Dog Ear

More from my reading of the famous Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and one of the favorite topics of the twenty- and twenty-first century. Which is better? Book or movie? Well, in this case, both were good. Like my favorite, The Blue Max, the book and movie took different takes on the same subject, looking at the same coin from different faces. And I like that – perspectives are fun. But here’s where the book was better than the movie. In the book, we understand this world of Philip K. Dick’s to have survived (just barely) a nuclear war. […]

I remember when I got really comfortable flying my old ultralight airplane. The perfect summer day, no wind, gathering hot, and I’d feel the wings bite into the air and lift me into that summer sky. Yeah, sorta like that. Or my new Mini Cooper. It feels perfect, a combination of sensible and sensual. It’s nimble and quick, good for precisely the sort of driving clod-hopper FUVs are incapable of. Yeah, it’s smooth and sexy, just like that. Spooning a lover. Standing before a crowd and bowing. The perfect off-the-cuff statement. The rainy weekend with nothing to do. All those […]

I‘m a cranky cuss in a big box bookstore. And even though I hate them, there are fewer of them – they’re going out of business, so I hate that too. But when I’m in them, I walk around frowning. There in the new arrivals (in the front section, which the publishers of Fire and Bronze were too bankrupt to put me in), there are a bunch of self help book and glittery vamperilic trash. Walking along, I see “staff picks” that are bullshit, the usual NYT bestseller “finds” (no climbing out on limbs here). And over here, a leatherbound […]

I‘m a coder from way, way back. Back in the days when home computer programs were saved on tape and memory was slotted into the machine and could crash if you hit the table hard enough, you saved early. And often. Even while working Fortran on a mainframe you habitually saved. I even always had a book with me back in my Navy Underwater Research days, given the usual outages we faced. Now, everything seems bulletproof. But I am reminded of the old adage: Never have an unsaved session larger than you’d be able to afford to lose (well, something […]

Long-time readers of this series know that I despise publicity-tricks. The closest I’ll come is putting my book link at the bottom of my blog posts. I suck at clever things that people do like begging their friends to inflate their amazon ratings, to giving bookshow clinics to flog their books, to floating their wares in blog postings here. It really pisses me off (and probably explains why I’ll never succeed at this) because I find the entire publishing racket an dirty mudhole of false representation. It explains why so many people read so many lousy books, I suppose. But […]

It’s a quiet Monday night. I’m home from a casual work session at the train club, working out a blog for the coming week. Unlike most nights, I’m carrying a production pager (the kid who is supposed to have it is visiting his fiancée in Toronto and everyone else has kids this weekend, so against my better judgment, I took it). I’m in that writer’s space now: all the thoughts, words and elements neatly switching around in my head, aligning. I can see where I’m going, the points I’ll make, the specific words that will punch meaning across. The words […]

So the latest on the literature blog front is the siege by unscrupulous mini-marketers, the ones who want to sell cheap purses, knockoff sunglasses, or just get you to go to their site where you can be infected. And what does this have to do with writing? I ask myself that, often. Park of being a writer is exposure, and part of exposure, these days, is maintaining a site. I still slip a few books out through here, now and again (see my wonderful link below, which will take you to reputable sales sites such as amazon). But suddenly I’m […]

riting isn’t…. Deleting obvious spam postings out of my comments folders. Backing up this website. Fussing with the state over taxation forms. Dealing with copyright issues for song usage, and paying royalties for use. Sitting at a show booth for hours and only getting nibbles. Standing at the new arrivals section of the book store and seeing nothing but crap. Making sure the automated backups get all my latest versions of my writings. Getting interrupted at lunch when all I want to do is write (and the conversation that supersedes the writing is flat and dull). Having to jog at […]

rom an email from a dear friend of mine… “So I decided to ask you for advice. You have a home, a wife, a job, a yard, a pet, a train hobby, ride a bike, and you and JB travel.   So how do you find time to write? Do you apply your stealth mode and disappear……and if so, how do you find time?” I will admit that I face a significant time shortage. I used to set aside every Tuesday and Thursday evening for writing (three hours and then a cool-down walk). I also used my lunch breaks for […]

ast DOG EAR, I told my friend that it isn’t time writers lack, it’s creativity and passion. And she told me in her comment to my piece that while that might be true, she was going to fight to find her creativity. And that opens an interesting thought. Writers have to make time, this I know. But why should we have to wait for creativity to strike? Perhaps we need to make that, too. Yeah, she kicked me in the ass. I sat there looking over her comments – it was 10:30 on a Sunday night. I’d just finished the […]