Writing Wibbles

As always, let’s start with a big FAR Manor welcome for the new blog followers:

• Thaddeus Howze — fantasy writer and computer technologist
• Nicola Slade — a fine UK-based writer of fine cozy books of my acquaintance — hi Nicky!

Visitor badges are on the table, as always.

Sometimes, writing is like chasing a receding goalpost — but sometimes you catch it anyway. I finished Chasing a Rainbow over the weekend, a total of just over 17,000 words. After a quick typo pass, I decided to let it marinate for a week before starting a paper edit this weekend.

I’m also thinking about how I want to release it on an unsuspecting world. I know some authors have had good luck podcasting their stories, so I’m seriously considering that route (once again, with the ability to buy the eBook right away). Boran may take a shot at painting the cover, which would be pretty cool. That would give me time to make sure the story is in good shape, so it’s likely to see the light of 'pod sometime later this year.

Not much movement on the White Pickups front. sigh I’m in a similar blockage mode with Pickups and Pestilence that I was at one point with White Pickups, which suggests to me that I might be pushing the story in the wrong direction. Whatever it is I’m doing wrong, I hope the characters will let me know soon. I’m about ⅔ done with the story.


The “one photo, three genres” project is off to a roaring start. Three Sprites, One Silent has (as I type) 199 reads, which puts it very close to being my all-time most read #FridayFlash. Only Geek vs. Zombies has passed the 200 mark so far, and that just barely (at 201). I hope the next one is as well-received.

Speaking of #FridayFlash, my Christmas/motorcycle/horror story To Begin With was named #FridayFlash of the Month for December! I got interviewed and everything — go check it out! Good publicity is good publicity, you know.

And… there’s some other cool publicity-related stuff I'll get to next week…


While Amazon is officially discouraging authors giving out eBook sales figures, I think it’s safe to say that Xenocide hasn’t exactly marched to the top of the best-seller lists on either Amazon or Smashwords. Especially Smashwords. Even with a coupon that made it free, I only got a few more Smashwords free downloads than I did Amazon sales. It makes me glad that publishing Xenocide was a trial run, to see how much effort it took and what I’d need to do to smooth the path for the White Pickups release. But given the numbers, I’m seriously questioning whether it’s worth the effort to release an ePUB on Smashwords, even with the automatic distribution to Nook/Sony/iBooks/etc.

While a quick Google suggests the eReader market is split 67%/22%/11% between Kindle, Nook, and the rest, I also found an eBook sales page that suggests eBook sales are split 58%/27%/9%/6% between Amazon, B&N, iBooks, and the rest — which says that Nook users buy more eBooks than Kindle users. But my experience, and what at least some others are seeing, doesn't line up with this. For example, indie author Stephen Knight posted his sales figures on Monday, and to say his numbers are heavily skewed toward Amazon is an understatement (over 95% of his revenue came from Amazon!). This suggests to me that adding one’s books to Kindle Prime, which makes them Kindle-exclusive for the duration, doesn’t leave much money on the table. I’m not sure what’s happening here — it would be interesting to see how other writers are doing — but it could be that indies are having an easier time of it on Amazon’s store.

We’re all groping our way forward in the dark. Beware of people trying to sell flashlights.

Writing Wibbles

Oh look, two new followers to welcome!

• Chris Morton — a Taiwan-based writer who occasionally gets back home to the UK…
• Russell 1200 — “deep background on the human (inevitably) terminal condition”

Your visitor badges are on the table. Please, no flash photography.

I hoped (but did not expect) to get a lot of writing done during the two weeks I had off. It could have been worse — the holiday put a crimp in the writing time, but I did manage to write some. I even got on a roll… not with Pickups and Pestilence, but with Chasing a Rainbow. As with most of the tales I take on, it grew in the telling. I originally expected it to run about 10,000 words. I’m closing in on the end, I hope, and the current word count is 16,000. I think another thousand words will put this one to bed… a 70% overrun. Considering I originally expected White Pickups to be 30,000 words, and the current estimate is 180,000 (a 600% overrun), my estimates are improving!

Something interesting I’ve noted: sometimes, it feels like I have to push the first 200 words through the keyboard. At some point, without my realizing it, the next 800 (or more) words just flow out. It’s like pushing a car over the hill; gravity just takes over and I’m just along for the ride.

I’m not sure whether I’ll serialize Chasing (probably), or offer it for a buck on the eBook sites like with Xenocide, or both. By the way, the latter is currently free on Smashwords, using coupon code CE84M until the 10^th. I’ve had a few Xenocide sales, not enough to get to the payout level, and just a few more free downloads than purchases since I set up the coupon. I’d like to see a review or two, even tepid ones so I’ll know what to improve in my writing.

One problem with releasing Chasing as an eBook is that I have no book cover for it, nor any ideas for one. Oh well, that gives me time to shake out typos and other issues. But I’ll probably have to design my own cover, since (unless I’m pleasantly surprised) it’s unlikely I’ll get enough sales to cover the expense of having it done for me.

I need a 36-hour day.

Debut Books

Guest post! Shannon Meyer is taking over the blog for one post. There’s a prize for the blogger who gets the most comments — that would be cool, but frankly I’m in this for the good karma. Remember to support indie authors, the creator-consumers of the publishing world…

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Support Four Debut Authors and Snag $125!
Four books — Two Days — Great Prizes

With this contest, there is something for everyone and it’s SO simple to be in on the winning!

On November 28 and/or 29, purchase 1 or all 4 of the debut author’s books listed here. Then forward proof of purchase (the receipt Amazon sends you will do just fine) to motionsrider@yahoo.ca and get up to 4 entries into a draw for a $100 Amazon gift card!

It’s that easy, no reviews, no hoops to jump through. Just a great 99¢ book or two. Or three or four. AND, if the person who wins the $100 Amazon Gift Card has purchased all 4 books, an additional $25 Amazon Gift Card will be awarded to the winner!

On top of that, 2 random commenters picked from 2 of our participating blogs will receive $5 gift Amazon gift cards. So, be sure to leave a comment and let us know what you think of the promo, the books, or the authors.

