Blogging about Writing---mine and others'

A Corona Rant

5/7/2020

Hello. Everybody safe and well? As I'm sure you know there are people protesting the current shut-downs and social distancing. They're actually protesting to have a better chance to contract the virus that may hospitalize or even kill them. Beyond that, they're protesting to have a better chance to contract the virus and pass it on to others so the others, including their own family members, can come down with COVID-19 and maybe be hospitalized or even killed.
I'd like to think that American citizens were not this stupid in the past, but I'd probably be wrong.
I saw a Facebook posting about how it seems the virus can be caught in bars and hair salons and movie theaters and restaurants, but not at gas stations, grocery stores or hardware stores. This was a sarcastic objection to the shutting-down of some places but not others. I hope people reading that, or producing that, recognize the difference between essential services and non-essential services. Buying gasoline, food, or tools is essential. Getting your hair cut, eating out, or seeing movies, going bowling, etc. is not. It gives you all an idea of how spoiled we've become as a people. Our entertainment and leisure rivals illness-free living for importance.
So, for you protesters and whiners, everybody is going through the same thing. It's tough on those who've become unemployed, especially in the leisure and hospitality business. And I'm still working, so you may think I have no idea how bad it is.
Well, I do. I was unemployed for a full year back last century, and at that time we had three children. We had to move to a cheaper home and file for food stamps. Our car was repossessed. So I do know how rough it can be. But those of you who are just tired of the shut-down, suck it up! You've still got it better than the large majority of people world-wide. Count your blessings instead of your troubles and spend time with your families now that you have the opportunity. Go fishing, or walking, or gardening. Read! Learn things! Explore subjects or points of view you've never done before. If you just gotta drink, do it at home.
It occurs to me just now that the above rant might be entirely wasted. The readers of my blog are all intellectually superior, disinclined to lapses in logic and courteous concerning the welfare of others.
I finished Koontz's Brother Odd. It is definitely worth reading, and he always has a surprise or two, but I find that the final solution to the problem, the ultimate take-down of the bad guy, is sort of anti-climactic. In From the Corner of His Eye, this was also the case. The final fate of the insane serial killer is accomplished by a mere gesture of a child. In Brother Odd, the mad scientist is...well, never mind. I don't want to spoil it in case you want to read it, which I do recommend.
The climax in Odd Thomas was much better—more action, a longer passage of time, more tension. That was a great climax and even a surprise in the after-climax wrap-up.
As for my writing: It didn't take DAW anywhere near three months to decline Saving Atlantis. Shucks.
As a writer, I'm used to rejection. Actually I got used to it even earlier, in college, about every time I asked a girl out for a date.
TOR and Flame Tree Publishing are next to receive my effort.
I've finished (for this initial draft, anyway) the scene I was working on for World to World. Now onward and upward. One thing I did do in that scene was set a forerunner for a situation I anticipate in Book 2 (No title for that one yet).
That's it for today. I need to go into the basement and begin phase 1 of the war on the spiders: wiping out the webs. After that, phase two will be spraying the area with a mixture of water, dish soap, and peppermint oil.
Thanks you for reading, and please read something else. Page and Spine is starting two new tabs this Friday: one called "The Itch," which will be an "unleashing" of Lee Allen Hill, one of the best short story authors writing today. The other will be a tab dedicated to science fiction and fantasy that takes the place of The Reading Lamp. Check them out!
Almost forgot! My horror story, "Switch," will appear in Black Veins Anthology, a digital collection from The Great Void Books. Scheduled to be released May 15.

