Sunday, December 29, 2019

Witty's Year End Book Review 2019

This whole year had been busy in a lot of ways: Work at the library involved my taking on double-duty as an interim director; I was active with the Florida Writers' Association's Royal Palm Literary Awards as a judge (I did not judge in the fields I submitted, relax); I increased the amount of stories submitted to the markets to see if any publisher would like (just one: A sad truth is that writers face a ton of rejection and few victories. We live for the victories).

In all of this, I still found some time to sit and read, both for relaxation and for education/self-information. Here's what I had in front of me for 2019 and what I think deserves a huzzah or three for being effective reads:


Best Fiction

Black Spire (Star Wars Galaxy's Edge #2), by Delilah S. Dawson

I didn't read much fiction - I blame my heated political slant, see below - so what I did sometimes didn't keep my interest. This one did. Granted, I am a huge Star Wars geek and so I can get into books in that 'Verse quite easily, so this one already had a few bonus points to keep the grade up.

Tying in to both the aftermath of The Last Jedi movie as well as promoting a new Disney theme park called Galaxy's Edge, Dawson (who also wrote the well-received Phasma novel) sends her heroine/Resistance spy Vi to the Outer Rim in search of safe havens and new recruits. Instead Vi runs into a wretched hive of tourism and sunscreen (in other words Orlando Metro FL ow stop hitting me) where run-ins with First Order troops and vendors selling 800 credit t-shirts (ow stop hitting me again) keep her busy.

Dawson does write a lot of Young Adult, so a good amount of dialogue and description reads to a middle-school level than adult, but for me it's not a problem. What I enjoyed were 1) re-immersion into a 'Verse I love, 2) good storytelling, 3) likable characters and 4) the subtle Floridian snarkery of poking fun at our tourist industry while accepting its place in our lives.


Best Non-Fiction

The Man Who Sold America, by Joy-Ann Reid.

There are a TON of trump political books I can recommend, given my outrage and discontent about our nation's current predicament under his corrupt rule (yes, as an apostate moderate ex-Republican, I have a bias against that Shitgibbon). Reid's is one of the better ones worth your time, which focuses as much on trump's still-shadowy background and rise in business as well as his current acts of corruption and failure.

Honorable Mention: The Mueller Report (Washington Post edition)

In terms of our current events, keeping up with the political catastrophe that has been the trump Administration requires constant reading and constant reminding. Robert Mueller's years-long investigation into Russian interference with the 2016 elections, and the possibility of donald trump's involvement aiding them, may have come out in April and it may not have ended with proper closure... but a lot of the revelations even when redacted exposes a criminal enterprise behind everything trump has done and is doing right now (hi, impeachment over Ukraine military aid extortion!).


Best Graphic Novel (or Ongoing Series)

Harleen (Black Label), by Stjepan Sejic (DC Comics)

As part of a publication effort to print darker and edgier versions of their mainstream characters, this one focuses on THE breakout Batman rogue of the 1990s - Harley Quinn - to provide a more nightmarish origin story to Dr. Harleen Quinzel's run-in with (and corruption by) the Joker.

As always, the art is the biggest draw: Sejic works like a painter much of the time with the kind of detail to character designs (although I gotta admit a lot of people's chins start to look the same) that make you squint and zoom in to catch it. Also, he can draw nightmarish images that haunt more than terrify, fulfilling the darker/edgier requirement of the Black Label series. The plot itself covers familiar ground - foreshadowing of the demons Harleen herself carries with her, the meetings with Joker than begin her descent as a force for chaos - but Sejic refreshes them in an attempt to make the (anti) heroine a more intelligent and tragic figure that can later find the shred of redemption.