Winners will be chosen randomly, one entry per person, per book.

All winners will be announced on December 7^th on Wringing Out Words (http://shannonmayer.blogspot.com)


“Between” by Cyndi Tefft
It just figures that the love of Lindsey Water's life isn't alive at all, but the grim reaper, complete with a dimpled smile, and Scottish accent.

After transporting souls to heaven for the last 300 years, Aiden MacRae has all but given up on finding the one whose love will redeem him and allow him entry through the pearly gates.

Torn between her growing attraction to Aiden and heaven's siren song, Lindsey must learn the hard way whether love really can transcend all boundaries.

Link: http://www.amazon.com/Between-ebook/dp/B004XZUMBA/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1322190792&sr=1-1


“Until Dawn: Last Light” by Jennifer Simas
When darkness falls, whose side will you be on?

For the past six years, Zoë has been anything but “normal.” Struggling to accept her immortality and thrown into a war that’s been waging in the shadows for over a thousand years, Zoë must now become who she was meant to be, joining the other Chosen to save what’s left of humanity. When the endless night falls over the Earth, will she be able to save the one man who reminds her of what it is to be human, or will it be too late?

Until Dawn: Last Light is a story of death and despair, love and longing, hope and hopelessness, and the ability to survive and keep going even when it seems impossible – when you want nothing more than to give up.

Link: http://www.amazon.com/Until-Dawn-Last-Light-ebook/dp/B005QUIXJY/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1322190717&sr=1-1


“The Kayson Cycle” by Jonathan D. Allen
A stranger enters a dying town and makes a desperate plea…

The Kayson Cycle introduces the Kayson Brothers, a pair of faith healers who once wowed crowds in a traveling show but went their separate ways after a night in which a healing took a dark turn. Jeffrey Kayson disappeared into the wilderness and William Kayson, wracked by guilt, moved to the failing mining town of Calico Hills to build a nice, quiet life – one that has lasted for over ten years.

His quiet, predictable life crumbles when a mysterious stranger walks into his tavern bearing a proposal to find his long-lost brother and do the one thing that William has sworn to never do again - have his brother heal a woman. William soon learns that he can’t escape his family – or his destiny.

Includes an exclusive sample chapter of The Corridors of the Dead. Please note that this is a Kindle Single, and around 6,000 words in length.

Link: http://www.amazon.com/The-Kayson-Cycle-ebook/dp/B0061FDUA0/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1322190892&sr=1-1


“Sundered” by Shannon Mayer
A miracle drug, Nevermore, spreads like wildfire throughout the world allowing people to eat what they want, and still lose weight. It is everything the human population has ever dreamed of and Mara is no different. Only a simple twist of fate stops her from taking Nevermore.

As the weeks roll by, it becomes apparent that Nevermore is not the miracle it claimed. A true to life nightmare, the drug steals the very essence that makes up humanity and unleashes a new and deadly species on the world that is bent on filling its belly. Locked down within their small farm home, Mara and her husband Sebastian struggle against increasingly bad odds, fighting off marauders and monsters alike.

But Sebastian carries a dark secret, one that more than threatens to tear them apart, it threatens to destroy them both and the love they have for each other.

Now Mara must make the ultimate choice. Will she live for love, or will she live to survive?

Link: http://www.amazon.com/Sundered-Nevermore-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B005KOIVH0/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1315021535&sr=8-3

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And that’s that! Leave a comment and check out the books…

Let’s Go To the (Blog) Hop!

I was invited to participate in the Scribbles Blog Hop, and it sounded like a lot of fun, so here we go…

each writer is going to post pics of their writing journal/diaries/notebooks/notepads/etc and tell a little about their approach to writing, how & why they use their journals, and post links to the other bloggers participating.

I knew there was a reason I was saving all those scraps of paper…

Everything eventually finds its way into Scrivener on my laptop, but not all of it starts there.

After I got caught out with an idea at lunch, and nothing to write it on, I got into the habit of taking a pen and either a notepad or notebook to lunch with me.

Depending on how hard something is trying to get out of my head, I’ll either eat lunch (usually at the Johnny’s Pizza on Jones Bridge in John’s Creek) or just start writing right away and keep an eye out for the server. I’ve been going there long enough that the staff knows I drink unsweet tea and usually get two pizza slices with mushrooms. Once I get started, I’ll write until whatever it is gets completely out of my head or until it just gets too late to ignore how far overtime my lunch “hour” is running.

This particular scrap of paper contains what became Episode 74 of White Pickups. You may notice scratch-outs on the paper — those happen at the time I’m writing. I can’t get out of the habit of editing as I write. I’ll edit some more as I type things in — often inserting sentences or whole paragraphs.

One day I was poking around in a B&N while someone (I think it was Daughter Dearest’s boyfriend at the time) was at the nearby game store, and it was there that I saw the Moleskine rack. I bought one of the pocket notebooks, and bought a second one in May after I filled up the first one.

They’re awfully handy — it’s easy to see why (as the promotional literature wants you to know) the likes of Hemingway swore by them. The little pocket in the back holds note cards and other bits of not-quite-outlines that I’ll flesh out when the characters get off the dime and let me know what’s going on.

That pretty much leaves “why” — well, I’ve already explained part of it: it’s a convenience. As I wrote a couple weeks ago, writers are working when we’re staring out the window — but the downside to that is that we’re always working. So having a way to get words on paper when the ideas are coming, but the keyboard isn’t available, is crucial.

Now of course, that only works if someone (like Mason, the World’s Cutest Grandkid) doesn’t snatch the pen and Moleskine right out of your pocket:

I took this shot back in February, when he was about 18 months old. He’s 26 months now, and still likes to grab ’em when he can. Maybe once he learns to write, he’ll be writing his own stories too.