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Corona Post part 2

4/12/2020

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Happy Easter.
I've been approaching a certain anticipated scene in World to World (The first novel in my Lying Swords fantasy serial) and I finally have it done—just today in fact. There is one little part left. It is in fact a simple brief exchange of dialog, but I have to move the scene from the middle to the end. Won't take much, but I decided to take a break from that to write this. Since I'm going to five ten-hour days of work again, I don't know when I'll have a chance to get back to this.
DAW is one of the premier publishers of science fiction and fantasy. The only premier publisher of that genre that does not require agented submissions. So that's my first submission for Saving Atlantis. The drawback is that they want it exclusive for three months. So, I'll take that bet. What have I got to lose?
We've been observing the six feet of separation rule at work pretty well, but starting this week the gentleman that does the same job on the other shift and I will be there at the same time three days of the week. Our work stations are next to each other on a long table. The six feet apart policy can't be observed as it stands. Don't know what, if anything, the bosses will do, but I suspect one of us will be sent off to a different function much of the time. As long as it's equitable, fine with me. I had calculated that I could afford to go part-time in August and thus avoid these fifty-hour weeks. Well, shucks, they got me anyway. But I suppose I can survive. So far our geographic area is relatively low in the numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases and we all hope it will stay that way.
I finished reading Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz. I recommend it. I donated it to the PDC public library.
Here's an odd coincidence: When at the Goodwill store in LaCrosse I bought three Dean Koontz hardbacks without even looking at the titles. And I set them on my dresser, again without looking at the titles and picked up the top one, which was From the Corner of His Eye. Then I picked up the second, which was Odd Thomas. And now I'm starting the third, which is Brother Odd. The odd coincidence (pun intended) is that Brother Odd is the immediate sequel to Odd Thomas. Just by chance that I will read them in the order written.
Brother Odd seems much larger than its prequel, but maybe its print is larger and the pages thicker. And since one is now in the library, I can't check.
I suppose, like me, you are looking forward to the stimulus checks coming from the federal government. I thought I might spend mine on booze and broads, but my wife did not find that proposal amusing. I had alternative ideas: Guns and girls? Sweets and sex? All received negative judgments. Can't understand why.
I'm guessing we'll blow it on something frivolous, like bills.
We could buy a used SUV...ten percent of one, anyway.
Please stay safe, observe all social rules, and if you're stuck at home, read. All my novels are available electronically, hint, hint, hint.
Thank you.

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In the Time of the Corona

3/21/2020

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Got enough toilet paper? Enough cleaning product and alcohol wipes? Enough ammo? Yep, ammo. Ammunition is selling like people are expecting to repel rioters and looters. And maybe they are. Or else they want to protect their hoard of t.p.
Speaking of hoarding t.p., here's an editorial cartoon that might provide a chuckle: https://www.gocomics.com/chipbok/2020/03/20
I have a real hope—though not an expectation—that the precautions most of the country is taking, along with the research on either a vaccine or a cure—will actually get this damn virus pretty much non-disruptive by the end of May. Please, all of you stay safe, stay healthy, follow the guidelines, and be kind to each other.
On the writing front, I've finished the new ending of Saving Atlantis. I'm going against accepted form just a little; I have two epilogs. We'll see if that proves acceptable.
I'm now going over it one final time, reading it and applying a few tweaks. Perhaps I'll add or subtract a word here or a whole sentence there, but that's about it. Then I'll begin submitting.
On the reading front, I finished From the Corner of His Eye. I still think he over-wrote, but I must give him credit—he can really build tension. And after he brought everyone together, I would have to say that most of the characters were necessary, though if three or four had never been included and the story written accordingly it would not have been a weaker story. And a few deaths of good innocent people might have been avoided. And the final disposal of the bad guy was a surprise and while not anti-climactic it did seem to be over too quickly, but that's just my subjective view.
The story has a major theme, which is that every action or even every decision a person makes can have effects on people and places they never imagined. Everything is connected.
But he brings in a second minor theme: quantum mechanics. This involves some of the gifts the children in the story have, but it's obvious he was influenced by the research while writing this. Quantum mechanics tells us, among other things, that effect might happen before cause, or there may not be a cause, and that on the sub-atomic level two separate things, miles apart, can actually be two parts of the same thing and what happens to one happens to both simultaneously.
Sorry, I read the article years ago and only read it once, so I don't recall it all as accurately as I'd like.
As part of this speculation, he spends a little time on the theory that every major decision a person makes creates a different world, where, from that point on they made the opposite decision. As you can see, this provides for a real infinity of worlds, yet most (all?) of us are in just the one, and cannot access any of the billions or trillions of others.
Maybe that accounts for all the "empty" space in the universe. It isn't really empty, it's needed to accommodate all the other realities. That's my own spur-of-the-moment idea, by the way.
I did donate the book to the library. The public library is closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 concerns, but I dropped the book in the book return slot.
I've now started on another Koontz book, Odd Thomas. I'll keep you posted. This one is much shorter.
I haven't mentioned these in a while, so I think I should again. Three sources of free reading are Page and Spine, Daily Science Fiction, and Trouble Among the Stars. P&S publishes a new issue every Friday, with short stories, poetry, essays on writing, and a running serial titled Coffee House Chatter. Plus, their archives hold most of the writing I've published with them.
Daily Science Fiction can be sent to your email M-F, free. The stories are as often fantasy as science fiction, but they're usually pretty good. Unfortunately they've declined the four or five submissions I've sent them. But I'll keep trying.
Trouble Among the Stars, sadly, is closing after six issues. The deadline for submissions for the final issue is April 6, 2020. My story, "Guidelines," appears in Issue #2.
And that is it for this post. Thank you again for reading, and please continue to read whatever you can. And stay well.

