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Monthly Archives: July 2009
I wrote my first short (for my site) last night.
I wrote the first short last night for my website. It took me all of two hours – it involved more backspacing than I care to admit – and I churned out just about three whole pages. It’s a little tough cramming a whole story into a handful of pages. Try it – you’ll see what I mean!
At any rate, I sent it off to my editor. As soon as she’s done ripping it apart, I’ll be making the changes and / or overriding her suggestions. I’m the author after all; I reserve the right to do that, although I didn’t do it at all in Seven Days of Terror.
Keep an eye out! If I get it back and done by Friday night, I will be posting it on Saturday.
Posted in Writings
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Allow me to introduce my shorts!
For the past few days I have been toying around with an idea, mentally batting at it with my paw and watching it swing tauntingly back and forth in front of me like a cat’s toy telling me to go for it on every tick and to forget it on every tock. What good is going for it, trying to achieve success, if you’re too chicken-shit to put yourself out there and take risks? My grandmother is the one who talked me into writing again, hence the reason I dedicated Seven Days of Terror to her; and I took that plunge, put myself out there, and you know what? It wasn’t that bad. In fact, it wasn’t bad at all. I’ve had nothing but good reviews on my first contribution to the literary world.
As an aside, my lovely and much trusted editor gave me a rave review on the first chapter of Piratas, even though it was only a rough copy I wanted to run by her. How’s that for stoking the old creative fire? Not only did I get a good review, I got a damn rave.
What I’ve been toying with is, since my one true literary passion is the art of the short story – on occasion short, short stories but mostly short, short, short stories; Seven Days of Terror is written in the short, short, short story format – I have decided I would start writing a “short” every so often – bi-monthly installments is the tentative plan – and posting them on my website for all the world to see (err, read) – for free. It is my hope that people will read these, subscribe to them – more on that in a minute – and perhaps even be compelled to purchase my books.
Being that I have this blog’s posts feeding to my site using Google Feedburner, I plan to do the same with my “shorts” – create a new blog and post them all there. From there, I will “feedburn” them to a page on my site that will automatically get updated whenever I post a new one. Creating a new blog and posting them there will also allow my readers to subscribe to my updates via my RSS feed.
In short, keep an eye open for my Shorts!
Posted in Writings
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Seven Days of Terror is now worldwide!
So today I got bored at lunch and pulled up the Internet on my pocket PC / cell phone and Googled myself. I really wanted to see if I was back up on Amazon yet – I was on there initially back when I actually released the book in April but shortly found myself unlisted – but much to my surprise I found Seven Days of Terror not only on Amazon, but being listed on websites worldwide as well.
I’ve enjoyed a handful of sales since its release, enough to treat myself to a new Logitech VX Nano wireless mouse to use with my laptop. He calls it the Acer writin’ machine, he does! With global distribution available now, I may actually start selling enough to go buy that Movado watch I had my eye on the last time we went to Sam’s.
I’m working on my next book now. I won’t give out any details except to say that it’s going to be probably four to five times longer than Seven Days of Terror, and just one story this time. The first chapter has been in the works for a month now and every time I sit down to bring it to an end, another idea flows through my fingers and the end seems to drift farther and farther away the closer I get to it, kind of like the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It’s in 6″x9″ format – that’s the smallest size I can get and still have myself listed as the publisher – and it’s currently thirteen pages and eleven sub-chapters long. If I could print it in the standard 4″x7″ size you see in the racks at grocery stores and pharmacies, there would obviously be more. But I like the 6″x9″ size.
I’m planning to start writing the twelfth sub chapter tonight. The last time I worked on it I started at page eight and ended up where it is now, page thirteen. My writing is very sporadic; it comes when it wants to and when it doesn’t, I can’t force it.
How many pages can I add tonight?
Posted in On Writing
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Did A Little Fishing This Weekend
My wife and I made a trip down to Panama City Beach in Florida – yes, the Redneck Riviera as it’s so lovingly called; soon to be defunct now that all the fleabag hotels are being torn down and replaced with pricey high-rise resorts – to visit family and get a little fishing in. Hell, I grew up there; well more over in Seagrove Beach, but PCB is only a hop, skip, and a jump away. We spent a lot of time there in my youth. It’s always good to go back.
When I return it feels like I’m home again. When I walk barefoot down the white, sandy beaches, my mind returns to my youth – surfing, sailing my Hobie Cat, snorkeling for sand dollars. Ah, I love to live it all over again.
Anyway, we drove down Thursday night, arriving just after midnight Georgia time. We decided it’s best just to leave at 6:30 from now on so we miss all of the rush hour traffic through Atlanta. Unless we leave at noon and take half a day off, we invariably hit it; somehow or another rush hour traffic in Atlanta seems to last from about 2:00 to 6:00. Don’t ask me how, especially when the normal work day ends at 5:00. Sometimes while we’re sitting there in bumper-to-bumper traffic I ask myself Where the hell are all these people going? And why aren’t they still at work?
I awoke bright and early Saturday to go fishing at one of the pilings beneath the Hathaway Bridge – the third incarnation of it anyway, the original wood bridge and the subsequent drawbridge have both been completely removed, leaving this new, massive fly-over. We had three rods with us and two spare leaders (rigs as I like to call them). Let me tell you, we were hooking some big fish. My sister’s boyfriend hooked the first one, fought it for nearly twenty minutes, and suffered Slack Line Syndrome just as the fish neared the surface. Later on he landed a red fish (his first) that was a couple inches too large to keep so he threw it back – win some, lose some. Somewhere along the line, three of our leaders were snapped off. After a couple of hours I finally hooked something, only to suffer The Syndrome as well. After re-rigging, I dropped my line back in and fought something for a few minutes before it dragged my line across the barnacle covered concrete and frayed about ten feet of my line before snapping it off where I tied the leader on. Like I said – win some, lose some.
Saturday we trolled fifteen miles out, in the one-hundred foot deep water for a few hours. Sad to say we came home empty-handed then too. Aside from catching a few pin fish and a catfish in the channel in front of the house, I wasn’t getting any action. My fishing poles were acting like bad wives – only putting out once in a blue moon.
Sunday morning my luck changed. We woke at daybreak and tried again. Below are the fruits of my labor. Be forewarned, in this first picture the camera was not being nice to me. This picture is a testament to the quality of a Blackberry’s camera.
Posted in Personal
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