Welcome to Fred's Website
  • Home Page
  • Fred's Blog
  • The Right Writes
  • Mascot Serial
  • Contact

May Day

5/1/2023

0 Comments

 
Good thing I didn’t promise.
I finished Dean Koontz’s Jane Hawk series. I recommend it. There are surprises throughout, especially in the last volume. It’s also a bit refreshing that an undeniably beautiful woman, that almost all men want, doesn’t romp with anyone. The one single male adult character that loves (adores) her has told himself he has no hope of a sexual relationship with her…yet he will die for her. There are five books, with interesting titles: The Silent Corner, The Whispering Room, The Crooked Staircase, The Forbidden Door, and The Night Window.
I’ve started his Quinn Quicksilver novel. It’s curious, but it’s like Odd Thomas meets Jane Hawk’s problem. Odd Thomas had a gift he called psychic magnetism. Jane Hawk was constantly on the run from well-funded but corrupt federal agents. Quinn finds himself unexpectedly having psychic magnetism, and being pursued by aggressive federal agents. Beyond those similarities, though, the plot and problem is quite different, as are the secondary characters. One of those secondary characters quickly becomes a primary.
I have not yet got back in the writing groove. Here’s a completely true replay of a conversation:
I work six to noon three days a week. A co-worker who is also part-time came over to use my printer (hers was malfunctioning) and she asked me, just for conversation, what would I do when I got home. Here’s my answer: “Well, I’ve got one book that was published, then the publisher went out of business. But this other publisher said I could submit to them, so I’m polishing it up before I send it in. Then I’ve got another book that’s been rejected multiple times. This same publisher rejected it, but gave me solid feedback on what needed improvements and when those are done I can resubmit, so I have that to do. Then I’m also working on the second book of a fantasy series, and I’m also revising the first one. So, when I get home I sit down and watch television.”
Here's the weird thing, and yet it makes sense. The next thing I’m probably going to write is an erotic story. I’ve got that serious stuff to do—I did finish the polishing and submit that fantasy novel--and I’m likely to write a short story in the erotic genre.
But it makes sense because I have that whole story pretty much in my mind. I know how it starts, how it continues, and two distinctly different endings, so I’ll choose one when I get to that point. Like playing chopsticks (a simile I used back in 2019 in the same context), it’s easy, fun, and no pressure. Also no monetary reward, but you can’t have everything.
April 29th & 30th I’m having a garage sale. It will be a challenge. I had a lot of help on Tuesday (the 18th) moving stuff from the house to the garage. But putting in a nine-hour-day by myself at the garage does present problems. I may have help for Saturday, but Sunday…?
Primarily, I want to sell all the camping gear that we haven’t been able to use for years, plus a lot of the handicap helpers that Verlene had—walkers, wheelchair, transfer bench, adult incontinent underwear.
I did write a quick new story for On the Premises. That’s a long-running publisher that features prompts for stories of various length. The prompt on this one was a story between twenty-five and fifty words, using the word “unicorn” just once. We’ll see how my forty-eight word story does. I’ll keep you posted.
I’ve run out of content.
Please read, and read a lot. Texts don’t count.
Thank you.

