Saturday, October 8, 2011

Anniversary!

Today's my one-year anniversary with my sexy secretary!
pictured?
(she's not actually my secretary, guys, but she is sexy and...)

The first movie we saw as a couple was Secretary, which may or may not be indicative of our relationship. I'm not telling. (Probably not.) (I kinda talk like James Spader though?) It's still a good romantic comedy, so you should go see it. After that we saw Music and Lyrics. Let's call some mixture of those two our official couple movie, OK? (They talked too fast in The Thin Man and His Girl Friday.)

Our Song is "Wonderful Tonight" (Eric Clapton) ... the good version


Our anniversary meal will be "Bla Lui Suan" (literal translation: Fish Invades a Garden), which is delicious fish covered in a spicy nut mixture and surrounded by vegetables. I'm always too hungry to take a picture of it when it's ordered, but it looks kinda like this:
Ours will be bigger (because we provide the fish), spicier, with more vegetables.
As an anniversary gift to me, I'm declaring myself "Offline-lite". This is also my gift to her, because I'm too focused and annoying without the Internet to distract me. I'm like a junkie, but with Flash. Also, where else am I going to get relationship advice from completely untrustworthy sources?

Thanks to all this stability, my health, my confidence, my writing (you know, that thing what this blog is about?), my finances...oh, c'mon! My entire life has improved for the better. Possibly there was some nagging involved, but that's OK.
  
I look forward to five or six more years of stable relationship bliss, at which point we will have a big fight about something or other and then get back together with a furious passion, our differences becoming our strengths and a best-selling novel of a writer's romance entitled "Make-Up". Followed by a romantic comedy on the big screen and successful television situation comedy. It will be more awesome than Mr. and Mrs. Smith and not a complete rip-off at all, nosir. (Add that to the Couple Movie mélange...)

Then happiness forever, et cetera, and the checks never stop coming in. What more stable a relationship could two ask?

I love you, lady.

feel free to comment

Monday, October 3, 2011

Offline Update

Shhh, I'm not really here... I'm searching for treasures on the OCEAN DEEP...
Amongst which are the mysterious Carolyn: my lost love...alas...
Since I'm 'orribly sick and can't write today, I thought I'd surface for a moment and note a few things, surprising and unsurprising. Then I'll disappear again, to reappear at a time that no man can ken. Or Halloween. I guess.

The Dark Tower
One of my goals over this offline time was to read Stephen King's The Dark Tower series from start-to-finish like the epic single book it was meant to be. (Also, I realized that I hadn't read any but the first two.) So, I've done that.. Being sick and flooded helped that process. Good stuff, it only took a week of constant reading. In case you care, I liked The Wolves of Calla best. I suggest you read them all, for a neat story and a true example of pure 'discovery writing'.

I take two writing lessons from it: (1) Don't be scared to write whatever pops into your head, and don't worry about it until it's finished. (2) These books are too long for the working professional. My "I don't write longer" pledge remains in force. I have a few epics in me, though, once I roll through my backlist. DON'T WORRY. (They'll be so freakin' awesome.)

Timpani the Ostrich Rancher
This is one of the surprising ones. Right as I was about to pull the plug on my Internet, I got the Amazon notification that my short story "Timpani the Ostrich Rancher" had finally been made Free!, as I'd requested a month ago. So, I--here I apologize in advance--set up a few 'scheduled tweets' and left it alone. Here it's the first and now I've checked my Amazon numbers, and a kerbillion people have downloaded it. So, that's neat. It's always good to see four digits where the first one isn't a lonely one.

It's one of my favorite stories, considering it's my only proper steampunk at the moment. There are a few more stories waiting to be set in that world ("flat Earth"), but they'll arrive when they do. Until then, if one of you could leave a review, I'd be most grateful. Oh, and I'd like to say that Patty Jansen's "Out of Here" collection (which seems to have went free at about the same time), is also quite good. Check out the rest of the Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought for more gems!

Mr. Booze
One of the other goals of this offline time is laying off the booze. In this case beer. I don't have a drinking problem--please don't read denial into that--but it is the main source (by a wide margin) of utterly worthless calories. I love my liver and svelte figure more than I do periods of cheerful drunkenness (esp. when I should be working). Also, I don't want to get gout. That'd just be embarrassing.

Anyways, that's going fine, and there's a neat passage in one of The Dark Tower books that reinforces it. (you'll know it if you've read it) Good on you, Mr. King. And good on me.

Jillian Nice
wrote this: "Minute Macabre One (1)", or at least the three Horror shorts within it. It's a dollar on Amazon and worth every dollar (1).

ed
Jillian Nice is about halfway through this horrific fish story, and it will soon be released upon the world like a  barracuda in a small tank of ... whatever barracuda eat. You'll have to ask her, she did all the cetacean research. I just write the ad copy.

Next up will probably be (of all things), the exciting conclusion of Lived Too Long To Die.

eBook Formatting!
As you know, H2NH built up an eBook Formatting Workflow via the patented David Barron muddle-through System, which boils down to failing a lot, consulting many sources, and then working it out. I didn't keep notes, because I'm a bad person, but a certain Paul Salvette of my e-cquaintance has come out with a rather fine eBook Formatting Guide. I'll write a proper review later, but I've read it, it's amazing, I've added it up top of my workflow. You can find all the details via the link, and I suggest you pick up the eBook itself (for convenience, if nothing else) over at Amazon.

Thus concludes my surface message. Have fun!

Air tanks full, hatch secured...
DIVE DIVE DIVE
feel free to comment
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...