Tag Archives: writing

Looking for something to do?

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Are you snowed in like me? Tired of watching all of these damn snowflakes fall sideways onto the ground?  Crying of boredom into your steaming mug of hot cocoa (with tiny marshmallows, of course)?

Don’t be jealous, I’m actually drinking tea…stupid diet

I’ve got a great idea…

Why don’t you catch up on The Watchmage of Old New York, my fantastic serial from Jukepopserials.com.  Watchmage… is currently an Editor’s Pick, so you know that it’s much, much better than most online drivel.  Of course, if you’ve been reading this blog, you know that I’m a damn good writer, and should not be surprised.

Registration is required for more than the first “chapter.”  Lucklily, I jammed two chapter’s worth into the first one, so you can read a good 4000 words before having to register, not that it’s hard.  That’s like Two Chapters for the Work of One!!

But the best thing that you can do is to VOTE for Watchmage at the bottom of the page.  VOTING not only lets the editors know that people like my work (helping me to sell work in the future) but it entitles me to earn cash bonuses if i pass certain milestones.

It’s also a very good story, a Cross-Genre Fantasy that mixes historical, magical, noir, and mystery elements into one great big pile of Awesomeness.  Think Buffy meets The Dresden Files meets Ugly Americans meets American Gods meets Gangs of New York.

Where else will you find a Fire Elemental on one page, and a Lower East Side rabbi that quotes Emerson on another?  And I haven’t even mentioned the faerie mafia…yet.

So Read!  Vote!  Share with your Friends!  Tell your Friends to Read!  Vote!  Share with their Friends!  So that their friends can Read!  Vote!  Share with their Friends…

I was just thinking about…

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About how Valerie and I would sometimes have “working dates,” where I could sit on her couch, typing away at my latest story or editing my novel. She would sit and work at her desk (she always worked at her desk) with Rancid or The Transplants or any one of the millions of Tim Armstrong projects pumping his frantic mumbling into the airwaves.  Valerie loved to work.  She loved to be doing something, anything.  We both found comfort in our work and in each other.

There is a reason why this is so extraordinary:  I don’t like people.  What I mean is that when there are people around me, it raises my stress levels.  At times it has caused panic attacks, though this is usually associated with a bipolar cycle.  It is very hard for me to be in public.  I often have vomiting fits from being around too many people.  I usually put on a persona–a super-nice, polite guy who isn’t me at all–in order to survive.  Of course, people like the super-nice me better than the real me.

There are only a few people that do not trigger this reaction.  My brother, Scott, is one, I’ve had a lifetime with him.  Some of my friends from college (Like Osvaldo) are others, but it took a long time to feel that way.  The same with my college girlfriend, Jolene.

Valerie was the only one where I felt that way immediately.  She made me feel so comfortable, she became a part of who I am so quickly and completely.  It was like she was always there, and I didn’t know it until I met her.

Damn, I am crying again.

Switching to a more postivie topic, Chapter Four of The Watchmage of Old New York is up and running at Jukepop Serials.  I suggest that you read it, vote for it (you have to register, but that takes half a minute) and share it with your geekier friends.  You can vote once for each chapter, which means that right now each of you can give me 4 votes.  The votes are what keep the serial alive, and if I get enough, I can get bonus money.  To a starving artist like me, that bonus money means that I can buy new pants…I really need new pants.

I Promised Big News . . .

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And here it is.  Drum roll please . . .

My novel Song of Simon was accepted for publication by Damnation Press.  It is a small press, and I will have to do most of the promotion, but it’s still a big step up from self publishing.  I am still waiting for the contact, and of course I’ll have a lawyer take a look at it.  Mama Sanders din’t raise no foo’.

For those that aren’t reading my serial, The Watchmage of Old New York, you’re missing out on a great romp.  I just posted Chapter 4, and the whole series is a lot of fun.  I highly recomend it if you enjoy fantasy fiction.

Rest in Peace, My Valerie (1977-2013)

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I buried my soul mate yesterday.

Last Tuesday (Jan 22), I went up to Binghamton to visit Val.  She was up there to begin her PhD candidacy in English.  I climbed the stairs to the back door and knocked.  I looked through the screen, and she was on the floor.  I don’t think that Val would want me to tell the final details of her life to strangers, so I will refrain.

