Storyteller
I know I said I wasn’t going to post anything else on the website today, but I ran across this and just had to make sure my readers knew about it.
It’s pure, in it’s own way, not ugly, not tawdry, but so damn honest. Check it below.
But the website war will continue on another front.
For instance, one of the early fans of The Thing From HR pointed out it’s not on my book page and the very fun cover isn’t part of my snazzy slide show.
Plus there’s writing news I should share (in the biz, we call such an off-handed, yet ominously significant comment “foreshadowing.” Free would-be-pro tip for y’all, right there). Alas, having burned a lot of time wrestling with my own personal dragon (see figure A, above), all of that website bidness is going to have to wait.
Because I’ve got a book (The Breakroom of a Thousand Nightmares, a
I just realized that a writer who was savvy about marketing would have already pumped out a couple of newsletters pimping his upcoming book.
It’s pretty clear I’m not that guy. I have subscribed to some newsletters, usually as the result of attending some online seminar about the bidness of writing. And more often than not, I’ve learned useful stuff at those seminars.
But, man…most of those folks, once they have a brother’s email, they will cyberstalk you, with their special offers showing up anywhere from once a week to every other day.
I get that we all have to advertise ourselves, our art and our commerce. But I really get annoyed
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.
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
(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
Boy, that was communicated just like an actual author.
But it’s true. I’m already hard at work on Book Two of my new Cthulhu, Inc. series.
While that’s happening, I’m finishing up the editing and general prettying-up of the first book in that series, The Thing from HR.
It’s very different from any of my previous novels; the cover and title might be a tip off to that fact. I’m kind of stoked about it (I do, as my website proclaims, call myself a storyteller for a reason), but don’t worry. I’m planning on completing additional books in the By the Hands of Men and Lonesome George series this year, too.
I’ll let you
As, in the middle of my vacation, I caught my annual cold (and that virus was a tenacious bastard, let me tell you). But, 2019 is gonna be great.
Hint: New covers.
Hint two: new blurbs.
Actually, it was last week, but I’ve been too busy with other (secret) projects to announce it.
But I’ve finished the first draft of the final book in my “By the Hands of Men” series.
Working title: “Ringside at the Circus of the Fallen,” but that may change.
…
One of my personal failings (well, the only one I feel like admitting) is I have a strong fairness impulse. It was the whole Martin Luther King thing, judge people by the content of the character not the color of the skin. My father, who had grown up in the deep South surrounded by virulent racism, introduced me to the concept, mostly by the way he lived his life, treating everyone he met with the same courtesy, fairness, and respect. It was what made me a nascent liberal as a young man.
That belief in fairness was the same thing that drove me away from Liberals. Growing up, my experiences with