Ode to my backpack.

You know how people are attached to their old shoes?

Well, I'm attached to my old backpack.  It goes everywhere with me.  I finally unloaded the crap in my wallet to the backpack, and now just carry a bill or two and my driver's license and a credit card in a thin sleeve in my pocket.

I have an old notebook in my old backpack, in which I keep my business information, as well as lots and lots of scribbled notes.  I have my little tranquilizer pills in case I need them.  (Which is almost never anymore, but I still like having them there.)  I carry bottles of lemonade and ham sandwiches wherever I go --  I'm like Howard Hughes, I can drink and eat the same stuff day after day.

I've got pens and pencils and batteries and a slot for my phone.  When needs be, I can carry my new laptop computer.  On hikes, I sit on my backpack if nothing else is around. 

I love my old backpack -- my security blanket.

The poor dear thing is falling apart from my loving.

After going through a couple of cheap backpacks, I finally bought a good one.  A "Coleman" brand, and it's held up really well.  But it's starting to get holes in the corner.

I'm tempted to patch them.  Keep my old backpack.  Or just not put anything in there small enough to fall out. 

I don't want to give it up.

"Never tell me the odds!"

I started doing some research about the best-seller lists on Amazon and Smashwords, which led to other articles about the whole digital change and how it is affecting publishers and authors and so on...

Oh, boy.

I'm not sure I wanted to know all that.  I'm not sure that when it comes to being a writer, ignorance isn't bliss.  I mean, you want to be realistic and all, but I had a pretty good sense of the odds -- I'm just not sure I needed the odds to be explicated.

I don't know if I can get across how different actual writing is -- from everything that comes after.  And yet, without everything that comes after, dare I say "promotion",  whatever you wrote won't see the light of day. 

I decided to work at getting this first book, at least, in a many hands as I beg borrow plead command insinuate and dazzle.

But it isn't writing.

Writing is something I do alone in my room, with little or no outside input.

I really want to get back to that, but things keep popping up.  I'm figuring another month of interruptions, and then -- even if other things are happening, I'm going to let them take a back seat to writing.

Best-selling author?

I might actually be a best-selling author!

I'm #4 on Smashwords best-seller list for Horror books! There are one hell of a lot of books on that list, so I'm pretty excited.  I think that might be a pretty big deal and, well, completely unexpected.  I'm also much higher up some of the other lists than I could ever have hoped for!

 So I have to thank you all for the reviews and all the help. 

A 'Western Horror' or a "Horror Western?'

Led to the Slaughter never felt like a Western to me.

But the sequel is shaping up to have many more the elements of a western -- cowboys, boomtowns, gold rushes, miners, Indians and Indian Wars, saloon girls, etc. etc.

But I want to keep the focus on Horror, not on Western.

I like the historical underpinnings, and I figure if I keep trying to be accurate, it won't come off as a Western.  (My model for this would be the great books by Don Berry about Oregon -- which are set in the west and in western times, but yet feels real and authentic.)

I think I can pull that off, but I do need to be cognizant of the possibility. 

"The Mind of a Writer."

This quote from the Oscars last night made me laugh.

I resemble, oh, about 90% of this remark:

 “The mind of a writer can be a truly terrifying thing. Isolated, neurotic, caffeine-addled, crippled by procrastination, consumed by feelings of panic, self-loathing in soul crushing inadequacy— And that’s on a good day.”
—Robert de Niro

"Read an ebook Week."

The following is a press release from Books of the Dead Press, announcing that they are joining in Read an ebook Week.  I'm not sure if my book is one of them, but if so -- now's the time to buy it!

Please.

Smashwords makes the book available in all digital formats, except Kindle (easily corrected by downloading the Kindle app.)

Smashwords are running a "Read an ebook Week" event, and Books of the Dead Press submitted a bunch of titles to it.

This means you can grab many of our titles for nothing, or next to nothing, over the next few days.

Enjoy.

Follow this link and scroll down.

Like what you see? Please support Books of the Dead by purchasing one of our books. Thank you

House of Cards -- Spoilers.

This show got under my skin.  I could barely watch the last 5 episodes.

SPOILERS:




Every single decent or even half-way decent character in this show is crushed.  At first you think the dynamic sociopathic duo might have a soft spot for the 'little people' but no, in the end they too are used and tossed away without a backward glance.

In this world, the more ethics you have, the more you are crushed.  Obliterated.  The less conscience you have, the higher you rise.  The slightest weakness, the tiniest humanity is used against you.

Apparently the Chinese are watching this show in great fascination, convinced this is the way we really are.

I watched the original British House of Cards, and I remember the main character as being more of a charming rogue, a devious schemer.  I can't remember if he actually kills anyone, but somehow he wasn't quite as repellent.

Every time one of the Underwoods looks as though he or she are weakening, it's a ruse.  Except for one moment at the last.  Claire Underwood starts to weep, and I'm thinking -- oh, no, here it goes.  But no -- she weeps for all of Ten Fricken Seconds.  Then she's back to being cold-blooded murderous bitch Lady MacBeth.  Somehow that measly ten seconds made it even worse.

All through the show the Underwoods express love for each other in the most formal, distant way -- as if they have a pane of glass between them even when they are hugging.  Again, at the last -- all is revealed, though it's hinted at all the way through.

At one point, I turned to Linda and said, "I think Claire is going to seduce the young Secret Service agent."  The very next episode, I said,  "I think Frank is going to seduce the young Secret Service agent."

Well -- I was right.

I almost didn't want to watch the last five episodes.  I hated this show -- all 25 episodes.  Every time we'd finish one, I would turn to Linda and say, "I HATE these people."

Linda, "Yeah, me too."

"Um...ready for another one?"

"Absolutely."