0 Comments

Missing creates missing

2/19/2023

0 Comments

 
​This blog post will be different than usual. Much more personal. I decided it was time to use this blog for my own mental health…or what passes for that inside my head.
So, if you don’t want to read about my temporary derangement (I hope it’s temporary) you should bail out now.
And, awaaaayy we go.
Most if not all of you that read this post know that my wife died last month. I want to write about that first.
She’d been in home hospice since October, but was really quite alert and very much herself for the first month or so. Her smoking went from a pack a day to about a pack and a half a day. I got on her about that. Now I’m kinda sorry I did. I didn’t yell at her, I just told her it was getting too expensive.
As November advanced, her mental acuity began to lapse. The hospice nurses had told me that she might go pretty soon—they were seeing some of the signs—and our kids should visit if they could. So the weekend before Thanksgiving we got visits from two of our three kids—our youngest daughter couldn’t make it but she sent her daughter to Colorado so she could drive up with our son and his son. Our oldest daughter also drove, but drove an extra four hours southeast and picked up her oldest daughter and our great-granddaughter and drove back to our house. She had her youngest daughter with her. Her two middle daughters couldn’t make it.
So, we had our son, his son, our oldest daughter, three granddaughters, and our great granddaughter for a too brief visit—arrived Saturday and left Sunday. I asked Verlene on Tuesday if she remembered who’d visited. She thought she remembered our son. My birthday was that week, as was Thanksgiving, and she didn’t realize either one.
Her speech wasn’t doing very well either.
She continued to decline, physically and mentally.
She’s been my best friend for at least the last twenty-five years. We talked, joked, and laughed. We went camping and fishing until her various health problems made it all too difficult.
But that so-important communication declined and about the first of this year pretty much stopped. I miss my friend.
My urge to write has stopped with it.
On the dedications page in Just Lucky, Book 2: Love and Hate, I wrote, “And for Verlene, who inspires the imagination more than she imagines.”
Some of the details of Jean Dahlquist’s life were inspired by Verlene, but I did not realize how much her presence, and the daily communication with her, did in fact inspire my urge to write.
I’ve sat down several times over the last four months, intending to continue the second novel of the fantasy trilogy, and managed maybe a sentence or two, and then that was all.
The writing just no longer excites me.
Or,(painful as it is to admit), possibly the story or characters no longer excite me.
With my two published (and since un-published) fantasy novels, I never had to think about the over-all story or characters. The basic story was in my mind before I wrote anything. I had to make certain decisions about the characters and a very few times how to transition scene-to-scene, but the basic story in the two fantasy novels was done before I started writing it.
As for the two Just Lucky novels, I started out with a short story I’d written a few years before about a man with a non-functional left arm that could still kick ass. He was married to a beautiful blonde named Jean, and he rescued a former student of hers from a very bad marriage.
During the intervening years, this character, Ron Russell, stayed in my mind. How did he lose the use of his left arm? How did he manage to marry this beautiful woman? So I set out to write it and, other than making a few decisions about a few of the other characters, the story just wrote itself. Three hundred thousand words worth. When I was done I edited it into two books of about ninety-five thousand words each, cutting out a lot of stuff that was funny but did not move the story forward. But, again, I didn’t have to think about what should happen next. It just happened.
But now I’m trying to write something that the story is not writing itself and I don’t have it all mind-written before I started, and it’s hard work and I don’t have the drive to do it.
I’m hoping I’ll get over that as I become used to her absence, but I can’t know that until it happens. If it happens.
So, that’s it. It took me a few days to write this. As usual, I’ll try to get something new out in a couple of weeks or less, but no promises.
Thank you for reading.
   
0 Comments

First Post of the New Year

1/2/2023

1 Comment

 
​Happy New Year! Seriously, may your coming experience of 2023  be happy, productive, and safe.
I haven’t added to this blog since September. Shameful.
There’s been little to add. My wife, after months of off-and-on hospitalizations for various concerns has been put into hospice care at home. She hates being in the hospital, and a nursing home is equally distasteful, so she’s home, where she can smoke as much as she wants (and she wants, and wants, and wants) and watch television and work on her various diversions. Her legs no longer work well enough to even transfer from wheelchair to recliner, or bed, so she’s in bed permanently. Besides the duties that info will convey, I also have to do the cooking. She really likes to cook, and bake, so that’s something else she can’t do anymore. But I’m not a cook, and I’m generally too lazy to cook a good balanced meal. On top of that, there’s things she can’t eat, so our menus are limited.
I’m her primary caregiver now, with help from the hospice nurses and Medicaid volunteers. Plus, I’m still scheduled to work twenty-eight hours a week. Between both duties, writing has just not been on the list of things to do. But I’m starting to get the fire back, even though it’s only a sputtering little flame at the moment. It will flare up.
I’m also enduring an ARI—Age Related Infirmity.(I made that term up, but who knows? It might become widely used in medical circles someday.) Something’s wrong with my knee, but there was no trauma incident. I went to the clinic a few days after it showed up, and took my knee with me. I think they missed the diagnosis because physical therapy just made it worse. I’ll see someone else on Jan. 3.
HERE'S THE BIG GOOD NEWS: Water Dragon Publishing, an imprint of Paper Angel Press, has agreed to publish my fantasy novel Prophecy of Honor. Due to the time it takes for publishing—editing, cover art, formatting, etc., plus the other projects they already have, the book won’t be available until near the end of 2023. But it felt good to read and sign a publishing agreement again.
Water Dragon is still considering my novel, Saving Atlantis. Once I get a decision from them on that, I’ll see if they’re interested in Witchery.
On the reading front, I’m still reading Dean Koontz novels. I’m now part-way through The Silent Corner, the first of the Jane Hawk series.
So, what are you reading?
Till next time, which I certainly hope will be sooner than the time since last time.