Val was pronounced brain dead Thursday morning.  She died that evening.  She was my world.  She was the most brilliant, caring, gifted, loving, person that I will ever know.  Her writing is some of the best that I have ever read.  I only wish that I could write like her.

Her obituary is here.  Her website is here.

If you read my blog, you know how much I love her.  We just celebrated our anniversary.  I went to her mom’s for Christian Christmas (as opposed to my usual, Jewish Christmas.  We just didn’t have enough time together.

I want to tell you all about her.  I want people to know and love her the way that I love her, the way that she deserves to be loved.

This is what I told the Binghamton reporter that is writing her memorial:

She was about as warm and giving a person could be.  She cared very deeply about her students and would always go the extra mile for them.  Her favorite writer was Oscar Wilde, and I am sure that she could go wit for wit with him and come out the victor.  On her wall there was a picture of Oscar Wilde next to a picture of Malcom X.  I asked her about it once, and she said “I’d like to think that they are lovers in Heaven.”
Val loved so many things:  Joss Whedon (especially Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Rancid (for the past year she has been keeping a tongue-in-cheek photo journal updating the status of Tim Armstrong’s epic beard.  That was just her sense of humor), action figures (she had a massive collection of action figures, she would sometimes use them as writing prompts for students, but mostly they just hung around the house).  She loved to write, she was constantly writing, but even more than that, she loved to teach.  She loved the Oxford Comma, if you could love punctuation.  She had a passionate affair with Semicolons.

She was a strong woman: independent but not distant, tough but not hard, witty but not cruel.  She was brilliant, the most intelligent person that I have ever met.  She loved Grammar.  She was very excited to be taking a Grad level Grammar class at Binghamton.  She felt a great sadness for people that couldn’t use “there, their, and they’re” properly.

Her writing was incredible.  When we first started dating, I asked what she wrote.  She said something like “I do mostly short stories, mostly humorous, but when you say you write humor people think you write bad stand-up or something. I love the type of short story that can make you laugh and feel sad within like five pages so that’s what I try for.” 
If you read some of her writing (on her website), you will see that she succeeded everytime.
 
If you would like, I can recommend some of my favorite stories. 
 
I don’t know what else I can say.  She was the most perfect person that ever walked the face of this Earth.  She was too perfect, too gifted, too gentle and loving for us.  I would say that she was ahead of her time, but Time will never catch up to her.
This is what I said, but there was so much more to her.  She wrote erotic fan fic  as a hobby, and helped form an entire community for it.  Her frank talk and writing about mental illness was inspirational and life saving for many people.
On our first date, she gave me a toy for my turtle.  Who does that?  Who is that thoughtful?  Val was.  On our second date, I spilled an entire move-sized diet coke in her lap, and she didn’t walk out on me.  On the contrary, after the movie, she still made out with me.
She did all of this, but I knew that she was the One when I first walked into her apartment, and there was a giant Godzilla doll on her refrigerator.
I am concerned with her legacy.  I want the whole world to know how gifted a writer she was.  I want her name immortalized the way that it should be.  She was everything that I could ever want, or want to be.
I love you so much, Valerie.  I will love you forever.
The two of us, late December, 2012

The two of us, late December, 2012

Great News!

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I can’t help but be obnoxiously excited.  My novellette “The Watchmage of Old New York” has been accepted by Jukepop Serials to be published in serial form!

So big whoop!  Why are you so excited?  You get stuff published all the freakin time

Two reasons:

1) Moving a 15,000 word story is next to impossible.  Too big for most magazines, too small to self publish.

2) They pay 2cents a word (up to 5000 words).  Because part 1 was 4000 words, I am looking at an 80 dollar pay day.  For fiction, that is a huge pay day in an industry where they rarely pay you for short stories.

My favorite cheese is . . . chedda!

Further more, if my story is voted into the top 30, I get cash prizes.  So vote for me!  Vote early, vote often!  You have to register, but it is an easy registration, and there are a lot of good serials on there.  Mine is the best, but others are good too.

Valerie has a new story up too, and it is amazing (like all of them).  She is so much more talented than me that it’s ridiculous.  Even her dick jokes are more subtle and nuanced.

So yeah, read and vote for my story!  And read some of the others on there too.

My First Attempt at Stand Up Comedy

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Last year, me and Val took a class on humor writing at the Hudson Valley Writer’s Center.  I had no intention of ever doing stand up (I would literally pee myself on stage, which would actually be hilarious and probably make me a star.) but one of the assignments was to write a comedy routine.

