Guest Blog by Marcia Griswold

Marcia Griswold

Once Upon A Time … I used to draw stories and then dictate the plot to my grandmother, mother, or father. The chosen one would then write my words onto the accompanying illustration. I kept up this practice when I began school and I remember dictating stories to my first-grade teacher Mrs. Thompson. Mrs. Thompson thought this was such a grand idea that it became a class project. In the second grade I won the grade level haiku poetry contest and in the third grade Mrs. Bourgeois predicted I would become a writer when I grew up.

            I continued on my meteoric Mozart-like writer prodigy track all through my grade school years. I was the Writer of the class. Lori So-And-So might have been the Adele of the Glee Club, but I was the Stephen King of English class. (Though I did a mean turn as Harriet Tubman in the fifth grade dramatic production of her life story.)

            But writing is not child’s play and it wasn’t until my junior year of high school that I really knew I could write and wanted to make it my life’s purpose. 1981 was kind of a hat trick year for my writing ambitions. First off, my beloved father died suddenly and shockingly in August. This, of course, broke my heart and in so doing opened it, so that words poured out in a deluge of pain and loss looking to mend the heartbreak. Next up, in September I took a creative writing class wherein I met Mr. Rankin who recognized my talent, encouraged it, and published it anywhere he could. And finally, 1981 was the year, Rich and Famous with Jacqueline Bisset and Candice Bergen came out.

            Now, this might seem like small potatoes when compared to one’s father dying or finding a mentor who thinks you’re the female incarnate of Dostoevsky, but Rich and Famous, while being rather cliched and somewhat predictable, changed my life!

            Bisset and Bergen are two friends from college who become writers. Bisset, is in it for the art and is respected in the literary world. Bergen does not start out writing. Instead she flees college to elope with her sweetheart and only starts to write years later when she sees how well her friend has done. Bergen writes more commercial fiction and, of course, makes way more money than Bisset. Needless to say, the friends go on to compete throughout the movie and in the end return to each other understanding there is nothing more important than old friends. (Except, perhaps, huge royalties and accolades.)

            I wanted to be Bisset—still do. Her character was everything I thought a writer should be—beautiful, respected, serious about her craft, living in New York and quoting Yeats over cocktails … I even tried drinking scotch because that was Bisset’s drink of choice in the film. Big disappointment.

            I still hold this image of Bisset’s character in my head some 35 years later. My dream of becoming a writer, a writer like her, has changed along the way. I worked as a journalist, published stories and poetry, and now, finally published a novel. Life is bigger and more difficult to wrangle than I understood back in 1981. So, maybe I didn’t turn out to be that writer, but I did turn out to be a writer. Webster has two definitions for writer: someone whose work is to write books, poems, stories, etc. and someone who has written something. Well, I have definitely written some somethings and I am trying like hell to make my writing my main source of work/income, so I guess I qualify.

            If one wants to be a writer one needs to write. It really is that simple. I believe people do what they want to do. If someone wants to write, they write. If someone wants to paint, they paint. If someone wants to binge watch “My 600 Pound Life,” they binge watch “My 600 Pound Life.”

            Do I want to write every day? God no. I’d much rather go to the movies or run 10 miles. Each is both more entertaining and easier. Writing is hard work and can be rather demoralizing. But I write anyway. Even if it’s a pulling-a-donkey-up-a-ladder kind of writing day. Stephen King said there is no bad writing. Well, there is plenty of bad writing, but we’re not talking about that kind of bad writing. We are talking about the act of sitting down and sculpting words onto the face of an intimidating, judgmental, and unforgiving blank page every day, no matter what—that there is value even in the crap. As my old friend E.B. White said, “A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word to paper.”

            So, I make time to write. Is it enough time? Certainly not. As I said earlier, life is hard to wrangle. To pay the mortgage I teach middle school students. To keep in shape and get a free YMCA membership I teach spinning. Because I am a fool and probably have undiagnosed ADHD I compete in half-Ironman distance triathlons. And because I am a writer, I write.

            We do what we want. I want to keep on being a writer so I face the blank page, I rest my fingers on the home row, I muster up my courage and write on.

