Every Four Years I Get Older

For a short period of time, once every four years, a strange thing happens, and for me to cope, sometimes, I need every extra nerve pill I can find. The only thing that saves my sanity is the realization that this, too, shall pass. At some point during this period, I wake up to the fact that too many of my friends are politically minded, and not necessarily in the way I am. It is as though some government entity comes in during the dark hours of the night and builds an invisible fence between me and everyone else I know. And while it is inconvenient, even I have to acknowledge that it serves a distinct purpose.

Election day is finally here, and within a week to ten days, I feel confident that life will return to normal, or at least as normal as my life has ever been, and my friends will once again be my friends. This year, however, has been unique with issues that should not ever have been issues, at all, and life may be altered from what i...

t has always been before. This year, emotions have been stirred and it has come to a head in my head. Due to the thoughtlessness and irresponsible politics of this election, and quite possibly my age and intolerance of the status quo without consideration, I have changed my habit of keeping my mouth shut and ignoring all those things I used to let slide off my back.

I have to go vote, now, but I will be back, and I will come back different. Gone are the days when I just shut up and turn a blind eye to the trends of the day and the representation of politicians who dismiss the issues that effect me as unimportant because they don't effect them. Unfortunately, I will come back more vocal and more outspoken than anyone would ever want me to be, and although I would hate to lose any of my friends because of it, these are changing times and we have to change with them or be considered fools for not having adjusted.

So, this is good-bye to those who won't be able to tolerate the new me, and a thanks to others for accepting me as I adapt to who the past fifty years has made me become. It's been a roller-coaster ride and I'm not ready to get off just yet, but instead will declare my independence as I move on from this date. Cheers!

You can ignore me. I don't know what I'm talking about.

Of Unicorns And Pegasuses - Published!!!

YES!!! I just received the first shipment of my erotic novel "Of Unicorns And Pegasuses" and it is now available on Amazon in soft cover format here:

http://www.amazon.com/Unicorns-Pegasuses-Book-Temptress-Witch/dp/1477581081/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1339885217&sr=1-1&keywords=Of+Unicorns+And+Pegasuses

For those to whom I promised a signed copy, please be certain that I have your current shipping address. This is a 7" X 10" standard library sized book at 418 pages, and packaged for shipping, it will not fit into a P.O. box. If you have a P.O. box address for receiving, be sure to ask the P.O. employee at the desk if you have a package. The standard paperback issue has not been formatted, yet.

For those who were hoping for the more cost efficient eBook edition, I am sorry to say that there is a delay due to formatting difficulties. In other words, I'm too friggin' stupid to do the upload to my satisfaction to release it at this time. Please be patient, I hope to get there, soon.

For those who are not inclined to read erotica and will not be purchasing a copy of my book, I understand. I did not expect to make everyone happy, and this book was written for a particular purpose, but hopefully, I will be able to write something you would enjoy, at a later date.

The Aggravation of Limitations

I see by my notes, that last I was going to write was in February.  I didn't make it in here then and, as my mind is still a bit fuzzy on those days, I can only think that the weather here turned off toward Spring and I came out of hibernation earlier than expected.  It has been almost five years since the big flood and, while most of the damage has been removed to the landfill and the land has been reclaimed, there are still vacant houses and lots and unclaimed areas to the south that bear mold and cause allergies and respiratory distress whenever the wind blows toward me in the north.  Some people like me, who never outgrew the hayfever symptoms of their youth, remain housebound, popping antihistamines and going through box after box of Kleenex, while our heads throbbed to the beat of our hearts and so unrelentingly that we can't think straight.

That aside, I was working on my book and questioning whether there was room in the world for an epic erotic novel.  When totally finished, my book ended up being over 152,000 words, exceeding 900 pages (although double-spaced), which by publishing standards is extremely long, and quite frankly, undesirable.  As I researched publishers, I was shocked to find that most preferred manuscript submissions of 50,000 to 80,000 words, maximum.  I thought there was no way I could possibly cut my book in half and still have the plot and characters that made it the story it was.  Even the kind suggestion that I make two books out of the one was considered, but found to be impossible, as the first half of the book does not stand alone by itself, but continuously feeds to the second half.  A local author I know suggested that I check out some of the free self-publishing services such as createspace-dot-com and lulu-dot-com, but even their publishing specifications seemed limited to a maximum of 750-page manuscripts, well short of what I required.

