21 Days

Today is the last day that 21 Days will be on promo. If you don't have a copy you may want to grab it, just click its cover to the left. Tomorrow, I will be putting it on Smashwords and one other site.

Changes

More recently I was told that someone wouldn’t go through a major change in their life like Timothy does in “The Sea Witch”. They were wondering where the religion was because it would require religion to do that. It doesn’t from personal experience but I’ll go into that later in this.  

Here’s the real story behind that part of the story. Until early 2002, I had a couple of small side businesses going. One was a cabinet/furniture making shop. The other one was computer repair, mostly out of a spare room wherever I was living. Because I was such an asshole back then quite often they were more than just side businesses.

I would flip out and quit whatever place I was working. I can’t tell you all of the various places I worked, there were so many of them. Some places I would quit after one day. I was really abusive to everyone to tell you the truth including myself though I didn’t realize it at the time.

Coming back to 2002…

What caused it all to change for me was a couple of things that happened at the same time. My wife passed away in bed next to me was a major one. Another was closing up the shops that were quite often my primary income source. Third, I got rid of everything else! Just threw it out, left it all behind, etcetera. Fourth, I became a ranch hand on a horse ranch which is also where I went to live for two and a half years.

It’s amazing how much thinking you can do when you’re out walking fence lines to find the breaks. The only thing that’s out there where you’re at is the sound of the wind. Almost every daily interruption is gone from your life. The roof over your head is part of your pay, there is no cell phone service, cable TV. So many things are gone its just not the same way that you're living. You really get a chance to look at your life and what a mess you made of it previously. In fact, you don’t even have a choice since there’s nothing else for you to focus on except your past life. Once you begin to really take a look at yourself it’s amazing the changes you go through because you don’t like what you’re seeing. You'll go through changes real quick, quicker than you would believe.

In the garden

Our garden is beginning to look pretty good as we are headed into fall. Some more of the potatoes ready, the Cosmos have really taken off. Unfortunately, the heat didn't do our lettuce a lot of good.

Fall

I'm looking forward to the start of Fall soon. We're already having slightly cooler temps even during the day. It's been a nice change from the 100 degree temperatures that we were having for over a month. During the mornings its in the upper 50's and I usually need a jacket.

Now, onto The Sea Witch, there should be four parts when I get done. The part that is out will be "The Awakening", the part I'm working on will be called "Jonathan's Rendezvous". Don't quite know on the other two parts yet but the story is there waiting to be told.

The week

It's been a very busy week to say the least. I'm still busy writing the second book of Sea Witch and I'm making pretty good progress on it. I'm at 4,800 words now after just a few days and have chapter three just about complete. Hopefully, I can have it out by October 1st at the latest so that I can add it to book 1. Altogether, it should be about novel length for the entire first book, about 48,000 words. So far the feedback has been really good especially after rewriting the first book completely.

I also have plans for two other novella's to be added at a later date, possibly as a complete second book. The first of those will fit time wise between the first book and the one I'm writing now. The second of the two should be about 10 years after the one I'm presently writing. Depending on how long these stories are they may also get combined into a complete single book in the correct time line order.

Sea Witch book 2

I had the idea that I was going to write a lot more on From Afar but the muse as fickle as she is had different thoughts. I'm now working on book 2 of Sea Witch which will be added to the present one. It starts 17 years after the first book ended. Here is the rough draft of the opening for the second book.


Caught the third time for smoking weed at school! Jonathan didn't think anyone would find them in the baseball dugout but hadn't thought of the coach coming around.

"Damn it!"

Now, they were all sitting in the coach's office and he was calling the principal. Three heads were bowed in shame and silence, not because they felt they did something wrong. Each of them was thinking about what their parents would say when they got home.

"Yeah, I caught them in the dugout smoking marijuana", he said into the handset watching the boys.

Disgruntled frowns appeared on their faces as two of them looked up, all awaiting sentence. A few more moments the coach set the handset back down.

"Get up, we're going for a walk to the principal's office now."

Silence from the three reigned supreme as they got up from their chairs slowly.

"Come on, let's go", in an attempt to speed them up.

They all headed into the hallway with the coach close on their heels. Passing numerous doors and lockers they wondered if he was going through with it. Turning their heads to see if he was still following they could see the coach’s serious look.

Narrowing his eyes and remembering catching them once before, "I'm sure by now you boys know the way."

It was a small school so unfortunately it didn’t take them long to get to the office. The coach waved them over to the waiting area chairs and said a few words to Principal Atkinson. After nodding to the man inside he went to stand in the doorway to help prevent them sneaking out.

“I’ll see you now one at a time”, came the voice from the office’s doorway.

Jonathan looked over at his two friends and since they were in no hurry he got up and headed in. He figured that he might as well get this out of the way as he was pretty sure that he would be suspended from school today.

Waving Timothy to one the chairs facing the desk, “please take a seat Mr. Hutton”.

He opened one of the file cabinet drawers and selected one of the folders. Setting it on the desk, he began looking through the accumulated papers inside. After taking a look he sighed and began looking intently at the seventeen year old student sitting across from him. Timothy suddenly felt that the room was rather oppressive and wanted to crawl under the chair and then back out the door.

Looking very serious, “you’ve been skipping a lot of school these days and you were just caught smoking that stuff again by the coach. The question is, what do we do with you?”

He paused a few moments to let what he said to sink in a little. “I could make you stay after school but I don’t think that will do much good. Think that I need to suspend you but if I do you probably won’t graduate this year.”

Once again, the principal paused while looking intently at the boy who appeared to be shrinking in the chair. “Okay, your turn. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

Jonathan looked at the man behind the desk and shook his head, “no I don’t”.

In a stern tone of dismissal while raising his eyebrows the principal spoke. “Consider yourself suspended then and you can send in the next one I need to talk to.”

Nodding as he got up from his chair and headed out of the door into the waiting area. In passing he looked at the other two, “he wants one of you next”.

My review for Robyn's Egg by Mark Souza

The book started out pretty slow and I was tempted to put it down. I'm glad I didn't though as it gets pretty good later on. There are definite shades of Blade Runner and Fahrenheit 451 to the story.

Major corporations dictate every aspect of the lives of average people. You don't really have a way to think for yourself since you are connected constantly to the net. In fact, its illegal to think independently. There are of course some that would like to change that not being happy with the status quo. I could see myself wanting shake everything up also.