If you like to read, and would like to test read some of the nonsense I’m going to publish before it gets published, just drop me a comment here. Some of it is finished and ready for editing stage, some is still in progress.
I should say you probably also need to be okay with adult language and adult situations. I don’t write erotica or porn, but my characters are people from the real world and they don’t talk or act like they live in 1840 England 😉
Hey kids, just like to toot my own horn a bit and let everyone know that my story “One Last Job” will be free starting at Midnight Sunday the 14th (tonight-ish if you are a night owl like me). Since it is free, give it a read, send me some hate mail.
You can read it on one of the following:
Kindle (all flavors) / Android Phones / Android Tablets / iPhone / iPad / PC / Mac / Probably other stuff
“While this page is entitled “Free Novel,” that’s actually a total lie: by coming here, you can get not one, not two, but three free bestselling novels! And all three are available from your favorite ebook retail sites for Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and are available on iTunes and Google Play!”
“We’ve written more than a few times about Scott Turow, a brilliant author, but an absolute disaster as the Luddite-driven head of the Authors’ Guild. During his tenure, he’s done a disservice to authors around the globe by basically attacking everything new and modern — despite any opportunities it might provide — and talked up the importance of going back to physical books and bookstores. He’s an often uninformed champion of a past that never really existed and which has no place in modern society. He once claimed that Shakespeare wouldn’t have been successful under today’s copyright law because of piracy, ignoring the fact that copyright law didn’t even exist in the age of Shakespeare. His anti-ebook rants are just kind of wacky.”
So last night while I was tooling around Tumblr, I happened to come across a post on someone’s blog (she runs a sort of anti-bullying blog and she’s awesome). As you can see below, it was fairly disturbing:
every-one-is-mad-here: Would anyone here be pissed off or Sad if I committed suicide today? Seriously considering it.
If this was ten years ago, I might have not cared much, or worse, thought it was some cry for attention. Keep in mind I haven’t always been the nicest or most caring guy for a big chunk of my life. But over the last decade or so, I’ve had a huge shift in my thinking. Continue reading
I suppose this will go down in history (my own history anyway) as the very first story I ever published.
I wrote this a few years ago, and fiddled with it for a long time, and then forgot about it, then fiddled with it again. I mostly put this story up first to learn how to navigate the Amazon KDP and Smashwords interfaces. If someone wants to buy it, then I’m your bestest friend ever.
It isn’t very long, only about 3,000 words, but I’ve always liked it personally. I love short stories, and I tend to buy lots of anthologies (mostly sci-fi, but I’ve been known to purchase into other genres). I also grew up as a semi-redneck of low birth who was fascinated by the ‘evil empire’ known as the U.S.S.R. as I’m a true child of the 1980’s. That’s probably where the seasoning in this story comes from. Enjoy!
Right. So. Welcome to Writer’s Confusion #3. Today we are going to talk about the difference between nauseous and nauseated. I’ve used this incorrectly before myself, so this is a good lesson for me. This is one of those ‘not so important’ rules that you might only come up against a few times in your writing (or verbally speaking in the real world). But it is always nice to know rules right? Continue reading
I had a pleasant dream the other day. The dream was that America was full of intelligent people who actually read books, newspapers, and websites that were full of facts. An America where an opinion was something that you maybe didn’t agree with, but were at least respectful enough to allow that someone else might have a different one than yours. An America that wasn’t full of mindless drool-tards that got their information from one source and tweeted/tumbld/facebooked it the instant they saw it instead of actually checking to see if information was factual or just opinion.
But then I woke up. Continue reading
Welcome all to Writer’s Confusion #2. Today we will talk about gray vs. grey. This isn’t really a super-important topic when it comes to writing, but I’ve been confused about it for a long time. The funny thing about this is that once I found the answer, I started asking/talking to friends about it, and it has become quite a popular topic (yes, we are NERDS. WORD NERDS).
So we want to talk about iron skies, or geriatric hair color. But is grey the correct word? Or is it gray? Is it important? Maybe…if you are a Grammar Fascist (or British).
I would like to ask everyone…was I the only one that felt really weird about being unsure if I should use grey or gray? Every time I had to write ‘gray skies’ or ‘grey hair’ I waffled for about two minutes as to which one was the correct one…
So, let’s do this!
Writer’s Confusion #2 – Grey vs. Gray
Right. So. Look here mate! Oi! This is the correct version of the dickey bird in the King’s pommy: GREY.
Yo. This here is the ‘Murken (American) way: GRAY.
Yep. It is just THAT simple. If you are British, or speak the King’s English proper, then grey is the way you will spell it probably 95% of the time.
If you are an American, you will probably spell it gray.
Now you can probably see why this is such a good topic of conversation around word nerds! The real and proper answer is that either version is perfectly fine. No one will troll you for using grey or gray instead of gray or grey. Well, someone will probably troll you at some point. That’s what the internet is about. In the meantime, since I’m an American, I have begun to use grey since it is the British version, and there’s nothing I like more in life than annoying the hell out of my British friends!
A couple of web references I used: Ref-1 Ref-2
PS: And remember kids – it’s vs. its
its = possessive. This blog is its own worst enemy.
it’s = contraction of it is. It’s the worst blog on the internet.
So I just got my copy of The Elements of Style by Strunk & White…a little bible of sorts for authors, and one that I haven’t cracked open in at least twenty years. I’ve been banging out the words quite a bit lately in anticipation of getting my first two books published (one novel, one collection of short stories). I’ve been worried that since I haven’t taken a formal English Composition class or Creative Writing class in many years (and prior to the two I took about six years ago it has been at least a decade before that), my proper writing skills would be incredibly rusty, worthless, and cringe-inducing. I think this is the worry of any author, really. Continue reading