Tag Archives: humor

Progress to the tune of small nervous breakdowns

Posted on by under One Hundred Days of Blogging 2.0

Short version of an update from yesterday: I saw a cover band named Velveeta last night, indulged in a fair bit of alcohol consumption, and didn’t go to bed until an ungodly hour. Let’s not talk of this again.

My new novel-project is coming along nicely, which is good. I can’t turn that into a negative. Believe me, I’ve tried. It’s getting positive feedback so far from my beta-reader(s). There could be some level of bias there, but I also accept that these are people who I can trust because they would cautiously and kindly let me know if my writing is turning into garbage.

There may have also been mention at some point from someone–someone who happens to be me–about eventually wanting to send something to HarperCollins for publication consideration. I would have to research it, find out what all goes into such a challenge, and then make it happen. The goal wasn’t publication, but an attempt. Even a rejection would be fantastic, as it would indicate I’ve met a goal. I can also say, completely devoid of any doubts, that if I did get accepted (that if is so big that there are now billboards along major highways advertising it as a tourist attraction) I would probably have a multi-week meltdown as I processed the greatest success of my adult life. Let’s also not dwell on that.

Short version: HarperCollins does not accept any unsolicited anythings. Ever. That much I guessed even going into this, but I figured I would look into it anyway because sometimes my delusions of grandeur take on a life of their own and go crazy. This was one such time. They do, however, also have a link to a web site called Authonomy. Curiosity got the better of me, as it should in this situation, and I clicked the link. Continue reading →

Sanity-Recovery Saturday

Posted on by under General Bloggity Stuff

Just when you all thought you were safe from my horrible love of alliterative titles, here we are. This is typically what Saturday posts should look like for Hundred Days of Self-Imposed Suffering 2.0, but I got caught up in my earlier post and so this became secondary. It works out because writing that post was surprisingly relaxing, which is sort of the point of Saturdays.

Except the ones I also happen to work. Those aren’t redeemable.

Sundays are for reflecting on how much of a fiasco I managed to turn the previous week into, and so I’m choosing to prepare for the next week by relaxing on Saturday. A little writing, a little reading, some TV, and maybe some meditation. That last one hasn’t happened in a while. My sanity needs to be repaired occasionally, if not for me then for the folks who read this mess. I’d rather not end up letting a blog post loose on the world that could look like my version of any celebrity’s very public mental breakdown. Nobody needs that.

Today has consisted of the following distractions:

  •  Reading more of In Some Other World, Maybe, which is quickly turning into one of my best whim purchases I’ve made at Barnes & Noble in a long while (a review is doomed to happen eventually, once I finish the book).
  • Making adjustments to Unnamed Novel-Project based on suggestions provided by the ever-helpful, ever-brilliant Lindsey, who is one of the beta-readers who helped fuel my madness as I wrote what was Joshua’s Nightmares at the time before it evolved into Joshua Harkin and the Novel-Length Book Title.
  • I spent time with two of my adorable
  • I treated Brianne and myself to McDonald’s. Don’t judge, damn it. It’s garbage-food, but sometimes I can enjoy garbage-food without too much self-loathing and gastrointestinal distress to follow.
  • I watched two stand-up comedy specials. Aziz Ansari and Patton Oswalt. If the walls of a house absorbed the words thrown around near them, my living room would be saturated with expletives and Hobbit-related self-deprecation. Let’s add Nick Offerman to that collection, as now I’m watching him on Netflix as well.
  • Apparently I’m going to a bar for some sort of concert-thing tonight.
  • Regardless of if I drink at said bar, I see a glass of scotch in my future. Single-malt, eighteen-year-old Glenlivet. It’s the most expensive bottle of liquor that I barely paid for that I own, and frankly I think one of the main ingredients is refined unicorn tears.
  • More writing to follow, because I need to make up for being a hilarious failure with progress this past week.

And now I’m going to return to writing because I’ve reached a point where I don’t feel like the writing process with this story is similar to trying to sprint through a bog with giant weights chained to my limbs. Have a delightful Saturday, folks.

Confession: I may be addicted to Twitter

Posted on by under One Hundred Days of Blogging 2.0

Anyone else feel like this week was actually two weeks worth of suck crammed into the giant-sized Monday of a mega-sucky week? My car got stuck in my yard because of snow, which is annoying. Some very Howard Dean screaming later and I managed to get snacks. Unfortunately, I had no idea that the Sprecher Hard Root Beer tastes a whole lot like Robitussin. That isn’t what I was hoping for when I made such a purchase.

