Tuesday, December 3, 2019

My Tree

I can look at my tree for hours and never see the same branch or leaf or gnarled knot.
My eyes travel forever, up and down the ridged bark, tracing the deep folds and the open wounds of missing limbs.

I can get lost in the leaves, often wondering if I'll ever return.

Gently waving branches are calling for me to climb up and converse about the Universe.
Rough, sharp bark scrapes at my knees and knuckles as I ascend to join the silent communion.
My hands smell of old thoughts and wisdom.
The wisdom that there is no such thing as wisdom.

Precariously perched on my favorite limb, worn smooth from my visits, I gaze out to the field of cotton behind my house.

My tree welcomes my young body, calmly waiting for me to lean back and start another day of drifting dreams.

I get lost in the leaves, not caring if I ever return.

Tuesday, November 5, 2019

Great day of writing, lousy weather day!

It was a cloudy, drizzly, wet and a cold today here in North Texas. OK. 'Cold' as in 63 degrees. Trust me that's cold for Texas. ;-)

I did NOT want to get out of my warm, cozy bed and take my laptop up to my favorite cafe, the Sukoon Cafe in Lewisville. I go there on Tuesday and sometimes Thursday mornings to enjoy a Matcha Teas Latte and bagels while I write. I sit on a high chair at the front window and enjoy a little people watching between paragraphs.

But I drug my lazy butt out of bed and moseyed up there, braving the weather. I also forgot my coat so I was actually cold. I was too stubborn to turn around and get it. Never said I was smart, just good looking.

My Muse must have been too cold to stand out in the drizzle because she stayed by my side the whole morning!

The words flowed, for almost 2 hours, on a difficult scene. It was one of those look up and wonder where the time went moments around 10 o'clock. It felt great. I reviewed the chapter and I'm really pleased with it so far! Lots to do and lots of editing to go, but the foundation is solid.

So.

Never give up on your writing. Never assume that you can't write because 'blah, blah, blah'. You can. You must. Lots of excuses will be looking over your shoulder, like vultures, hoping you will take the bait and skip a writing session.

Don't!

Just pull up your big boy/girl britches and write. Everyday if you possibly can.

You never know when you'll have one of those 'Oh My God That was fun!' sessions!

Go! Now! Write!



Thursday, October 3, 2019

Can you feel it coming???

Fall. Autumn. The last gasp of a scorching summer. Whatever you want to call it, it's finally coming!

The weathermen are all a twitter with forecasts of 70 degree weather in the 'next few days'.

Being a weatherman in Texas is not that hard, really.

From May to October it's hot, hot, hot with a few days of hail storms and tornadoes.

From Mid October to Mid November SOME of the trees sport burnished gold and yellow leaves, SOME of which will fall to the ground. Mostly in my yard, even though the trees are all in my neighbors yards.

From Mid November to Mid April it's cool, cold or warm, depending on what's going on in the Gulf Coast to the south and the Rockies to north. Oh, and a few ice storms just to make life interesting. Yes, ice STORMS. Go to sleep with cool air outside. Wake up and the roads are covered with a half inch of clear ice as far as the eye can see, semi's jack knifed everywhere just to make driving a little more challenging. By the next day the sun has blasted the ice off and it's 70 degrees again. Or not.

Mid April to Mid May Spring time struggles to push the ice back up to Montana. Trees and plants push buds out to the tips of their limbs and withing days new leaves and blossom explode everywhere. The Bradford Pear trees pop with white or pink blossoms that last about a week. They are beautiful and brief.

That's it. That's Texas Weather in a nutshell.

Here's a few pix for you.




Friday, September 6, 2019

Great week of writing!

My Muse stuck around all week! Thank you, Missy! It started on Sunday and continued through the week, ideas flowing easily from Mind to Manuscript.

On an weird urge I wrote a quick 700 word story from my childhood and submitted it to a 'way back when' magazine. We'll see.

I've made good progress on 'Special Intel', book #5 of my SciFi series 'The Adventures of Arlo and Jake'. Major characters are in place, the plot is smoothing out and I've stumbled onto a few side plots and secondary characters! Love when the little guys peek around the corner of my imagination and say 'Me! Me! Pick me!'.