But until Mason starts sharing his stories with the world, go check out the other writers participating in the Scribbles Blog Hop:

Danielle La Paglia: http://daniellelapaglia.wordpress.com/

Anne Michaud: http://annecmichaud.wordpress.com/

Marianne Su: http://mariannesu.com/blog/

Victoria D Griesdoorn: http://www.vdgriesdoorn.com/

Ren Warom: http://renwaromsumwelt.wordpress.com/

J.A. Campbell: http://writerjacampbell.wordpress.com/

Tammy Crosby: http://tammywrites.wordpress.com/

Maria Kelly: http://mariakellyauthor.com/

Chrissey Harrison: http://chrisseysgreatescape.wordpress.com/

Natalie Westgate: http://nataliewestgate.com/

Tony Noland: http://www.tonynoland.com/

Larry Kollar: http://farmanor.blogspot.com/ (←you are here)

Writing Wibbles

Whew, I made it.

I recently finished reading a book (no, not the next review, nor the one after that) where the editing… well, there’s no easy way to put this. It started out really well, a few glitches here and there, all books have those. About halfway through, it got past the “all books” benchmark. In the last fourth of the book, the editing broke down completely. I tweeted the author about it — via direct message, no need to hang dirty laundry out in public — and she was pretty cool about the whole thing. Two people had edited it, and the author hadn’t looked it over before the final went out — heck, I’d have been inclined to think that two editors would have done the job as well. But like I said, she was pretty cool about it, and plans to roll out a corrected edition next month (hooray for eBooks!). I would probably have a very public meltdown if it happened to me; I’m anal about typos to the point where I’ll fix old blog posts if I see typos in them.

So I’m expecting lots of jitters before, and immediately after, the White Pickups release. I’ll be happy if it’s completely typo-free, but I need to keep some perspective — even if there are more than a handful, I can push out a corrected edition. I wanted to release it on Sep. 14, the day the story began, but I’d rather have it out late and right. I've probably gone through the entire thing several dozen times, no exaggeration — one advantage of serializing your work, it makes you go through it to make sure the next episode doesn’t wander off into the weeds. That’s one reason I’m going to start small (literally) with Xenocide as a short eBook. I figure I’ll learn several valuable things that I can use to make the White Pickups release go smoother.

I can’t remember, did I ever link to The Were-Traveler issue where my two drabbles appeared? My entries are #2 (Hunted), and in the middle (Unseen). If you haven’t seen them, go check them out. They’re all good.

Instead of a #FridayFlash this week, I’m participating in a bloghop. I think it will be interesting — there will be verbiage about how I use my handwritten notebooks and photos of my horrible penmanship, as well as links to other participants. (I may recycle a certain photo of Mason, just for the “the cute, it burns” factor.)

October Horror Spotlight #4

Happy Hallowe’en! I’m wrapping up this series with some real treats: free horror fiction, fresh from the blogs! Clicking the links below open a new window, so you won’t have to remember to return here for the others.

Maria Kelly’s The Were-Traveler is a newborn webzine — the first issue, Hundred-Word Halloween, was published on Saturday. I happen to have two pieces in that issue. ;-) The ‘zine focuses on drabbles (100-word stories) and other types of micro-fiction, with occasional flash or short stories.

Lake Lopez wants to “scare the hell out of you,” so he blogs at The Scary Story. There are short and long pieces to suit your scarification needs. His current serial, Sinister, is definitely worth reading.

Christian Jensen’s Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children is for those adult-types who like their erotica with a big side dish of horror. Or maybe it’s horror with a side of nookie. Whatever!

And that’s a wrap. It’ll be November in less than an hour here, so enjoy whatever’s left of the day!

Writing Wibbles

You would think I would have had plenty of time to crank one of these out last week. But, no. I was actually getting some writing done while traveling on business to our office in Beaverton, OR (more about that later). Kind of nice to be able to come to a quiet hotel room and not worry about people wanting you to Drop Everything and take care of their stuff.

The writing action the last couple of weeks was centered around Pickups and Pestilence. I figured out how Chapter 8 was going to fly, and that filled in a serious gap in the story. If I were to start serializing it today, at the usual one a week, I’d have a year’s worth of episodes in the queue. I think I’m about ⅔ of the way done with it.

Even better, I now have a clear view of the endgame. Among writers on Twitter and the blogs, there’s a “plotter or pantser?” meme (we have too much fun with it to call it a controversy). After writing just over 150,000 words on the White Pickups two-fer, I’ve finally figured out how it ends. I’ve had some thoughts about it all along, even from the time when I expected White Pickups to be a 30,000-word novella instead of two large novels, but none of them ever felt quite right. This is definitely pantsing, i.e. writing by the seat of my pants. The thing is, it actually works for me. Of course, what’s really happening is that I’m taking dictation from the voices in my head. Naturally, the changes reverberated all the way back to Chapter 1 of White Pickups. Funny thing was, several things I put at the end of the first book are tied to the ending of the second. Maybe the voices in my head knew all along and gave it to me piecemeal.

My next large project, tentatively called Wings, is going to be largely plotted. In fact, much of the plotting is done already. I did that as a compromise — it wanted some attention, and I’m trying to stay focused on finishing a large commitment as described above, so I threw down as many details as I could into a mindmap (you may remember this wibble from July). I did it so I won’t forget important details when it actually comes time to start writing, rather than any serious conversion to plotting (I think a plot is like a battle plan: neither of them survives very long once they’re actually used).

Maybe some of you are still stuck on the “year’s worth of episodes” thing three paragraphs back, thinking Hey FARf, if you’ve got that much done why aren’t you posting them already? Well, I’ve been thinking about that ever since I got back from Oregon. Here’s what’s going to happen: I’m going to get White Pickups released, I hope some time next month. When I hit some arbitrary sales figure (50? 100? don’t know yet), I’ll start posting episodes. I’m hoping to complete the first draft of Pickups and Pestilence by the end of the year, and have it ready for release in the spring, so it should be available long before the last episode goes up on the blog. (You see where I’m going with this?) If you don’t want to wait to see how it ends, you’ll be able to get the eBook.

Yes, I’m pantsing this whole marketing and promotion thing too.

