"Recalculating" Is On Flash Fire 500

I'm on fire!

That is, my story "Recalculating" is on Flash Fire 500. Now please, go take a gander, while I try to figure just where did I put that fire extinguisher.

They Come From Above

Their swift, massive ships control everything in the above.

They are hideous, malevolent creatures, incapable of sentiment. They lure us out and we’re abducted without warning or mercy. If we are released, it’s not out of compassion, but due to some strange criteria that they choose not reveal to us.

Their probe hypnotizes me and, as if by magic, they seize me painfully onto their ship.

They grasp me with their horrid appendages and I cannot breathe in their brutal atmosphere. I writhe and gasp under the sinister glares of their giant misshapen heads.

“Damn, throw him back Clem, he’s got to be the smallest big mouth bass I’ve ever seen.”

We Can Do This The Easy Way...

...or, you don't want to know.

We can do this the easy way, you click this link here and you vote for Nora O'Sullivan as Fangoria's Weekend Spooksmodel.

She's the offspring of Bubs, she's a student and a zombie extraordinaire. And as Bubs says-

Nora is competing against quite a few professional models with some pretty slick photo spreads.

A few of the girls (and I mean this with no disrespect whatsoever) look like budding alt-p*rn starlets, and they show a bit of skin. Nora, on the other hand, is the wholesome girl-next-door of horror. Proof that gore-soaked splatter movies are really good old-fashioned family fun. That's our girl.

So I'm going to put it to you this way, either you vote for Nora, or I'm going to sing. And by "sing," I mean I will do a spot on imitation of my drunk "friends" doing what they call "rocking out." That means selections from Rock Band, only I'll be doing my version acapella with all of their tone-deaf glory and drunken fervor.

I will ruin songs so badly for you, that you'll never want to hear anything from that particular artist again and you won't want to look at a picture of them, either.

You will wake up in a cold sweat every day of your life. So let's do this the easy way, vote for Nora and spare your ears...and your sanity.

It's Somebody's Birthday Today...

...I'll give you a hint; her first name leaves you out of breath, and her last name rhymes with "toffee." I'll give you another clue, she's from Georgia and she's so hot, that she sizzles.

No, you're overthinking it, guess again...

No, not her, this tomato is from Mississippi.

No, she's from Georgia, but it's not her birthday and stop thinking about TV chefs...

Okay, now you're just trying tick me off. Come on, seriously, guess...

...that's right, I'm talking about Beth Coffey! Here's a picture of us right in front of John's Grill and we had the grandest time. Every one of her birthdays are special, but this one in particular is really special because it ends in a zero...that's right, Beth is forty!

; )

Happy Birthday, Darlin', from all of the Browns!

Where's Paul Revere When You Need Him?

One man threatens to overrun the entire Internet with fiction and there's nothing we can do to stop him. From across the pond comes Paul D. Brazill and he won't rest until every fiction site and E-zine is under his thumb.

We're talking "Sins of The Father" on A-Twist-Of-Noir.

Not to mention "Stamp of A Vamp" on Powder Burn Flash.

And please, check out "Swamplands" on Flashshot before it rotates out!

Have You Ever Given Up On Submitting Stories To A Site?

I do believe that I didn't receive a rejection letter with my first submission to their site. I know they definitely sent me one in response to my second submission and they were polite. They were were also rather prompt.

With the rejection of my third submission, they were prompt and polite. "It's not quite what we're looking for, but please keep trying."

Well stories #4 and #5 didn't make the grade either. Part of story #4's title even got a mention by the editor and she praised the concept. I'm not mad and it's not just because they've been so unfailingly polite...it's not them, it's me.

Honest.

They still haven't found what they're looking for, Bono, though I do know it's not my writing.

My stories? They leave the toilet seat up.

My stories? They snore like a chainsaw revving up inside an echo chamber.

My stories tell inapporpriate jokes at company picnics, in front of company, and in front of the family.

My stories display PDA at the worst times as well. Maybe, you know, it would be better if, uh, they started seeing other authors...I don't know.

I do know that I'm not going to stand outside their window in the rain, holding a boom box playing Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes." I'm not going to waste a fortune in flowers and candy. I...I'm not crying, I just have something in my eye...it's the wind, honest. I know all the windows are shut, but it's the wind, I tell you!

Let's face it, they are just not that into my writing.


So enough about my writing, how about you? Have you ever given up on submitting stories to a site?

