Except, instead of numbers, each ticket contains a word.  Repeat the process until two paragraphs have been assembled, and call it a product description.  I have no idea what the story is about, having read that.  Clearly, Pacione was shooting for how the words sounded in the foggity fog of his mind, without any regard for coherence.

Inside, the text is a tiny font — mercifully legible, but tiny.  The preview is limited to the cover, publication details, and what is presumably the first page of the “story.”  For all practical purposes, this is a monologue rant, interspersed with dialogue between the unnamed voices in his head.

As Ablert points out, here,

Nicky has stopped trying to write fiction altogether. He can’t be bothered creating even paper thin characters anymore. He used to get a thinly disguised version of himself into a diner with a Mary Sue as an excuse to bitch about his rivals. That was his standard story for years, but now it’s just him arguing with himself in a vacuum.

See for yourselves, in the following screenshot.  It’s clickable for a full size view.