LTUE Bound...

 Heading out to LTUE today and probably part of tomorrow, hoping to network a little, meet a bunch of new people, pass out some cards and bookmarks, that kind of thing.

I made up some bookmarks to tease the new book, so we'll see how that goes. 

Revisions languish, but I think I still have a sightline to get them back to Lanternfish by the end of this long weekend...

Buenas suertes!

Revisions and more

I have successfully dived into revisions and am having a great time. No really, I know everything I say sounds a little bit sarcastic...it's the family curse.

But yes, revisions are proceeding apace, and I hope to have them done and back in the editor's hands by "mid February" as agreed. By which I mean, before the end of the middle third of February, which I calculate to be 4:00PM on the 19th.

Also, I designed and ordered prints of a promotional bookmark to pass around at LTUE next week. Trying a new online printing service - I'll report how it looks once it gets here..... 

Revisionating, Take One

 This is a blog post about not yet having started working on revisions.

At least not in any concrete sense. I seem to spend some time internalizing the editor's notes before I dive in. My editor's name is Christine. We worked together on the previous book, and now we're working on this new one. 

<<Interruption to break up a fight among the cats>>

Here are the challenges to jumping into revisionating:

1 - finding more than five minutes of uninterrupted time to focus on it. Revisions take the same amount of focus as any other draft. More, in a way, because we're smoothing out lumps in the tone, and filling little plot holes with putty and Plot Spackle (tm). Which means one has to - in a matter of speaking - hold the whole work in one's mind, the entire construct hovering over the work of the moment like a big circus tent while one tries to get the littlest dancing poodle to wag it's little tail just the right way. That takes a minute, at least for me. I need to sit with the manuscript for a bit so the whole thing is sitting in RAM like a movie I've watched a dozen times. 

2 - getting past the pouty response to anyone finding anything at all wrong with the manuscript, because I worked REALLY HARD on it, and not only is it just fine the way it is, but I'm kind of sick of it and don't want to think about it any more. That feeling only lasts a few moments, and I'm getting better and breathing past it, but it never really goes away. At least not yet. 

3 - fear of messing it up because I'm nowhere near as smart or creative as I was when I finished the draft a few months ago. I actually really enjoy the collaborative process of turning a manuscript into a book, and I'm definitely the amateur in the room when it comes to making an actual book happen. 

4 - Also, I keep getting distracted by the vision board I put up for the next project. Gonna have to take that down...

So with that all said, and having used this very post to distract myself some more, I guess I'll get going.

What did we learn?

I don't know...three cats is too many...

This is a Blog Post About the Journey from Acceptance to Release

 Hi there!

Frequent readers of this blog (of which there are zero) will note that there are no meaningful posts. As with most things I start, I started this blog and then promptly discovered I didn't know what to do with it and had nothing to say.

So, since no one sees it anyway, I figure it's as good a place as any to document the process of moving from acceptance to release of the new book (see below). 

Seeing the title, it sort of sounds like dealing with a terminal disease, and surrendering to one's fate with grace. I guess it is a little like that...

Anyway, with this project, I'm making a concerted effort to be involved in marketing and promotion for the book, and I have no idea what I'm doing, so I'm going to track it here so I know what not to do next time.

Yesterday, after resuscitating this blog, I made a LinkTree and put some stuff on it. I've also been drafting a bookmark to promote the book, with the plan of taking them to LTUE in a couple weeks and slipping them into people bags while they're not looking. That draft is currently with Feliza, the publicity director at Lanternfish for her feedback and approval of the copy and whatnot.

I have to say, I really am excited to be working with the Lanternfish team again - The first time around was such a great experience that I feel profoundly fortunate to be returning. Before the first book, I had no idea what a collaborative process creating a finished book is. I dig me some collaboration! I've got revision notes from the editor (Christine, she of unlimited perspicacity) and am working through those with an aim to get them done by "mid February." And by working through them I mean I've read them all over twice and am now letting them stew in my semi-consciousness for a few days (which is how I do all my writing). (Yes, I know it LOOKS like procrastination, but it's STEW. Stew takes time. Ask your grandma.)

 Hello!

