Bits and Bobs

Bits and Bobs

Again, over a month vanishes and I haven’t posted anything here. I’ve had a busy month writing-wise and I haven’t had much time to document much of it.

In My Solitude

On October 19, I a couple of hours to Saugerties, NY for a mini writing retreat. I got there about 2:00 PM and after getting unpacked and settled in. Here’s a picture of my cabin:

I did take a brief break on Saturday to travel to Woodstock and get cupcakes from Peace, Love, and Cupcakes to bring home for my family. They were epic!

It was productive and I wrote over 7000 words that weekend which is a respectable total for me.

One of the coolest things that happened was I was looking for something to watch while I ate a late supper and I stumbled upon a horror movie show called Creature Features on the public access channel. It’s based in California and is reminiscent of Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. The cast introduces the movie and comments before and after each commercial break. The movie that night was Daughter of Frankenstein. It made me nostalgic for a show in my youth, Monster Movie Matinee. This was particularly serendipitous as I was working on a horror anthology where a show like this will play a central role.

 “Shouldn’t you be working on book #2? Who do you think you are, George RR Martin?”

The above is a quote from one of my college roommates. No, I’m not consciously emulating George R. R. Martin’s penchant for not finishing the Game of Thrones book that everyone wants. I’m in the process of getting The Reluctant Agent edited by someone who isn’t me. My goal is to publish the book sometime in the Spring of 2019. In the meantime, I still want to write and I’m not quite ready to tackle Book 3 while wrapping up Book 2. So I decided to try my hand at horror short stories. Given the time I have available, it’s easier to work on a short story that’s going to track around 5000 words than it is to try to dig into a new novel. My hope is that after I finish up The Reluctant Agent, I can have this horror anthology edited and work on Book 3 of the Reluctant series. I hope to release the horror anthology September 2019.

Miscellaneous Writing Learnings

Last time I wrote, I said that I was experimenting with software called Scrivener to write my next work and use it to outline and plot my horror anthology. I have absolutely fallen in love with using Scrivener for a large writing project like a book. It keeps everything you need to write right at your fingertips and helps you track your progress. I actually attended a webinar on how to use Scrivener faster. I learned so much. One of the things I learned was that you can use emojis as icons for your writing pieces. And since I was in the middle of a short story that wouldn’t work the way it was structured, I turned most of the status icons to the “Pile of Poo” emoji to tell me I had to rewrite it:

Ever the model of maturity…

I’m working my way through the software and I am positive that this is going to be the tool of choice for my writing from here on.

This turned into a much longer post than I intended. I guess I had a great deal to share.

Until next time…whenever that will be….

Happy Journeys!

Mike

PS – Since we have somehow decided that the Christmas season begins the day after Halloween, I just want to say that books make great gifts…particularly my book…which you can conveniently purchase through the link on the top right of the page…

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