So we gotta say good-bye for the Summer

Well, this is it. I’m packing a bag now, and tomorrow, we hop on a plane to start our trip to Amsterdam. I know I said in another post that the muse was done, but I lied, apparently. I’ve been writing a lot in the last few days, and I’ve completed the fist five chapters of Wereporno. It’s got a lot of sex, so it will live up to its title. But it also is slowly developing a real plot, and I’m loving this story already.

But now I must set it aside and spend a week without writing. A WHOLE week without writing…NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! O.O

Why do I write?

There’s a seemingly simple question that can tie me into knots trying to come up with what I feel is a proper answer. When asked why I write, I ramble a lot because my reasons change depending on what I’m working on.

I think when I first became serious about writing again, my efforts were a kind of therapy of disassociation. According to my “rules,” I could apply a few of my problems to a character, but I had to make the rest up. Or I could borrow from my background, but only if the character’s present day circumstances were different from my own.

Over time, the stories began to evolve for two different reasons. For my serial stories, the muse was constantly pushing to find the key scenes that I could work with in each episode. There would be new creatures or killers to explore with each installment, but as the timeline progressed, the muse kept pushing for more. Groups of people from prior stories would break up, and I’d have to follow both sides in separate stories. What the muse was offering was good, but I wasn’t sure if I could handle writing so much all the time. She won that fight, because it turns out, I can write a lot more than I was giving myself credit for.

Bar Blog: Attack of the Killer Teas

Last night, I decided to research a recipe for a Long Island Iced Tea, but I had plans to modify this recipe from the beginning. Instead of a splash of cola, I planned to use Chinò, which is a cola-like drink. However, where colas use lemon juice to give them their crisp tastes on the back of your tongue, Chinò uses the chinotto orange. This result is a slightly more bitter taste, something I’ve come to love the longer I’ve lived in Milan. So, my idea for a variant tea would use Sanpellegrino Chinò, and I call my concoction a Milan Iced Tea.

Neeeed sleeeeep!!!

The previous post may have seemed like my last missive before the vacation, but it isn’t. It’s just the announcement that there’s no more fiction being edited or written until I get back home. I did have some other stories to work on, but the muse blanked out on the connecting scenes to get from one key scene to the next in two books. One case happened because the muse is bad about remembering minor details. The second came about because she’s also a bit of a twit.

What happened to the funny?

I know, I haven’t done a lot of funny posts lately, but I have a good reason: you. See, every time I do a serious post, a lot of you show up. If I do a funny post, only a few people look at it. It’s a difference of 5 posts for the funny compared to 25-189 hits for a serious post in a one day period. Yeah, seriously. So it seems to me like there isn’t much point telling jokes if nobody is going to show up for them.

Here’s something odd to ponder. The most popular posts are when I decide to talk about e-books. Well, I consider it weird, anyway. I’m just now learning the ropes of e-publishing, and I consider myself a novice in e-marketing. But when I talk about e-books, my traffic triples.

What this means is that unless there is some kind of giant outcry, I expect the humorous posts to be less frequent. Maybe I’ll replace it with extra bonus blog fiction or some new bar blogging posts. Or maybe I’ll come up with a regular ramble about e-publishing.

Bonus Blog Fiction: Blood Music

His black claws click-clack on cobblestones as he paces in the dark alley behind the theater. Anticipation waters his mouth and sends rivulets of slobber down the sides of his grey muzzle.

The door opens, and he take off at a full run. The alley will soon be crowded with humans, and he cannot afford to be choosy. He will take whatever comes out of the door first.

The girl steps around the swinging door, her blonde head craned back and raised to look at someone behind her. She hears his claws and starts to turn her head, but she never sees him before he barrels into her. He rams her with his head, and she goes flying up the alley soundlessly. Stunned by the impact, the child drops on the pavement and rolls without crying.

In the theater, voices scream as the humans catch a glimpse of him passing the open theater doors. His ancestors might have foolishly gone into the theater for a grand feast. But he is wiser, choosing to pick off weaker targets from the edges of the herd.

On choosing to work the dark side…

Hubby brought this article to my attention over at Crooks and Liars. Smile When Your Heart is Breaking…Yeah Right was written by another anonymous writer who is complaining about America’s cultural desire to ignore reality and keep wearing rose-colored glasses even in the worst of times.

You should read the whole thing, but I wanted to point to one part in particular because it resonated with a recent memory. Still it will help if you know how this quote fits in with the context of his article. And before I get started, I should warn you that this is a long post that goes to some very dark places in my past.

His quote and my rambling follow after the cut.

Where is the limit between asking and begging?

Twitter is now my favorite place to go for stimulating conversations or to read articles that inspire me to write on a non-fiction topic. Today, another serial fiction writer (who I haven’t read yet, but they’re in the TBR list) commented how their site’s traffic was rising, and now they only needed to sort out how to get people to click the donation button. I jokingly replied, “When you figure it out, let me know how it works.”

This prompted another writer, Rebecca Sutton, to offer a few ideas. First, she suggested that in spite of giving readers regular serial fiction updates, the real reason that you readers haven’t donated yet is that I still need to give you a better incentive to donate than just the fiction.

She also suggested that despite me reminding you between stories about the location of my tip button, you guys are probably still missing it over on the sidebar of my web site. She said it’s too small and generic, and being over there on the side, she says you’re not even looking at it.

When people leave the Internet…

Have you ever lost contact with a friend from the Internet? Sure you have. You’ve probably experienced something like this multiple times in your life now. I know it’s happened to me many times.

The internet has been a part of my life since I was 17. I got my first 14.4 dial-up account to run Winsock 2 on a 286 running Windows 3.1 (Not to be confused with the 3.11 one, a-doo run run.)

Throughout the years, I’ve met some great people online, and we form friendships in chat rooms and by exchanging e-mail. They’re the modern day pen pals, the friendships we develop with people sight unseen, or perhaps only glimpsed through photos. Modern times offer us video chatting, and of course if my friends have a blog or a Twitter account, I will follow them  to see what they’re up to.

Should I bar blog here?

In my search to provide you with more interesting posts, I want to pitch an idea and see if it flies with you folks. If you think the idea stinks, feel free to say so.

The thing is, a few nights ago, I was on Twitter, waxing poetically about the taste of a great mojito. I got a few people in the mood for mojitos, and someone asked for the recipe. So I tweeted it, and another follower suggested that I ought to start up a section on my web site for drink recipes. Not just a stock recipe from a book, but a mixture that I believe will achieve the best flavor results.

In addition to the recipe, I would also write about my experience with the drink in other places. Or perhaps I might detail some of my own experiments. Let me give you an example with a drink I made up on the fly last night. I’m not sure if someone else already made up the combination, so I’m labeling this “new” on the provision that if I find a similar recipe later, I’ll concede defeat to the older version.