50 Reasons Why No One Wants To Publish Your Book

Bookgasm has "50 Reasons Why No One Wants To Publish Your Book" and unfortunately, I'm suffering from at least a few of these examples...


"21. And the 78th to submit a chick-lit manuscript about an attractive woman’s sweet tooth and affection for footwear, called CHOCOLATE AND SHOES."

Sh*t, I was going to buy a house with that one.

"31. There’s a fine line between writing authentic regional dialogue and making all of your characters sound like stroke victims."

Ah yes, that's where Super Editor Katherine Tomlinson saves the day, or your Cajun pimp will wind up sounding like a punch-drunk Louisianian.

"38. For the first 20 pages, everyone who reads it is certain it’s the funniest book they’ve ever read. Unfortunately by the 21st, they finally realize you’re actually being serious."

No comment...

"41. When writing erotica, you want to avoid graphic descriptions of acne, cellulite and back fat."

Aw, (expletive) limit me, why don't ya?

And finally...

"15. It’s not technically a novel until you’ve written it down first."

Damn, why don't some of my best friends tell me these things?

Question III...

Maybe this is the old fogey in me talking, but why is an "afterparty" necessary?


What? Seriously, I lead the clean life now, but back in the day, I'd hit the club and then we'd all go out to eat...whether I had to work the next day or not. That was it. That didn't mean that we didn't see the sun come up, it just meant that we didn't donate a small fortune at another club, to do so.

If you're at a club and you waited ten minutes before last call to get your dance on, or to try and get that all important phone number, regroup for another day. The chances of you getting that number at another 125 decibel club aren't going to be any higher, and the chances of your dancing improving at 2:30 AM are even lower than getting those digits.

But let's go back to the highs and the lows...

If you couldn't get enough partying in at the last stop...

...Do you think that anything good will come from getting even more lit, Sugar T*ts?

Uh, then again, I sip alcohol once every six weeks, and I'm starting to look like James Brown did in this picture. No, seriously, the hair and my beard is now more salt than pepper.

All the above pics are from Uncoached.com, where they have even better pics than the above.

Quin Comes Back Home To A Sixer-Tape Parade

Quin is back the U-S-S-

Back in the U-S-S

Back in the U-S-S-R...no, wait a minute, that's not right. Oh, yeah, Quin is back in the U.S. to a Sixer-tape parade. Quoth her Quiness-

"I had some nice news waiting when I arrived home late last night (after 20 hours!).Not only do I have a new SixSentences published, but, one of my Smith Magazine memoir in six words is a finalist to appear in their next book!! woot! One problem, I'm not sure which of them it is!!Hope you enjoy the reading."

Should the site be changed to "Quin Sentences?" I think so.

Non-ficton With Bubs

The two books that I buy without except every year, regardless of the selected authors, are The Best American Mystery Stories (B.A.M.S) and The Best American Crime Reporting (B.A.C.R.) The latter is an anthology of crime and mystery-related articles from every magazine in America.

Well, lo and behold, there is a writer in that Sprawling Ramshackle Compound, and his name is Joe O'Sullivan. His writing debut is in Farmhouse Magazine and the title of it is "My Day With Antonia." He gives B.A.C.R. a run for the money and true crime never read so good...or so funny.


Pssst, Katie Schwartz has an eye for talent.

Paul D. Brazill Is In Flashshot

Me mate Paulie Decibels, is in today's Flashshot with a bullet he calls "Swamplands." It's a beaut about "The King." Take a gander and you'll see why Keith Rawson calls him "the English Bukowski."

Question II...

I'm sorry, I've always accepted this without question and never really contemplated the ramifications of this, but...


...just what exactly does "The Dude" abide by?

The zen of life?

The call of the no dress-code, code?

The call of a ice-cold white Russian? That was my go-to drink when I was at bars where the bartender would grimace at the mention of any drink that needed a blender to be made. That, and a Cape Cod, because there isn't a bartender alive that can f' that up or water it down.

Or is it the law that "one must bowl with a hot chick at least once in life?" Julianne Moore definitely fufills that requirement.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Kiss me, I have an Irish pen name.

Hey, whaddya want? St. Patrick was English!

Question...

Was Sir Mix-A-Lot correct in his assertion that indeed, the "808 kick drum makes the girlies get dumb?"

BTW, the Etchasketchist kicks ass, though I'm biased because I couldn't even make a circle or a straight line with the damn thing.