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No witches, warlocks or vampires...

just a sexy tale about a guy trying to live the Hollywood dream...
Luigi's Chinese Delicatessen by Jim Vines

A thought for the day...

Perfectionism isn't necessarily an 

attractive quality.  Consider that needing to be perfect 

is rooted in the fear of getting things wrong. 

Perfection is something the truly confident 

don't fret too much over.

Poetry for the Frazzled Writer...by Oswald Goodheart

“Chasing Words”
Copyright (c) 1972 by Oswald Goodheart

I sit in the calm early hours

In my lonely, cramped room

My sturdy wooden desk before me
Hunched over my trusty Olivetti

A small lamp to light the way

Chasing words

Capturing them

Framing them neat and pretty.

But this night

The words

Those elusive devils

Play hide and seek

Teasing me

Mocking me from the shadows

As I sit at my wooden desk

Gazing into the void

Caught between somewhere 

And nowhere at all

And I dare to blame the tedious drip, drip, drip

Of a leaking spigot.

So this early morn 

In my cramped, lonely room

I sit and I tap out unsuitable words

Which I will frame neat and pretty

Words which shall forevermore remind me

And remind you, my friends

I can’t write for shit!

-- Oswald Goodheart

For more of Oswald Goodheart's prose 

and poetry, visit his Facebook page!

No witches, warlocks or vampires...

just a sexy tale about a guy trying to live the Hollywood dream...
Luigi's Chinese Delicatessen by Jim Vines

Guest Blog by Kyle Shoop

Kyle Shoop

I write for two reasons: (1) to entertain and (2) to fulfill a lifetime goal of mine. But I never actually thought I would write a novel, let alone a whole trilogy. Now here I am finishing up the last book of my Acea Bishop series. But when I reflect on why I set a goal of one day writing a novel, I think there was always an intrinsic part of my nature meant for me to eventually end up a writer.

In eighth grade, my English class was required to join a state-wide writing contest. Only a handful of students from all of Washington State would win the “Gold Key” award. From the moment the mandatory contest was announced in class, many serious students began conjuring up what their approach would be to write that award-winning masterpiece. I was not one of them. Instead, I forgot about it until the day before it was due. I hurriedly wrote a couple pages about a science project that had gone awry the week before, and guessed at which category my entry fit into. (I recall having no idea what some categories even meant and just randomly checking one off.) My story was entitled "Dissecting Chucky." Chucky was the name I gave my fetal pig in science class. The required dissection in that class did not go well, probably due to same lack of effort which I had put forth for my English class’s writing competition. Anyway, I won the Gold Key award (as well as several bad looks from straight-A students). But instead of recognizing the internal creative juices I had, I chalked it up to good luck.

Several years later, when I was in college for my undergrad, I was in a class which was a complete letdown. The class had promised to be a venue for creative minds, but it was unfortunately not that. Due to that class, I ended up making lifetime goals. The goals were: to record a music album (I play guitar), write a book, and learn how to paint. Years later, I completed the first goal. However, I ended up instead writing and recording three CDs instead of one. At the end of my last album, I wanted to take a break from music. However, I did not immediately remember my goal to write a book.

Then one night, I had a dream. That dream was the first two chapters of my first novel, Acea and the Animal Kingdom. From there, my imagination took off—creating the plot, conflict, and setting of a trilogy. Since that initial dream, I’ve been writing to entertain my readers and allow them to escape into the worlds which I’ve worked so hard to create. My wife taught elementary school for several years, so my goal was to write a story which would appeal to both parents and children—something they both would want to read together. My series centers around twelve-year-old Acea Bishop, who awakens to find that he’s been kidnapped from his home on San Juan Island and brought to an ancient, magical kingdom full of real animals. In trying to escape and to make his way back home, he unlocks the mystery of the kingdom’s history and reveals things about his past which he never imagined existed.

Writing the trilogy has not happened without sacrifices. In addition to writing, I am also a practicing attorney. So, finding time to write (in addition to spending time with my family) is difficult. This can be emotionally taxing, and I’ve learned that a book’s dedication is not just a gesture—it’s hard-earned. In addition, my decision to be independently published naturally leads to additional financial obligations. But I’ve been very enthused and motivated by the outpouring of positive responses I get from my readers! These positive responses from readers of all ages make the sacrifice well worthwhile. 