Dishonorable Mention: Doomsday Clock, Geoff Johns (DC Comics)

Not gonna provide a link here, because as a miniseries supposedly trying to tie in Alan Moore's Watchmen universe into the overall DCU this one has been a meandering mess. Considering how writer Geoff Johns had overseen the last decade or more of Crisis-level changes to the comic 'Verse narrative, this miniseries looks to be his latest - maybe last - attempt to clean up all loose ends caused by those shifts. I'm not sure it works: Characters introduced and then ignored for entire issues, plot points that weren't even present early on suddenly become the reason the whole story is being told... I just couldn't keep up with it. There was one bright moment in the entire series - where Manhattan becomes aware of the multiverse and how it's affected by the real-world metaverse - where you can see what Johns was aiming for... and if he made that more prominent from the first issue the miniseries might have been a more coherent work. But he cluttered it up too early and too often, and I walked away discouraged.


Best Work by Someone I Email, Tweet, or Chat With on a Regular Basis

Eye Spy (Valdemar Universe Family Spies series), Mercedes Lackey

Adding to the list of authors I've been in communication is Ms. Lackey, and for a roundabout reason. Ya see, I'm a fan of an MMO called City of Heroes that sadly got shut down a few years back... only for a dedicated fanbase to secretly start up a private server version of the game to continue to hard work of saving Paragon City. Well, earlier this year someone blabbed about the secret server, which launched a huge outcry of millions of fans who wanted to get back on it (oh, and the usual suspects of people complaining the secret server had access to people's credit card numbers). So the secret server managers released the game code and... well, as long as NCSoft doesn't bring the lawyer hammers down on anybody, the game is there to upload and play.

City of Heroes was huge in the day (and its revival one of the bigger gaming news of 2019), and it drew in a lot of well-known fans including Mercedes Lackey. She was such a fan of the game she wrote an entire superhero novel series called The Secret World Chronicles (unrelated to City of Heroes itself due to copyright) that she's kept up with to this day.

So here's the thing: In-game, they hold Costume Contests (CoH is legendary for its varied costume options for your game avatars) and one night they announced a secret prize. So I showed up with my most outrageous avatar (Lady Esoteric) and ended up winning! The prize turned out to be a gift copy of the second book in Lackey's Family Spies series set in her Valdemar universe, which she sent to me via email and basically qualifies her for this award. Congratulations! (ow stop hitting my Blaster)

You may need to get into the entire Valdemar 'Verse first, but I'll try to make it simple. There's a kingdom ruled by a benevolent monarchy beset by dark forces - at one point a rival border power, currently tribal raiders - that require the aid of magical creatures (known as Companions) and also magical people (known as Heralds) to protect the realm. The Family Spies series focuses on one Herald family where at least in the first two books the children develop their magical Gifts to serve both family and kingdom. Eye Spy focuses on Abidela (Abi for short) who discovers her Gift as a form of Scrying (the reading of inanimate objects) that can sense their physical weak points.

From there Abi is swept off to Wizard School the Collegium to hone her skills and train as her parents had to serve as a Spy. From there she hits the field working on a mystery involving a drowned village and political schemes that threaten Valdemar's reputation with their border allies.

Lackey's skills are in the details of her world-building, and crafting characters who are believable as social, living beings. I do encourage you to read the earlier Valdemar novels though to help get a better understanding of how that whole world works.


Best Work Including Stuff I Wrote

This has always been a narrow category, considering few publications accept the stories I submit. I made serious efforts this year with short story submissions but... well... Sigh. I need better adjective placement in the stuff I write, I think...

Anywho:

Strangely Funny VI, edited by Sarah Glenn (Mystery & Horror LLC)

Keeping up with the near-annual Strangely Funny series, I submitted another chapter of the ongoing Dhampyr storyline with Minette on vacation in "How a Vampire Gets a Tan". Set in the more current day of... well, after the events of a novel I've half-finished called Subway Night, it's a pretty straight forward story of why vampires don't tan outdoors (it's less to do with getting charbroiled and more to do with the excessive pheromone production when they sweat). Saying any further would spoil the rest of the story, but anyway it's a good volume and it's an overall great series so PLEASE take the time to purchase/download (available in Kindle) and read.

Happy New Year, everybody, here's hoping 2020 has a lot of fun reading ahead.

