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 … Read entire article »

I was reading through this post over at the Write Anything site and came across the following list of questions at the end. They really made me think. So through the magic of copy / paste, I bring them to you now. Do you have space eked out that is yours, and yours alone to write? If no, why not? I tried to eke out a space, but in all honesty it just didn’t work. One of the spare bedrooms in my house I had transformed into an office space when I found myself laid off a few years ago and decided to start my own business. Being that I immediately went to work for a competitor, my office space went unused and when I started writing again, I tried to make … Read entire article »

In February I released Seven Days of Terror, my first official contribution to the literary world. Although self published, I can (and am proud to say) I am officially a published author. Check one off my bucket list – only 57,000 more to go. An old friend from high school, who happens to be a fellow horror movie connoisseur, not to mention a professional copy editor, graciously tackled the task of becoming my editor. I have so much to thank her for and don’t know how I can ever repay her. Hopefully one day I’ll get picked up by a publishing house and can take her along with me. So to sum up that little tidbit, I am now a published author with my very own professional editor! Not bad for … Read entire article »

I felt inspired to start working on Piratas again tonight. I’m nearly an hour in and have formatted parts three through five. Think of each part as a chapter with a bunch of little chapters within each. I’m sitting right at twenty-seven printed pages so far, formatted at Font Size 12 and 6″x9″ pages. I did push myself to just over 7,800 words. I left off two weeks ago at 6,500, so it hasn’t been a terribly difficult forty-five minutes of work. I’m a little worried because I’ve only outline Part Four in my notebook – five subjects, five parts in the book. Convenient, isn’t it? Like I said, it has me a little worried, but Part Four is where all the real action is going to take place. I freestyled … Read entire article »

November’s short is called Satan’s Cauldron and let me tell you, it turned out to be quite a bitch to write. You see, this time I decided to outline it and well, I didn’t much like it. In fact, I almost trashed it and started writing something else. I ended up using the basic premise of the outline as a foundation for it and freestyled the rest. What I actually ended up with is nowhere near what I had outlined. As I said in a previous post, it took me over four hours to write whereas it usually takes me only two. Suffice it to say, I won’t be outlining any more shorts from hereon out. I have to put in another weekend of overtime – a bummer, but it’s money – … Read entire article »

For this month’s Short!, Satan’s Cauldron, I decided to outline it like I’m doing with Piratas. Suffice it to say, and to make a long story short, I did the outline – It only took half an hour to do. – and ended up taking four and a half hours to write what I can normally freestyle in only two. I might try it again with December’s story, but it doesn’t look like outlining is going to have a place in my monthly shorts. We’ll see. … Read entire article »

… that is the question. Seeing as how I’ve been having a little trouble with my novel, the biggest part being the fact that I don’t write with a set goal – I just start writing and let whatever wants to come out, come out. -, has brought me to a standstill. Well, I shouldn’t say a standstill – more like a “literary downturn”, if I can poke a little fun at our current economic / political state. I don’t write with outlines – I just don’t. Then again, all I write are short stories that only have one plot point, a handful of characters, and are only a few pages in length from start to finish. It’s not that hard to let a story that short unfold on its own. … Read entire article »

Methinks I might start writing again. Years ago I wrote a bunch of short stories. A lot of them got scrapped because I couldn’t get past the first couple of pages. Such is the case with authors. For every masterpiece, there are a hundred complete and utter failures. Unless you’re Stephen King or Michael Crichton.Some of the stories I kept with the intent of compiling them into one single book of short stories, ala Stephen King’s Everything’s Eventual. That might be where I start. I don’t have it in me just yet to actually write a novel. If I had the time, a year off, to devote to it I think I could do it. There’s more to writing than just writing. There’s research, research, and um…research. That takes a … Read entire article »