I am thrilled to share that Lanternfish Press has picked up my new book, "The Girl Who Made a Mouse from her Grandfather's Whiskers." They published my first book, and I couldn't be more excited to be working with them again.

Here's a picture!

You can check out the full press release here (not a real link)

        www.lanternfishpress.com/news/2025/1/27/acquisition-gordon

or by clicking the link to the left, over there >>>>

While you're there, check out the rest of Lanternfish's catalog.

Peace!

Soundbite #1

"We have met Big Brother and he is us."
-Commodore Perry
-George Orwell
-Pogo

Second Amendment Thoughts

As a writer, I like to examine issues from a holistic human perspective, as opposed to taking a stand on one side or the other. It’s fun, and sometimes everyone gets mad at me. For example…

 The interesting thing about the Second Amendment is the moral weight it gives to gun ownership.  By listing it alongside freedom of speech and religion, security against abuse of power by the government, and other protections for the individual, guns are elevated from being a simple tool to being a representative agent for those protections.  It therefore has the same moral weight as religion or speech, and is embedded the same way in people’s personal sense of identity, both as individuals, and as Americans.

Some interesting questions: what if the Second Amendment instead protected a person’s right to protect himself and his home by not unreasonably restricting his actions or methods?  That is, what if the need for a militia and for personal security was guaranteed without specific mention of firearms?  The first amendment ensures freedom of “the press” and we assume this means the institution of journalism, not the physical ownership of a printing press.  Freedom of speech has not suffered from this.  Would gun ownership culture have evolved differently?

Guns are tools; physical devices designed to perform a function when operated by the user.  Some are designed for killing animals.  Most are designed for injuring or killing people.  By stating one’s right to own a gun, one is essentially asserting one’s right to have the ability to injure or kill a person.

It is worth examining this at both a collective and individual level.  Collectively, why do we acknowledge and defend that right?  Because the right to kill is as inalienable as the right to the pursuit of happiness. We are never far from the law of the jungle. A well-ordered society offers institutional protections for the weak against the powerful, but societies face threats to order from within and from without. The demonstrated support of the right to kill is in place partly as a deterrent against these threats, and partly as a defense against society’s collapse, whether at a local or global scale.

Individually, the question is much more subtle, and there can be no one answer.  Each person - gun owner or no - should carefully examine his or her position, and reasons for their choice to own or not to own.  But hardly anyone will.  People don’t.  The gun is such a potent symbol of individual and collective power in America that most people on all sides of the question cling to their position on the issue as a proxy for the gun itself, which is in turn a fetish for the phallic power they crave.  That is to say, “My identity as a gun-owner/non-owner is my badge of power that represents my connection to the symbol of power with which I have aligned myself.”

But where is the real power in this dynamic?  To find the power, follow the path of who gets what they want.  Does your individual gun-ownership status get you what you want?  If so, then the power is yours.  Do you perceive threats to your power? From where do those threats come?

We can discuss the gun as the symbol of American phallic power at another time.  If the gun is that symbol in America, what fills that niche in other places?

Dormancy...and Post-Dormancy

Hello

One may regard everything prior to this post as an experiment and a warm-up for all that is to follow. I learned how to use the platform, and discovered that I had little to say. Other than providing a central point for links to the things I've published, this site has lain dormant and without a clear purpose.

Being a writer, it seems having a blog is a necessity, but I never quite found the groove. Writing is hard enough as it is, and having to write a blog on top of it - especially a self-reflexive blog about writing - just adds to the snarl. So I worked on other stuff and this blog languished.

But all that changed some short months ago when I had the great good fortune to have a novel picked up by Lanternfish Press, a wonderful small publisher in Philadelphia. You should check them out - their books are beautiful and strange. My novel, working title One Bronze Knuckle, is tentatively scheduled for spring 2019.

 So here I am, reanimating the withered corpse of my blog, because I finally have something to talk about! Imagine that!

Peace...