Books one (Acea and the Animal Kingdom) and two (Acea and the Seven Ancient Wonders) of are available now in paperback and e-book on the Amazon, Kindle, iTunes, and Google Play stores. Kyle is currently completing the last in the series, Acea and the Adventure Thru Time, which is anticipated to be released within the next year. For more information, please visit Kyle's website.

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No witches, warlocks or vampires...

just a sexy tale about trying to live the Hollywood dream...
Luigi's Chinese Delicatessen by Jim Vines

Guest Blog by Nik Krasno

Nik Krasno

Imagine you live in a society where private property is a curse, business or entrepreneurship is a criminal offense and likewise—non-working parasitism. You can't leave the place nor change its principles. Surrealistic? Science fiction? That's where I lived—in the USSR, the biggest and most "glorious" empire. And then it all started to crumble. I was off to Israel for a few years and when I came back it was a different world. Also surrealistic, improbable, but different.

                For many years I was virtually living on the plane traveling back and forth between Israel and Ukraine (plus some other countries), thus sharing my time between family and business. Not for a second the feeling of a unique phenomena unfolding in front of my eyes left me. The transition from pre-communist Soviet republic to an independent, Wild West capitalistic, corrupted pseudo-democracy was fast, furious and ruthless to those who didn't know how to adapt. On the other hand, these turbulent times benefited modest Soviet citizens, who were apt to grasp what was going on and use the new rules, or more precisely, total collapse thereof, to their personal favor. It's no wonder that every ten years of her short, twenty-five-year-long history Ukraine undergoes a revolution.

                Within a remarkably short period huge factories, built during decades by the Soviets and employing tens of thousands of employees, ended up in private hands for a much lower than market price. Being a commercial lawyer, you are very aware and exposed to the dark side of things, which usually represents a good material for a high-voltage thriller, noir or action book.

                Having all of the above as a background, at some stage I started to think that a story of a fictional billionaire who uses real schemes or scams for enrichment could be of interest to those who wonder what happens in places once sealed almost hermetically by an iron curtain. I thought revealing the unbelievable magnitude of corruption could also be thrilling. These ideas evolved into a plot-line for a book that I conceived. Five or six years ago, there was a series on Israeli TV about Russian or Ukrainian oligarch (extremely rich individual having considerable behind the scenes political influence) coming to Israel, buying a football club, marrying Israeli woman and so on. It was pretty naive and clichéd in my opinion, but still—so popular. I thought the oligarch theme was intriguing and that I could come up with a much more realistic story. My general assumption was that people were always curious how someone made countless fortunes. Many watched with interest movies about Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs. Their stories may just look trivial in comparison with those of their Eastern peers.... 

   

                So from time to time I was writing down scenes and outlining the plot. One day when I was having a beer with a friend (a published non-fiction author) and I shared the idea with him. He was pretty enthusiastic about it. We decided to go for it. About a year later we had the first book: Rise of an Oligarch. Were it not for him, I doubt I would've found time or confidence to finish it on my own. I knew I had a story, but I wasn't sure I wanted to be a writer or whether I was capable to become one. Hmm, I doubt it even now, as despite many positive reviews, my books are not yet New York Times bestsellers. 

                And then I've discovered that writing is addictive. Since I was so eager to find out what happens next with the protagonist and having garnered enough confidence, I just sat down and wrote the sequel myself (Mortal Showdown, released in June, 2015). I'm currently working on a third installment that might conclude the trilogy and which shall contain a certain surprise, call it a gimmick. I hope to air it rather soon, so don't bite your nails.

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No witches, warlocks or vampires...

just a sexy tale about trying to live the Hollywood dream...
Luigi's Chinese Delicatessen by Jim Vines

Guest Blog by Luna Saint Claire

Luna Saint Claire

I wrote my first novel because I had to. It was a compulsion that propelled me each day.