For my #FridayFlash this week, I’m going to try really hard to do something with Icy Sedgwick’s prompt: “write a story about a pirate captain, a fictional Londe bus route, and a kidnapped bear cub.” I’m going to assume “Londe bus” means “London bus,” since that’s what Google thought it meant.

Writing Wibbles

Greetings to all y’all…

It’s been a strange week for writing. The three-day weekend at Mom’s didn’t let me do much more than nibble at the edges of things, although I did finish up a third segment of On the Georgia Road that may become my #FridayFlash this week if another idea doesn't strike me tomorrow. But I’ve mostly been trying to get some momentum on Pickups and Pestilence — filling in holes here and there, trying to get rolling on the last half of the story. Some time in the last week, an important detail finally became clear: I’ve known for a long time what’s behind the pickups, but not why they’re white pickups instead of a Maserati or Ford Expedition. Only 140,000 words in before I figured it out.

Mom says, “needs more nasties!” There’s a group that fits the description in Pickups and Pestilence, but I also have a feeling our heroes will run into Perry Adams…

Meanwhile, I’m not neglecting White Pickups. I’ve begun tackling the dreaded “blurb,” the summary on the back cover of printed books. The White Pickups page has the first attempt; Mari Juniper (my April Fool’s Blog Swap partner) gave me some suggested fixes that I’m working on now. I never realized how difficult it could be to condense a 95,000-word story into a single paragraph of promotional come-on. But I’ve summarized 500-page technical manuals with a haiku. I can do this.


A week ago, I said I was going to change the blog template because of several deficiencies: the “contact me” link went nowhere, and not having the Share buttons, were the two big ones. But I also wanted the “comment” link at the bottom of each post, where it’s more likely to get clicked by someone who just finished reading. I figured I should check the Deluxe Templates site for an update before doing anything drastic — there wasn’t an update, but there were instructions for adding the Share buttons! That didn’t include the +1 button, but a little poking around on the Blogger site led me to a fix for that too. Fixing the “contact me” link was trivial by comparison; I pointed it at my profile for now. For whatever reason, I figured out how to copy the “comment” link to the bottom this time, when I couldn’t when I first started using Abrasive.

So now I have almost everything I wanted. The last part, making the sidebar wider (from 180px to 240px), involves widening the background graphics as well. I have Photoshop Elements, so I don’t expect that to be a huge problem. Speaking of the sidebar, I put a small copy of the White Pickups cover in there.

Then when I was reading Tony Noland’s #FridayFlash last week, I noticed he had a “LinkWithin” widget at the bottom of his posts that links to related posts on his blog. The widget also had a link to its home site, so I followed that and found easy instructions for adding one to TFM… so I did. It’s kind of fun, seeing what posts come up and sometimes following them. It was a little random at first; it said it could take a few hours to index the blog. Given that TFM is approaching 1,300 posts, it might have taken a few days.

So I have all these new features bolted onto the blog, and once I get the sidebar widened that’s going to be all the changes for a while. Feel free to click them to see what else is lurking here — or share it around with your friends, of course. Smack that +1 button if you like a post. Don’t forget to leave a comment…

Writing Wibbles

The more sharp-eyed readers (and I love you all, sharp-eyed or not) noticed that I changed the usual title of Wednesday Wibbles to Writing Wibbles. I’m doing this for two reasons:

• They don't always end up getting posted on Wednesdays.
• Much of the content of these posts is about writing in general, and how my writing in particular is going, anyway. May as well make it official, and talk about the free-range insane asylum during the rest of the week.
• As I get closer to releasing White Pickups, and slowly drop my light coat of anonymity, TFM will of necessity focus more on writing until I move that to its own blog or website.

Earlier this week, Tony Noland wrote a blog post about The risks and rewards of posting NSFW content, after an unusually erotic (for him) #FridayFlash story created some blowback. He hesitated about posting it at first, and asked for opinions on Friday morning. I obliged, and thought it erotic but well-written and not as “bad” as some other erotica I’ve seen on Blogger. I said go for it, just add the NSFW (Not Safe For Work) tag, and he did. Sure, it was an easy call on my part — I didn’t get the blowback — but I think any blowback was unwarranted. I haven’t posted flat-out erotica myself, but there are sex scenes in White Pickups that still move me more than a story about hot wax, even after repeated readings. I didn’t exactly gloss over the nature of Cody’s Christmas present to Sondra in Episode 57, for example.

Tony has this, in part, to say about posting stories that concern matters of the heart (actually, a couple feet below the heart):

I have a nasty tendency to overthink things. This, I believe, has the potential to be a problem for the quality of my writing. I've decided that a writer who is perfectly unobjectionable is far too close to one who is perfectly acceptable, perfectly unexceptionable, perfectly bland.

Perfectly forgettable.

As a writer, can you see yourself striving to be acceptable? That's setting the bar a little low, don't you think?

Indeed it is. I’ve had a couple deep thinks about the sex scenes in White Pickups, and decided they do add to the story. Writing White Pickups has pushed my personal writing envelope for me in several ways — there’s plenty of R-rated language to go with the juicy parts, and I hadn't written much of either previously — but while it would work as a YA novel without those elements, that was never my intent. Even with a youthful main character, it was meant to be an adult novel. Tina at first, then Cody and Sondra later on, made sure of that. But that’s not so important. The important thing is, as I said in my comment on Tony’s post, is there’s no good reason that it’s okay to show people getting beaten, shot, stabbed, or tortured on prime-time TV, but a little nookie gives people the Shivering Collywobbles.

The closest thing I’ve ever written to erotica is a short called Hunter and Trapp. I haven’t posted it on #FridayFlash partly because I can’t get it below 1400 words without marring the story, but mostly because it’s centered around a rape scene. The tables are turned in the end, but I know several of my female friends online have emotional issues centering on either rape or a near-miss. It would disturb them if they stumbled across the story, so I respect that and may find some other venue for the story sooner or later. But even if it only sits on my hard drive or sees an occasional private reading (Maria Kelly thought it was well-written and not at all over the top), it wasn’t wasted effort. The “Trapp” character turns out to be an important part of a half-baked urban fantasy novel that may get some attention before 2015, God willing.