I had a great Wednesday with a cool group of guys I call the OFPC, the Old Farts Pinochle Club. We show up at a members house around 10:00 for some healthy snacks, like donuts, muffins and a fruit tray. The fruit tray is plastic so we concentrate on the real food. We joke around, pretending we know all about the politics and religious nonsense we spout.

Around 1 PM we tally up the scores, announce the winners and head off for lunch. More BS is spread generously around the table while we feed on more healthy food and drink. I love these guys. We don't agree on everything, but we do enjoy each other's company.

The rest of the week I've been writing a couple of hours a day. Feels good.

Here's a little humor for you.


Tuesday, August 6, 2019

How do you classify your stories?

OK, I'm not googling anything here, so if there is a site that describes all this that's fine, but let's still discuss this. I sometimes think we use google so that we don't have to think for ourselves. That's just lazy and doesn't give your mind a chance to explore. If you don't exercise your mind, it will atrophy and fall off. It's a verified fact, just google it.

I'm writing a story that I've had on the TODO list for quite a while. I was trying to describe it to a friend and was having quite a bit of trouble giving her a quick description. Is it a 'literary novel'? A dramatic period piece? How about 'non-dystopian, historical, metaphysical journey of discovery with a dash of yuks'? (yeah, just made that last one up ;-)

It occurred to me that I've had this problem from the beginning as a writer. It's hard to give someone an 'elevator pitch' on one of my books. It's a problem because I need to be able to do this to gain a reader's interest enough to try a newbie writer, even if it's only 99 cents for the book. It's embarrassing when I can't describe my own story without stammering and having to search for the right words.

My solution is to not try. OK, that's being lazy on my part I guess, but I find it much more satisfying to engage the reader/friend/potential agent by diving into the guts of the story and dragging them along. ;-)

The real problem of course is that few of my books fit easily into the common books genres you see on Amazon. You know what I mean. That funky drop down box that categorizes books by 'genres'.

My SciFi series, Arlo and Jake, is a 'humorous, buddy story, Space Opera based partly on my time as a submariner in the US Navy, with great plot enablers, weird characters and wild action'.

'Genome' is a 'hi-tech, biotech mystery and love story with paranormal twists and Artificial Intelligence characters'.

'Walk with Me' is a 'paranormal romance exploring the worlds of dreams and pure love'.

'Etchings' is a 'pure ghost story set in a period of Colorado's mining expansion.'

I've used other phrases and summaries for these books. Each time I think I've nailed it I see some flaw in message and try again.

So, how do YOU deal with summarizing your stories?

Be Cool!

Friday, June 21, 2019

Lordy, lordy, lordy it's hot!

Yep, Texas summer has arrived!

96 degrees with 102 index! Dang! We had a 'nice' spring, outside the floods, hailstorms and tornadoes. In Texas you take your cool weather with a grain of golf ball sized hail...

So I've been plowing through my latest WIP, book 5 of the Arlo and Jake SciFi series, while I sip iced tea in my writing den or on the couch. It's going OK. Like most writers I want it to go faster, but I'm pleased at how it's coming out.

You'll get the back story of the GHA, the Galactic House of Aquinoxous, the villains in the series. I think I missed an opportunity to add a lot great content by skipping over these guys too much in the early books. I'm even thinking about going back to the first books and adding some more content that will make the story 'meatier'.

Of course I've still struggling with my Muse. She keeps throwing great story ideas in front of me, trying to sidetrack my progress on 'Galactic Special Intel'. But what the heck, I'm having a blast just writing! I have no commitments to an agent or publisher so I can write what I want when I want to!

I know that makes me an amateur writer. I'm OK with that. I am an amateur writer. Every time I sit down to write I try to get better, to tell the story a little better. If I ever get noticed by a publisher or agent who says I can be an author who can make a living with my stories, I might belly up to the bar and get serious. Or maybe not.

I'm not sure my stories would be better if I did buckle down and spend 10 hours a day and have schedules to meet. In fact I think they would suffer. That's not me.

Stay cool, my friends. Drink lots of iced tea and keep your beanie covered!

Tuesday, June 4, 2019

I propose a new season in Texas...

You know the 'normal' seasons of Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter, right?

It just doesn't seem like enough definition to me, too vague.