There is most certainly a circle of life. In high school I wrote tortured poetry. I never fit with the popular girls who tittered about boys, and hung out smoking cigarettes at the mall. I was an artist, listened to the edgy new music with potent lyrics, and I dressed eclectically bohemian wearing only silver and turquoise jewelry. I was never happy with the way I looked. I was darker skinned, with long thick black hair. I looked nothing like any of my classmates in Syracuse, New York. I had been adopted as an infant from the Mohawk tribe. I was a Native American.

In college I made friends and fit in. I discovered I was actually an exotic beauty. I preferred progressive music to popular, I painted, and I was inspired by Tolkien and Hesse. I took advanced philosophy courses and studied comparative religion. I began to feel somewhat intellectual—which was trendy. I remember my mother being startled that I enjoyed One Hundred Years of Solitude, and insulted when she asked if I understood it. My father, on the other hand, began reciting verses when I announced I was taking a course in Milton’s Paradise Lost. All the while, I continued taking ballet classes that I had relished since childhood, secretly wishing for a magical career on stage.

A year after graduating with an MFA in painting and art history, I was fortunate a friend suggested I call her cousin, a renowned costume designer, for a job. I had not considered myself skilled, but she assured me I had the right combination of art, photography and fashion acumen needed; and besides, I had amazing style.

In only a few years, I was promoted to costume designer and working on feature films, living in L.A. I met my husband, not surprisingly a philosophy professor. I substituted ballet with yoga. I never wrote tortured poetry because I couldn’t have been happier.

Two fleeting decades passed. Engrossed in our careers, we didn’t have children, doting instead on nieces and nephews. We traveled and invested in art. On Friday evenings we had date-night, drank a bottle of red wine, and danced to blues rock. But something small gnawed at me. I was middle aged and I felt my life was conventional and had become circumscribed. It hit home when an acquaintance reminded me how heads used to turn when I waltzed into a room like an exquisite butterfly—I felt I had become invisible.

Everything happens for a reason. A new yoga studio opened. The teacher, a charismatic Argentine guru, made me feel as if anything was possible. Charming and magnetic, he appeared innocent in his motives, gaining my trust with affection and compliments. Truth is, he targeted me. Vampires are real. I’m not referring to the paranormal kind that drink your blood, but rather, narcissistic sociopaths who use manipulation and compulsion to seduce their victims. Infatuated, I became entangled in his life as he used his mesmerizing sexuality to manipulate everyone around him in his pursuit of women, wealth, and celebrity.

For seven years I was a victim of narcissistic abuse. I could not escape his compulsion. It was like being addicted to a narcotic. Thankfully, like Jonathan Harker in the novel Dracula, my husband understood I had been compelled. It took perseverance and patience, but I eventually broke free. As part of the healing process, a friend in AA assigned me the first Step: to write. The words flew out of my fingertips. It was tortured and painfully revealing, like my high school poetry. When she read what I wrote she suggested I write the book. After three years, I published The Sleeping Serpent—a woman’s struggle to break an obsessive bond with her yoga master.

Like an injured lioness, lying in her den licking her wounds, I remained sequestered in my darkened room in front of a desktop computer with my headphones on for at least eight hours a day, every day. I wrote continuously in a stream of conscious. Unsure if I was writing a memoir in first person or third person omniscient voice, I often mixed up the point of view. In one year I had completed a trilogy. I had made an Excel spreadsheet to use as a timeline and created a bible of characters listing their characteristics, fashion style, music they listened to, and cars they drove. I researched everything on personality disorders and read books where characters are narcissistic, sociopaths or psychopaths: Dracula, Anna Karenina, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Bastard Out of Carolina, American Psycho, and Wuthering Heights. I pinned everything to Pinterest boards, including kundalini yoga kriyas and Argentine recipes. I listened to Liquid Mind on Pandora non-stop. At the end of the year, I cleaned it up as a first draft and gave it to beta readers. I had planned on a trilogy, but the feedback was unanimous: there wasn’t enough arc in the first book to ensure readers would read book two and three; it needed to conclude in one book. I edited it down to one book, tweaking the dialog, and tightening the story.