To Microsoft Compliance and Ethics

Sirs

I am dismayed today to find that Windows 10 has decided to install itself on my computer.  No doubt I have fallen victim to Microsoft's tactic of configuring the [x] on the Wondows 10 promotional pop-up to function as an affirmative selection rather than a simple close command.  This is a tactic I expect from penile enhancement products and Russian girls hot for western men, not from a highly respected and well established global corporation.  I can hardly have missed the media blitz or the persistent pop-ups that distract me from my work; does Microsoft not think that, should I have chosen to switch to Windows 10, I would have done so when I was damn good and ready?  Has Microsoft such a low opinion of my decision making abilities?

Further, upon completion of this action (dubiously termed an "upgrade"), I find that Office now believed I have exceeded the number of allowable downloads, although I am accessing the program from the very computer (the very one!) from which the program was originally purchased.  For Microsoft, whether through intent or oversight, to block my access to a legitimately purchased product by way of imposing upon me an unwanted product indicates a sketchy regard for its customers at the very best.  At worst, it betrays Microsoft's view of its customers as mere nodes in its global super-mind, with which It may do as It pleases.

Surely, you are aware that Microsoft faces real and growing competition from a wide array of providers whose products provide all the desired functionality without putting their hands up their users' skirts.  How, I ask you, is behavior such as that described above intended to retain my interest in remaining a customer of your products?

Hoping you are well,

Loyal Node

Reading Camus, and then -

Greetings from the center of the universe! 
There is nothing to report but this:  A certain black and white cat of my acquaintance has left a gift this morning for us - the back half of a small rodent.  It may be a mouse, or a pocket gopher.  Without the front half it's hard to tell.  The cat - who is orca-colored - informs us by this means that the seasons are progressing as planned, that the world, against all other evidence, remains upon its axis, and that he will take his breakfast on the veranda.  M. LeChat strolls obliquely into the room as we write and regards us with affectionate disdain before announcing his desire for immediate egress.  He will go out at this time, and will remain out through the night.  We needn't wait up.  These things, these and the little snails that terrorize the roses, are the only signs of spring we need.

After a lengthy silence, a feeble rustle...

So...
Having decided that nothing is more boring than a blog about a writing trying to write something, I stopped posting until I had something interesting to say.

However, if I gave you my card at LTUE this weekend, I thought you deserved something more than that, so here you go>>>

Greetings!  Had a great time at LTUE 2016, and I hope you did, too!  Thanks for stopping by!  I still don't have anything interesting to say!  But exclamation points always help, right?  I said, am it RIGHT?!?!?

Anyway, if you stopped by for some other reason and you don't know what LTUE is, you should go here >>>  ltue.net >>> and check it out.

Should I pretend that someone is really reading this and promise to post more frequently?  Hmmm...
I don't know, what do you think?

Armoire Pirate Update

Greetings...
I have pulled The Armoire Pirate down from Smashwords and Amazon temporarily to revise the manuscript (and also to prepare for launching the next three books in the series).
I have tried to take down all the links for it, but if you accidentally found your way there and it didn't work, and then you found your way here, I apologize.

So, so sorry...

Kenny

The Armoire Pirate - ebook on Smashwords and Amazon

Oh, Hi

Also, I forgot to mention that The Armoire Pirate - the first in a series of middle-grade chapter books - is available as an ebook at Smashwords-dot-com and Amazon

Aargh!

Kenny

"The Eye Fish" Published by Diagram

Hi There!
"The Eye Fish" has been published by Diagram.
Click on the link to the right to check it out!

Peace
Kenny

"Barefoot Woman Comes to Fire Town" published in Permafrost

Hello!

"Barefoot Woman Comes to Fire Town" has been published by Permafrost in their Summer 2014 on-line issue.  Select the link under "Short Stories" (to the right) to check out the issue.  "Barefoot Woman" starts on Page 30, but the whole issue is worth a look.

You can check out more of Permafrost's output here >>>  Permafrost

Cheers!

Outlining a New Book - AAARGH!

I've started working on a new project - working title: "The Omega Notebook Project" - and so far I'm following my usual approach...