Saturday, December 21, 2019

Still Not Ready for Star Wars to End... Yeah I Know There's Spinoffs But...

From 42 years ago when I was seven years old sitting in the Clearwater Carib (thanks for the reminder, brother Phil) watching this mind-blowing movie Star Wars...

Photograph taken somewhere around that time period

...to watching the Official Final Episode IX Rise of Skywalker at the AMC Brandon multiplex...

Photograph taken somewhere around that time period

to considering whether or not to sign up for the Disney Plus streaming service for the hell of it because The Mandalorian has been must-see TV...

I WILL DIE FOR BABY YODA YOU NERF HERDERS
So in the meantime I'll wait a bit on posting my thoughts on the Rise of Skywalker movie and how I have to live with my guilt from here on out...

Wait. I never did a review of The Last Jedi did I? Slipped my schedule. I'll go back and review it ASAP.


Friday, December 13, 2019

Getting To the End of a Year 2019 Edition

This is also in some respects the end of a Decade (2010-19) and time to not only review a year but review an era.

I started off 2010 unemployed as a librarian, struggling to find even part-time work, not getting back into the profession until 2013 where I've been thankfully for the last six years.

Writing-wise, I've been keeping up with NaNo here, a few short story submissions there, two self-published books (one an anthology, the other a set of political essays) but still nowhere close to a full-scale novel to call my own.

There's been a lot of personal changes along the way. Sad ones, like the loss of my kittehs Page (died 2011) and Tehya (died 2013)... but good ones, like the arrival of Ocean (literally on my doorstep Halloween night 2013) and Mal (literally as a litter during the Fourth Quarter of the Denver vs. Seattle Super Bowl 2014).

Still coping with depression, with anxiety, with a meager social life, heading into 2020 coping with major surgery that still needs to get scheduled so I can know exactly when to go into full panic mode before the doctors hit me over the head with a hamma to knock me unconscious.

There's more to say before the end of the year - still have to type up a Year End's Book Reviews - and we'll see about me taking care of a writing project soon, very soon.

In the meantime, I've barely done any Christmas shopping for Saturnalia. Shame, Witty... shame...

Friday, November 29, 2019

NaNoWriMo 2019 Follow-Up: Now Requiring a Follow-THROUGH

Getting to 50,000 words is the easy part:


Finishing up the next 3-4 chapters to have an honest-to-God novel is the harder part (getting it edited and PUBLISHED is the hardest...)

I shall keep on writing, krewe! This alien invasion story should be good to the last prod! Uh, drop.

Monday, November 18, 2019

The Thing That Motivates Me During NaNo Writing

It's a very simple reason I keep writing.

The characters I'm writing will present an interesting tidbit about themselves I didn't realize until halfway through the story I'm writing.

Granted, sometimes the secret they reveal stops me, because I can't keep writing them into a plot if they no longer fit it. But sometimes like what my two main characters I'm writing in my alien invasion plot just told me, it gives me a reason to add a chapter to flesh out that new development.

I might actually get this one done, unlike the four other novels languishing in the first draft stage.

Friday, November 8, 2019

NaNo 2019 Writing Day Eight

I've gotten to a critical juncture in the alien invasion storyline where I get to blow up Clearwater Beach!

...

Relax, it's only the roundabout that gets blowed up.

KEEP WRITING, PEEPS!

Friday, November 1, 2019

NaNo Me Baby One More Time! 2019 Edition

Annnnnd... I'M OFF!

(types furiously)

Remember to use the Space Bar. THE SPACE BAR! AAAIIIIIEEEEEEeeeee... (crashes into the Oxford Comma)

Wednesday, October 30, 2019

In One More Day, I Begin NaNoWriMo 2019!

Sharing this link with you as I get ready to commit to National Novel Writing Month for 2019!

https://blog.nanowrimo.org/post/188067825552/its-october-which-means-that-national-novel

There's images and banners stuff you can download to your own social media pages.

Like this one
Good luck with your projects, fellow writers!

