And Now the End is Near: Update

The end, not of the blog, but of the current WIP. Because the kiddos have been supervised by someone other than me for the past couple of weeks, I've been able to write in the morning for several HOURS. I am fast closing in on the end of rewrite #5 (or is it 6?) and things are starting to gel. Maybe I'll have a product I can be proud of by the end of the summer.

Mary Kole had a post a few days back about whether unpubbed writers should blog. You can read it in its entirety here. The upshot: she didn't think it was necessary. The reason, in her own words:

If you have a blog where you can give people really valuable content, tips, and things to make their lives better (or at least to give them good cocktail party conversation), do it. If you are just thinking of blogging because everyone else does it or you heard that agents won’t consider you unless you have a blog, don’t.

(If you read my blog, please continue to natter about it as you sip cocktails on the party circuit.)

But back to Mary Kole's post: she believes, rightly, that blogs foster a sense of community. As I near the 6 month mark of my own blogging adventure, that has been the greatest boon. I've communicated with people I'd never have a chance to in "real" life. The Microfiction Monday crew has been wonderful--I look forward to hearing from them every week. Also, I have 16 declared followers, which is positively super. (Pour more cocktails, fellows.) Occasionally, others will tell me they're enjoying my blog. Thank you, EGO BOOSTER CLUB.

So, before I head off on massive vacation #2, if you read this blog I would love for you to leave me a comment, complete with the name of your favorite cocktail/mocktail for our own cyber cocktail party. And here's a big fat CYBER SMOOCH from me for taking the time to read and write and comment and follow. I'll take the comment verification off to make things easier for you to do so.

Cheers, and thanks.

Microfiction Monday: Shooting Stars

Welcome to Microfiction Monday, at Stony River: a writing life, where a picture paints 140 characters, or even fewer.

[Hate counting letters and spaces? Try Design 215's character counter, which will count for you as you type. Microsoft Word will count for you too, of course, as part of its word count feature under the 'Review' tab.] Here's this week's picture, and my story to go with it.





Roger was dead. For Gem, nothing was left. She stared starward, wishing. The stars were generous: five wishes. Each wish: to see him again. (140 characters)

(Off on my travels again--c.f. previous post--so may miss a couple of MMs, depending on computer availability. Hope you all have a good week, and thanks as always for your comments. I appreciate you all.)

Vacation, vacation

The life of a dangerous writer is not all sweat, blood, and toil. In fact, the month of July has been pretty much taken up with seeing to the welfare of out-of-school kids (this includes building daily bonfires and watching endless "shows" on our deck. All three of my joeys are thespians, it seems, and the littlest one is getting in on the act with daily performances of either Scooby Doo or Jack Sparrow.)

Why Jack Sparrow, you might ask. Because we spent ten days in the capital of Disneyana, a.k.a. Orlando. The reason we went there in the first place merits a novella, one which you will not be reading here. We groaned and moaned about much preferring to be in Hawaii, but in the end made the best of things and were all real troupers going round the parks: Magic Kingdom, Epcot, and Hollywood Studios. The ace in the hole, however, was Islands of Adventure over at Universal. We, in the company of forty thousand others, descended on the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, which sent my 7-year-old into paroxysms of delight. Hogwarts castle was magnificent and Hogsmeade was a splendid replica--just a pity about all those sweaty muggles clumping about. My advice to anyone planning to go: wait till October. Heck, wait till next year.

(Here we all are, waiting for our letters to Hogwarts)

Now we're back home, the kids are all in camp/summer school, and I have been getting oodles of writing down. Not for long though: we're off at the end of next week for Vancouver, B.C. If anyone has any recommendations about this supposedly wonderful spot, I'd love to hear about them.

Microfiction Monday: No April Fool

Welcome to Microfiction Monday, at Stony River: a writing life, where a picture paints 140 characters, or even fewer.