As authors, we don’t give thought to the publishing end of our craft.  We tell a tale and embellish a story with all of the flavor and colors that bring the landscape to life for those readers who have never seen the world we are describing to them, and we never give word counts and number of pages a thought, when such things should actually be the first things considered.  It’s like trying to put 500mg of your most favorite fantasy drug into one dose, it becomes a very large and bitter pill to swallow, as does the idea of trimming and cutting your over-sized manuscript to fit into x-number of publishers’ pages.  As authors, we want to write, we love to write, and writing is all that we want to do.  We don’t want to be burdened with the publishing end or the binding details.  If the book isn’t big enough to hold my story, then add more pages.  What’s the big deal?  But that’s not how publishing works, and so, enters the editing phase to rectify the problem.

In my search and research, I did find what I considered to be my ideal publisher, with a maximum of 120,000 words, it became a goal to reach in editing out over 32,000 words to make them and me a happy couple, and it was an even bigger challenge than was writing the book.  Perfectionist that I am, editing does not come easily to me, but as I started out, I tried to think as any good editor would, and I red-lined everything that I knew would be deleted as unnecessary to the story. In my first edit, I trimmed only 30 pages (approx. 2 chapters), but I told myself it was a good start and set myself for the second attempt.  Perfectionist that I am, I knew I could do better.  In my second edit, I removed 3 chapters and approximately 8,000 words, and I thought I was getting pretty good at this editing stuff.  But I still had a long way to go.  I was only down to 144,700 words total, 24,000+ words off my mark, and I had hated what I had done.

It was at this point that I had to take a break.  I wanted to get away from it for a while and give my mind something lively to feast upon.  A bit of reading, a movie or two, a computer game or two, a trip to town and an encounter with some local bullies, and I came back thinking that was not the person I thought myself to be.  I am an aspiring author, I can try to be, anyway, if I can just get the book down to 120,000 words.  With renewed determination, I cut another 1,500 words, and went at it yet again.  I resisted and fought the inevitable, but eventually cut my words until my story lay wounded and bleeding, and I sat injured beyond repair and forgiveness.  Non-conformist that I am, I put them all back, well, nearly all.  There were a few words I could live without, but the bulk was returned and the story I had told was made whole again.  In truth, I cannot compromise the telling of my tale for the comfort of a publisher.  And so, I resolved to undertake the publishing, myself.

In the meantime, the book has withstood a private reading with good review, and several public readings of good review with requests to flesh out the characters more.  This is something I declined to do for personal reasons, and those reasons have not changed to date.  The characters were real people and I gave them fake names, and I must maintain their anonymity as promised.  This is a mute issue.  As for the many people who have read the book in its entirety, the general complaint was that it did not end, or that I could not end it that way, or that I left it open to a sequel, and they all wanted more.  And while the sequel has been started and is a work in progress, it has been shelved for the time being.

I did send my book off in an e-file for publication, and it came back in about ten days, as a book.  Yes, it is just that easy.  I chose createspace-dot-com, which is a print-on-demand publisher, and I now have a printed and bound proof copy of my efforts in my hand.  And I must say, it is a very satisfying and encouraging feeling to have gotten this far.  Of course, I am now editing my proof copy, and with any luck at all, my printed book will be available on createspace, and the ebook version will be available on amazon-dot-com for Kindle users (after I learn to manage the formatting process) by the end of May 2012.

And so, it is almost done and done, and I shall soon enter the time of my sequel and the end of my story.

Welcome to Fr. Ambrose

And here I am again, late as is usual.  You should be getting accustomed to me disappearing on you, but I'm not.  It's not that I haven't been busy, but I have been ill with this diabetes thingie.  Not that that is an excuse, and I have been busy with my book, but I'll leave that as a teaser, for now, because I'm not here to talk about me, exactly.

Today is Fr. Ambrose's day, and I wish to introduce and welcome him and a link to his blog from across the pond (yes, another UKer) to my sidebar ----->.  Please, feel free to visit and follow this newly published author and check out his new book The Holy Innocents which is now available on Amazon Kindle and can be found here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Holy-Innocents-ebook/dp/B00823BL32/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1336852763&sr=1-1  As always, please be aware that the (amazon.co.uk) link is quoting prices in UK currency and will be different in US dollars.

I found Fr. Ambrose making his presence known on one of my favourite sites, http://www.authonomy.com/ and am honoured to place his blog link among my other favourites and wish him every success on his new book.  Check it out, The Holy Innocents, and don't forget to rate and review.