Monday, October 21, 2019

The Force Will Be With You Always AND OMG THEY HAVE A HORSE CAVALRY CHARGE IN A STAR WARS MOVIE

THE LAST OFFICIAL TRAILER FOR THE FINAL STAR WARS CANON FILM OH MY GOD I HAVE FEELS



I WAS SEVEN YEARS OLD WHEN THIS STARTED I AM NOT READY TO END THIS JOURNEY I WANT TO BE THERE FOR THIS PLEASE GOD LET ME LIVE LONG ENOUGH TO ENJOY THIS (and also live long enough for the Marvel/DC/Star Trek/Star Wars/Doctor Who/Power Rangers/Voltron/Godzilla/Lord of the Rings/Game of Thrones/X-Files/West Wing crossover event once Disney buys up every geek property in the universe)

Sunday, October 20, 2019

FWA 2019: A Melancholic Seminar

I attended this year's Florida Writers Association's conference in Altamonte Springs, and... kinda felt like a wandering spirit this year. Wasn't in the mood for selfies and really couldn't find a time or place (they've taken away recharging stations at the hotel) to focus on any bit of writing I hoped to do.


This is author Delilah S. Dawson, writer of various fantasy/sci-fi
works including Star Wars novels! She is living the dream!


Bumped into a few people from the Lakeland group, bumped into a few presenters from previous conferences still providing their motivationals and tutorials to fellow writers. But this year it just seemed... rushed, everybody running everywhere else. 

I dunno, I might have been feeling bummed out from last year's conference when I went in with high hopes and kinda left without 'em. It might be all the personal and work-related stuff I'm coping with that's got me stressed for differing reasons.

I'm sorry. I'll try to be in a better mood.

Sunday, October 13, 2019

Deciding on My 2019 NaNoWriMo project

I'm going to redo a science fiction novel idea I've had, and this time I'm going to plot out the chapters and the main characters so that way I have a structure around which to stay focused. Last few tries I just pants-ed the NaNo attempts and lost track of things. I shall have an outline done while I'm at the FWA this weekend.

Wednesday, October 2, 2019

To all Polk County FL NaNoWriMo writers for 2019

In case you have a Facebook account, we have a closed group for Lakeland Area NaNo, and if you're not already in it please send a request to join and I will check you in.

Link is here.

Good luck, everyone!

Thursday, September 26, 2019

They've Changed NaNo's Website


They've gotten rid of some of the stuff I used as a Municipal Liaison before. The Google Calendar link is missing (maybe moved) so plugging in events may get trickier.

I am going to need to take time figuring this out, thank God I got a month before November starts.

Get your novel prepped, people!

Thursday, September 5, 2019

Getting Prepped for NaNoWriMo 2019

I had skipped on doing the Municipal Liaison thing last year because of staffing issues at the library where I work, but this year I had to take it on because the lady who had taken over duties has moved away from the Lakeland region.

I do plan on finding times and places to have Write-Ins to host, and maybe this year I'll find the motivation to finish a work instead of letting the writer's block demon get the better of me.

Keep an eye out for further details!

Thursday, August 8, 2019

Regarding the 2019 Royal Palm Literary Awards Status

You might recall earlier that my story "The Pumpkin Spice Must Flow" was up for Semi-Finalist status under the Published Story category, which meant a likely shot at the Finalist status and with luck a Top Three win this October at the RPLA.

Welp... It didn't get to Finalist.

Ahh, well. It probably wasn't to everyone's tastes.

The other fiction submission "Road Trip to Vegas" never even cleared the Semi hurdle. Meanwhile, I never really heard back on the submission for the Blogging category. The judge reviewing the article I sent noted some of the links were broken and asked for fixes, but what I sent them probably did not help.

It's gonna be a quiet year for me after all. Unless I can get my muse to answer my calls...

Changes to My List of Works

I don't know if anyone else has paid attention, but I've been having some issues with the Print-On-Demand service I've used to get two works published.