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Working Two at Once

2/27/2020

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My apologies for the long wait for this. I've been very involved in the fiction writing, when the time allows. I worked on Lying Swords and made some good progress. Ideas continue to pop up. At the same time I was constantly considering the changes needed for Saving Atlantis. And I finally got it. I understood what I needed to do to add to Atlantis herself and the expanded explanations of the motives of the villains. I also needed to divide a scene into two parts, with a change of scene inserted between to increase tension.
I was involved with a significant sub-story in Lying Swords when this revelation for Saving Atlantis come to me. I quit the one and went to the other and that's what I've been up to on the writing front for the last two weeks. I still have one small plot hole to fill in—it will only take a brief bit of dialog. The problem is where exactly to put that dialog? One of the things important in writing is the flow of the narrative. It must proceed smoothly, unless the author is intentionally going for a jarring and disjointed style. Which is as legitimate as any other, but not for this kind of story. So, that bit of dialog must be in the right place. And, I have to rewrite the ending, since what I had before was a good happy-ever-after Romance ending.
In the meantime, while working on the paranormal thriller, I continue to get ideas and solutions for the fantasy series. This is one of the reasons a writer should have more than one work in progress (WIP) going on at a time. If stuck on one the author can go to the other, and often ideas for the one can come while working on the other.
I also have a short story I'd like to write but that one is really on the back burner for now.
I mentioned last time that I'd picked up another Dean Koontz novel. This one is titled From the Corner of His Eye. I don't find it nearly as compelling as Life Expectancy for a couple of reasons.
For one, I think he's trying to do too much. I'm a little over half done and he's introduced enough characters and enough conflicts to make two stories. And so far some of the characters seem to be unnecessary, but they may show up again later so I'll have to wait and see if that "criticism" is valid.
Another reason is that he is really over-writing in this one.
Example: "The hospital was drowned in the bottomless silence that fills places of human habitation only in the few hours before dawn, when the needs and hungers and fears of one day are forgotten and those of the next are not yet acknowledged, when our flailing species briefly floats insensate between one desperate swim and another."
He has stuff like that throughout the book. As literary prose, it's beautiful. But as a part of this semi-horror, semi-mystical story I find it distracting and patience-wearing.
On the good side, Koontz has presented us with a character that is as hateful a psychopath as any, yet his appearance is not at all repulsive, his inhumanity is tempered with physical human weaknesses, and Koontz never tells us, as the narrator, that the character is a psychopath. He shows us, over and over again in his thoughts as well as his actions.
Koontz has also developed an interesting and new (to me, anyway) metaphysical condition in one of the important characters, a little boy named Bartholomew. "Barty" seems able to be in more than one place at a time, somehow, but exactly how is not yet clear.
Example: Agnes, Barty's mother, and Barty have gone to the cemetery to put flowers on her husband's/his father's grave. It began raining hard. When she and Barty got into the car, "She was sopping, shivering. Water streamed from her soaked hair, down her face, as she wiped her beaded eyelashes with one dripping hand." Then, a few paragraphs describing her turning on the heat for herself and her son, and emphasizing her soaked condition, Barty tells her that she needs the heat, not him..."Agnes saw that Barty was dry. Not a single jewel of rain glimmered in his thick dark hair...His shirt and sweater were as dry as if they had just been taken off a hanger and from a dresser drawer....'I ran where the rain wasn't,' he said."
When I finish this book I'll donate it to the Prairie du Chien public library, so if any of you in the vicinity are intrigued enough to want to read it, it will be available there...if that does you any good.
In connection with that, I urge everyone that reads to donate your books to your local library if you have no particular desire to keep them. By all means, build and maintain your personal library. Mine has expanded beyond the dimensions of my bookcase, and my wife's collection of cookbooks has likewise done the same to hers. But chances are that you'll acquire some books that you like (or don't) and have no interest in keeping. Of course you can donate them to Goodwill or The Salvation Army, or the DAV store, or you can donate them to your local library.
I sincerely hope I don't go this long until my next entry. Please feel free to put any questions or comments in the comments section of this site or the comments section of just this blog, or on one of my two Facebook pages: the regular one or the author's page. And don't hesitate to remind me to post another if you think it's been too long. Thank you for your attention.
And by all means, read!

