Category Archives: Sex for Dinner, Death for Breakfast

March 24, 2017 · 4:27 pm

There is a tide in the affairs of men, but it isn’t as predictable as real tides (#SFWApro)

So last Friday I mentioned that I had another possible paying gig. It’s a legal news service, providing freelance content to various legal papers around the country, and they liked my first story, so I’m in.

And then Wednesday of this week, my former clients at Demand Media (now Leaf) emailed me with an offer to work on one of their special projects.

And Thursday, someone for another website calls to ask me about doing some articles.

Which is very cool. I like people calling to ask me to do work . But why on Earth now, in particular? It’s something I’ve thought in the past when I suddenly sell two or three short stories in a relatively brief stretch of time: why didn’t it happen say, a year earlier? Or ten? Am I suddenly that much better? Is it all blind chance? Or what?

First world enigmas, I guess.

Of course it’s not like even if all these clients plus Screen Rant provide tons of work (I’ve had clients in the past who liked my stuff but didn’t generate much work) it would let TYG quit her job and live a life of ease. But it still feels good to have money coming in. How will all this work with the fiction I like doing best? Well, we’ll see.

As to actual accomplishments this week, my new Screen Rant column is out: 15 Heroes Who Quit and Never Came Back. This was surprisingly tough to write, as I kept finding characters (the Bronze Age White Tiger, the Patriot, the Earth-2 Batman) who quit for years — oops they got back into harness! Back to searching for someone new. Hellboy is top of the list.

And I got probably ten thousand words done on Southern Discomfort, though I’m unsettled by how much of it was new material (new scenes, radically rewritten old scenes). That means more polishing down the road, which takes more time, which could delay completion even more.

I had hoped to wrap up turning Sex for Dinner, Death for Breakfast into a hard copy via Createspace, but I ran into some log-in problems. Hopefully I can get it done next week, and then work on that book will be over.

Wish me luck.

(All rights to Hellboy cover remain with current holder)>

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Filed under Nonfiction, Personal, Sex for Dinner, Death for Breakfast, Southern Discomfort, Time management and goals, Writing

March 10, 2017 · 5:10 am

Perfect Balance? (#SFWApro)

Last weekend was surprisingly good.

I got a lot of little errands done, including buying replacement light bulbs, refilling prescriptions, buying replacement batteries. And I fixed the errors I found in Sex for Dinner, Death for Breakfast. But I also managed to spend a lot of time relaxing, reading and watching movies. I keep trying to organize my weekends to be all laid back, but it often doesn’t work. It actually felt a little weird during the down-time stretches — shouldn’t I be doing something productive? I thought I’d gotten over feeling like that, but it stuck back up on me again.

There will be no week-in-review post today, due to a crazy day ahead. Book and movie review posts for the weekend will proceed as usual.

All rights to Connery-as-Bond image reside with current owner.

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Filed under Personal, Sex for Dinner, Death for Breakfast, Time management and goals

March 3, 2017 · 4:36 pm

Regaining some balance, losing some face, facing some weather (#SFWApro)

The weather was freaky this week. When I took this photo Wednesday, I was out bicycling in shorts, even though the sky looked ominous (the photo doesn’t capture it as well as I’d hoped). Today I wore a sweater to walk the dogs, and it was cold. Overall it’s been much warmer than last year, when we had icicles hanging from the bird feeder in late February.

Now, as to the balance — specifically between fiction and non-fiction as I discussed this morning. I didn’t really get the balance right this week, but I can see it improving. The tractor article is done. Screen Rant articles (I finished another this week though it’s not up yet) are getting easier as I stop fretting about their requirements and just write. I passed my trial period so now I can select images directly from SR’s library. It’s much simpler, to my surprise, than emailing the editors with a list of what I want.

I devoted today to finishing the Sex for Dinner, Death for Breakfast index, and I’m very glad I did. As with Now and Then We Time Travel indexing turned up eight or nine errors, several quite substantial. If I go this way for another nonfiction book (and I’m thinking about it for Undead Sexist Cliches: The Book), I’ll definitely index before publication. I feel really, really embarrassed to have released something inaccurate, hence the losing-face reference in the post title. I guess it shows why so many self-published writers recommend hiring an editor … but then again, the issue isn’t style or spelling but facts. So would it have helped? At least I did find them — I’m in the process of getting the ebook changed now (and pulled it from my sidebar and Nonfiction By Me pages until it is). Meanwhile I’ll add the index to my text to create a second PDF and see if the pagination is accurate. If it is, I submit to create space to get hard copies. If not, I submit without an index — I’ve had requests for hard copy and I’d like one myself.