One thing I tried recently was to email XLibris and request a change on pricing to the ebook release of Last of the Grapefruit Wars, which was supposed to be covered by the agreement I had with them back in 2003. Unfortunately, the only thing they DID do was remove the ebook offering altogether from Amazon and Barnes&Noble (and likely all other retail providers). I think they changed the parameters of the deal on me (or I didn't understand it to begin with), or else didn't care. Either way, they never emailed me back about what they did. I had to see it for myself. Not a good way to handle a client.

Back when PoDs first appeared, I gave XLibris a try to see how the service would work, which ended up being a lot of work at my end and not much else. They did provide decent copies of books, the bindery has held up relatively well for more than a decade. And they did have some decent marketing materials... which have now gotten too expensive for my budget.

And the only thing I do get from them are calls from a new "agent" every six months asking me to sign up for a new marketing plan... which is essentially the same marketing plan they offered me since 2003 of spam-emailing everybody.

I'm a little bit discouraged about this.

I read up the current rules for XLibris to see if I can cancel both of my book deals with them... and it looks like I can.

So my plan is to cancel both my books with XLibris - the political book has sold... well, maybe once - and re-edit the Grapefruit Wars anthology with a few new stories. Update the collection as it were, make it bigger - at 124 pages it was pretty thin - and repackage it to a self-publishing service - Ingramspark - that might provide a better deal with both print and ebook.

(This won't include my Talents superhero stories as I want to package them differently, preferably anchored by an honest-to-God book)

Thing is, I also want to change the anthology title. I've found out Last of the Grapefruit Wars confused too many people.

So I'm brainstorming now about what a good new title for the book could be.

It's a mash-up of different genres - there's one true sci-fi, a couple of fantasy, a lot of coming-of-age - mostly from my college years and the 1990s when I tried getting into the short story market. If there's any consistent element to the stories, it's been a lot of humor (I hope). Most of the newer stories to add are humor-oriented as well. So I'm thinking that would be the way to re-brand the set of stories.

Right now, the best title I can think of is Slices of Crazy: Collected Stories.

Titles like Welcome to Florida won't cut it, that's too common. So's Out of My Mind and variants thereof.

One story I might add is "Jar of the Atlantic" but as a book title might be as confusing as Grapefruit Wars. I'm intrigued with the idea of making the subtitle to any decided title be ...And Other Personal Disasters but that's too self-deprecating.

If any of my seven blog followers got any suggestions, let me know.

Monday, July 8, 2019

I Got NaNo-Nine Problems...

Quick update on my writing for this month of July:

(cricket chirping)

I was hoping that by going with a time limit - 40 hours - instead of word count, I would be gliding into the writing process of an hour here, a couple of hours during the weekend there, that sort of thing.

The first full week of NaNo writing and I haven't even found an hour to get anything done: not a paragraph, not one sentence or bit of dialogue.

I am finding myself sitting in front of a computer monitor suffering from depression, self-loathing, and anxiety... not all of it writing related.

I've headed out to places away from home, to avoid distractions. It's not working.

No excuses here.

I need to find my motivation. A muse. Something.

Monday, July 1, 2019

Camp NaNo July 2019, Underway

I got my opening chapter already!

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single slice of bread in possession of strawberry spread, must be in want of a butter knife."

...

WHADDA YA MEAN IT'S BEEN DONE?!

Sigh. (crumples paper and starts again)

I'll get something done this month with Camp NaNoWriMo. 40 hours to go...

Wednesday, June 19, 2019

Something New With Camp Nano 2019

One of the things you could do with Camp NaNoWriMo for April/July was setting your own word goal, so that you won't stress out trying to get 50,000 words done in 30 days like you do in November.

But I noticed something new when I tried to select my Goals for the July camp: It now included options on selecting other means of measuring your efforts.


  • Words
  • Hours
  • Minutes
  • Lines
  • Paragraphs
One thing I kept running into with my last handful of failed projects was finding the time to get writing done. The word count was one thing: trying to cram in 1600-plus words per day wasn't happening, and the more I fell back the harder it was to keep up.