1 Comment

After Labor Day...

9/12/2022

0 Comments

 
Holy moly, It's been over a month! There is so little going on…
I've finished World to World, the first volume in the Lying Swords trilogy. Except that I haven't. I'm working on the second volume, title not yet decided. As I'm working on it I realize that to accommodate what I'm writing I need to go back and add or change something.
I introduced a knife-wielding serial killer in volume one. It offers several possibilities for other characters and circumstances. But now I've reached a point I've planned since I intro'd the character. He's going to murder a family of four, and I'm not sure how to write the killing of a preteen girl. I'll have to contemplate making the preteen a boy, or maybe both children will be teenagers. It'll take some work…I may just have the carnage found by police and not describe the actual murders. And I just now came up with that idea.
I put this aside for a few days because I needed to think about how to handle that scenario and how to fit it in best with what’s going to happen after. That last idea I had led to another, and then another. Now I have the solution. I had to go back to the second chapter in the first book and make a change, which inspired some additional information that is relevant to much later in that first volume.
This is something I first noticed in college: writing about something often facilitates the creative process.
I was reviewing the other morning the cast of the movie Bad Day at Black Rock. The first time I saw the title on the Guide on my cable t.v., I thought it sounded like a B-movie western. Later when I saw it again on the Guide, I decided to see the cast. OMG! It is an A-movie, and not a western: Cast starred Spencer Tracy (Academy Award Winner—twice), Walter Brennan (Academy Award Winner—thrice), Ernest Borgnine (Academy Award winner—later), Lee Marvin (Academy Award Winner—later), Robert Ryan (Academy Award Nominee), and a few other lesser-known names. The movie was nominated for three Academy Awards. If you get the chance to watch it, do so, if for no other reason than the quality of the acting.
Ernest Borgnine was chosen for the role of Marty, the role that won him the Academy Award, based on his performance in this movie. On a couple of places on the internet you can find Borgnine’s commentary on Tracy’s acting in this movie. “Praise” is an understatement.
While I was thinking about that, I somehow got off on a tangent and starting making up my own cast for a movie. So, here it is: Starring Robert Ryan, Robert Mitchum, Robert Fuller, Robert Duvall, Robert Young, Robert Redford, Robert Culp, Robert Blake, Robert DeNiro, Robert Conrad, Robert Stack, Robert (Bob) Newhart, Eric Roberts, Julia Roberts, and Cliff Robertson in the comedic mystery, "Where Went the Roberts?"
Too bad, Hollywood. You missed your chance.
I continue to read Dean Koontz. I finally was able to get the second book in his Frankenstein Series, City of Night. I wanted the third book, but the library tells me it’s been out a long time—they’ll look into that. So I checked out Koontz’s Life Expectancy. It was the first Koontz novel I read and I wanted to read it again. I gave it to the library after I was done with it, and I regretted that.
Ladies and gentleman, it is football season. Need I say more?
Yes, of course. Please read. If you care to, many of my published stories and poetry can be found here: FW-STORIES - PAGE & SPINE: fiction showcase (pagespineficshowcase.com) .
Stay well.