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How's Your Eyesight?

1/16/2020

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Welcome to the year of perfect vision: 20-20.
I shipped my wife off to Utah for two weeks (her idea—well, the daughter's and grandkids' idea, really) and I have hopes I can get more writing done. I'm dedicating most of my writing time today to this blog, then tomorrow's and Saturday's to the fiction writing. As I wrote that, I realized I need to take care of filing the income tax forms, too.
I get a few news letters or blogs that focus on writing and serve writers. Anne R. Allen's blog is one. Others are Authors Publish, Sequestrum, Written Word Media, Inkitt Writersblog, and Duotrope.
Among other things, most of them list opportunities to submit writing. One of those had a listing from Cossmass Infinities, a digital and print sf/fantasy publication in Scotland that publishes three times a year and pays professional rates.
I have a short fantasy story of about 4600 words that I'd only submitted once or twice before (rejected) and I decided to submit it to this market. This is a one-man undertaking, so it takes about three months to consider and select all the stories. I actually have another short story I like better, but it's about 1400 words and Cossmass wanted stories of 2,000-10,000 words. There are a lot of things I needed to learn the hard way about submitting work for publication, but one I did not have to learn the hard way was that when the market sets word limits, minimum and/or maximum, submitting works that don't fit those perimeters is worse than a waste of time.
Why worse? Because if you do this more than once or twice, editors will remember your name and you'll have a black mark against you from the get-go.
On another writing-related subject, I was reading a digital publication yesterday that allows comments from readers on the story.
The specific story I read started out with an author's comment that he apologized for the errors. He'd used Word and Grammarly, but could not seem to find all his errors.
If he's really using Word, he's not using it effectively as he could. I saw an error or two that I know from experience Word will at least alert to.
I don't use Grammarly. I've heard good things about it, but it's a Google function and I just feel Google has enough fingers in our pies already. I use ProWritingAid. It's not perfect, but what is? It's also not free, but the cost is nominal and worth it to not use Grammarly, which is free. I have nothing against Google—I use Google Chrome for my primary browser, but it doesn't need to see what I'm writing.
Anyhow, I offered commentary on this story because the content was very good, and although there were errors they were not so numerous or grievous as to distract from the story. I offered two suggestions to the author, and these are suggestions I've encountered in writing blogs or newsletters from professional editors or publishers:
First, any writer should, after finishing the work, set it aside for at least a week (two or three would be even better) so that your eye and memory will be less likely to miss errors because you know what you meant to write.
Then read it aloud to yourself, being sure to read it slowly and carefully.
Second, have someone that has never seen it before read it aloud. It's very likely that most of the errors will be recognized.
And that is it for this time. I've taken up another Dean Koontz novel, and I'll mention more of that next time.
As usual, please read!