British Punctuation And Books

As anyone who has read one of my unedited stories or an email from me can tell you, I am to punctuation as Dubya is to speechifying (sic). Proper punctuation and me are lost to each other, we circle each other like strange dogs and bare teeth...each unsure whether to outright attack or sniff...never mind. Holy sh*t, speechifying is actually a word!

At any rate, I still don't have a handle on all that Messrs. Strunk and White were trying to impart, yet they know me well as bastard that is making their graves spin faster than all of the satellites in Earth's orbit combined.

So last January, I was reading "The Bullet Trick by Louise Welsh and while it said it was the U.S. edition, something was odd about it...


...no, not the book itself mind you. It's a nice piece of neo-noir about Scottish magician that runs into a spot of trouble in London and he scores what seems like fortuitous gig in Berlin, Germany...or is he better off in another country? I said it's "neo-noir," so you know that all does not go well.

As I said, the book itself is fine, it was something else that was off, it was the punctuation-


'There's something I'd like to know.'

He played with his glass, not taking a sip from it, just looking into the brown liquid as if the answer might lie amongst the bubbles. Curiosity and the dangerous faint hope of an easy score kept me in my seat.

'Go on.'

'I'd like to know what Inspector Montgomery had on my dad.'

The sentence hung in the air, a bridge between Bill's world and mine. A bridge that I wasn't sure that I wanted to cross.

Eventually I said, 'So why don't you ask him?'

'It's not as simple as that.'

'Sorry to hear it.' I reached for my jacket. 'I'm in the entertainment game. Complicated isn't my scene.'


Okay, what's wrong with this picture? Did you see it? Single quotation marks. They created our language and they use single quotation marks?

I can understand using "s" instead of "z," such as in the Brit usage of "organisation," actually, no I can't. Still, I've gotten used to seeing the letter "s" in unexpected places, and half the fun of reading British and Irish crime fiction, is translating the idioms and pop culture references.

Yet as I read Brit and Irish crime fiction, I keep asking myself, what spun this singular quotation mark usage off? A stylistic choice? A type-set error way back in the day? An odd effort to save ink?

And conversely, why do we have two quotation marks, if the English language was born in Britain?

Any thoughts, theories or snark (not directed at me (sic) writing, mind you) would be appreciated.

Eight Blogger Meme

I'm sorry that I've been away from your blog and this blog, but lately it's all about playing an online RPG and writing for a future issue of Astonishing Adventures Magazine. Here I am, waiting for character points to regenerate, so I now is the best time to take care of a meem. Quin gave me the honorable tag of a meme that listed me among eight bloggers that have well-written and amusing blogs. The rules are-

“These bloggers are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers. Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award.”

Wait a minute, you mean I have to give this picture to eight people? To eight blogs? How do I narrow it down to eight people? How?

And tell me now

How do I live without you?

I want to know,

How do I breathe without you?

If you ever go...ahem. So, let me try to narrow it down...

Katie Schwartz. My best online friend forever and favorite source of irreverence.

The Baroness. We're the most zen of all the royalty and the source of "Thoughtful Thursdays."

Paulie Decibels. The student has become the master. When he first visited this blog, he didn't even have a Blogger accountant and now I use his page to find new and interesting blogs. He is also a good quip-master, bon viviant, and a writer on the rise.

Sprawling Ramshackle Compound. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Bubs, and he makes it funny too. Not to mention, food, drink, and the best "Florida or Germany?" site on the web.

Chris. He is not just about humor and documentaries, though he excels with those topics more than any other blog that I know.

Gifted Typist. She is columnist and another harbinger of humor.

Dale. As I've said before, "c'mon America, get passionate about Dale!"

Last but not least, I'd like to nominate a bunch of blogs, but I only sleep with one of the authors and she'll be angry if she doesn't get in here. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you The Missus.

"Lazy"

Ted: Why aren't you ready?

Jessica: I have to do the dishes.

Ted: Isn't it Terry's turn? I mean, she does nothing around here and she leaves you with all the housework.

Jessica: Yeah, well…we had a discussion and she was right.

Ted: About? Jessica: She said that we have lazy people to thank for everything that is good.

Ted: That's absurd.

Jessica: Well, think about it. Wine? Someone let the grape juice sit around long enough to ferment. Cheese? Likewise with the milk. Sushi? Somebody didn't want to cook the fish.

Ted: Hmm, you wash, I'll dry.


This was a discarded scene from my next-to-last screenplay and the names have been changed because I'm too lazy to look them up.