Bartow Authors Event, Saturday May 20th. BE THERE OR ELSE I WILL YODEL AT YOU. IN KLINGON. BACKWARDS.

Oh, I should have mentioned this sooner.

I will be one of many local authors at the Bartow Writers' Block Party and Street Fair happening this Saturday May 20th from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM.

Lemme get the details here:

All types of activities including, painting with a friend, kids coloring with a Klingon, a Jane Austen panel, guest speakers, music & so much more.

We are inviting people or their pets, to dress up as characters from books. This also includes your favorite author like Herman Melville, HG Wells, Mary Shelly, Edgar Rice Burroughs. The skies are the limit on who you want to be. It could be from a movie that was adapted from a novel or a character from the book itself, including the author.

It's a pet-friendly event, but make sure your alligator is emotionally prepared to attend.

There will be painting activities for kids and teens, I believe.

Food vendors will be in the area, so lunches and refreshments are available (bring moneys for books and food, don't eat the books eat the food).

I may have drink mugs and mousepad giveaways. I need to check supplies.

To the nine people I think follow me, hope you can make it to Bartow this Saturday!

Dragons on the Wind of Morning, RIP Ursula Le Guin

What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
-- Ursula K. Le Guin

A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.
-- Le Guin

“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.”
-- from The Dispossessed

And now I need to read The Dispossessed.

I read her Wizard of Earthsea back in 8th grade.

I read Lathe of Heaven back in high school, maybe 11th grade.

I read Left Hand of Darkness in college, can't recall the year though.

I should have read more of her works.

Granted, I was content with reading Douglas Adams, and Frank Herbert, distracted by some groundbreaking writing in comic books during the 1990s and all.

But Le Guin was groundbreaking in her own way. Feminist but not overtly militant, philosophical - a Taoist - but not preachy, insightful in every way.

She passed away just now. A bright light in fantasy and science fiction lost to us. There are other lights, other voices, but hers was brighter than most and our world now diminished.

“I do not care what comes after; I have seen the dragons on the wind of morning.”
-- The Farthest Shore

Am I In Trouble With Canada Again?

What did I do to upset Canada now?

Well, nothing really. It's just I haven't blogged here in awhile and I need to keep traffic up.

So here's a link to the Canadian Authors Association. Hola! Get your 3-Day Writing done for Anvil Press!

And I had nothing to do with this, I swear!

Although if Hollywood wants a screenplay about the wacky hijinks behind the rash of Maple Syrup heists Oop North, I'm more than willing to pitch the idea to Universal or the guys who make the Sharknado series.

...Damn Canadians threatening global domination...

DON'T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU, EH?

In Which We Pester Writer Columbkill Noonan About Humor and Horror Anthologies Until It's TOO LATE

As part of the ongoing promotion for the latest humor/horror anthology Strangely Funny III, now available as print book (ISBN-13 978-0996420969) and Amazon ebook...

I've been interviewing fellow authors of the anthology, and this time around I got a reply back from an entity known only as Columbkill Noonan. I have no idea which parent lost the bet during Naming Day, but still, here we go:

Question 1: What inspired you to write stories with a humorous bent?

I equally enjoy writing serious stories, but funny stories definitely seem to come more easily to me. Perhaps because much of my life tends to be a comedy of errors, so I have no lack of inspiration.

Question 2: Which is harder, writing a horror scene or writing a humor scene?

Definitely horror. I find myself, well, horrified when writing horror scenes. One of my own stories even gave me nightmares!

Question 3: So was Mad Max Fury Road robbed of Best Picture at the Oscars or what?!

(This question was apparently so heartbreaking that Columbkill Noonan was unable to answer. Instead, she was seen spraying Silver Mist food coloring over her mouth while jumping into a souped-up SUV screaming "MEDIOCRE" and driving into the wastelands)

Question 4: If you had a choice between classic monsters - the vampire, the golem, the werewolf, the ghost, the gill-man - which one would you throw a coconut custard pie with whipped cream at?