I'm going to see if going by HOURS - say, 40 hours for the month of July - will get me to my goals better. If time is my limiter, use that as an advantage.

So I'm planning on 40 hours worth of writing this July: Getting science fiction stories finished up to complete an anthology of sci-fi shorts.

Wish me luck.

Sunday, June 16, 2019

Updating Witty Librarian Stuff

It's been awhile since I've tried marketing meself as a Witty Librarian, working with a Cafe Press service that I haven't made sense of for the last decade or so.

I'm thinking of going to Vista Print, where I've made bookmarks and handouts for my book vendor appearances, to see about creating mousepads and signage. In the process, I discovered I needed to recreate decades-old logos done on low-resolution. So I'm redesigning the stuff I've had to this:

I used to write it as "Smart@ss" but people thought it was a bad email link. /sigh


Is the shadow drop too much?
Still doing this graphic design on my own. I worry I'm not getting the images clean enough to transfer to printing on mugs and t-shirts. We'll see.

Wednesday, June 12, 2019

Strangely Funny VI NOW IN PRINT and On My Bed

The publishers shipped the print copy for me, just got it today!


My short story "How a Vampire Gets a Tan," continuing the ongoing struggles of my heroine from "Minette Dances With the Golem of Albany," (in SFIII) is on page 121.

If you purchase a copy from Amazon.com, I encourage you to READ. INDULGE. DESTROY! And then leave a nice review on Amazon 'cause we're polite like that.

Sunday, June 2, 2019

NaNoWriMo Planning 2019 And Other News

I've submitted working with NaNo this year to be the Municipal Liaison for the Lakeland region, as the lady who did it last year is moving away.

This may be relatively stressful due to ongoing concerns with work - we are still woefully understaffed at my library - but hopefully things can change between now and November.

I may try a run at the July Camp NaNo. I'm still recovering from falling apart during the April attempt. :(

In the meantime, I've been notified the latest volume of Strangely Funny VI release NOW in print, while encouraging my seven followers to spread the word that the Kindle ebook version is available right now! (P.S. PLEASE leave good reviews when you download).

Also wik, I am submitting some shorts here and there, looking through a site called Submission Grinder to see what places are accepting and if anything I've got can generate interest... Updates on that front as responses bounce back.


Sunday, May 12, 2019

Happy 2019 Mother's Day Ocean the Wiggle Cat

It's 2019 and I don't have any other pictures of Ocean being a Mom cat because Mal just won't stay in the picture with her long enough...


So I'll just show the latest photos of Ocean the Wiggle Cat so you can see she's doing okay.


Wednesday, May 8, 2019

It's a Day of Birth 2019 Edition

But it's a day in the middle of the week so I'm at work, doing librarianship, ordering copies, coping with 49 years of wondering about my place in the universe...

And not enough cake. Sigh.

BACK TO WORK.

Saturday, May 4, 2019

Thursday, May 2, 2019

A Little Bit of My Childhood, Gone Away.

The actor who played Chewbacca in Star Wars, Peter Mayhew, recently passed away.


While I have a fondness for all the original characters, Chewie was kind of my guy. Oversized, covered with fur, goofy, unable to play chess...

When I was 7 or 8 years old I asked for a large Chewbacca action figure for Christmas. My parents may not have understood the request because I ended up with a fluffy teddy-bear Chewie. I wasn't entirely thrilled at the time, but Plush Chewie grew on me and so he was a regular bedtime companion until I was 12 or so. Afterwards he was pretty much on a book shelf for display and I admit I grew out of the idea of owning a doll like that. I can't recall when he ended up going to a donation store, or whatever else happened to him.

There's times in my adulthood when I wonder why I let so much of my childhood things go. It was like letting go of some memories here and there. I feel this way when the actors I grew up with, playing the characters of my childhood, pass away.

Goodbye Chewie. What a Wookie!


Wednesday, May 1, 2019

Writing Out of My Blues

I am struggling to find the time and the motivation to write.