I’m going to change the blog skin soon. Tony pointed out that the “Contact Me” link is broken, and it doesn’t support the “share” tools available on standard Blogger templates. I need a cleaner look anyway. Fair warning, and all that!

Wednesday Wibbles (on Thursday)

I know it’s not Wednesday, but my employer sent us to a Braves game yesterday. The pitching was rather uninspired, and the bats only slightly more so until the bottom of the 9th — then a late rally got the thin crowd on its feet until it fell two runs short. It was a lot of fun, and the manager decided to try a team-building game on the way home: state one true thing and one false thing about yourself, and let everyone guess which was which. I picked: “I’m trying to get a novel published, and I raced in road rallies during college.”

But before I go much farther, it’s time to welcome the new follower:

• Robin Eduardo — dark and disturbing horror!

Funny thing: when I dropped into my Blogger Dashboard to get this post started, it popped up one of those notifications: “Your blog is popular, why not make some money with AdSense?” But according to my stats, pageviews dropped around 25% last month… which I attribute to not posting a Friday Flash two weeks in a row. Daily counts are now recovering, though — I knew you guys wouldn’t let me down!

We’re now calling the guest room “Mason’s room,” even if he isn’t sleeping there yet. We’ve modified the barricades to let him come down the hall and go in there. With daylight coming in the windows, he had no problem crawling under the bed and coming out around the side. He loves having the extra running-around room. Me… I can no longer stake out one place and expect to always see him from there. Sigh

With vacation behind me, I’m getting back into the writing groove a little. I have no idea where tomorrow’s Friday Flash came from, but I thought it was funny. Then again, I do have a strange sense of humor. I posted another flash on Google+ last week, and I figure I need to bring it over here. Maybe next week.

I’ve set Scrivener to give me a daily word quota — Nicola Slade, an author who sometimes hangs out at Andi’s blog, quoted another author who suggested this — of 50 words. The idea is, no matter how nutso your day gets (and most of mine can get pretty nutso), you can almost always find time to put down 50 words. Since a writer in motion tends to remain in motion, that 50 words can easily become 600 or more without even realizing it happened.

I got really excited yesterday, and not just for the Braves’ almost-comeback. Earlier in the week, Sara Reine offered on Twitter to work with people on their book covers. I was pretty impressed with the work she’d done for her own book, Six Moon Summer, and I wasn’t getting much indication that either The Boy or Brand X were interested in making a little money. I gave her my “vision” for the cover on Tuesday, and by Wednesday afternoon I had a first draft. To say the least, I was excited — too excited to offer objective feedback until later this afternoon. Once I settled down enough to suggest some changes, she turned it around in roughly an hour. I’m having second thoughts about one of the changes, but again I’ll sleep on that until tomorrow. But I hope to reveal it this weekend or maybe Monday. One of the beta readers got his feedback in as I was typing this up, so it’s two down one to go.

Mrs. Fetched took her van in to get the windshield fixed after we got home from vacation, and got it back today. I don’t know whether they fixed the other issues we reported yet… probably not. Daughter Dearest is getting her blue Civic, and has gotten comfortable with a manual shift.

And that’s things around FAR Manor.

(Late) Wednesday Wibbles

I got no new followers this week, so I don’t have anyone to shout at. Spread the word, folks, I’d like to have 100 followers about the time I publish White Pickups so I’ll have a good excuse for a giveaway.

Not much writing got done while on vacation… but hey, it was a vacation, right? I really do need to get cracking on Pickups and Pestilence though. Other things, that will take a lot of effort, are beginning to draw my attention. I just may have to start serializing the thing to get the incentive-to-finish going.

Speaking of vacation, here’s a cute anecdote: Mason was very comfortable at Dad’s place — comfortable enough that he’d go explore odd corners on his own, well out of sight of the adults. We slept downstairs, where there was also a large TV. So one morning, we were minding our own business; Mason slipped up the stairs, into the kitchen, pulled a quart of blueberries off the counter (fortunately a snap-top container), then carried them back down the stairs. He came walking up to us: “Berries?” That kid could just about live off fruit and cheese… and meatballs. He loves him some meatballs.


I mentioned having a “crisis of confidence” about the Friday Flash that I didn’t post week before last. I thought of it at first as a Vacationlanders fan-fic, but that isn’t right either. After watching both parts of the first episode, which are all that have been posted so far, I found myself objecting to some of the key points.

First off, while I could see the feds cutting off services to regions — or entire states, as was done to Maine in Vacationlanders — I don’t think that what comes after is quite so drastic as is depicted in the first episode. WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD On the other hand, I have to wonder if the film crew has been set up from the get-go. If the UTM were as lawless and dangerous as it seems, I would think they’d have heard about it and gone in prepared. END SPOILERS

Even if the Feds cut off the power grid and fuel deliveries at the border, 1) any local hydro and alternative facilities would still be available; 2) state and local governments would attempt to function and preserve order as much as possible, just to justify their continued existence; 3) you couldn’t cut off chunks of the country without some kind of quid pro quo for the affected citizenry or civil suits, probably both; 4) politics would exclude wealthy citizens from the Unincorporated Areas; 5) there would almost certainly be commerce along the border, perhaps even people continuing to commute from Unincorporated Outer Suburbia into Atlanta.

Back in 2009–2010 when there was a lot of talk from the right-wing losers about secession, I concluded that Planet Georgia could secede without hurting the rest of the country much, if at all. Seriously: what do we have here that can’t be produced somewhere else? No oil reserves, the gold was mined out decades ago, and the only strategic industrial pieces we have are concentrated in specific locations. So I created this map (click to enlarge), designating the Georgia Quadrangle where there are still full services, and Unincorporated Georgia. The corners of the quadrangle are the primary cities, with Columbus as a separate enclave, and a largeish rural “heartland” to supply food.