So I'm adding 'Stormy' between Spring and Summer, specifically the month of May.

The temperature had been pretty nice here for the month of April, in the 70s, with rain for sure and a few storms.

But May! May has been one storm system after another, driving up from the south west and driving right across Ft Worth and through Dallas into Denton and all those towns north and north east of us.

We had to hide in our 'safe room' the other day for the first time in a few years, as the tornado sirens sounded and the TV weathermen were drooling over their maps of 'rotations' and 'sheer fronts'. I swear they are happiest when they can show the same radar maps over and over and over, spouting the same verbiage.

The 'Stormy' season will continue for a while longer and then Summer will hit. Yeah...

I grew up in Levelland, about 30 miles west of Lubbock, up in the Panhandle of Texas. The seasons up there are 1 week of Spring, Summer, 1 week of Fall, 2 months of Winter and them it's back to Spring. Weird.

Stay safe everyone and enjoy the Stormy season before we start to melt in the Summer heat! ;-)



Sunday, June 2, 2019

Great day for writing!

Out on the patio for hours today, steaming away on my latest WIP, 'Arlo and Jake Galactic Special Intel'. At least that's the working title. Surely I can come up with a sharper title than that... we'll see.

The temperature on the patio was just right until about 4 PM. A little breeze and the tinkling sound of our water fountain helped. The iced tea kept me cool most of the morning and afternoon. Of course this is Texas, so it started getting too warm and now I'm inside enjoying the A/C comfort. How did my ancestors do it, living out here with no A/C? Ah, I remember now. Siestas!!!

I worked through several scenes and made some more outlining notes today. I think tomorrow could be another good time in the writing saddle. I have the next scene twirling in my mind and that should take at least 1000 to 2000 words, maybe more.

The story line is starting to move from setting things up to the actual meat of an interesting story. The characters are more substantial and the plot a bit more involved than the previous stories. It's challenging to keep the pace up and keep the feeling of the whole series in mind. I don't want to deviate from the fun and action, that's what I like best about the plots. Oh and the humor!

Time to get back to it.

Have a great week everyone!



Friday, May 31, 2019

We are all made of star dust...



In response to a twitter question, ''reincarnation, heaven or hell or decay' I responded :

"My atoms will eventually return to the stars from whence I came.
Later I'm going to be reformed as a character from one of my #SciFi books.
Not sure which one.
Depends on the Universe's sense of humor.... so I'm guessing the snarky Chameleon from my 'Arlo and Jake' series."

The first sentence I attribute with respect to Carl Sagan, who said something like 'We are all made of star stuff.' If I had time I'd search the Knowledge Web to see who said it before he did. There is always someone to said it before me...

My twitter comment is meant to be both a thought provoking answer to the question and a bit of humor to add a little spice to the question. I would make a great Arlo, btw, though I identify with Jake, his human partner. ;-) I snark constantly. Not that fond of Cajun gnats though.

One of the great things about being a 'full time' writer now is that I have time to explore even the silliest of ideas that pops up in my imagination.

So. What do you think? Is this a viable idea for a SciFi book? 

I think it would also have to explore whether or not consciousness lies in the atoms of your body or some other mechanism whereby you could realize that you're a snarky lizard now but used to be a Tibetan monk say. And that scenario assumes we are limited to reassembling on Earth... 

It's not much of story unless that consciousness is maintained, I think. If you don't know who you used to be, what conflicts or questions could be raised to explore?

What if I'm Arlo now but I was a Snarrk'ian warrior from Alpha Snarkazon a few bazillion years ago where my star dust traveled the expanse after a comet kicked my vaporize body into space.

Maybe a short story? Is it even interesting, or would the reader instantly say, "Say what? There are a hundred scientific reasons that could not happen." Not that that stops lots of stories. ;-)

Something to let my Muse chew on for a while.

Would love your comments, pro or con.

Monday, January 28, 2019

Beautiful day at the LLELA!

Family hike to the 1800s cabin out in the Lewisville Lake Environmental Learning Area by... you guessed it!... Lewisville lake!

Beautiful weather. Gorgeous woods and stream.

Here's a pix of the girls next to the cabin and one of a fisherman who snagged this monster catfish just as we got there! And a funny cartoon to top it off!

Have a great week everyone!