The werewolf...because he might take some time to eat the pie instead of me. A ghost would be entirely indifferent to the pie; same with the vampire (unless it were blood pudding, maybe?), and the gill-man...what was a gill-man, again?

Question 5: and why did that pie end up hitting Humphrey Bogart instead?

Because Humphrey must be a werewolf. Obviously.

About the Author:

Columbkill Noonan has no biography. No identity. No grade point average. A lone rider in the night, wolf by her side, Blu Oyster Cult guitar solos wailing in the distance, driving through the dark woods of (Insert spooky remote area of the Eastern seaboard here). Fleeing from a scarred past, a dangerous mission that went horribly wrong, that one incident that haunts her forever until the time of reckoning at the tide of a blood-red moon...
...either that or she's trying to get the pizza delivered before the 30 minute timer runs out...
Columbkill does have a Facebook page.

Reminder: Barnes & Noble Local Author Event May 21st

Just noting that the Barnes & Noble Wesley Chapel bookstore has the official notice for their Local Authors event on Saturday May 21st from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM. Link here for more info:

Here's a map to the location, it's north of Tampa just east of I-75 on State Rd 56 (it's the first exit past the Pasco County border if you're driving north on the interstate).

There's going to be about 25 other authors there to promote their works, and it would be real nice if we could get a lot of people showing up to support our writing and to support reading and books in general.

Thank ye! I hope to see you all there (yes even the Chinese Spammers I kept getting about 5-6 years ago, c'mon people it's only 3000 km away!)

In Which We Convince Writer Frank Sawielijew To Answer Questions Before The Swedish Inquisition Gets To Him

Because everyone's conditioned to expect the SPANISH Inquisition. I mean, really.

Anywho, as part of promoting Strangely Funny III on Kindle Amazon and soon to be in print, I've sent out questions to fellow writers contributing to that humor/horror anthology, and this time up we've got this guy up. If we can get my dad Earnest to add some comments, we can finally have a Frank and Earnest discussion about things (stop groaning, dad used that joke on me ages ago).

Anyway, to the questions!

Question 1: What inspired you to write stories with a humorous bent?

I honestly have no idea. The very first stories I wrote were filled with over-the-top silly humor. Even the comics I drew as a kid were funny (or at least supposed to be funny). In fact, I only started writing serious stories two years ago - everything I did before that had been humorous. I guess I just have a natural affinity for silliness, and writing funny stories is a better outlet for that than annoying my friends with horrible puns every day.

Question 2: Which is harder, writing a horror scene or writing a humor scene?

For me, it's the horror scene. I write a lot of humorous stuff, and there are so many ways to make something funny. Playing with the reader's expectations and breaking them with something absurd or even a complete non-sequitur, using puns and other forms of word-play, putting a humorous spin on popular tropes... writing a scene that manages to be at least mildly amusing is easy when you know the tools. Horror is harder to write effectively, as the tools you need to make it work are much more subtle. You need to create a creepy atmosphere and make sure the scary thing is actually scary. Tickling a reader's funny bone is easier than triggering his primal fears.

Question 3: So was Mad Max Fury Road robbed of Best Picture at the Oscars or what?!

For sure! Fury Road is the best action flick I've seen in years, and I love how it's one of the very few modern remakes/sequels that actually respect the source material. The car chases were almost as glorious as those in Mad Max 2. They actually used REAL CARS instead of rendering everything in soulless CGI. Fury Road would've deserved to win ALL the Oscars for being a highly entertaining movie that feels like it could've been made during the golden age of action movies.

Question 4: If you had a choice between classic monsters - the vampire, the golem, the werewolf, the ghost, the gill-man - which one would you throw a coconut custard pie with whipped cream at?

The vampire. I'm assuming this is a situation where I'm in a fight and the pie is my only weapon, and I can choose who I'm fighting against. The golem is made of stone, so throwing a pie at it would do nothing. The werewolf would just open his large, toothy wolf-mouth and eat the pie. The ghost is incorporeal, and the pie would just pass through it and hit the wall. The gill-man is basically just an overgrown fish that lives in the water and pies are even less effective weapons underwater than they are on land.