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Overworked

12/21/2019

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First, I'll confess to my errors. No, not all of them; that would take years. But my errors in the previous post: I misspelled the author's name. It's Koontz. I forgot the "t". And the correct title is Life Expectancy. Singular, not plural.
Shame on me!
The book was excellent. I just mailed it to my brother...along with some homemade fudge. Get a little of it out of the house so I don't eat it. I've told my wife she's trying to fatten me up for something, I just can't figure out what. Perhaps some of her relatives are of the cannibal persuasion?
My apologies (again!) for not contributing to this more often. But starting the day after Thanksgiving and for the next two-and-a-half weeks I was working six days per week, some of them a full twelve hours. It has settled down a little, but still five ten-hour days at the moment.
Plus, I got behind on things like balancing the bank account, paying bills, lying to our creditors, the usual. I'm slowly catching up on that.
Christmas is much easier than it used to be. Now it's just send out cards and checks to the kids (checks are for the grandkids) plus the boss and I buy one requested gift for each other. No gift wrapping, no tree, no big family dinner, just a day off from work and a slightly fancier dinner than usual, and either assembling or learning how to use the presents.
On the writing front, I've done almost nothing. I continue to get ideas for the series and the rewrite of Saving Atlantis and I'm looking forward to being able to actually get active with both of those.
I'm going to descend into politics for a moment. President Trump is now impeached. George Conway, husband to Kelly Ann Conway, is one of Trump's harshest critics. And apparently one of the most clever. Since POTUS stands for "President of the United States" and the current POTUS has now been impeached, Conway offered a new anagram for Trump: IMPOTUS.
As for the President, I say this: If people love, worship, trust, or respect President Trump, they cannot love and respect The Constitution of the United States. I suppose they can fool themselves into thinking they can, and certainly in ascertaining that they can, but they can't.
Saying you admire and respect Trump, and respect the Constitution is like saying you admire and respect the Mafia, yet respect the Commandments against theft and murder.
In 2016 Donald Trump declared more than once that he would release his tax returns, that he had no trouble doing it. Now, he refuses adamantly, even going against clear written law, to release those returns. Why? What changed?
He was elected President (God help our country), that's what changed. So what's he now hiding? What is in the returns that would not have been of negative (to him) importance before he became President, but now is negatively important?
My theory is that his returns for 2017 and 2018 would prove conclusively that he is in violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution, and that would be such an obvious and egregious violation of the Constitution and his oath of office that even the Republicans would be almost required to vote for his removal from office.
I wouldn't devote even this much time and this many words to Donald Trump if he was not The President of my country. I thought his "reality" show, which I tried to watch once or twice was a waste of time and that he was a fraud, full of himself proud of it. Unfortunately, the Electoral College made him President. Strange rule, that. The Constitution declares that the majority of votes would decide the President...except that sometimes it wouldn't.
Enough.
Hopefully I'll have time to write again and in my next post I'll have news on the writing front.
Thank you for reading this, please continue to read whatever you find provoking, entertaining, or informative.
One such source I highly recommend is Page and Spine (www.pagespineficshowcase.comwww.pagespineficshowcase.com )

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Keepin' On

11/16/2019

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On the personal level, I'm still working five ten-hour days per week which leaves no time for exercise, writing, sleep, eating, helping the boss with whatever, and now snow shoveling is added to the chore list. So exercise and writing are forced to the wayside...which is why it's been a month since my last posting. I really hate doing this so seldom, but I just can't find the time.
I finished reading Witchery and I did find an error, sort of. If you haven't read the book, this won't mean much to you. If you have, especially if you own one, you might want to go back and see for yourself.
When Mirra separates herself from the forces of Kessia and goes on her own to rescue Kaar, there is no mention of her familiar, Shana. There is no way she would undertake a task that hazardous without her cat, but I never mentioned her.
I submitted Witchery to Book Pipeline, an organization that holds competitions to connect published or unpublished books with film makers. Will it go anywhere? More hope than expectation, but I must take a few monetary risks. Before submitting I added a few sentences that made it clear Shana accompanied her mistress into the Dark Land.
Speaking of dark, my submission to Avon of Saving Atlantis was declined. Not surprised, really. It's too much of a thriller. Now I'll have to rewrite it, removing or changing most of the Romance features and add more of the Thriller and suspense elements. It will really require a change in tone. I hope I can manage it.
Of course, having to spend more time on that project will subtract more time from the Lying Swords fantasy series. I continue to have ideas about events and progression of the series, but getting it all down in writing just ain't happenin'. I feel like I'll be seventy before I even get the first book done.
I've taken up reading a book by Dean Koonz: Life Expectancies. I haven't read Koonz before, but I picked up a used paperback at the Goodwill store in LaCrosse.
I like his story-telling style. He presents short chapters. This book begins with a unique premise: James Tok was born at the exact same minute his grandfather died in the same hospital. But with his last minutes, the grandfather dictated specific predictions for his grandson's future—specific dates that Jimmy (as predicted, everyone always calls him Jimmy) would experience a terrible day. So the story is about those days. Hence, the title.
I have no idea how it will be going forward, but so far I like it a lot. I'll have to read more by him when I've finished this one.
Sorry this is shorter than usual, but, as Arlo Guthrie said in the movie Alice's Restaurant when they told he had not provided sufficient sample for the urinalysis, "It's all I had."
Please keep reading, writing, enjoying what you can when you can, and tell someone you love how you feel.

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A Corona Rant

Corona Post part 2

In the Time of the Corona

Working Two at Once

How's Your Eyesight?

Overworked

Keepin' On

Author

I'm a former teacher and current warehouse grunt that loves writing.

Archive

Categories

A Corona Rant

Corona Post part 2

In the Time of the Corona

Working Two at Once

How's Your Eyesight?

Overworked

Keepin' On

AuthorI'm a former teacher and current warehouse grunt that loves writing.

Archive

Categories

Author

I'm a former teacher and current warehouse grunt that loves writing.