That's all I can say at the moment.

Sunday, April 28, 2019

In the Good News Category Regarding the 2019 FWA Royal Palm Awards

While one story did not fare so hot, another story did!

CONGRATULATIONS! Your entry, The Pumpkin Spice Must Flow, Short Story, is a semifinalist for the 2019 Royal Palm Literary Awards competition!

This was done under the category of Published Short, thanks to it being in the anthology Strangely Funny V!

You know, this book! Still available on Amazon!

So yay! If it was good enough for Strangely Funny, it's good enough for the state of Florida!

The thing is, there's still a Finalist stage to contend for, and then finding out if the story achieves top status as a Winner (First, Second, or Third Place). So there's still a few more nerve-wracking months until we get there.

In the meanwhile, I get to display this!


In the Sad News Category Regarding the 2019 FWA Royal Palm Awards

Well, I just got back word that "Road Trip to Vegas" - my submission to the Short Fiction Unpublished category for the Florida Writers Association's Royal Palm Awards - did not make the Semifinalist cut for consideration.

'Tis a pity. I hoped it would have been funny enough and good enough to pass muster.

Maybe I didn't have enough Fourth-Wall-Breaking narration in it. Yeah, that's the problem. MORE INSANE NARRATIVE DIALOGUE COMING RIGHT UP!

/owstophittingme

Look, "Road Trip to Vegas" is kind of a personal work for me, based on one of the traumatic moments of my teen years undertaking a non-stop road trip that left some emotional scars. I wrote TWO stories based on that trip, the other one being "A Face In the Light" which interestingly enough earned a Finalist status in this same category last year (I am trying to find a publisher to submit it, so far I've had a couple of rejections so... sigh...).

I still think it's one of my better works. I'm sorely tempted to package it together with other humor stories and self-publish another story anthology. I just need to get about eight or ten more stories - I have six already, maybe seven if I pull some e-published works off-market to put it together - to justify a decent-sized book.

Meanwhile, if you're looking for some GOOD news... (wait for the next blog post)

Thursday, April 11, 2019

Coming Soon: Strangely Funny VI

I am proud to announce a new humor-horror anthology is coming out this year, the next installment of Strangely Funny (this one is the seventh but it's numbered Sixth, we'll explain later)!

The editors forwarded the book cover, see below:


The story they accepted is "How a Vampire Gets A Tan," a sequel of sorts to the "Minette Dances With the Golem of Albany" published in Volume III. If anybody enjoyed reading that and the other Dhampyr story "I Must Be Your First," I hope you enjoy this follow-up as well.

I'll let you know when the book is available online for print and eReader!

Sunday, April 7, 2019

Getting Back Into The Superhero 'Verse I'm Writing

I've settled on the plot ideas I've been bouncing around in my head since 2004. It's gonna be a story about a man who meets a woman during the war.

...

Okay, so I'm ripping off the plot of the Book With the Blue Cover (wherever it may be on our shelves). BUT DAMMIT I'M TIRED OF SUFFERING FROM WRITERS BLOCK.

(activates lightsaber before heading into battle) CHARRRRRRGGGEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!

Saturday, March 30, 2019

As March Rolls Out, April Rolls In

I know I promised to find a work I had on the backburner and clean it up for possible publication through IngramSpark to see how the experience went.

Well... one month later and I haven't gotten anywhere near fixing that project and getting something going.

There's every excuse I can throw out there, but the basic answer is I am just not feeling it. I'm bummed and stressed about three to thirty things that don't even have to do with writing, and I'm bummed and stressed about that.

I'm looking back at about ten years of working on NaNoWriMo projects and finding not a one of them - whittled down to five solid candidates - grabbing my interest to get done.

Even with Camp Nano starting again this April, I am feeling challenged and unmotivated.

I am one of those poor souls in dire need of a Muse. Might be Thalia (for humor), maybe Clio (for history/non-fiction). It's a damn shame the Greeks never set up Muses for Sci-Fi / Fantasy fiction. :/

Anyone know the hourly rates of a good Muse?

