Here’s the third product of the collaboration between singer, songwriter, guitarist and bassist Rick Neidlinger and myself (drums, mix, mastering):

The second track that songwriter, guitarist and bassist Rick Neidlinger and myself (drums, mix, mastering) have collaborated on to date is finished:

My first novel, the sci-fi / satire Cynicism Management, will be on sale on Amazon until 17 July. During this time you’ll be able to get it for only 99 cents. For more information about the novel – or to grab a free direct download of the original soundtrack for it – head here.

I’ve recently started to collaborate with Rick Neidlinger from Kansas, USA, whom I’ve met on SoundCloud and I happen to like his true “southern rock ‘n’ roll” tunes and sound. So we decided to come up with a four-track EP: Rick would write and record everything, and then I’d contribute to the project by recording real acoustic drums, mixing and mastering the tracks.

This is the first result of the collaboration, entitled Rattlesnake:

More coming soon.

My good pal Giulio Tarantino has just released his first EP, entitled “Suicide Circus”, as a (for now rather fictitious) band called “Bullet Democracy”:

According to his Bandcamp bio, Giulio Tarantino (a.k.a. Bullet Democracy) is an Italian film director, musician, singer & songwriter, currently residing in Berlin, Germany. He makes a living as an Italian deli proprietor and keeps buying useless junk at the local flea market.

All of this is true. Giulio would probably perish in considerable pain if he were prohibited from haggling at the local flea market, the exact purpose of which continues to elude me to this day. Be that as it may, I’ve gladly assisted him in the realisation of his long-time dream of publishing an album, so I recorded, produced, mixed and mastered his debut while also playing drums, percussion, bass, keyboards and additional guitar on it. I’d characterise the four-track EP – which Giulio is also determined to present live at some point in the future, at least with a limited acoustic live line-up – as a sort of grunge with Italian pronunciation. It may be interesting for some music aficionados to know that Giulio’s distinctive vocal has such a low register that we had to resort to recording three of four tracks on this album with a baritone guitar tuned to B E A D F# B (as well as drop A, where necessary).

The EP is available for download on the Bullet Democracy Bancamp site (name your price / free).

The soundtrack for the upcoming theatre performance “Kratko in jedrnato” (Short and to the Point), directed and co-written by Marko Djukić, has just been released as a 15-minute EP, entitled “Short and to the Point“. You can download it on Bandcamp (free / name your price) or grab a free download here.

All tracks on Short and to the Point were composed, arranged, recorded & produced by Borut Praper (a.k.a. Ray Kosmick). All instruments performed by Borut Praper. Produced, mixed and mastered by Ray Kosmick in S.U.R. Studio, Berlin, in 2016. The cover artwork is a screenshot from the film Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans by F.W. Murnau (1927).

Theatre performance credits:
Starring: Branka Hočevar, Helena Bevc, Renata Jančar, Neli Mlinar, Tamara Kragulj, Aja Kobe k.g., Roman Tišler, Urh Props, Maks Kovič, Žiga Rappl, Gal Mavretič
Set design & costumes: Katja Sladič Rudolf
Assistant set & costume designers: Tina Baš, Tjaša Doblekar, Tessa Adamič
Hair stylist: Nina Vozel
Light design: Aljoša Vizlar
Technicians: Jure P. Končar, Matej Bračun
Performance produced by the TOMBAS society in cooperation with the Litija Cultural Centre

I am overjoyed to report that my second novel, Pendulum Pet, has just been released on Amazon! It’s currently enrolled in Amazon KDP Select, so it’ll remain exclusive to Amazon for the foreseeable future. I might change my mind and release it elsewhere at some point, but for now let’s see how this arrangement works out.

I would hereby like to thank my precious “beta readers”: Monika Fritz, Rick Harsch, Vesna Žagar, Barbara Drobnak, Jure Rudolf, Sunčan Stone and Marko Djukić for their invaluable insight, assistance in the never-ending whack-a-typo hunt, as well as their involvement in advanced mental fart eradication. Furthermore, hats off to Matej Peklar, top-notch illustrator and my best friend back in primary school (in another millennium, in a now deceased country), for his witty cover design. Yay, we’ve got a thoroughly grumpy pooch on the cover!

Over here you can listen to the complete soundtrack for this novel and download it for free.

I can only hope Pendulum Pet manages to find a few readers whose sense of humour is convoluted enough to enjoy it. By the way, the price on Amazon is $3.99.

ABOUT THE BOOK

PENDULUM PET
(Cynicism Management Series Book 2)
Satire / comic fantasy / sci-fi

Pendulum Pet is a romp through the vicissitudes of a gregarious advanced culture with too much time, information and technology on its hands. Paranoia is placed and misplaced, the devious succeed through manipulations of those who gaze in wonder at the mundane like chimps on acid, or fail when the truly bizarre and unthinkable inadvertently stand in their way.

Civilizations clash, as they will, when Metaore, a transnational mining corporation headed by CEO Budd Dimples, purchases a field behind Boris and Beeba’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Tavern, a cult concert venue and meeting place of an eclectic collection of feckless artists, in order to undertake a remarkable experiment: drilling a geopunctural borehole to heal the Earth. Budd has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and taken a sudden turn toward esoteric wisdom, much encouraged by his healer and sex therapist Ashtara Wolf.

