Ghosts

When I travel in the southern states, I hear the best ghost tales, scary ones that make chills go up my spine, stories aimed at adult audiences.  

Here in Wisconsin, the assumption is that storytelling is only for children, so I never get to let go and tell the tales of horror that would give the tots nightmares.  Yet adults always want to hire me for those kid's parties. 

That is so frustrating to me. 

Tonight, I was hired for an adult Halloween party about an hour away from here, in Sherwood. The guests were dressed in costumes, but nothing that detracted from my work.  I told two stories, one I heard in Georgia about a mountain lion, and another from Kentucky about a father murdering the mother of his children. They are the kind of stories that rattle around brains long after the night is over. 

I held my audience mesmerized. Not a whisper, or a cough disturbed my story weaving. 

Afterwards, everyone thanked me, but I thanked them for an opportunity to have a good audience of adults who loved to be frightened.

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This morning, I finished the book design, uploaded the finished interior and finally hit the "Submit" button at Create Space.  The Glen Valley Compact is being reviewed now.  I hope to have the proof copy in hand about a week from now. 

More Writing

Today I finished the first depressing Christmas story of the season and posted it at Black Coffee Fiction
http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com/2013/11/christmas-spirit.html

I write these stories to counteract the advertising on American television depicting the perfect family having the perfect Christmas, when we all know that not everyone has a traditional Christmas or even a satisfactory one.  So I write stories of people having terrible holidays. At this point I have nine stories. I figure on having a collection of these by the end of 2014.
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For a while there, we had our listing for our Black Coffee Fiction, Volume 2 paperback at amazon.com but it had an error so it is being run through the system again. It is still there as an e-book but it will be a day or two before that is settled.

I downloaded my new mystery at Create Space but there are four errors that the publisher discovered.  I also have to figure out how to get the cover photo cleared up. I hope to do that tomorrow.
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Wade has posted at his blog about his writing career,It's a Long Way to the Top
 http://wadepeterson.wordpress.com/2013/11/01/happy-nanowrimo/
.....

Wade is almost done with his novel.  The month of November is National Novel Writing Month but neither Wade nor I intend to write new novels this year.  He will do the final editing on his novel and I will do the final re-write on Going Down from Gairloch.  

But right now I am about done with it all for a few days.  Two days of writing non-stop has wiped me out mentally and physically.  Gary and I are going to get back to the fitness center on Monday to get ourselves back in shape and I intend to spend a few days reading books.

But first, an evening telling ghost stories tomorrow night.  

Halloween Expertise

It rained all day here in Seymour.  Not optimum Halloween weather but I'm an expert at holidays.The trick is not to get started too early, no matter what the stores are selling no matter what's being advertised.

I decorate but don't go overboard.  I happen to have a nice collection of electric pumpkins. They serve as easy decoration, but they are also useful when I am doing ghost story. They set up a stage beautifully. They are on a timer and go on about dark.

If I'm working on Halloween, I have to be ready for trick or treaters  between the hours of 4:00 and  6:00 pm.  I checked back to see how many munchkins stopped by last year.  I keep a record on the calendar. There were sixty in 2012 and that was in cold but clear weather. With the rain, I figured there certainly would be no more that this year.

I always wait until past noon on Halloween because the candy is on sale, usually half price. I knew that ShopKo had my favorite fall candy, caramel apple pops, a delicious treat that won't be stocked again for another year. Sure enough, they were on sale. The bag promised 15 in each bag so I bought four.

At 4:00 pm I turned on the porch light. No porch light and the children are not supposed to knock on the door. Most of the kids came with their parents, who were holding umbrellas. The families got soaked anyhow. The rain came with wind.  The arrivals were sporadic, usually two or three children at a time. As it got darker, the tots gave up, leaving the ground to teenagers, who were really too old for trick or treating.

At 5:45, I was down to three caramel apples pops.  I looked down the street and saw about a dozen teenagers in a bunch heading my way.  Three treats, twelve teenagers.

The answer was simple, I turned off the porch light, unplugged my pumpkin lights, and left the house in darkness save for this office which is at the back of the house.  I sat here with only the computer for light, sucking on my once a year caramel apple pops.

I had to finish them before Gary came home from his Thursday night meeting. I am an expert, after all.

Announcing The Glen Valley Compact

Tonight I finished the final edit of The Glen Valley Compact! It was a twelve hour day of writing but the job is done.

I've sent the book to Wade who thinks he can get the header and page number problems worked out.  He thinks it's only a matter of fifteen minutes.  Once those problems are worked out, it will be time to send the book to Create Space for publication.  After about three days, Create Space will tell me if the book is ready to go.  I will order a proof copy which will take about ten days to get here.