I love to write. It’s Zen. Even editing is Zen. When I put the marketing hat on I feel like a hustler. Switching hats makes me crazy; it's a schizophrenic feeling. But it has to be done. I post at least once a day across all social media channels. Each one is specific, so I do them separately which assures I get it all correct. I spend time counseling other victims in dozens of abuse groups on Facebook and Instagram. It’s important for me to help others and many end up liking my Facebook Page, following me on Instagram, and some have bought, read and reviewed the book. I also post blurbs, excerpts, and reviews on dozens of book promotion blogs on Facebook. And, I spend time on Goodreads. I read books, newsletters, and take webinars on social media marketing.  I’m not sure someone else would be doing this for me if I were traditionally published. I can only tell you...all I want to do is write. 

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No witches, warlocks or vampires...

just a sexy tale about trying to live the Hollywood dream...

Luigi's Chinese Delicatessen by Jim Vines

Guest Blog by Alp Mortal

Alp Mortal

The reason I write now is somewhat different from the reason I began writing. Cast your mind back to 2008: the UK entered the Credit Crunch, and on March 31st, 2008, 400,000 people lost their jobs—myself included. Not so quickly coming to the realization that the situation was hardly likely to improve anytime soon, I stuck around, getting more and more depressed as prospects grew thinner and thinner. A friend suggested retraining to teach English as a second language and then hop on a plane to China. That easy?

Actually, it was that easy. But I didn’t hop on a plane to China; I boarded a train for Toulouse. I speak French and I felt more confident trying to get things done in a country where at least I spoke the language. Turns out to have been the turning point in my life.

Backtrack to the last few days in London prior to leaving for France. My best friend and I were having dinner. He said, “Are you planning on writing a journal?” 
I replied, “I’ve thought about it ...” 
“Try something different; by all means write a journal but instead of doing it ‘diary-fashion,’ why not write a story that incorporates all of the people, places and events that you will hopefully encounter?” 
“?” 
“Give it a go...”

In December 2008, I was 43 years old and had never written a word of fiction in my entire life. I had, however, spent 25 years writing technical reports, so the act of writing was not alien, but fiction was a dark ocean, threatening to engulf me. I also had no home, no job, no car—but I felt free for the first time in years. I also had just one suitcase, a laptop and a certificate that said I could teach English. 

Goodbye, UK!

Roll forward to February 2009 and Toulouse. I was failing to get teaching work and had decided to pack up and try something else. Seated in an Algerian café, enjoying what was probably going to be my last coffee and pastry before heading off somewhere else, I looked across the small square and noticed an old gentleman, seated in the window of his studio, working on a violin. BAM!

It was like an adrenaline rush; the story (The Dog and The Eagle) hit me between the proverbial eyes like a locomotive. Two years later, I had finished a 1,200 page crime thriller trilogy that incorporated as many of the people, places and events of my travels up to that point as was possible. (That trilogy is waiting to be re-edited and republished.)

In September 2010, I found myself back at a Buddhist retreat in the Vosges Mountains of France—a work exchange that turned into an odyssée. On Christmas Day 2010, I took up residence in a small, neighboring cottage, which had no power, phone or Internet connection, and spent the next three years working the land to grow my own food (also generating a surplus to exchange for things I couldn’t grow), and generating my own power so that I had enough electricity in my batteries to have light and laptop for three hours every evening so I could write.

At the end of 2012, two years into the self-sustainable lifestyle, and loving it, I was talking to a friend who said, “Why don’t you publish your stories? You can do it yourself these days.”

I don’t know why I had never thought of it before.

Later, after a few searches and some research, I had an Amazon KDP account, and within a few days, I had published my first title. I became addicted to the process, publishing everything I had already written up to that point within the following few months—all of it unedited for the most part. What a rush! For the first time, in a very long time, I felt liberated...totally energized.

Writing had transitioned from an interesting way to record my travels, to a path to achieve a kind of enlightenment. The stories were—and mostly still are—the ongoing narrative of the journey of a 50-year-old gay man, seeking only to be and remain happy.

At the beginning of 2015, I moved to the United States, to set up an indie publishing company with three of my friends (all indie authors). A very different kind of experience. I love Jeffersonville and Louisville, but hate the fact that you have to drive absolutely everywhere (though drive-thru ATMs and drive-thru pharmacies are pretty cool).

