Confessions of a Starving Mystery Writer

I've come full circle...or is it just a circle jerk? Blogger beta ate my last last blog teplate so I've return from which I came. I'll be working on a new template but I'm trying to write and submit. So if anyone is getting vertigo from my incessant format changes - sorry.

It was reported yesterday, Dan Brown dodged a big bullet yesterday - do-wop-do-wop. The US Supreme Court declined to take up and review a federal judge and a federal appeals court panel's dismissal of a lawsuit alleging illegal use of another author's book as a templet for Brown's Da Vinci Code as reported in a Christian Science Monitor article . There are many things I could say, over 60 millions copies sold, created a genre that didn't exist...yada, yada. I think he still has to fight the same battle in Brittan. The trials and tribulations of a bestselling author - I'm jealous.

All politics aside, 3,125 Americans have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many, many more have been wounded physically and psychologically. I pray for those who serve, their families, and those have served throughout our tortured history. I wish to honor all of our fallen soldiers. They have given the supreme sacrifice for freedoms we hold dear. Though I am a veteran, I never served during hostilities. For those who have in the past or do, I salute and honor you. The following portion of John Donne's poem was an epigraph for Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls . I hope it is fitting and appropriate. No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it...

Confessions of a Starving Mystery Writer 

As Popeye said, "That's all I can stand, I can't standz no more!" I give up. Spam has infiltrated my posts like locusts. This forced me to abandon the template that I really liked; the K1 Black. This current template is temporary and I apologize for its Spartan nature. Sorry for the changes but I recieved 200 spam messages today and I have had enough. I deleted about 5 prior posts infected by over 1000 spam messages. I will be working on a redesign this coming week.

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry. T. S. Eliot If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are? T. S. Eliot

Happy Halloween or Devil's Night as they call it in Detroit. They burn riot, burn, and loot on Devil's Night in Detroit. No pussy trick or treating for them. Have a safe one...

Artist William Utermohlen chronicles his descent into the dementia of Alzheimers by self portraits painted over the span of nearly forty years as reported in a recent NYT article. Utermohlen's self portraits, displayed in a multimedia slideshow , are a moving, striking, and saddening evolution of an artist's perception of himself during his slow slide into the depths of this disease. Mr. Utermohlen, now 73, no longer paints and now lives in a nursing home. This post was inspired by a post by Austin Kleon .

It's hard. It's fucking hard. To write, to create, well written fiction. My idols did it and until recently I didn't know how hard it was for them too. I thought they all sat down and wrote brilliant words that ended up in thier novels. How niave I was. They revised. They massaged. They sculpted the words, sentences, and paragraghs. Epiphany. Revision, I am learning is the key to good writing. Revision, revision, revision. It sucks - but there, I believe, is where the gold lies. The road is tough and the gate is narrow but with revision I hope to plough through it. I look to the great ones for guidence, inspiration, and a roadmap. I've been told before the ones I admires time has come and gone. I disagree. Good writing is good writing and it is ageless. So - ask not for whom the bell tolls...

Ok, I thought this would be easier. I've written for most of my life. Not a novel, but I've written just the same. It seems like I'm just learning to walk. I tried short stories as my labratory with some limited success. It just didn't get me there. I am struggling with plot. I want to tell a good story that is character driven but in the end I want a good story. I've tried to outline several times and it leads me no where. I'm working on Aristotle's three act structure with plot points at the end of act I & II. I guess I am missing a critical element or component. The only thing I have figured out is the more I write the better I get. Go figure.

10 Writing Rules from Elmore Leonard drawing by Austin Kleon

Don't compromise yourself. You are all you've got. Janis Joplin

Don't get caught drunk driving

Grief 

Breath came heavy and labored after an eleven-hour drive south under stress and grief Detective Harry Beam was unfamiliar with. He witnessed and investigated all manners of death from the heinous to the benign. Never had he suffered the loss of a parent until yesterday. His mother died the day before. He was notified yesterday. It stung. It hurt. It seemed unbearable. Heart attack. They said. Advanced lung cancer but the heart attack killed her. No real surprise, the lung cancer. She smoked three packs of cigarettes a day for the last fifty-five years. She was a poster child for lung cancer, suffering debilitating coughing fits that would last for increasing durations. He sat quietly in front of the decaying house of his youth, visited just months before. He lit a cigarette. Now, only one person still lives in this home - his father. The front yard had been cleaned up and the trees, trees that Harry and his mother had planted together in his early teens were trimmed and neat but the ho...

Lightning Strikes - Fiction Coming Soon 

My mother died and i have asked my brother to help me blog. I have lost it. sorry.

Storm on the horizon 

The summer season comes to an end and the thought of winter heating fuel bills makes me queasy. Gotta love it. Oil companies in action. The beauty of fall is on the horizon, leaves change, a chill in the air. This is suppose to be my year but the months are quickly slipping away. Things are falling into place and the writing is coming back. So it goes..

Smoldering