Then once more I will read through the book to see if I can find more errors. (I probably will.) If all goes well, I give the go ahead to Create Space. A few days after that, I will be able to order some books.  I should have my first shipment in time for December 7 when I will be at Sissy's to sign books.

At the same time as I was doing this, Wade made the decision to go ahead and publish our second short story paperback Black Coffee Fiction: 33% More Caffeine.  It is place-marked at amazon.com so in about three days, readers can go ahead and order it.  The e-book has been available for the last two weeks.

With that out of the way, I can now finish up another short story for our website:
http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com

Then I go back to my next novel. At the end of 2013, I figure on having eight of my books on the shelf in this office.  That includes two children's books, three short story collections, and three novels.

It's been a good writing year.  

Still Working at It.

More on the mystery novel:

My reader said that somewhere I had used the name "Agnes" instead of "Shirley" for the name of the assistant librarian.  Also, the librarian's car was a Pontiac Grand Am but somewhere in the novel, for some reason, she was driving a Toyota. I think all the names are correct now.

I had to change the children's story-time to Wednesday and added a second story-time. Throughout most of the book there is a space after each paragraph ... except when there isn't.  I have to go over that page by page.

I still haven't figured out the headers. I designed a nice one but for some reason it goes on the top of every page in the book including the title page.  The page numbers aren't working at all.  I probably don't have a program that will do the trick.  Instead I will do the page numbers and headers manually.  The book is over 200 pages long so that will take a while.

Today I found a photo of a white garbage truck for the cover. It fits the story perfectly, but apparently doesn't have enough pixels.  I'll have to work on that, too.

So much of today I was spinning my wheels.

*****

It was a good time for Gary to pull me away for a Chinese meal downtown. I liked that.

And I was able to get out for a walk despite the cold weather and was able to add one mile to my imaginary round the world trip. As of today, I've walked 19,105 miles. I am in Zurich, Switzerland.  My next goal is Dijon, France. I hope to be there by the end of the year.  Only France, England, Scotland, Iceland and then I will be back walking in the United States.  

More Goals

I am in the middle of another run through on the mystery.  It's a line by line look at the piece.

I discovered that midway through the book, the Glen Valley Chronicle, the weekly newspaper, had become the Glen Valley Times. That had to be fixed. I am still double checking names.

I got a calendar for August and September to straighten out the dates I was using. If I stuck with the ones I had in the rough draft, the murderer would have been in the town almost a month and that didn't make sense.

I'm still having problems with headers and page numbers.  When I use the system I have, none of it works.  I may have to do it all by hand which will be frustrating.

I am giving myself until October 31 to get it all figured out.

I have decided on a garbage truck as the photo for the cover, so tomorrow I will be out taking photos during the garbage pickup.

While I am working on the book, I am thinking ahead to the short story I must have written by Friday. Today, I got the idea for it.  Tomorrow, I will outline the story. The rough draft will be done on Wednesday, the second draft done on Thursday and the final draft on Friday when it will be posted.

On Friday, I will return to the novel based on my travels in Great Britain.

I see myself writing in this insane way through the end of 2013.  On New Year's Day  I will set new goals. Perhaps there will be a new Glen Valley book in 2014.  The friend who read the mystery enjoyed it and asked me to write a series.

Finished! Writing the Mystery Novel

I finished The Glen Valley Compact this morning and sent the final chapters to Deb, my reader. So far, she likes the novel though she notes some problems I've written about here, inconsistencies of names being one I must go back and correct.  At the end of the book, I discuss the rain during one of the murders but when I went back to that chapter, I found I hadn't written about rain at all!  I will have to do correct that.

I've given Deb a questionnaire to see if I need to make improvements. One good thing, she didn't figure out "whodunnit" right away, even as the list of suspects narrowed.  I am pleased about that because my friends knew who did it in the third chapter when I read them the first draft.

The next question is whether I should send the book to a publisher or self-publish. There would be more money to be made if a publishing firm took it, but from acceptance to book would likely take about two years. At this point in my life, I want to see the book in my hand.

Recently, a friend's writer pal died. He had managed to get one book published by winning a contest, but never deigned to self-publish. He was too proud to do that. Now, years of novels are stored somewhere but no one knows where.  His computer is password protected. No one knows the password. Decades of work are gone.

My self-published books are not making my rich but they are now in libraries where they can be read for decades. And we are earning a bit. At the beginning of November, I will receive a cut from the Black Coffee
Fiction e-books and paperbacks and a royalty of $12.40 from my novel. I sell a book here and there as well.

So I will self-publish, and the book should be available by mid-November.

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As of this evening, this blog has had 40,000 "hits" from all around the world.

I keep wondering who all these people are.