So here’s the writing prompt: think about your own area and whether it would still be “incorporated” or not, and conflicts should be many and obvious. Post links to your stories here so I’ll see them. If you use the graphics, copy them to your own blog so they stay available. I’ll post one of the flash pieces I’ve written on this theme on Friday.

Wednesday Wibbles

Wow, two in a row! As always, welcome to the new follower:

• Luca Veste — book blogger, adult student… and father of two daughters! Oh, I’ll bet we have some stories to swap about our kids.

With the manor rapidly re-filling — The Boy and Snippet are back (sigh), and M.A.E. and Lobster show no signs of leaving anytime soon — I’m getting crowded in both time and space. M.A.E. in particular seems to always need something, and isn’t exactly Janie-on-the-spot about helping out. At least Snippet is showing some sign of wanting to take care of Mason… even if she’s inadequate about it.

Speaking of Snippet, she came in yesterday with an awesome sunburn. She wanted to show it to me, and first pulled down the front of her shirt to show her neck — then hiked up the back to show me her shoulders. As she wasn’t wearing a bra, it’s beyond me how I didn’t get an eyeful of boobage along with the acres of redness. I found her some spray-on burn ointment, and it seemed to help. At least she didn’t pull her shirt off again. This morning, she headed to work with plenty of coverage.

With summer in full burn (see above), I made a pasta salad this evening for tomorrow. FARf-alle (bowtie) pasta, sun-dried tomatoes, an onion, a squash, a bell pepper, some broccoli I found laying around in the fridge, garlic, mozzarella fresca, and Vidalia tomato-basil dressing. Lobster doesn’t want to wait for tomorrow, when the flavors will be blended — he’s grabbing a bowl on the way to work. (Oh… did I mention Lobster has a job? He’s working night shift as a welder.)

At least I got some writing done yesterday! I’m going to try keeping up the momentum tonight.

Wednesday Wibbles

At last, I sit down on Wednesday night to catch up on things. As usual, let’s start with greetings to the new observers at the free-range insane asylum:

• Cherie Reich — a fellow #FridayFlash’er, and reviews books on her blog as well. (I hope she gets to White Pickups when the time comes.)
• Craig WF Smith — Craig’s fantasy novels, The Red Stone and Zoolin Vale and the Chalice of Ringtar, are in print. Zoolin Vale is also available on Kindle (Craig doesn’t know why the publisher released his second book first either). Craig also writes some #FridayFlash.
• Tony Cowin — he writes horror! He reviews movies!

We went to the resort Sunday afternoon, along with M.A.E. and her new boyfriend as guests. I was surprised that Mason was reluctant to get in the pool, but maybe it was all the other people around. It took him about 20 minutes to decide he wanted to be in there, and that’s where he stayed until he was too cold to stay in. We did slather him up pretty well with sunscreen, so he didn’t burn.

I mostly had him through the afternoon, but Daughter Dearest and Mrs. Fetched did pitch in. I brought my Kindle, but never got a chance to do any reading.

On the writing end of things, my two #FridayFlash pieces Kate’s Wings and the follow-up Freak of Nature, gathered a lot of comments along the lines of “this would be a great YA novel.” That came as a surprise, as I never really set out to write YA. There are plenty of very good writers out there either publishing YA or trying to get published (some of whom commented on the two stories), and frankly the market feels a little crowded.

But… I did say a while ago that I felt like Something Big was brewing, and this could have been it. Almost against my will, I started thinking about how a story would develop — and things started click click click falling in place. But I’m committed to finishing Pickups and Pestilence, so it has to wait a while.

I remembered I’d downloaded a copy of a mindmap template called StoryMap a while ago, and decided to get the details organized so I could come back to it later (after getting the current project conquered and reading a couple YA novels to see how they go). The above is a screen capture of what I have so far — left side is world-building, right side is plot. You can tell what I’ve mostly focused on. ;-) I couldn’t remember where I’d found it, only that it was a guest post on someone’s blog. But when I posted on Google+, Trevor Mcpherson sent me the link, not realizing it was his template I was working from! By the way, StoryMap is a FreeMind map — FreeMind is free and cross-platform (a Java app) so you don’t have to worry about money or having the wrong OS.

Now if I could only find a way to download all this into Scrivener, with all the pieces in their proper pigeonholes. Scrivener has great organizational tools, but I prefer mind-mapping for initial staging. It just works better for me.

For those who think writing a story isn’t all that difficult, I refer you to John Wiswell’s How I Wrote My Novel, True Story of John 11 that he posted today. Even if you do understand what’s involved, it’s an interesting read and a great look behind the curtain as he wrote a 105,000 word first draft in five months. As he progressed, he talked about designating a day off from writing and sticking to it. I think that’s a pretty good idea, especially since I have a grandson (and a great-nephew) who are highly attached to me and a huge “to read” pile. So I’m going to designate an arbitrary day “Reading Day” and maybe another day “Me and the Toddlers Day.”

Speaking of toddlers, Skylar has the Screech of Toddler Rage™ down pat. If anything, he’s hit the Terrible Twos earlier (age-wise) than Mason. It won’t be long before they’re both bellowing, “MINE!!!”

Work… is work. Looks like I’ll be flying out to the west coast for training in late September. This will be my first flight post-bin Laden’s demise, but I doubt the TSA will act accordingly. Weather permitting, I’ll travel in shorts, a tight T-shirt, and sandals. Even with nowhere to hide anything, I’ll still get yanked out of line and probed. I may try to embarrass them, although I’m not sure they have that capacity.

Giggle Plus, and a Full Manor

Sometimes, the only way to get a blog post up is to just sit down and bang it out.

I got an invite to Google+ on Friday, and spent a lot of time this weekend setting it up, adding fellow #FridayFlash writers, sending out a couple of invites, and generally feeling it out. It strikes a nice balance between Twitter’s minimalism and Facebook’s overwhelming featurism. I’m using my real name there, as a warm-up to when I start putting my books on various sites.

