Roy M. Griffis

Roy M. Griffis

Storyteller

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Tech, New and Old

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Tech, Old and New

Here’s a writing confession:  I really like to write to music.  Have ever since I started working on my first short stories in the last century.  My wife, as a singer, has more sensitivity to sound than I do, so she finds doing creative work with music in the background maddening.

Me, I think it creates a kind of aural wall inside of which I huddle with the waking dreams.  When I’m on a roll, I rarely hear the music, but sometimes, when I lift my head from the keyboard, it’s kind of a refreshing surprise to remember how much I like that soundtrack (can’t go wrong with “Last of the Mohicians”) or that  old

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ON BEING A PECULIAR SORT OF PERSON

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On being a peculiar sort of person

My son’s mother, my second wife…yes, I’ve been married three times.  I’m either terrible husband material or a serial optimist.  Don’t judge.

Not the author, exactly

As I was saying, my second wife found fault with some of my reading choices.  For a while, I was reading a great deal about UFOs and folks who believed they had interactions with aliens.  The contacts ranged from variations of “turn your head and cough” type exams, to very distressing reproductive procedures (including “and here’s your hybrid offspring, say hello to mummy, darling”), along with occasional tours of other worlds or galaxies, often polished off with warnings about the impeding global disaster.  Note that none of …

Some Good Writing Here

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Some Good Writing Here

It’s spare and powerful.  As a writer myself, sometimes I am captivated by the way songs can encapsulate emotion using a very simple presentation.  Someday, I hope to write something as starkly emotional and as cleanly presented as Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Philadelphia.”

That may not be possible in a novel.  I think Hemingway pulled it off once or twice before it became a parody of itself.  

File this under “things writers ponder early in the morning.”

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How the research goes with me…

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How the research tends to go with me

When writing a novel, there is a place where you brain is going “Only 20 pages? Are you nuts? You have to write 40 times that to finish the book!”

I also run into that when researching the places and times for the next novel.  Pick up a source you think will be great, read 80 or 90 pages before you realize the author is only interested in relaying nominally interesting anecdotes about high-level goings on, with none of the detail of daily life I’m looking for.  So I’ll put that aside, grumbling about the lost time, and pick up another.

This is a very small sample, with all of the random
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The Curse of Research

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The Curse of Research

As I’ve mentioned before, my research takes me in odd directions and inspires new ambitions in me.

Now I want to learn how to do this.  If only I didn’t have 15 novels to write, the day job to maintain, and various human relationships to nuture.

But, still, it’s awfully cool to watch.

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Life Happens Pretty Fast

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LIFE HAPPENS PRETTY FAST

This past Sunday, I finished the first draft of the second Cthulhu, Inc.  book, The Auditors of Doom.  That clocked in at 340 pages, over 78,000 words.  I’m taking a week off to clear my head before diving into the revisions/rewrites.

In the meantime, waiting anxiously for the revised cover of Book One The Thing from HR.   Aiming to have that ready and released right around Memorial Day:  nothing says “beach reading” like the misadventures of a Shoggoth down among the Hairless Apes.

This may or may not be how our "hero" will look

And, since life has a way of happening even while I’m living among the characters in my head, I’ve been rehearsing

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Random coolness

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Random Coolness

 

So while I was home recovering from some sinus surgery (yeah, that happened)…

…I was in my office trying to read when out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of something flying low past our fence, toward the back acreage. 

It turned out to be this fine fellow, a great blue heron, probably checking out how well stocked we keep our little pond.  

I like seeing stuff like this. A bald eagle apparently nests about 8 miles from here.  Some day, I’ll get a photo of him, too.

Oh, and the surgery tuned out great.  Only downside to me not snoring is that my wife kept thinking I’d died in my sleep.  Fortunately, that hasn’t

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There is so much crap out there…

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pimp the good stuff, my people!

Mission Statement:  

There is way too much soul-debasing garbage out there.   Let’s tell the world when we find creative work that is good, original, even uplifting.

 

 

(Ed.  Originally written in March, which gave me the idea for these posts)

My wife is likely fighting the Wuhan Virus.  So we have spent time inside this weekend.  And we watched a delightful, accomplished, and exceedingly fine film called Emma.  Released in 2020, it’s a sumptuous, funny, sweet, and ultimately very moving adaptation of a Jane Austen novel.

Not an Austen purist myself, I’ve never read the source material.  I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the film and as soon as it is available on

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