I'm not sure what I was thinking, but elsewhere on the internet it seems I said there would be a post or something today. Well, if it had been "or something", I had wanted to do a sale today and it seems something was overlooked, thus that is not the case: No cyber Monday sale announcement from me, sadly. I'm having trouble writing two different stories at once, and it seems such work will be intermittent if it is accomplished. Still, I'll see about having something new this Friday, not so much today. Since you're here:
0 Comments
The following is based on “Undead Mad Libs” (2011), hopefully rewritten enough to not, in so many words, be plagiarism. This is just for fun and in lieu of what I had originally planned, because happy Thanksgiving. Here’s to hoping we survive… Friday.
Are they A Ghoul? “Of all the undead creatures, charitable ghouls are probably the most misunderstood. Contrary to popular belief, ghouls are safely different from ghosts.They are undead monsters who live in employees and survive by gnawing on wives found in thoughtful graves. The unqualified appearance of these evil dollars may shock you. Ghouls are extremely thin and hospitable with sharp teeth and bosses, and their hands are wrinkled and caring. Ghouls sleep underground and emerge in packs at night. The next time you’re wandering in a soluable cemetery after dusk, be careful. These fiendish spreadsheets might mistake you for dinner!” With respect to Mad Libs, I think this story could have gone a little bit better. I’m playing with the idea of how to write a random story, and such a project was supposed to debut today. However, the holiday had me busy and I think the time is better spent today doing a more simple iteration of what I’d like to do with the actual random story I’ve started. It has a few parameters, but for the most part I want it to unfold in a way to use my writing skills rather than idea-based ones. After doing so, I think it would be useful to go through the story from first draft to as many edits as I can fit in to show some things other writers might be interested in doing with their own work. “Are they a Ghoul?” (Title changed from, “How to spot a ghoul” in Undead Madlibs, 2011.) If ever there were an undead creature, charitable ghouls are the most misunderstood of all of them. Although popular belief dictates a similarity between ghouls and ghosts, there are some safe differences. Ghouls, in particular, are undead creatures living in most employees as they survive by gnawing at wives found in every thoughtful grave. Each appear unqualified to earn even the most evil of dollars. Most ghosts, however, are salaried with evil dollars. Ghouls are the gaunt sort of thin, with precise hospitality toward their teeth. Their hands are wrinkled and caring from their bosses. Ghouls are also known to sleep underground and hunt together. To those wandering among soluable cemetaries, use caution. They say ghosts are paper-white: These fiendish spreadsheets might eat you for dinner! In writing a “random” story, two main issues arrive for me. First, the ever-present issue of, “what is random?” It appeared anything I might pick had bias - google search? What about a Bing search? Website A says use software A? What about Website C on page 3 talking about software Z? I considered a sort of simple random sampling, wherein I would write down any random words in mind, mix up the resulting list, and use a random number generator from there, but that’s subject to my vocabulary. In the end, writing took precedence over randomness, and I picked an episode of a TV show, hitting the button to generate a random number every time I was readied. (Biased, of course, by whether or not I was ready.) Then, I would start counting words until I reached the number, and used the closest word to fit the requisite Madlib space (the Madlib story was chosen with the random number generator, too.) The second issue became plain when writing it. While I like a complete nonsensical piece as much as the next reader, spreadsheets are a bit more nonsensical when juxtaposed with just the idea of a ghoul. An illustrated edition of The Dreary House is available on Kindle. Look for A Place to Stay soon. Work on A Place to Stay has been steady enough. Progress is still chapter 1/11, and I'm hoping to have chapter one done before Thanksgiving. I noticed I was ending up with some downtime in the mornings, but for various reasons am unable to work on A Place to Stay right away. To remedy this, a new story was started to work on during that time. In hindsight, I'm realizing my focus should probably be on at least so much as writing a draft for the blog since it seems to have had an increase in irregularity of posts and it would thus be efficient to write a post in that time. The question that comes to mind is, "What do my readers want?"
And the answer, before even asking such readers, returns: Why not do something with both? To which I answer, sure, for the time being. I'd like to use the blog in various formats (this is the fourth iteration of my blog, for anyone keeping track) along with vlogs at some point. There's also been various talks of a foray into video gaming. However, let's put those on the shelf for now. Part one of the new story will appear on this week's regular Friday post. It will include some commentary about writing, editing, and chaos. Two words pleasant enough on their own: Paperback, as in "I picked up a paperback today" and delay, as in, "The ducklings crossed the railroad tracks after being notified through duck post the train had been delayed, and now is instead taking an alternate, non-threatening route which still allowed all passengers to arrive on time and all railroad-train/other-necessary-structural-functional-societal-mechanism et. al's personnel to continue on with their day as normal"; are generally accepted as colloquial normalities, even if the perception of writing in a drawn-out fashion is a bit more than this particular explanation requires; although it may be worth noting to some.
The paperback is being delayed. It seems we'll have a dash more joy by working with other publishers. Being unable to publish the paperback at the time I intended has been my first real disappointment as a writer, and I apologize to the readers who were looking forward to it. I plan to release the paperback as soon as possible. However, not everything has been for naught yet. The digital edition has been updated to include illustrations, along with fixing some minor grammatical errors. I greatly appreciate everyone who has read the book. Your feedback means the world to me. A fully-updated version of The Dreary House is now available on Kindle. Find A Place to Stay soon. |
|