So I did it, and I thought nothing of it until I found my notebook from the class.  I thought “what the hell, I’ve got nothing else to write about today, let me humiliate myself online with my hack comedy.  Waka waka, muthafukka!”

Put some pants on, goddammit!!

So the world is going to shit, but I’ve got the cure for it . . . Cannibalism.  What better way to solve the hunger problem than to eat the fat bastards that are causing it?

The average American could feed a villiage.  Me?  I can feed a city.

You know where that would go over great?  New York.  It doesn’t matter what kind of meat it is, if you sell it from a cart, we’ll eat it.

Seriously, I think that “schwarma” is Arab for “subway rat.”

I’m from NYC, and I love it.  It’s the only place where you know your neighborhood by the unique scent of its homeless pee.

*sniff* ahh, that’s “Rusty Shiv Tony,”  I must be in Fort Greene.

New Yorkers have a reputation for being rude.  We’re not rude, you’re in the way.

I’m a pretty nice guy, but if you stop in front of me to look at the pretty buildings, I will dropkick your ass into oncoming traffic

I hate reality TV.  I get all the reality I need from realy life.

I never even knew what a kardashian was until last year.  Now my penis runs their fan club

It has a “Kourtney and Scott 4eva” tatoo down the shaft.

I used to love Survivor, but they need to up the tension.  How about a special “Hunger Games” edition?

The winner gets to eat the loser.  Cannibalism wins again!!

So yeah, that happened.  I also wrote a short story for the class called “The Kid and the Casserole,” but I am having a lot of trouble selling it.  And let’s face it, a story doesn’t exist until an editor arbitrarily chooses it and pays you nothing for it.

Remember, you can check out some of my short stories and articles right here.  Make it so.

Picard using Prof X’s telepathy

 

“I Lost My Underwear” and Other Gems

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I decided that I will go back to keeping a journal with me to write down my random thoughts.  I have done this in the past and it helped me come up with all sorts of writing ideas.  Mostly it is crap, but there are a few gems in there.  I thought that I might share some of my favorites with you.

  • 3:50 pm — I like Chock Full of Nuts.  My roommate likes Folgers.  Now we must Kung Fu fight.
  • 3:55 pm — Bacon has been co-opted by hipsters.  How can you like pig meat and Whole Foods at the same time?
  • 9AM — I am eating slices of corned beef for breakfast and nothing else.  I am such a healthy dude.
  • 2:30 — I walked into the gas station and lost my underwear.  I wore an old pair with the elastic stretched out.  With each step, i felt the fabric inching downward.  By the time I got back home, it was hanging from the crotch of my shorts for dear life.  Have you ever had a conversation while losing your pants . . . I mean, without alcohol?
  • 1PM — I really need to get some work done.  Stupid internet.
  • 9:30 AM — I had a dream last night where Taco Bell banned me from sitting in one of their seats.  There are some dreams that only fat people have.
  • 6PM — That first bite of pizza melted my face like the Nazis from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
  • and from today, 6PM — Feeling lazy.  have to pee.  Considering pissing myself.

Writer’s Angst

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I am suffering from a bad case of Writer’s Angst.  This is the feeling of depression and anxiety that only an arrogant douchebag that thinks that anything that he creates is worthwhile and can somehow contribute to society can have.  I am an arrogant douchebag.  I am also full of self-loathing.  I suppose it is these contradictions that make me a writer (see?  it’s comments like this that makes me a douchebag!).

So the reason I am full of angst right now is because I ended the year:

  1. with stories left unsold (and by ‘unsold’ I mean ‘given to magazines for free because it is such a ridiculous buyer’s market that writer’s are grateful just to see their work in print)
  2. by finishing up an unsellable story (a novellette!  who buys novellettes?) and having too many ideas for projects to start next
  3. realizing that I am getting old and I am still relatively unknown, and that I will probably die unknown, with all my dreams unfufilled.  The downside of having dreams is that they almost never come true.

Also, my girlfriend has moved away to go back to school, and I miss her very much.

Re: my New Year’s Eve party:  3 people came, they left by 11pm.  Another rager.  I swear that I am fun.  Fun fun fucking fun!

This has been another whiny post.  I promise that my next two will be funny, even if I have to quote people funnier than me.

I will end with Grumpy Cat