It’s also a relatively quiet hangout — for now. It reminds me of when I was in high school; the local Baptist church had a “teen center” thing they did on Friday nights. Being in a small town with not much else going on, it was a pretty popular thing because there were lots of table games and a concession that sold various teen-ambrosia (pizza, soft drinks, snacks). It could get a little overwhelming at times… and that’s when a few of us would meander to the Congregational church’s version about a block away. It was much less of a “thing,” having (free) popcorn and a pit group to hang out on, with a checkerboard and chess board if you wanted a challenge. If you needed a place for some quiet conversation, that was it. And that’s what Google+ is like right now, with Facebook playing the Baptist version.

Right now, to get on, you need an invite — sent to an email address associated with a Google Profile. You have one if you have a Gmail address, or have a Blogger profile tied to some other address… which is to say, if you want an invite I’ll send you one.


The manor was pretty well packed when I got here. M.A.E. is here (with Moptop, oh joy) and her boyfriend (who is helping Mrs. Fetched with the chickens), along with Lobster, Skylar, and even EJ coming by. EJ and I hung out in the kitchen to chat for a while. The Boy and Snippet are visiting her mom in Florida, so they weren’t here, but they were here yesterday.

Wednesday Wibbles

As always, let’s start by welcoming the new followers:

• Alan W. Davidson 
• Jamie DeBree 
• Tamara Rose Blodgett 

Three writers — go check out their blogs, and give them a follow if you like what you see!

Since I got Scrivener a while back, I’ve been making some pretty good progress on the White Pickups series and have produced a fair amount of shorter work. While I have an outboard hard drive that automatically backs up my system whenever I plug it in (Time Machine is one of those cool things Apple does right), it wouldn’t do me a whole lot of good if a fire or tornado creamed laptop and hard drive alike. I’ve been wanting the same “do it for me” convenience, just for backing up Scrivener projects off-site, so if Something Really Bad happens I won’t lose my work.

At first, I thought maybe the Amazon Cloud Drive would be the solution. If you have an Amazon account, you automatically get 5GB of “cloud” storage for free; if you buy an album from their MP3 store, you get a one-year upgrade to 20GB. Amazon’s S3 protocol is well-documented and supported by all sorts of software, but unfortunately there’s no S3 API to the Cloud Drive per se.

That’s when I remembered, I already have a Dropbox account. While you “only” get 2GB for free, they make things really easy with a driver that integrates your Dropbox with a folder on your hard drive. MacOSX has a nice little scripting hook called Folder Actions, that runs a script when something happens to a folder (say, a file is added to it). Since Scrivener makes a ZIP file of a project in Home→Library→Application Support→Scrivener→Backups whenever you close that project, you can attach a Folder Action to the Backups folder and have it copy new files to the Dropbox folder. Dropbox takes it from there, and automatically copies it to the cloud. Peace of mind!

So: Here’s the script. Create a folder called Scriv_bkup in your Dropbox before trying to use it.

Dropbox also came in handy yesterday, when I realized my beta readers hadn’t received the manuscript. I guess the attachments got trapped in some spam filter along the way. So I just dumped the files into my Public folder and sent the links. They got the files, problem solved.

Now if I could just get more time to write as easily…

Wednesday Post-Vacation Wibbles

It just seemed like a good time to get away… then again, just about any time is a good time to get away from FAR Manor. So let’s welcome the newest follower to the free-range insane asylum:

• Mike Robertson — all things creative is his domain!

I took a few days off work and took Mrs. Fetched, Daughter Dearest, and Mason up to Mom's summer place. (Of course, I arranged it with Mom, who wanted to see her only great-grandchild anyway.) It’s pretty nice up there, what with it being about 10°F cooler than on Planet Georgia and low humidity.

Mason had great fun torturing their kitty…

sliding with Great-Grandma on the playground equipment…

playing on the beach…

… and riding in the golf cart, then fighting sleep tooth and nail the last few nights.

I was certainly not idle: I helped Mom set up a slideshow for her screen saver, finished the self-edit phase on White Pickups, put a copy of it on her Kindle, and worked on another story. The day after I finished the edits, I saw this sign at the back end of the development… and took it as a “sign.” I thought it was pretty cool anyway… if I start serializing the sequel, I’ll include it in the posts.

Wednesday Birthday Wibbles

It’s not only Mrs. Fetched’s birthday, it’s also Towel Day! You know what that means: today, she’s 42 again! She was supposed to get dinner at her favorite Italian restaurant tonight, but Big V dumped Skylar on us so we ate leftovers and watched Dawn Treader.

Since I haven’t had any new followers since last week, I get to skip that part. I do love the followers I have though!

Sometimes, taking a stroll with the grandkid has side benefits. I found this sign lying in the grass not a quarter mile from the manor, complete with bullet holes. It must have been lying there for longer than I’ve lived here, over 25 years now, because it was never standing along this road. I took a steel wool pad to it to get it to the state you see here (it was pretty grimy). Mrs. Fetched thinks I should give it to either the county or the state, but I figure they just tossed the sign aside — they haven’t used that particular wording for a long time.

A “Pass With Care” sign came with the manor; I want to hang it in the bathroom.

Mason’s second cousin Skylar (yes, with an “a”) has been spending a lot of time at the manor. You can think of him as a half-time boarder if you like at this point. He and Mason play together like two near-toddlers do: when they’re not trying to kill each other, they have a lot of fun. Skylar is four months younger than Mason, but has the in-laws’ genetic heritage that has already made him a bigger kid.

Having Skylar around has reminded me about Mason’s rather well-developed sense of personal space. Mason has a definite bubble, and if another child gets into it uninvited he can get more violent than absolutely necessary. For example, I’ve had to pull Skylar away to stop Mason from methodically whacking him over the head with whatever toy he has in his hand. But bedtime isn’t twice as difficult, because they wear themselves out chasing each other around the dining table, and they’ll chatter with each other in the morning instead of demanding to be let out right away.

The upside is that Moptop hasn’t been around near so much. M.A.E. reached an agreement with the baby-daddy, where they each get her a week at a time. To make matters better (for us), Moptop was sick and someone else got to take care of her. But she won’t be our problem much longer: Mrs. Fetched tonight texted The Boy, Lobster, and M.A.E. to let them know they have until June 1 to find new lodgings. We’re basically done with letting them use our space without much of anything in return.