Bogomyr Yadvig, one of the more outré of the regulars, lives in a tent nearby with Rex the tavern hound – his idea of communing with Greek Cynics in preparation for an upcoming performance piece. He has cause to lose sleep and accumulate suspicion that the corporation has nefarious unstated ends in mind, particularly when he has his Roswell moment, if that is indeed what it is.

The corporate endeavour comes to a sudden halt when their drill runs into an impenetrable barrier, leading to mutually unfortunate and potentially combustible discoveries, along with stunning truths about parallel evolution and devolution. Yes, the world of the techno-information age has gone mad and survival may very well depend on the whims of a pendulum pet.

Please note that this novel is adult, poignant satire. As such it contains explicit language, sex scenes, politically incorrect depictions, and may be offensive to the more irritable readers. Even though the work is part of a series, the story is self-contained and can be read independently of the other Cynicism Management Series novels.

First of all, until the end of February the second edition of my first novel, Cynicism Management, will be on sale in most digital stores (e.g. Amazon | Apple | Inktera | Kobo | B & N). During this time you’ll be able to get it for only 99 cents. For more information about the novel – or to grab a free direct download of the extensive original soundtrack for it – head here. By the way, a few people asked about this: yes, of course the book is DRM free. DRM protection annoys the hell out of me, and I definitely don’t hold it against anyone if they make “unauthorised” copies of the book.

Secondly, the graphics and illustration wizard Matej Peklar has just finished the cover for my second novel, Pendulum Pet (Cynicism Management Series, Book 2), which is to be released in March. The final draft is done, and I’m about to start formatting the text for e-readers.

In the meantime, head to this page to find out more about the upcoming novel and listen to the complete, quite extensive original soundtrack for it (you can either stream it or download it free of charge).

Finally, I’m happy to report that my new author homepage is now finished and you’re most welcome to check it out. Apart from my usual ramblings about books and music it also offers direct free downloads of most of my albums, recorded in the recent years (I’ll be adding more from my “back catalogue” over time). The download packages – available to all my “new release mailing list” subscribers – contain tracks in 320kbps mp3 format as well as artwork for each of the albums. This means that you can now download the complete Cynicism Management and Ray Kosmick discography directly from my site – free of charge.

I’m currently working on my third novel and the accompanying music album, both of which will be entitled Dog Days. The book is at about 20 % of rough draft, and I’ve just started composing the songs and recording the first tracks, so no demos yet…

This about wraps up everything I have to report this month. Next time I’ll hopefully be able to announce the release of my new novel.

My new “author homepage” is now up and running at www.boripraper.eu. It focuses on the literary side of my work, but also offers direct free downloads of most of my music from the recent years (I’ll probably be adding more from my “back catalogue” over time). These packages contain tracks in 320kbps mp3 format as well as artwork for each of the albums and are available to all subscribers for my “new release mailing list“. Under the “Novels & Soundtracks” tab you can see more details about my books as well as download the complete soundtracks for both of them (collections of Cynicism Management and Ray Kosmick tracks, featured in the novels).

Meanwhile, the second edition of my first novel, Cynicism Management, has also been released on Apple, Barnes & Noble, Inktera, Kobo, and Scribd (apart from Amazon).

The second edition of my first novel, Cynicism Management, is now available on Amazon (the link should automatically take you to your local Amazon store) for $2.99 / £1.99.

HOWEVER! Be warned that this price can vary greatly between the countries you’re buying the book from, Slovenia being one of the most unfortunate ones. In Slovenia the $2.99 book will cost you $6.09. For example, these are the prices I’ve been able to confirm (when browsed in different countries, on Amazon US) after some research via VPN servers and/or with the assistance of friends living abroad:

– USA: $2.99 (my price at Amazon US)
– Germany: $3.29 (most likely my price of €2.99 at Amazon DE, with currency conversion from €)
– UK: $2.96 (my price at Amazon UK, with currency conversion from £)
– Switzerland: $ 3.26
– Latvia: $ 6.04
– Lithuania: $ 6.04
– Czech Republic: $ 2.99
– Romania: $ 3.71
– Slovenia: $ 6.09
– Portugal: $ 3.68
– Spain: $ 3.26
– Sweden: $ 3.74

I tried clearing up the issue with Amazon, but for three days of fruitless back-and-forth they kept evading and muddling the issue with diversionary tactics and nebulous quasi-information before finally sending the following statement (after I demanded explicitly that they send me a clear breakdown of how exactly they calculated the Slovenian price):

“The availability and pricing of titles in global Kindle Stores may vary by home country or region, because of taxes and other operating costs. However, it is our operational policy that we don’t disclose the breakdown to our publishers/authors. Unfortunately, we’re unable to provide why we can’t disclose these information to publishers/authors either.”

In other words, they won’t tell me why they charge the extra $3.10 in case of Slovenia, and they also can’t tell me why they won’t tell me that.

I know of no taxes and reasonable “operating costs” (of sending a digital file to a Kindle and charging a credit card) that could result in an increase of price in excess of 100 %. However, the last sentence of the final response was probably volunteered by a rather disgruntled Amazon support staff member, and the actual interpretation from “bamboozlese” would probably be – I’m reasonably sure – that Amazon applies some ridiculous arbitrary surcharge in case of certain countries… And they obviously don’t want to advertise this fact.

Be that as it may, the book will soon be published as epub in various other e-bookstores as well, hopefully without this astounding surcharge.