Welcome to the first Free-For-All Friday, which would have been called Cluster-**** Friday but I want to pretend I have some capacity for classiness. And I have relatives who read my blog occasionally and I’d rather let them live with the understanding I would never use such language ever. Even if I’m fairly certain I’ve dropped my fair share of f-bombs on here in the past.

Today is also another Follow Friday on Twitter. I have more fun with that than I should. Embarrassingly enough, this is probably indicative that I spend too much time social media. Or not enough? Probably not enough, in reality.

Let me just say this much: I may be addicted to Twitter. Please note that I don’t mean to make light of actual, serious addictions, as I have seen their effects firsthand. It’s hyperbole. That said, I consider this to not be such a bad thing. Before I can really go into why it’s good, at least for me, I should probably provide a brief history of my weird approach and eventual sort-of-but-not understanding of Twitter. Continue reading →

Lady Ghostbusters won’t actually ruin your childhood

Posted on by under One Hundred Days of Blogging 2.0

Good evening, readers. And people who happened to click a link to this post while trying to scroll on smart phones, tablets, and other touchscreen devices designed for such misclicks. Welcome to the first of undoubtedly many Throwdown Thursdays, which is a thing I came up with instead of making Throwback Thursday happen on my blog. I avoid posting old pictures of myself because they’ve been known to cause irreversible blindness, but if I were into that sort of thing I would post them on whatever day of the damn week I want.

The purpose of Throwdown Thursday posts is to pick a topic–preferably a relatively relevant one–and…basically rant a bit. I can’t justify dolling up the point of these posts when they’re actually just therapeutic venting with a chance someone else might read it.

I’ll admit that I was really torn on tonight’s subject. Commenting on how people being shocked by snow in January is actually the most shocking part of winter was a close front-runner. That changed when I saw the reactions to the cast reveal for the Ghostbusters reboot. It’s like someone filled a garbage bag with highly concentrated crazy, held it over the Internet, and tore it open in response to the news of who would be the leading ladies of this brave new version of a Hollywood treasure. Before I even dare leap into the bulk of me losing my mind over just how ridiculous this non-issue is, let’s take a look at what the problem is. What group of B-list, no-named losers did Paul Feig cobble together for this terrible, sad knock-off again? Continue reading →

Weekly Progress Recap

Posted on by under One Hundred Days of Blogging 2.0

I was going to name this day’s entries Wednesday’s Weekly Work Updates, but I would hate myself too much. And so, for now, dies the alliterative titles.

Wednesday’s posts are simple ones, acting more as a kick to my ass to help me get moving a little faster for the remainder of the week (instead of potentially slowing down, of course) instead of a means of being entertaining. Just like all of my other blog posts are something other than a means of entertainment. Zing! I really burned myself there.

My heart’s not in this tonight, as I took a nap that left me feeling like someone pushed me down a cartoonishly tall cliff, complete with many rocks for me to bounce off of.

The Progress So Far

Unnamed Novel-Project – 53/??? pages; 1 new chapter in progress, plenty of editing completed

One Hundred Days of Blogging version 2.0 – What the **** was I thinking?

Things I Need to Focus On

“Cordelia’s” (short story) – Status: Mapped out in a notebook

“Woman Seeks Vampire for Dinner and a Movie” (short story; tentative title) – Status: Locked in my brain-meat

Projects On Hold

The Lodgers (novel) – Started, but trapped in creative Limbo

The Devil Sort of Made Me Do It (novel; tentative title) – Started, but trapped in creative Limbo

[Redacted] – Nope. Nope nope nope. Not telling. Sorry.

Miscellany

Super Deluxe Commented Copy of Joshua Harkin and the Wicked Nightmare King for Lindsey (the best beta-reader the aforementioned book had) – Uh…In progress-ish.

…

I feel like there’s more going on, but I can’t honestly think of it at the moment. Obviously this is ignoring my 45+ hours of work and tendency to take naps on a regular basis.

Ninety-six days remaining.

Something alliterative involving Tuesday

Posted on by under One Hundred Days of Blogging 2.0

I haven’t even written a Tuesday post and I already changed my mind on what Tuesday’s posts are going to involve. That sounds like a strong indication of how quickly this misadventure is going to devolve into shenanigans.

To settle this problem, while giving myself enough room to turn Tuesday into a blend of whatever-I-want posts, I’m going to call Tuesday posts Topical Humor Tuesdays for now. Make a note of that for when I invariably change it to something different next week. And the week after. Moving on.

