April 2018 Writing Projects

1. Cleaning up some of my short stories to submit to the FWA Royal Palm Awards.

2. Joining Camp NaNo this month to complete the YA alien invasion novel.

3. Slapping myself each hour I don't get any damn writing done when it could get done.


I expect to be covered in slap bruises by the end of next week.

Good luck to ye, too.

Quiet Man Question, Maybe a Pub Enthusiast Can Tell Me

Okay, so I got a question about this bit in the movie:

You can to scan ahead to the bit in the pub, when O'Flynn gets the gun to fire "one if by land two if by sea" and the bartender shouts "Gentlemen on a day like this, the drinks are on the house!"

And then all of a sudden every man there paying attention drop their whiskey glasses and refuse to take another sip.

I don't get it.

I'm a teetotaler, so I'm not hep to such things.

Is that a man in Ireland pays for his drinks regardless of the free and unhindered offering of a drink?

Please comment below.

In the meantime, here's my dinner movie I'll be watching as I eat Mexican food.

...what?

Just Noting for the Record: PI DAY

March 14th translates to 3.14 which are the first three numbers in pi, an irrational number that in theory goes on forever because it defines the curvature of a circle, which has no corner, meaning it keeps getting smoother and smoother and smoother but never stopping as you zoom into the infinite of nanospace and...

ahem. I'll start over.

It's Pi Day.

MMMMMMMMMM PI.

Librarianship and Social Media

In terms of marketing, libraries need every form of outreach they can think of.

But Facebook can only go so far. Tumblr requires near constant updating, as does Twitter.

Is Snapchat a good way to get teens more interested in using the library for reading or school work?

What other social media apps might work?

Suggestions? Please comment.

Submission time! Yay!

So again, I'm rushing up to the deadline for submissions, but hey I got this in this morning!

I submitted a short story "Knowing Dragons" to Darkhouse Books for their planned Shhh Murder anthology. I spotted it on a listing of online submissions - thank you, Gwendolyn Kiste! - and while it's in a genre - cozy mystery - I'm not usually working in, I noticed it was perfect for me in one regards.

The editors were going to give extra credit to anyone with a librarian background.

So, here's hoping the story passes muster!

February 2018 Misdeeds In Action

Deadlines are coming up for various writing projects.

No more distractions.

The next blog entry I post will proclaim a story finished.

I swear it.

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