1. I have a germ of an idea, share it with my family, and they say "Meh."
2. I write down the germ, still convinced it has promise.  I assume I just wasn't able to communicate how cool the idea was to my family.  Plus, they are notoriously hard to impress.
3. I leave the written-down germ in a notebook for an indefinite period of time (in this case, about a year).
4. I get inspired one day to write the first page (more on this below).
5. I file the first page away for an indefinite period of time (in this case, about six months).
6. I find the first page while I'm looking for something else and decide it's really worth working up.
7. I start outlining, get halfway through and say "Meh."

Which is where I am now with this project.  I think it sounds like a really fun story, but the outline makes it seem boring and predictable.  On the other hand, if I just start from the first page and go freestyle, who knows if I'll end up where I need to at the end?!?

About the first page thing...
The way it works is I get and idea for a story and an environment and characters and whatnot, and then, all of a sudden, one day I'll get a flash and write an introductory page that sets the voice and tone and character for the whole piece.  It actually works pretty well - I've got four or five sitting around now, just waiting for me to grit my teeth and finish an outline...

More to come, 
Cheers!

Red Raiders available at Amazon.com

"The Book" is now available on Amazon through their self-publishing service.  It's $0.99 because that was the minimum.  I couldn't figure out how to make it free.  Maybe I'm dumb or maybe Amazon doesn't want to give away free stuff for free.  Likely both...

I just discovered the "Post Title" window up there!  I'm such a cool, professional like blogger and web presence and stuff!  It only took a few weeks for me to figure out I could put a title on my blog posts!  I can't wait to see how it looks...

Red Raiders has passed review at Smashwords and will soon be available via most major ebook retailers!  I will have to figure out Amazon separately, however...

For the time being, the book will remain available for free, because, really, what have I got to lose?

Peace

I'm waiting patiently for Red Raiders to pass review at Smashwords, at which point they will begin distributing it to other retailers, and at which point I will unleash the full furor of my marketing powers. 

Actually, what you see here is about the extent of my marketing power...we shall see...

In the meantime, as is my wont, I am juggling a bunch of ideas trying to decide what project to work on next.  I tend to have many things cooking, but focus on just a couple at a time.  The next self-publishing venture will be The Armoire Pirate, a middle-grade chapter book about middle-grad kids and pirates.  It's currently with an illustrator, and when it comes back, BANG!  On to Smashwords it goes!

But as far as writing goes, I want to focus on one thing for kids and one for adults over the winter.  I've outlined a sequel to Red Raiders, and would like to have that done by next summer.  For grownups, I'm not sure...  I just finished a short story and am working on submitting it to literary quarterlies.  I can't share it here, because any on-line exposure invalidates the 'unpublished' criterion.  But if you're interested in that side of my writing, I recently published a story in The Bitter Oleander (Vol. 18, #1).  You can check out the magazine here > www.bitteroleander.com  I don't think you can see my story from their site, but I'll try to figure out a way to get it posted somewhere.

Stand by...

Red Raiders published on Smashwords

I have successfully published Red Raiders on Smashwords - available here >>> https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/352543

It's currently FREE as part of my Friends-and-Family Beta Launch

Here's the official description...
Torus and his friends Chello and Nevi are three young rats, living with their clan in the walls and floors of a run-down apartment building. Life is hard for a young rat. They have to deal with all the pressures of coming of age, and they must also manage the perils of an urban rat’s life: avoiding the humans that share their building, dogs, cats, poison, and traps, not to mention finding enough food to eat.
When an aggressive flock of pigeons begins to invade their main source of food – a dumpster in the park across the street – the clan is faced with a choice. Should they resist the birds? Or cooperate and try to live in peace with them? When the leaders decide to try to work with the pigeons, most of the clan goes along. Torus and his friends go along grudgingly as well, after all, as pups, they don’t have much influence.
As winter progresses, however, things go from bad to worse. The clan begins to starve, the pigeons take more and more control, and the leaders seem powerless to stop them. Finally, when the pigeons begin moving into the building itself, Torus, Chello, and Nevi decide to take matters into their own hands.
With help from Mr. Nile, a wise old rebellious rat, and some other unlikely friends, they make a secret plan to resist the invading birds and protect their home and families. Will the pigeons take over the building completely, or will the Red Raiders save the clan?

Pretty exciting stuff, non?