Happy New Year

Photo: Sydney, Australia, celebrating New Year's Day in 2007, from "New Year's Day" page on Wikipedia.

Really simple blog entry this time: Happy New Year to all my readers, and to anyone who happens to stumble in.  Here's to better health, better happiness, better times.

And if you'd like to leave a wish for everyone, please do so below.  I'd be glad to hear from ya, as would everyone else who reads this.  Emails are cool, too.  Thanks again to all my readers and followers for sparing some time with me here.  As my time is very limited, I'm sure yours is, too.

2013's first real entry will be a review of Tarantino's Django Unchained, coming soon.  But until then, I thought I would start a comment thread, each comment but a few words long, of what we would like 2013 to bring to us.  After seeing mine, feel free to put your own.

And Happy New Year!!!

YouTube Christmas Song List and Team You

 Photo: Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas market) in Jena, Thuringia, Germany.  From Wikipedia's "Christmas" page.  Click on it for a bigger, more vivid picture.  It's worth it.

Here's my Christmas song list that will be playing Christmas Eve and Christmas Day:

1.  2000 Miles (It Must Be Christmastime)
2.  Same, because I like it so much I want to hear it twice in a row, cuz I'm like that
3.  Have A Holly Jolly Christmas
4.  The Little Drummer Boy (Original version; Harry Simeone Chorale/Peter Pan Caroleers)
5.  O Holy Night (Charlotte Church)
6.  There's Something Stuck Up in the Chimney
7.  The Little Drummer Boy (Bob Seger)
8.  Silent Night (Stevie Nicks)
9.  Baby Please Come Home (U2)
10.  Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree (Brenda Lee)
11.  It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year
12.  All I Want for Christmas Is You (Vince Vance and the Valiants)
13.  Christmas Canon (Trans-Siberian Orchestra)
14.  A Wonderful Christmastime (Paul McCartney)
15.  Happy Xmas (War is Over)
16.  All I Want for Christmas Is You (Mariah Carey)
17.  Do They Know It's Christmas?
18.  Same Old Lang Syne (Dan Fogelberg)
19.  Santa Claus is Coming to Town (Bruce Springsteen)
20.  Christmas in Sarajevo

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year, everyone.  May you be close to those who are loyal, friendly and caring.  (And may you not have to be close to those who are not on Team You.)

Happy New Year

To all my readers, Happy New Year.  Be good, and better than you were last year.  I'll see you again on the second, with a blog about the novel, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  You can read the blog about the movie in the previous entry.

Happy Holidays 2011

This time of year finds me working hard on The Gravediggers and Cursing the Darkness, anticipating the arrival of "Hide the Weird" in the upcoming Winter 2012 issue of Space and Time Magazine, and waiting to sign a contract for a very short nonfiction piece I just sold a few days ago.  A few other stories are out pounding the internet pavement.  Reading, writing, taking care of the new house and hangin' with my better half.  What's better than that?

I hope this time of year finds you well.  Happy holidays, all, and happy New Year!!!

Writerly Things

Happy New Year, everyone!

Today I'm taking it easy.  Doing writerly things like: reading (over 150 pages into Undaunted Courage--a semi-biography of Meriwether Lewis and a history of that era and the Louisiana Purchase--that my better half's mother was nice enough to get me for Christmas), organizing the office (I've decided that I'm going to keep only the books and research materials I need to write the novels and stories I'm working on right now, and store every other book away), sending out three short stories that were finished awhile ago (including one that takes place on Christmas and Christmas Eve--guess I missed the boat on that one), and--oh, yeah--writing!!!

May we all have great writing and even better contracts this year!!!  I leave you with a really good quote I stumbled across recently, applicable to all writers and other artists:

"The truly creative mind, in any field, is no more than this: a human born abnormally, inhumanely sensitive. To him, a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create-so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency, he is not really alive unless he is creating."

-Pearl S. Buck

The Power of the Internet

Been away for awhile again.  Writing, don't you know.  And the business end has been giving me...well, the business end.  Hope your holidays have gone well, whoever you are.  Now for a few quick things:

--I recently described my writing process this way:

"I let the whole thing fester for awhile--unless it's just suddenly springs on me and I MUST write it down--and then I just write and write and look at whatever comes out. Sometimes I get a lot in a linear fashion; sometimes I get a lot of fragments; sometimes I get the beginning; sometimes the ending. Whatever comes, comes, and then I have to sort it all out. Lately I've been getting fragments and multiple POVs. Cursing was linear, and "Hide the Weird" was, too. A couple of other short stories were. But not too often these days. I often, but not always, try and get down the very beginning, the very end, and hopefully the very middle. Somewhere in all this, at the editing and re-re-re-re-re-editing stage, I fill out an outline of what I've got, to make sure it all makes sense, and to plug in any very obvious holes. By that time, it's been well paved, and I see what I've got, and then I edit again, finish, etc. No strict formula for writing for me. Just go get 'em."

While this is a very accurate description of my writing method, it strikes me as a little all over the place.  Is this typical?  If you're a writer, please comment or send me an email and let me know.  Thanks!


--I recently responded to one of my Goodreads threads, one that asks if there's any book you've been thinking of lately that you remember a bit, but some of it is fuzzy, and you can't remember the title, and you've been looking for the book awhile without success.  You respond to this thread, giving as much information as you can, and the hundreds?  thousands? of Goodreads members who are game try to figure the book out for you.  So I did this about a book I've been thinking about for years, one I read when I was maybe 11, and it made a big impression on me, but I couldn't remember the title at all.  I'd been looking for it at yard sales, library sales, indie bookstores, etc.  I stumped the experts at first, but then someone nailed it!  It's called "The Tunnel to Yesterday."  So I ordered it from Amazon, cost maybe $6 total to ship to my door (free delivery!) and I just finished reading it earlier today.


Now that's the power of the internet.


And, by the way, if I don't get another chance to say so, Happy New Year everybody!!!