A note added after the post was finished: it turned out more like Tirade Tuesday, but I’m not admitting defeat just yet because there is some topical humor involved (damn it).

Any of you who follow me on Twitter (Anyone? No? Ah well.) are familiar with my tendency to live-tweet things. Sometimes while also some degree of intoxicated. There’s nothing, I’ve found, more enjoyable to drunk live-tweet along with than awards shows, and there’s no award show more fun to drunkenly live-tweet alongside than The Academy Awards (aka The Oscars aka The Awards Show for People Who Can’t Pronounce Names). It’s a huge night for the who’s who of Hollywood, presumably after many weeks of actors and actresses practicing their best I-can’t-believe-I-won faces in the mirror.

No offense meant to Kristen Wiig, a comedy treasure. This just happened to be one of the first results for "surprised celebrity".

No offense meant to Kristen Wiig, a comedy treasure (who, thankfully, will never see this post). This just happened to be one of the first results for “surprised celebrity”.

Continue reading →

Misadventures in writing a second novel

Posted on by under General Writing-Related Posts

Oh, wow. How far is it into January again? I’m pretty sure the year just started yesterday.

Unless I’m actually a time-traveler who doesn’t realize he’s a time-traveler…

It goes without saying that I’m a little dazed and confused. I’d like to shift the blame to being a time-traveler, but I think this gloomy, post-Christmas gray-and-frozen weather is to blame for my inability to remember what day it is. What I do know, however, is in this haze of work and naps and new things brought along with the changing over to a new year (or a New Year) has also got me working on something new and exciting, and that’s lead to an interesting couple of revelations.

The something new is a new novel-project-mess, which I may have mentioned. It’s another new novel. I lose track because I start too many projects only to let them wander around My Documents, alone and bored until I remember they exist. All of this is especially worth talking about now because it was around this time last year that I went absolutely crazy in terms of cranking out new pages of material for Joshua Harkin and the Wicked Nightmare King, a title I have grown to regret as it might as well read Joshua Harkin and the Paragraph-Long Title.

Progress is a bit more slow than with Joshua’s Nightmares (I’m aiming for brevity here, people), taking into consideration I have a different job than I had this time last year, complete with different hours, responsibilities, and so on. I am also, I’ve found, more prone to taking naps. That’s something I still need to work on.

What I’m also noticing, however, is that this novel has already taken on enough of a life of its own that it’s impossible to really compare it to its predecessor in any real, meaningful way. Joshua’s Nightmares was general fiction in the broadest sense. It features elements of sci-fi, fantasy, humor, horror, and so on. Current Novel Without a Name (the file name, which doesn’t really betray much in terms of plot, is currently The Princess, The Lich, and Some Murders) is more restricted in that it’s a blend of humor and fantasy, skipping out on sci-fi (read as “this will be lacking in epic battles between space pirates”).

The plot itself is taking more time to unfold, as I don’t want to rush getting the major players where they need to be. Events need to unfold over the right amount of time, and getting that figured out is taking up…well, more time.

Fortunately, I can say I’m starting the year off with plenty of writing instead of plenty of slacking, as even on my worst days I’m still adding to this project’s word count.

Of course, there’s always Joshua Harkin and the Wicked Nightmare King to keep busy with until this book is finished (and eventually published, I hope). Definitely just a little proud of having a four-point-three star rating for my first novel. Please check it out and, if you’re feeling extra generous, write a review once you’re done. I’ll be donating 50% of the money I earn from book sales to the American Cancer Society via Relay for Life.

Wherever you are, whatever you’re creating, and no matter how many days you forgot just what point in the week it is, I hope you’re all having a good start to this new year so far.

Hibernation season has arrived

Posted on by under Uncategorized

At some point, through some cruel twist of fate, it has officially become winter. I know. Shocking that the weather has taken a turn for the cold and disappointing in January of all months. Today was the first day of my favorite multi-month event, the Fishtailing of the Cars. My lovely little black Toyota handles snow pretty well in the sense that it usually doesn’t go three different directions I don’t want it to before correcting its course.

I had a post planned about how things didn’t go quite according to plan in regards to my more writing, more reading, less naps, etc., plan, but there’s something about this weather that makes me want to curl up underneath a thousand blankets deep within a pillow-fort (note to self: find a way to build a pillow-fort that incorporates the TV; only leave the living room for food and bathroom use) and slumber until the first signs of summer are upon us. It’s supposed to be eight degrees or less tomorrow, which is at least twenty degrees colder than should ever be acceptable.