Sunday, March 17, 2019

It's St. Patrick's Day, You Know What THAT Means!

Well, I have gotten to 500 posts on this blog, and I'm getting there by way of neither librarianship nor writing.

I'm getting there by way of posting yet again on St. Patrick's Day clips from one of my favorite movies The Quiet Man:


Ahhhh, the Quiet Man.

Impetuous! Homeric!




I need to update my passport and save up more money to make a trip to Innisfree meself.

Sunday, March 3, 2019

If I Can Clean It Up, I Have A Work To Publish this 2019.

If you note my habit of writing for November, I will on occasion finish a rough work-in-progress and win the NaNoWriMo prizes for crossing the 50,000 word mark.

Now that I've gotten a few side projects out of the way, I am re-tasking myself towards cleaning up that particular WIP and using a particular prize to get it out to the world:

A self-publishing discount with IngramSpark.

In case you're not a librarian or bookstore manager, Ingram handles a lot of book and AV distribution. With the growth of self-published works, they've jumped into that market - competing with Amazon's Createspace, you might have heard of that - and they bring to the table an advantage of providing print / ebook for market to libraries and brick-and-mortar stores (the stores are not obligated to display books, but you may be able to make personal arrangements with stores in your area).

As a distributor, Ingram has a decent reputation, so this may be something that can help a self-published guy like me find an audience.

We'll see. First things first, EDIT MY DRAFTS. :)

Sunday, February 24, 2019

Submission Time 2019: RPLA Attempts

Well, I hope I am wiser and sadder about this year about my chances in the Florida Writers' Association's Royal Palm Literary Awards.

This time I shan't get my hopes up too high. I will remain even-keeled well past any Finalist standing(s) I might earn.

I am putting in for more entries this year. Not only an unpublished Short Story submission, but also a Published Short Story (I shouldn't say anything until later which it is), and also a NEW category they are offering in the Non-Fiction category: Short Non-Fiction covering articles and BLOGS (oh, yeah, I have one of those).

We'll see how my year goes. Wish my stories luck, peeps.

Saturday, February 2, 2019

Happy 5th Birthday to Mal the Krazy Kat

Facebook reminded me that I posted images of Ocean giving birth to her kittehs this weekend, right around the 4th Quarter of the Seattle-Denver Super Bowl where the Seahawks were just mashing the Broncos.

Mal is in that pile somewhere.
I named them after six of the characters from Firefly: Mal, Zoe, Jayne, River, Simon, Inara. I kept Mal because black cats are harder to adopt out (River was a tuxedo kitten like her mom and Inara was the grey kitteh: they went first).

So here we are five years later, and here's Mal being the same crazy cat he's been since Day One:


YOU try keeping a birthday hat on a cat.



Woohoo.

Sunday, January 27, 2019

Asking for Artwork Commission for this Blog

I need to spruce up the WELCOME page I'm creating for the blog - to support the new www.paulwstories.com address - so I'd like to get in touch with any comic book or fantasy genre artists for commission. I know some people don't want to work with my Comments site so just click on my EMAIL link here to chat with me.

I'd like to get something done by May, if possible.

Thursday, January 10, 2019

Making Changes at This Blog

Check out the Writings tab on the menu above!

And I should be adding more books as this year progresses!

Tuesday, January 1, 2019

Busy New Year's Day 2019

Just been doing a few things here and there.


  • I got the "Face In the Light" submitted to a magazine, see how the response goes.
  • I am updating my web address info for self-marketing. I went out and snagged a new domain that I will use to redirect people to the blog here. Which may involve me renaming a few things here and there on THIS site.
    The new address is www.paulwstories.com 
  • I am redoing the Writings Tab on the menu above, adding book covers to the links to provide visual info for people to follow. This is still a work in progress and may involve a complete rehaul of things.
  • I am about to start work on a specific story for a specific submission, may the Old Gods and the New protect us.


Hello, 2019!