Now, in January 2016, I have just returned from the United States and I am back at the Buddhist retreat in the Vosges, looking after the house and the cat for the owners while they take a break. Still writing, publishing and marketing; also with a publishing company to co-manage (The Carter Seagrove Project, LLC) which is the driving force of my life right now.

I find that I cannot go a day without writing—it is a drug; it makes me insanely happy; and I still incorporate as much of my journey into the stories as I can. However, whereas the early stories incorporated a lot of my experiences up to that point in an almost autobiographical way, now I have transitioned to using the feelings and emotions I felt/feel as the essential fuel of the story I am writing, which itself has become more of a matrix and less of a linear-style narrative.

It never feels like a sacrifice despite having sacrificed almost everything to get to this point. I have no permanent home, no car, and no reliable income. I have one suitcase, a laptop and a Kindle. If you can’t carry it, you don’t need it! If needs be, I could write on the Kindle, so I could afford to kiss the laptop and the suitcase goodbye.

Happy to the point of delirium—how?

I think about this a lot. Many of my stories deal with "issues" and the process of "resolving" them. I resolve nearly all of my issues through writing them out of my head. However, we all have issues and they don’t all resolve neatly, so staying happy is about being honest about how I feel, confronting my fears, exchanging my energy, and helping as many people as possible in as many ways as possible.

Personal mantras: Energy follows intention. Honor your gifts.

I used to write one story at a time. There may have been times when I had a story waiting to be reviewed and a new one on the desktop being worked on actively. That changed. Now I have at least twelve manuscripts open on the desktop at any one time, and I spend my time flitting between them all, sometimes adding a single word, a sentence, a chapter, or ten thousand words, but it would be rare to spend the writing day focused on just one project.

Input hungry? Yes, I am. Typically, I will be writing to music (the story will dictate the type of music I want to listen to); often opera/classical, rarely vocals because they distract me. I’ll have a stack of short films and any number of Youtube vloggers latest posts to watch throughout the day. I’ll be flitting between at least six books on the Kindle.

How do stories arrive? Often, a line of dialogue will pop into my head. For example, "four shot tall latte, please," is the opening line of The Great Dane Saga, which is 150,000 words and waiting to be re-edited and republished. One line of fairly innocuous dialogue gives rise to a tome of 500 pages? Yes. And that is just one of many examples. That said, the latest story that I’m working on (The (mis-)Adventures of Captain Du Bon Le Phare) arose as a consequence of reaching for a tube of my favorite harissa paste—the name of the brand sparked a thought that has turned into a steampunk-ish style chronicle of an anti-hero. Will it become a series? I would not be surprised.

Literally everything comes into the realm of inspiration. The death of a coral reef, reported on the Internet, spawns a safe sex fable (Juxtaposition). One of my favorite films, Dead Ringers, gives rise to a dark story of sibling rivalry (The Two Piece Jigsaw). Emma Kirkby’s rendition of Dido’s Lament births an epic love story (Grand Affair). Finding a Stone Age arrowhead in my garden produces a fantasy series (The Map Stick). Every story has a trigger, and it seems to me that of late, almost everything is giving rise to a new story.

Writing is my entire Universe (which also involves posting 100 tweets a day); and when I am not writing my own stories, I’m collaborating with my best buddy, Chamber Mars, to produce the Inspector Fenchurch Mysteries (as Carter Seagrove), or I’m translating Chambers’ two series Zac Tremble Investigates and The Life & Times of Johnny Santé into English; or I’m co-editing the work of Morgan Starr and Shannon M. Kirkland; or quite possibly, designing/co-designing a new book cover or book trailer, processing the edits on the latest audio-book recordings sent in by the voice talent, working with other artists to produce original abstract art narratives for some of the stories, which will be used for book trailers/short films.

And there are the films! Principally, Tonight It’s You, a short film being made between The Carter Seagrove Project LLC and ASPD films. We expect to release in early March 2016. Writing has led to the formation of so many partnerships and friendships—probably my least expected outcome of self-publishing...but the most cherished of them all.

The journey of the last three years of self-publishing has been the most satisfying that I can ever remember.

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No witches, warlocks or vampires...

just a sexy tale about trying to live the Hollywood dream...
Luigi's Chinese Delicatessen by Jim Vines