We’re going to see Mom in North Carolina week after next. Brand X is graduating from high school over Memorial Day weekend, so Mrs. Fetched is videotaping that, and I got tagged to preach this Sunday. That means the creative energy I’d be putting into a #FridayFlash will instead go toward a sermon. Such is life.

But with the deadwood out of here, it will at least be a quieter life!

I’m Versatile!

I haven’t received one of these award things in a while, but Angela Kulig broke the drought. Thanks much, Angela! Angela’s one of the bumper crop of indie writers that have sprung up in the last few years. Her YA urban fantasy romance, Pigments of My Imagination, should be out soon. She was kind enough to post the first chapter.

You know the drill: admit to seven random facts about yourself, pick five more people to receive the award, let them know they won. So… here’s my magnificent seven, so to speak:

1. Despite the hassles, I’m enjoying raising my grandkid. Don’t tell Mrs. Fetched!
2. On my bucket list: produce two documentary films, one about chicken ranching, the other about fortune tellers and their customers. Both as unbiased as I can make them.
3. I enjoy most forms of electronic music, including hard/Goa trance, drum&bass, ambient, and others. I also like Christian hip-hop and metal. Yes, I’m in my 50s. Why do you ask?
4. The reason I have a motorcycle is to save gas. Little Zook gets around 60 miles/gallon. It, like TFM, is versatile: it has off-road suspension, so I can take it pretty much anywhere on the in-laws’ farm if I’m careful and the ground isn’t muddy (street tires).
5. I fully intend to have an anthology of short stories, and White Pickups, available on various eBook outlets by the end of the year. At that point, I’ll have to put the pen name “FARfetched” aside.
6. It’s more than a little spooky how events in FAR Future (see the Pages listing) are already happening. No rolling blackouts or $8/gal gas (in the US) yet, but the Pat-Riots are teabaggers by another name. Keep in mind, I was writing that part of the story in 2007.
7. Despite all evidence to the contrary, I firmly believe that people are essentially good and want to do the right thing.

Now comes the fun part: who are the lucky five? I pass this award to:

• Patrick Hester, for being highly versatile as well. He writes, produces podcasts, blogs, and holds down a dayjob.
• Marijan, who raises an autistic kid and still has time to write and express her particularly sarcastic sense of humor.
• Beth, who has the ability to pack up and go anywhere her desires lead. Funny how I envy her footloose life, and she envies my ability to put down roots.
• Helen, who writes and reads… the Tarot.
• John Wiswell, because he can write about just about anything.

Whew! That was more work than I thought…

Wednesday Wibbles

Pull up a chair, pass the bottle around, it’s chit-chat time!

A minor milestone, but a milestone all the same: 50 followers! What a nice sixth blogiversary present! Let’s all welcome the newest visitors to the free-range insane asylum:

• Jason Coggins, aka @JaseCoggins on Twitter. More below.
• Rexcrisanto Delson, aka @igorotdo on Twitter. He has a book coming out next month!
• Michael Tate, aka @Michael_A_Tate on Twitter. He’s a physicist and novelist (now how cool is that? Really!)
• Helen, aka @helenscribbles on Twitter. Writer, Tarot reader (another slice of coolness), and follower #50! And a writer of cool stuff. And a lady.

Alright… I’ve been devoting these wibble-posts to people following me. What about me? What am I following, besides a near-novel’s worth of #FridayFlash stories every week? Let’s have a look… first, the serials:

• Bloggin' Brimstone by Jason Coggins. I found it at the end of the “first season,” and it freeking blew me away. Now the second season is underway. Think “cyberpunk Hell” with a really sarcastic main character, and you’ll get the idea. Just read it.
• Meanwhile in Space… by Xanto Jones. It’s space opera, of course it's a fun read!

If you’re looking for more, check out the Tuesday Serial site. I might have started FAR Future and White Pickups before there was such a thing as #TuesdaySerial, but there’s plenty of material to choose from these days! (Speaking of which, have you been following The Gods of Evergreen?)

That’s some of what I’m reading at home. In the car, I listen to podcasts. With an hour to and from work, I have plenty of opportunity to listen to stories, interviews, and whatever-ness:

• Star Trek: Defiant — I started listening to this a long time ago, and during my 3-year podcast hiatus they kept producing a new episode each month. So now that I’m listening again, it’ll take a while to catch up.
• Escape Pod — a science-fiction magazine, in podcast form. There’s a new short story every week, some original material and some “reprints” of stories that originally appeared in print magazines.
• Podcastle — the fantasy sister to Escape Pod.
• ShadowCast Audio Anthology — a horror podcast. I submitted something to them last night, so keep your fingers crossed. One of the nice things about the smaller markets is that if they do reject your story, they take the time to tell you why.
• Functional Nerds — media, technology, and gadgets. Hosted by my blog-buddy Patrick Hester and musician (and Twitter pal) John Anelio (who posts sci-fi songs on his blog every week or so).
• SFsignal — author interviews, hosted by the Functional Nerds gang. I was wondering earlier how Patrick does it: he has a day job, does two podcasts every week (huge time sink in my experience), writes, and blogs. Then I realized: he isn’t married!

There’s more, but that can get its own post tomorrow. It’s another blogiversary present.

Six Years Later

Wow, six years!

Some days it doesn’t seem that long, other times it seems almost an eternity. A lot has happened since then: The Boy hasn’t grown up much, but gave us (literally) a grandkid; Daughter Dearest starts her senior year of college in a few months; I’ve finished two novels(!) and plan to indie-publish them and an anthology of short stories.

In the previous year, I’ve kind of let the fiction take over the blog. Many weeks, that’s all that appeared here. I hope to have more of a balance this coming year — yes, there will be plenty of strange fiction, but I hope to bring you more of my strange reality as well. It will be up to you, dear reader, to figure out which is which.

Thanks for reading — and I do appreciate all comments. Except spammers, of course!