Question 5: and why did that pie end up hitting Humphrey Bogart instead?

The vampire is played by Sir Christopher Lee who, as a WW2 veteran with combat experience, expertly dodges the pie. The pie misses and hits the vampire hunter van Helsing, played by Humphrey Bogart, who now looks much less stylish than he usually does. With Bogart having lost his greatest advantage - looking stylish - and me having wasted my only weapon, I am now left defenseless before an angry vampire Chrisopher Lee.
I'm screwed.

NOTE: Of course you're screwed, Frank. In MY universe, Christopher Lee isn't a vampire, he just teams up with one during The War as an MI6 spy and fight the Nazis. So, five demerits for House Ravenclaw...

About the author:
We don't have much on Frank Sawielijew. Only that he has a Facebook page promoting his works, that he's written a fantasy work in German titled Die Kleine Gelbe Krote, that he's constantly under attack by lobsters.

A Century of Beverly Cleary

Author Beverly Cleary turns 100 years young today.

I grew up reading the Henry Huggins books, and because of that also the Ramona books. I still don't get the idea that books at a certain age are "gender-specific": the Ramona books were still about growing up as kids, regardless of being a boy or a girl.

I didn't learn until years later that Beverly Cleary worked as a librarian in Yakima, Washington. Which for me as a librarian is a cool thing.

There's still a story in my head I have the title for - "Maybe Auburndale, Maybe Yakima" - that I have the urge to write. I have a reason for choosing Auburndale, FL (it'll be part of the story's theme) and when I found out where Beverly Cleary worked I added Yakima to finish off the title (and fits into the theme) so now you know where the title will come from.

I just want to say that it would be a bright and wonderful and perfectly appropriate thing if Beverly Cleary wins the Nobel Prize for Literature for her contributions to the children's literature and readership. If there's anyone on the committee I can talk to about this, please pass along their e-mail. Thank ye.

In Which We Host an Interview with Writer Rosalind Barden

As the readership here knows, I'm getting published in the upcoming Strangely Funny III humor-horror anthology (Kindle ebook version now available) and so I've been taking to interview the fellow submitting writers about various topics of humor, horror, and pie throwing.

But today I'm offering up a more serious interview with a writer with a broad range of successful publications (also, Sarah Glenn thwacked me on the head and said "BEHAVE"). So here now is a Q&A with Rosalind Barden (you may have seen her work in the same anthologies I've been published like the first Strangely Funny, Mardi Gras Murder, and History And Mystery Oh My).

Q. What would you like people to know about you?

I draw too!  My drawings tend to be tongue-in-cheek, like my writing.  I have a dancing TV and an architecturally significant Silverlake skunk, among others, on t-shirts, mugs and so on, at CafePress


Q. When did you begin writing?

When I was a kid.


Q. How did you get the idea for your story in Strangely Funny III?

I wrote the first draft soon after I toured a 1920s Downtown Los Angeles movie palace.  Movies used to be developed on silver nitrate film, and there was discussion during the tour about how dangerously flammable it is.  Modern film stock is safer, but the depth and sparkle of the silver nitrate is lost.  Because the surviving silver nitrate films are so dangerous, it is hard to find them screened.  Of course, with this bit of information, my mind wandered and a wereman got involved.

Q. Is there a genre you haven't written in, but would like to?

I have an idea for a fantasy, but it'll have to wait until I have the time to write it.

Q. Who are your current favorite authors? What do you enjoy about them?

P.G. Wodehouse is my current and long-time favorite.  I love his sense of fun.

Q. What are you working on next?

A short and a long mystery.

Q. What is your favorite writing snack food/drink?

Hazelnuts when I'm good.  Chocolate when I'm less good.  Both when I'm neither good nor bad.