 
0 Comments

Mid-Summer Notes

7/23/2022

0 Comments

 
I’ve finished Lying Swords, Book 1: World to World. I feel I need to have Book 2(as yet untitled) nearly done, or the first draft finished, before I can submit to a publisher…but I may investigate agents to see if one might be interested.
I keep running into the same temporary roadblock: I know just how I want the book to begin, but the best words to present it are playing hide-and-seek with my brain. I’ll get it, but it’s going to take three or four tries, at least.
Witchery was that way. After I’d written the entire book I tried at least half a dozen beginnings before I had it satisfactory. Saving Atlantis was the same: took me many tries to get the beginning the way I wanted it. Prophecy of Honor, on the other hand, gave me no such trouble.
I’m also writing an erotic short story. I wrote about erotica two years ago, in July of 2019. I’ve published several of those things since, and have a fairly decent “following” of readers. I find it helps when I’m really in the mood to write, and have the time, that if the serious work is giving me trouble I can go to the erotic story and work on that. Sometimes one part on one of the WIPs (works in progress) will spark an idea or a solution for the other.
I’ve submitted two stories to publishers this week. One is a new one I finished a couple of weeks ago but had not yet submitted anywhere, titled “Will Not Yield.” It’s an odd piece that doesn’t really fit anywhere. It’s fantasy historical fiction—something like it might have happened sometime in Eurasia hundreds of years ago.
The other story is a reprint, “Guidelines,” to an Australian magazine that wants fantasy and science fiction.
My wife’s health changes gradually—very gradually, but it seems, inexorably—for the worse. It seems like every week she’s a bit more in pain and bit more immobile than the week before. Nothing to be done.
Her younger brother is worse off. He had triple by-pass surgery days ago and expects to die. The rest of the family, from what I can gather third hand through my wife’s conversations with her sister, seems to have no expectations one way or the other. We may have to fly to Colorado on short notice. Neither of us has the REAL ID driver’s license and I can’t find our birth certificates. We had them a few years ago when we went to Florida, but now I can’t find them. I haven’t quit looking yet, but I’ve eliminated all the places they should be.
I finished Stephen King’s novel, Cell. It’s okay, but not much more than that, from my POV. I’ll give it to the library here in a week or two and if you want to try it out, it’ll be there. I’ve taken up an old paperback, Bran Mac Morn by Robert E. Howard. Howard is the creator of Conan, and Kull, Solomon Kane, and others. Next up will be a re-read of…something. Don’t know what, yet.
Another thing concerning reading: While exploring possible publishers for my short stories, I found this: June Statistics - by palisatrium - Short Story (substack.com). When you get to that site, scroll down to “Free  Online Short Stories”. There are some real gems there by excellent authors, like Hemingway, Harlan Ellison, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, Edgar Allen Poe, and others. Excellent short stories, some of them classics.
One of those stories, “Flowers for Algernon” was adapted to a film titled “Charly.” Actor Cliff Robertson won an Academy Award for the picture.
OK, I’ll confess that sometimes I’m absent-minded in a specific way that’s worth a real eye-roll. Three times in the last several years I’ve locked my key in the truck, and every time it’s because of the weather—either raining or snowing. The last time was two days ago, Thursday. When I got to work it was raining hard. So I parked the truck , turned off the headlights, turned off the wipers, brought the umbrella across, opened the car door and concentrated on getting the umbrella open over the open door, then climbed out with my lunch bag and locked and closed the door.
Notice what I didn’t do?
When I got inside and put my hand in my pocket I realized I’d left the key in the ignition. No biggy. I live close enough to work that I would just walk home, get the other key, and get my wife into the other car and she could take me to work.
When I left at noon and walked to the truck to make sure the key was still there, it became a biggy. I hadn’t shut the engine off, either. It had been idling there on that hot day for over six hours.
I decided right then that walking home and driving back (forget getting the wife to drive me) would take too long. I had no idea what kind of shape that engine would be in. Fortunately, one of the managers came back from lunch and very kindly offered to drive me home and back.
Here's the weird thing: The temperature gauge wasn’t even halfway to the H. I expected it to be sitting on the H with a red light flashing. Whew!
I think I’ll keep the extra key in my lunch bag in the future.
One other thing on a totally different subject. You’re probably familiar with straight-leg situps and bent-leg situps. Just by chance I discovered “air-leg” situps.
Sit at the end of your bed, or at the end of an exercise bench, then lie back so you’re lying on the bench with your feet on the floor. Then extend your lower legs out straight so that you’re horizontal, head to toe.
Cross your arms on your chest. Keeping your legs straight, do a situp. Then another and another, as many as you can, all the time keeping your legs horizontal. You’ll find it really gets your mid and upper abs. You can do this any time you have a few minutes right on the end of your bed.
After you get to the point you’re comfortable doing at least ten, you might add a twist to left and right with the situp, to exercise your obliques. Plus, of course, you exercise your quads a little by keeping your lower legs horizontal through the whole set.
And that’s it for this time. As always, please read.
  
    

0 Comments
<<Previous
Forward>>

    Author

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

    Archive

    November 2023
    September 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    September 2022
    July 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    January 2022
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly