So, I decided to go off on a tangent today. Last Sunday my father dug out the old bread making machine to try to make bread. Unfortunately it came out like a brick with the top sort of mutilated and looking like it fallen out of a mixing machine and then just hardened into clumps. The bread itself was awful and he was about to throw it out when I suggested I take it home. I wanted to let it harden and feed it to the birds that frequent my garden. I figured that birds will eat just about anything. Boy was I wrong.
This darn bread lived up to every bad expectation. I put the hardened chunks in the feeder and the birds wouldn't even peck at it. When I sprinkled seed about in the pan they pecked around the bread to get at the seed. Finally the local blue jay stopped by. Now this little fellow is quite the character and he eats almost anything I put out there. He took one peck of that bread and then tossed it aside to get at some other juicy morsel the other birds had left behind.
Ultimately, my dad's bread turned out to be fit for neither man nor bird.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Some Fresh Ideas
Recently I joined the wonderful San Fansisco Writer's Online University after the suggestion from an editor for another project. This page is an inspiration, a wonderful resource for myself and anyone who is a writer in this day and age. Joining is free, and there are online lessons for podcast that you can download for free. You can also pay a minimum fee for more robust subjects of podcast. Both areas cover anything from blogging, to editing, to inspiring characters to just writing in general.
After taking a moment to look through some of the ideas, I have decided to incorporate them into my blog. I am going to try to start blogging every day, if not three times a week or more, talking about Aboard the Phantom Express and my ideas surrounding it. I want to see my blog grow with this site's help, and I am certain it will do so.
One of the things I am most excited about is to start blogging my book. As a self-published novel, this will be a great way to expose my book to the public so that everyone can see what I've been talking about all this time. My first post will be my hook, of course, to get readers. From there, I will try to talk about passages of the book and discuss how and why I wrote them. So, here is to Phantom Train back on track!
After taking a moment to look through some of the ideas, I have decided to incorporate them into my blog. I am going to try to start blogging every day, if not three times a week or more, talking about Aboard the Phantom Express and my ideas surrounding it. I want to see my blog grow with this site's help, and I am certain it will do so.
One of the things I am most excited about is to start blogging my book. As a self-published novel, this will be a great way to expose my book to the public so that everyone can see what I've been talking about all this time. My first post will be my hook, of course, to get readers. From there, I will try to talk about passages of the book and discuss how and why I wrote them. So, here is to Phantom Train back on track!
Monday, January 23, 2012
The Publishing Gamble
Well, I have just submitted Phantom Express to Chronicle Books in the hope that they will see what so many people have in my little book. It's always such an exciting prospect sending to a publisher or an agent, but there's also so much nerves at stake. I think the best I can liken it to is playing poker. I know, I know, publishing and gambling are nothing alike, but they share many things in common.
Like gambling, publishing takes a lot of luck and a lot of nerve. You have to know how to play your cards right, to read the table. The publisher is the house, they hold all the stakes and the house nearly always wins when it comes to accepting your bet. As a writer its so easy to try to steel your nerves and then have them utterly crushed when you get a rejection letter. A rejection letter is as much a blow as losing a big hand. You can be so sure of winning, only to have just a slightly lower hand.
In my case, I hope that I'm holding a flush when it comes to Chronicle. I hope they'll see my gambler's mentality in approaching an independent publisher for my unique work. I think they'll look at my hand, see what I have and see how they can benefit by it. After all, in gambling and writing, the house always wants you to come back and spend more.
Like gambling, publishing takes a lot of luck and a lot of nerve. You have to know how to play your cards right, to read the table. The publisher is the house, they hold all the stakes and the house nearly always wins when it comes to accepting your bet. As a writer its so easy to try to steel your nerves and then have them utterly crushed when you get a rejection letter. A rejection letter is as much a blow as losing a big hand. You can be so sure of winning, only to have just a slightly lower hand.
In my case, I hope that I'm holding a flush when it comes to Chronicle. I hope they'll see my gambler's mentality in approaching an independent publisher for my unique work. I think they'll look at my hand, see what I have and see how they can benefit by it. After all, in gambling and writing, the house always wants you to come back and spend more.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Switching tracks
For a while now I have been lacking what might be the most important thing in a writer's life, a spark of imagination. Its so easy to get distracted in life, what with tv, internet, radio, work and just general life. So often I read about writers and how writing is an almost religious experience. Writers spend hours just finding the right location, they stick to a steady schedule of writing, break and more writing.
I suppose it is easy for a writer who writes as their one profession, they can devote endless hours to preparing for writing, but I have little bits of time here and there with work and other things. It becomes a struggle to put thoughts together, to coordinate them. Its easy to become discouraged as well with a lack of other writers to work with. So many groups meet at times that are completely different from what I can attend. It seems like the whole writing world is on one schedule and level of life and I am on another that is the exact opposite.
I draw once again to my analogy of a train for this blog. At the moment, I am chugging along at a slow pace, regaining my momentum. Ahead lays a switchboard of opportunities, and I need to decide where I need to go and what I need to do to get there. There's plenty of room for mistakes, for chances taken or lost, but that's the way it is with any thing in life.
I think and hope that this blog will help me continue to flesh some of my own frustrations or thoughts about writing. I just have to remain on track!
I suppose it is easy for a writer who writes as their one profession, they can devote endless hours to preparing for writing, but I have little bits of time here and there with work and other things. It becomes a struggle to put thoughts together, to coordinate them. Its easy to become discouraged as well with a lack of other writers to work with. So many groups meet at times that are completely different from what I can attend. It seems like the whole writing world is on one schedule and level of life and I am on another that is the exact opposite.
I draw once again to my analogy of a train for this blog. At the moment, I am chugging along at a slow pace, regaining my momentum. Ahead lays a switchboard of opportunities, and I need to decide where I need to go and what I need to do to get there. There's plenty of room for mistakes, for chances taken or lost, but that's the way it is with any thing in life.
I think and hope that this blog will help me continue to flesh some of my own frustrations or thoughts about writing. I just have to remain on track!
Saturday, November 5, 2011
A Last Night in Lake Tahoe
It is with a sense of sad nostalgia that I write this tonight. As I sit here with the window open, I hear the smooth sound of the waves of Lake Tahoe splashing upon the shore. I feel the bitter, wonderful bite of the icy cold, and see the reflection of white snow upon trees, buildings and ground. Far beyond, I see only twinkling of the distant lights of the far side of the lake. Everything else is eerily quiet, cold and still.
It is the last night here, the last night of my 29th birthday vacation. Tomorrow we will take the long drive back home, back to work and reality. It does feel like the waking of a long and wonderful dream. We've done so much, and so little in our short week here. We've taken a walk through the touristy nature trail, seen salmon swimming up the rapid stream, the fall colors. We toured around the old mansions and homesteads of our fore-bearers, those who came up to enjoy this lake in the past centuries.
We walked up the side of a great mountain, Mt. Tallac, about 5-6 miles by reckoning, along a rocky path. We stopped for lunch at an old resort camp, sat down upon the rock with nothing but the wilds of the mountains, just us for miles and miles. Peanut butter and jelly never tasted so good.
We did a lot of nothing too, sitting and reading. Walking and enjoying the freshly fallen snow. We sat and watched it cascade down, and watched the wind whip up the dark waters of the lake. We ate well, enjoying meals at such wonderful restaurants and home.
At long last though, it is time to go home. I wish we didn't have to leave. I could die tomorrow and probably be very happy. This is what it must feel like to retire, to have no worries or concerns. I could stay up here forever, within the reach of the wilds of nature but also comfortably in civilization. Alas, I cannot for now at least. But here is to dreaming.
It is the last night here, the last night of my 29th birthday vacation. Tomorrow we will take the long drive back home, back to work and reality. It does feel like the waking of a long and wonderful dream. We've done so much, and so little in our short week here. We've taken a walk through the touristy nature trail, seen salmon swimming up the rapid stream, the fall colors. We toured around the old mansions and homesteads of our fore-bearers, those who came up to enjoy this lake in the past centuries.
We walked up the side of a great mountain, Mt. Tallac, about 5-6 miles by reckoning, along a rocky path. We stopped for lunch at an old resort camp, sat down upon the rock with nothing but the wilds of the mountains, just us for miles and miles. Peanut butter and jelly never tasted so good.
We did a lot of nothing too, sitting and reading. Walking and enjoying the freshly fallen snow. We sat and watched it cascade down, and watched the wind whip up the dark waters of the lake. We ate well, enjoying meals at such wonderful restaurants and home.
At long last though, it is time to go home. I wish we didn't have to leave. I could die tomorrow and probably be very happy. This is what it must feel like to retire, to have no worries or concerns. I could stay up here forever, within the reach of the wilds of nature but also comfortably in civilization. Alas, I cannot for now at least. But here is to dreaming.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
The First Snow
It is only November first, and already soft drifts of snow float down outside my window. I am at home, in Southshore Lake Tahoe just three days after my 29th birthday and as I watch each tiny fleck I feel as if I am gazing out into a large and wondrous snowglobe. The snow seems to hover in the darkness as if borne on tiny wings, the wind casting it to and fro to land upon the roofs in thick clumps. It has only been an hour and it is already thick as a pillow blanket.
This is the best weather for writing that I can imagine. There is nothing quite like sitting in the black of night, with snow whipping outside. There's a fire in the fireplace, hot cocoa ready at my convenience, life is pretty good. I can sit without a worry in the world and concentrate upon my work. Its Christmas kind of weather, so far from the sunny and probably warm and hot of San Luis Obispo where I live.
We don't really have seasons back at home, which is something I do miss terribly. We basically have summer, indian summer, a semi-winter, and an allergy season (which is part of summer.) There's no fall color, there's no snow. We sometimes get hail or a freeze, but nothing like this. I think that this is the sort of weather that appeals to most of us when we think of warm and cozy.
Tomorrow, I will wake to a world of white. Where everything will be clean, cold and crisp. Everything will be blanketed in a thick waist high layer of snow. Kids will be out sledding, making snowballs, and animals will probably be gathering what foodstuffs they can for this strange "early" winter. I can step outside for a moment and take in the lovely white, cold, and then step back into my comfortable space and look out to the wonders of the first snow.
This is the best weather for writing that I can imagine. There is nothing quite like sitting in the black of night, with snow whipping outside. There's a fire in the fireplace, hot cocoa ready at my convenience, life is pretty good. I can sit without a worry in the world and concentrate upon my work. Its Christmas kind of weather, so far from the sunny and probably warm and hot of San Luis Obispo where I live.
We don't really have seasons back at home, which is something I do miss terribly. We basically have summer, indian summer, a semi-winter, and an allergy season (which is part of summer.) There's no fall color, there's no snow. We sometimes get hail or a freeze, but nothing like this. I think that this is the sort of weather that appeals to most of us when we think of warm and cozy.
Tomorrow, I will wake to a world of white. Where everything will be clean, cold and crisp. Everything will be blanketed in a thick waist high layer of snow. Kids will be out sledding, making snowballs, and animals will probably be gathering what foodstuffs they can for this strange "early" winter. I can step outside for a moment and take in the lovely white, cold, and then step back into my comfortable space and look out to the wonders of the first snow.
Friday, October 21, 2011
Whatever may come
Well, another sleepless night. Another evening alone with nothing but myself and my thoughts. Strange to say, but I think I enjoy the quiet outside. There's nothing, not even the sound of cars this early into the morning. The sky is awash with stars and there's just a faint whisp over Cierro San Luis mountain which looms like a massive black obelisk behind the house. Its the sort of night one should expect out of October, the night one half-expects to see ghosts out and about, walking the streets.
I'm a fairly superstitious person. I can't walk under a ladder or cross paths with a black cat. For the longest time I couldn't get out on one side of my bed (because of the saying getting up on the wrong side of the bed.) Apparently I thought the left side of the bed was the bad side. Now the way my bed is, I get out on the left side and seem to avoid the right. Strange. But maybe its just force of habit now.
That said, I do believe in spirits, ghosts whatever you may call them. There's times I'll get strange feelings, chills etc in a place that's old, or going by a cemetery. It's not easy to explain, its just a very uneasy feeling. Only once have I ever felt something malevolent, and that was a trip unto itself. Something I NEVER wish to experience again.
I know a lot of people discount ghosts and that sort of thing, but yet these same people don't discount religion. I never understood people who didn't believe in anything though. To think that we are born only just to live, die and then rot is a very fatalistic viewpoint. It sort of begs the question, what is the point of any existence if that's all there is? Whether you believe in god, goddess, buddha, or whatever, I beleive that there's a certain divine spark in all of us. It is not simply neurons in the brain that makes us conscious beings, it is a sense of being, a sense of purpose.
We're only on this planet for a short amount of time, and yes we are all born to ultimately die, but that does not change the fact that we must live. I struggle all the time with the ultimate conclusion, I am sure all of us do. I suppose the point of all this is that we all touch the divine in different ways, and I think we should celebrate that fact with each moment we live and breath.
I'm a fairly superstitious person. I can't walk under a ladder or cross paths with a black cat. For the longest time I couldn't get out on one side of my bed (because of the saying getting up on the wrong side of the bed.) Apparently I thought the left side of the bed was the bad side. Now the way my bed is, I get out on the left side and seem to avoid the right. Strange. But maybe its just force of habit now.
That said, I do believe in spirits, ghosts whatever you may call them. There's times I'll get strange feelings, chills etc in a place that's old, or going by a cemetery. It's not easy to explain, its just a very uneasy feeling. Only once have I ever felt something malevolent, and that was a trip unto itself. Something I NEVER wish to experience again.
I know a lot of people discount ghosts and that sort of thing, but yet these same people don't discount religion. I never understood people who didn't believe in anything though. To think that we are born only just to live, die and then rot is a very fatalistic viewpoint. It sort of begs the question, what is the point of any existence if that's all there is? Whether you believe in god, goddess, buddha, or whatever, I beleive that there's a certain divine spark in all of us. It is not simply neurons in the brain that makes us conscious beings, it is a sense of being, a sense of purpose.
We're only on this planet for a short amount of time, and yes we are all born to ultimately die, but that does not change the fact that we must live. I struggle all the time with the ultimate conclusion, I am sure all of us do. I suppose the point of all this is that we all touch the divine in different ways, and I think we should celebrate that fact with each moment we live and breath.
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