[Hate counting letters and spaces? Try Design 215's character counter, which will count for you as you type. Microsoft Word will count for you too, of course, as part of its word count feature under the 'Review' tab.] Here's this week's picture, and my story to go with it.



April 1st was never Sebastian's favorite day. An empty biscuit jar and garish flowers in his tea cup: who was the monster behind this?

I'm ba-aack! Have missed this blog and all you microfictioneers. I'll put up a post later in the week about what I've been up to--after I've caught up on my sleep and all the other things in my inbox.

Microfiction Monday: Sales (sic) on the High Seas

Welcome to Microfiction Monday, at Stony River: a writing life, where a picture paints 140 characters, or even fewer.

[Hate counting letters and spaces? Try Design 215's character counter, which will count for you as you type. Microsoft Word will count for you too, of course, as part of its word count feature under the 'Review' tab.] Here's this week's picture, and my story to go with it.




In all her years as a Wonderbra sales rep, Zola'd never had such feisty customers. But how could she tell them they didn't need her product? (134 characters)


I'll be away from computers the next couple of MMs. Will miss you all, but will be back in mid-July. Happy trails, everyone, and thanks for commenting.

Where's your Favourite Book Shop?

I had a nice jaunt to San Francisco last week. My wife and I were celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary (yes, we were child bride and groom) and we decided to make a splurge of it. We stayed in the Union Street Inn, a lovely B&B, the best part of which was drinking white wine and sampling cheeses during the pre-dinner hours in the sun-dappled garden. At times like this I give in and admit I am a complete hedonist: I could spend my life sitting in gardens, reading books, and sipping tea and other libations. I swear to you I was switched at birth. If there is some Panamanian-born Duke somewhere who actually pines to do 8 loads of laundry a week, please contact me as soon as possible.

One of the other pleasures of the trip, beyond being in the presence of my beautiful wife and being free of the constant cries of "Dad?!" from every quarter, was a revisit to the City Lights Bookstore. City Lights was founded in 1953 by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti. It has all sorts of Allen Ginsberg and Beat poet history and is a lovely warren of book stacks with a sweet, sweet selection of books. If you want your international fix--Japanese, Indian, Middle Eastern--you'll get it there. It's not the sort of place you see the likes of a Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck screed, nor anything mass-market--though they did stock Steig Larsson's Millenium trilogy. (Yay for them!)

I love grazing in indie book stores like this one. Nobody bugs you when you wander in (hello, Borders? Can you change your egregious policy of having your wired handmaidens stalk customers through the store with "can I help you find anything?" bleating like a broken record?!) and you get the feeling they wouldn't mind if you browsed for hours. In fact, I liked it so much I bought the t-shirt.

In Portland, we have Powell's which is, no joke, a city of books. Sometimes I come over a bit faint when I pass through Powell's--it's like falling into the world's largest smorgasbord after you've already had a substantial dinner. My own local, in Multnomah Village, is Annie Bloom's which is much more manageable--sort of the cheese and wine in the sun-dappled garden effect. I hope these type of book shops never go out of fashion. The world would surely be a much less lustrous place without them.

Where's your favorite book shop? Let me know so I can add it to my book tour itinerary. (One can but dream, eh?)

Microfiction Monday: Jumping the Shark

Welcome to Microfiction Monday, at Stony River: a writing life, where a picture paints 140 characters, or even fewer.

[Hate counting letters and spaces? Try Design 215's character counter, which will count for you as you type. Microsoft Word will count for you too, of course, as part of its word count feature under the 'Review' tab.] Here's this week's picture, and my story to go with it.



Dad was a character actor. When the kids gingerly suggested he might be jumping the shark, he took it literally. It wasn't a happy landing.

(From Wikipedia: Jumping the shark is an idiom used to describe the moment of downturn for a previously successful enterprise. The phrase was originally used to denote the point in a television program's history where the plot spins off into absurd story lines or unlikely characterizations.)

Hope all Dads had a happier Father's Day than the one in my story! Have a great week everyone.