The personal opinions of a guy just trying to make it through life.
I think that blog post (Getting It Up, Keeping It Up) got more comments than anything I’ve done here. Which is interesting. We had a lot of people weigh in, including some who are deeply vested in this business such as Marie Force and Joe Konrath.
The bottom line seemed to be hard work and more content was key.
I first read about the Sips Card in the pages of The Writer and learned shortly thereafter that one of my favorite artists, Kristen Solecki, is on the team behind this ingenious new way of sharing fiction. (Kristen's art, by the way, graces the cover of To Be Friend a Fox, a volume of poetry by the late Richard Pearce, which I edited in 2010.) Given my interest in spreading the word about new sources of fiction and in Kristen's work, I was happy to have the chance to chat with the artist about her latest endeavor.
In Special Forces we’re taught that the acronym Survival provides you with the first letters of the keys you need to survive. I recently published The Green Beret Survival Guide which frankly, I feel, is the most important book I've ever written, because it has information in it that can and will, save people's lives. In it, I cover the acronym in terms of a survival situation, but here, I want to use it in terms of being a writer:
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore".
An iconic line from a famous poem.
Written by a man who was orphaned at the age of three, lost the love of his life to tuberculosis, and then died himself at only 40 years old, it's instantly recognizable to nearly everyone who reads it. It is the haunting refrain of Edgar Allan Poe's “The Raven”.
By the light of the moon
From the dirt where they lay
They crawl up through earth
To lurk and to prey
They’ve lived and they’ve died
Loved and they’ve lost
But all through this night
Your lives they will toss
.
Dogs they do bark
Cats they do prowl
Seasons turn chill
And the winds always howl
.
The myths grow more sick…
Today, I’m interviewing a friend of mine---maybe approaching 20 years?---Jan C. J. Jones, producer, writer, video editor, of Forest Rose, Productions. I’ve always been amazed and in awe of Jan’s incredible, indomitable will, perseverance, and imaginative superpowers. I throw the term “superpowers” around a fair amount, but in Jan’s case, I’m not kidding (pardon the pun). I met her many years ago at a…
Epic slow-motion. Soaring music. Stunned reaction shots -- this commercial from Denmark has it all, and they do it better than Michael Bay without even resorting to 593 explosions.
Think of what they could have done with an explosion or seven.
###
Reformed journalist. Scribbler of speeches and whatnot. Wrote a thriller that was a finalist for some award.
Wheat. Duh. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Little Bighorn!
A dog named “Shep”!
Wheat Fields!
Underground bordellos!
Hutterites!
Flat tires!
Dam building!
All, coming to a theater near you!
I mean blog…to a blog near you!
Stay tuned, friends!
OK.
I’ve been on the fence about getting any kind of a tablet. Any kind. Had “nice little discussions” with info geeks and you name it. But, even I’m starting to get interested in these things…especially the smaller (7 inch or so) versions. They are great information platforms.
Check out this video—sure, it’s over an hour (but you can drag faster through the timeline), so run it in the background while doing other things, but this thing—if it delivers—sounds really cool. I don’t have a smartphone, but this thing could be my mitigator…accessing e-mail and keeping more “live” on what social media I belong to, making me more accessible to post comments and timely responses to my agent and other writerly needs without paying for the data coverages that rape smartphone users (really, does all of Humanity need to pay such outlandish rates when nearly every human being has a smartphone?!). Were I to own one of these things it has exactly what I’m looking for, and at a rather nice price.
According to Mr. Bezos, with the Kindle Fire HD (7-inch model to ship September 14th, 8.9 inch November 20th), they wanted to create the best tablet at any price. They want to be about services, not hardware. They make money when people use their platforms, not when they buy them and leave in the drawer somewhere.
Many think Amazon the enemy. I’m not convinced they are. And I find this new tablet of theirs quite intriguing, better than nearly every other one I’ve looked into, including the iPad (did I just write that out loud?). For a while I was thinking an iPad the best platform (click here for a comparison link)—better if they came out with a 7-inch model, but so far, I’m really liking what I’m seeing in this Kindle Fire HD.
And, for me to even take the time to post about this, scares even me, but that’s how impressed I am by this thing (at least on paper).
It’s smokin.
Exploring the Works of Rod Serling
Grabbing a bite to eat while pounding the keys on that novel...
because the only thing constant is change
The personal opinions of a guy just trying to make it through life.
The personal opinions of a guy just trying to make it through life.
Life On The Edge... Of The Sofa
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by the author of "Vampire Syndrome"
Factual Fiction by Bob Mayer
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Where intercultural writers connect.
Musings on chick stuff
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Conventional wisdom about writing is conventionally wrong.
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Marc Schuster's Random Musings and Ephemera
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Banned Thoughts That Deserve to Be Thought About
Just another WordPress.com weblog
A teenager trapped in a middle-aged body
Just another WordPress.com weblog