Rosalind's bio:

Over thirty of Rosalind Barden's short stories have appeared in print anthologies and webzines, including the U.K.'s acclaimed WHISPERS OF WICKEDNESS. Mystery and Horror LLC has included her stories in their anthologies MARDI GRAS MURDER, STRANGELY FUNNY, STRANGELY FUNNY 2 1/2, and HISTORY AND MYSTERY OH MY!, winner of the Florida Authors and Publishers Association President's Book Award Silver Medal. Ellen Datlow selected her short story LION FRIEND as a Best Horror of the Year Honorable Mention after it appeared in CERN ZOO, a British Fantasy Society nominee for best anthology, part of DF Lewis' award winning NEMONYMOUS anthology series. TV MONSTER is her print children's book that she wrote and illustrated. Her satirical literary novel AMERICAN WITCH is available as an e-book. In addition, her scripts, novel manuscripts and short fiction have placed in numerous competitions, including the Writers Digest Screenplay Competition and the Shriekfast Film Festival. She lives in Los Angeles, California. Discover more at RosalindBarden.com.

TOMORROW! I Wanna See 100 Million Of You At the Local Authors' Event.

Final reminder:

Just to shill to the seven readers of this blog, I'll be at the Barnes & Noble in Wesley Chapel FL this Saturday May 30th from 2 pm to 4 pm selling my works.

Location is 28152 Paseo Dr
(southwest corner facing the intersection of
Bruce B. Downs and SR 56)
Wesley Chapel, FL 33543
p: 813-907-7739




Just as a reminder, this is my stuff (available online through most book retailers, especially Amazon and BN.com).

My collection of short stories, published 2003.

E-published, available as download.
I'm currently working on other stories
based in that superhero 'verse.

Contains my short "I Must Be Your First",
which has received great reviews!

Contains my short "Why The Mask".

Contains my short "The Dread Secret of
The Battle Of Los Angeles," based on a
Real Life incident in L.A. at the start of WWII.

E-published, available for download

E-published, sequel to "Welcome to Florida".

I would LOVE to have people show up and support local/independent authors. (hint: buy my books!)  We need to encourage more adult reading (buy my books) and we need to support our bookstores as fun gathering places (buy my books).

I hope to see everyone in Wesley Chapel this Saturday.  All one hundred million of you.  Right?
(p.s. buy my books)

One Week Before NaNoWriMo 2014

GET PUMPED UP, WRITERS.

You want motivation heading into next week?  Here you go:

I met Tim Dorsey at his presentation at the Bartow Public Library last week.  I mentioned to him the thing about NaNoWriMo, that it's writing a novel up to 50,000 words within 30 days.

Dorsey mentioned that his Serge A Storms book Orange Crush - his third - was 80,000 words and he finished it in 40 days.  That's roughly 2000 words a day, close to the amount needed to do NaNo (1667) in 30 days.  Heck, writing 2000 words is easy to do during a Write-In event, those events tend to last 2 hours.  That's 2 hours in a day.  And there's more than 2 hours in a day a writer can find the time to write.

Doing NaNo is an easy thing to do, as long as you prepare yourself to write.  Planning out the days you're going to be able to find the time.  Planning out the rough narrative / outline of your work.  Knowing your characters before you write them.  These are all the easy steps you can be doing right now before logging in to www.nanowrimo.org to get set... ready... WRITE!

I Survived MegaCon 2014 (cross-post)

I blogged about my MegaCon trip this past weekend over on my political blog rather than the writing blog here, I apologize... but hey I provided a link!

As for my writing, I attended (I tagged myself...and the guy sitting in front of me) a very packed World Building panel presentation (the panelist taking that photo, Bill Hatfield, found out the line for the presentation went out the door and along the hallway for the poor souls who couldn't get in: I'm pretty sure next year they'll get bigger rooms for the writing panels).  Got some good motivation to get my damned first novel finished...

The panel was led by Glenda C Finkelstein, author of Battle Cry; and co-hosted by Bill (William) Hatfield, of Captive Audience; by T.S. Robinson, of Battle-Chasers; and Jade Kerrion, of the Double Helix series.  Philip McCall was also a presenter but he showed up late, so nyah to him. ;-)

Met the authors afterward to thank them, and found out that - hey - Hatfield owned the Novel Ideas comic book store in Gainesville when I went to University of Florida!  Small world...