The bigger problem, at least for me, isn’t the cold or the snow, or even my inability to cope with weather conditions I’ve been exposed to my whole life living in Pennsylvania (the keystone to the frozen wastes of Northrend). No. My biggest conundrum is how this cold weather, with its oppressive chill, saps me of any energy to really use anywhere (beyond the aforementioned cover-cocooning).  It becomes a vicious cycle of frustration over not accomplishing much only to realize that it’d be a lot easier to meet goals if I didn’t feel borderline comatose thanks to trudging through this dreadful cold to and from work…all ten feet of parking lot that I need to walk, at any rate.

However, that’s not to say I don’t realize I need to brew up some tea or cocoa (or perhaps just a hot toddy, but probably not since I want to actually be coherent while writing), sit my partially-frozen ass down, and get back to writing. I’ve got a notebook of ideas, more notebooks practically begging for ideas, and a relatively new Moleskine pen that is powerful enough to make me push past my typical distaste for handwritten notes and the likes.

To my fellow creative types, in whatever partially iced-over dwellings you find yourselves in: how are you coping with this polar vortex horseshit? What tricks and tactics are working best to help keep the creativity thawed?

Standard New Year Hullabaloo

Posted on by under Misadventures in Non-Fiction

Happy New Year! To those of you reading this in the year 2015, on January 1st, in a world that hasn’t devolved into some sort of post-apocalyptic Hellscape, I bid you good tidings. To those of you who are in such situations: best of luck, and embrace your new robotic/insectoid/alien overlords in hopes that good behavior will be rewarded.

New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day mean a number of different things to a number of different people, of course. That’s a fairly obvious statement, I should think. There’s the easy way of viewing New Year’s Day as the start of a new calendar year. Another day that will, in all probability, be followed by three-hundred-sixty-four similar days. It’s a series of weeks in which the previous year sneaks into dates on virtually every document until, damn it, those guilty of such forgetfulness finally move forward and accept not being time-travelers. Some people view this as a time to enact change, small or large in their lives via resolutions while others view it as a time to continue with more of the same. Neither of those options is particularly bad on its own. It’s all a matter of how the resolutions or staying the same (which, in itself, is a resolution of sorts) are carried out. I’ve established I prefer to set goals that feel more achievable and moving forward from there. Such behaviors, I feel, were instrumental in the completion of my first novel, achieving my first paid publication (upcoming at a presently-unknown date), and surviving one hundred consecutive days of blogging, among other victories. However, I did allow myself a fair few more naps than I care to admit, more cheat-days with my writing, and other grievous creative and personal sins. However, I aim to make gradual, and hopefully very productive, changes this year. My goals for the year, as of now, will follow. Before that, I’d like to encourage the sharing of goals in the comments as well as the sharing of encouragement. Continue reading →

The hundredth day

Posted on by under One Hundred Days of Blogging

I’m actually fairly sure this is probably day hundred and ten or something, but because I wasn’t particularly detail-oriented with all of my mobile posts they weren’t all properly filed. And so this marched along, a proud little soldier, until the very bitter end. My god this has been a long time. It was, if nothing else, a very impressive learning experience in what I’m capable of (and not capable of) as a blogger.

This was certainly a study in self-torment, make no mistake there, but it was really more of a study of myself overall. How I could, and would, handle daily posting despite work, a move, several major life events (I’m looking at you, journey to Chicagoland), and so on. It involved lots of pictures, a good few thoughtful posts, and a good few lazy posts to just meet the quota. And a fair bit of cheating by fudging the time-and-post-based rules. That last bit let me pretend to be something of a time-traveler, which I won’t let anyone take away from me (save for, perhaps, an actual time-traveler, but only on the condition I get to see all of time and space; ahem).

Coming up with consistently high-quality content is not my forte. Doing so on a daily basis proved quite impossible for me, especially given the number of other events life threw my way. Like the only semi-expected move that turned into an absolute shit-show for a number of reasons, the least of which being my rather sudden ankle sprain. Ultimately, the whole thing taught me I can’t force these posts to happen without some sort of eventual detriment to the overall quality of what I’m creating. Surprise.

This paragraph is starting with another word than however, because when it lined up the way it was with the WordPress post builder it spelled out BITCH and that seemed both hilarious and inappropriate.

Eventually, perhaps if only because of this intense and crazy hundred days, I will be taking a short hiatus from regular posting to recharge.

And partially because I am now embarking on the adventure of exploring the possibility of grad school. But that is a post for another day, I think.

Go out there, folks, set your goals and slay them like dragons.