Read this and tell me what it says

My apologies to A. Mannette Ansay for stealing her short story collection for the title of my post today. My story Wine For Two is up on Ruthless Peoples Magazine today, issue three. Go ahead an download it and tell me what you think, unless it isn't very nice and then just keep your opinion to yourself (just kidding, I want to know how to make the next one better.) You might note that they actually listed it as a romance. I had to laugh. Something I never thought I would have listed behind my name, and with good reason.

Also you should read Aaron Polson's short on EDF today.

Yesterday I took a day off, I didn't want to write I wanted to drive. Somewhere I have never been. This is hard for me to do in a very limited amount of time as I have taken almost every highway, biway and gravel road south of interstate 80 in Iowa and a good chunk of them north of it. Lucky for me I have never been to Northwest Iowa so in a couple of hours I was out of familier territory and into new scenery. It was beautiful, flowing glacial hills and flat plains that seemed to stretch forever. I showed my son some turtles in a farm pond and just enjoyed the time out. I considered it a re-charging time for my creative batteries. I was also looking for new landscapes and settings to showcase in my fiction.

I had better get going, it is raining today so I know I will be able to spend a good chunk of time in front of a keyboard when the boy goes down for a nap.

Last post of the week

Editing went well again yesterday (not as good as the day before but pretty good anyway.) Probably won't get anything done today. If I do it will be minimal. I will be attempting to get the house ready for my boy' s birthday party tomorrow. I have already baked the cake so my wife can decorate it tonight. That means I have the house to clean now.

If you want a good laugh go to Aaron's blog today and watch one of my favorite videos. I think I have that on both VHS and DVD formats. I won't post it, but there are some pretty good Star Wars versions on youtube as well. I will let you try to find them.

Now for the multicultural part of the show:

How do we decide what we write?

Aaron posed an interesting question on his blog this morning: What is horror?

I really don't concern myself a whole lot with what I write, I personally don't care to think about "Okay, today I am going to come up with a 2600 word story on martians invading Des Moines." I am a little more free-form than that. I think my favorite story that I have written, at least in the last six months has been Lullaby and published in Macabre Cadaver (who incidentally has some exciting news on their homepage you should read) I actually just came up with a situation and ran with it. I didn't have a character in mind when I wrote it or a plot for that matter. I didn't know where the story was going to end or if I would finish it. It was just an idea. Not a very original idea but I thought I would run with it. What the character did at the end took me as much by surprise as anyone. I got done writing it, leaned back and actually went "Whoa! I didn't see that coming."

I think this is how I like to write most of my stories. Just an idea with no real clue where it is going but letting the situation or the character take over and do whatever needs to happen.

How do you like to write?

Yippee!

First, I want to thank Aaron for drawing my name out a hat and letting me win a copy of 'Tainted.' I look forward to reading it. I am jumping it to next in my reading list whenever it shows up.

Yesterday, my aunt K.A. Bye who has a series of children's books out from the Boys Town Press e-mailed me. She said some nice things about the not so nice things that I do to my characters on an almost daily basis and, although I don't know if she will read this, I wanted to thank her. That and I wanted to plug her books which can be found at Barnes and Noble

My imagination is running wild with ideas for NaNo at this point. My cup seriously overfloweth. I just hope I can keep it up until the end of November. Still no new news from any editors. Just crossing my fingers that good news is on the way.