And that was pretty much my week. It would have been more productive if I hadn’t forgotten most of the photoshopping techniques for Screen Rant that I’d figured out last week. I did get some more work done on Southern Discomforts but not as much as I’d wanted. Hopefully that will change as we move forward in March.

Have a great weekend. For the record, while the weather is cold today, the sky is much more inviting than these photos (art by me, please credit should you choose to use).

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Filed under Nonfiction, Personal, Sex for Dinner, Death for Breakfast, Southern Discomfort, Time management and goals, Writing

February 24, 2017 · 4:30 pm

Regaining my rhythm (#SFWApro)

I finished another Screen Rant this week (I’ll let y’all know when it goes live, of course), and it’s getting both easier and faster. That’s a good thing, as I’d like to keep doing them. And because it was easier and faster, I got more other stuff done.

•I finished my History article on tractors (illustration via Wikimedia Commons found here). I’ll format it (as I’ve said before, I don’t trust Apple Pages to do it right), proof all the dates and names and send it out Monday.

•I got several thousand more words done on Undead Sexist Cliches: The Book. Though I think the chapter I finished today is less well-structured than the first three.

•I got a little bit of work done on indexing Sex for Dinner, Death for Breakfast, though not as much as I’d hoped. But indexing goes much faster with a book that’s so much smaller.

•And I finally got back to work on Southern Discomfort. The plot for the final section is still unpleasantly vague, but I decided to start rewriting anyway. I got in about 4,000 words.

•Plus I spent a great deal of time sorting receipts and tax paperwork and assembling forms. Because lets face it, it has to be done.

And that’s that.

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Filed under Nonfiction, Sex for Dinner, Death for Breakfast, Southern Discomfort, Time management and goals, Writing

February 17, 2017 · 4:11 pm

I rode myself hard and hung myself up—wait, does that sound right? (#SFWApro)

It was a week that did not go as I planned.

I submitted my first Screen Rant article, and then my second, but they both took way longer than wanted. And that required really pushing myself, hence the title. I need to trim the time down, and I need to relax and have more fun with the writing too. I love comics, which makes it easy; I’m working under a tight deadline and specific format requirements which makes me veer serious. I did better with the second one though (I’ll post a link when it’s up), so hopefully next week will be better yet.

I have my History article on tractors 80 percent done, and I should be able to get it out next week. So yay!

And I started indexing Sex for Dinner, Death for Breakfast for a Createspace edition. If I’m going to go hard-copy, it should have an index. Annoyingly, I found one minor error in the intro, so I have to correct the ebook too. I’ll wait to see if I find any more — indexing is good for that.

But I got almost no fiction written, which is not yay. That’s happened before and not that long ago — back last year when I was wrapping up Now and Then We Time Travel, for instance. However, I don’t want to be doing that now, if I can help it. I enjoy nonfiction (obviously. I’ve written enough of it), but fiction is the reason I write. And I do want to get two more drafts of Southern Discomfort in this year. So like I said, I’d better get more efficient.

I am pleased that despite the rush to finish up Screen Rant #2, I made time for essential stuff like exercise, and making sourdough bread while the dogs were in doggy day-care on Thursday. It’s important not to let even demanding deadlines roll over normal life, if I can possibly help this (and if I want to do Screen Rant regularly, I have to help it). I was sufficiently rushed I forgot adding the salt to the dough (sourdough buckwheat bread) but that’s easy to fix with a little salt sprinkled on each slice. It’s an easy mistake — I’ve done it before when I was rushed.

I’ll close with a shot of some dead leaves I took this week. It symbolizes … well, whatever you want. Free symbol! Please credit me if you want to use it.

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Filed under Nonfiction, Now and Then We Time Travel, Sex for Dinner, Death for Breakfast, Southern Discomfort, Time management and goals, Writing

January 6, 2017 · 4:22 pm

2017 began. You won’t believe what happened next! (#SFWApro)

I haven’t noticed doing clickbait post titles actually gets me more visitors, but I can dream.

This was, overall, a great start to the year.

•I redesigned this blog to show some of my books in the sidebar. Unfortunately it appears I can only do two, so I opted with my self-published stuff over Now and Then We Time Travel, as you can see. I may just keep changing them out every week. But regardless of where the images appear, you should feel free to buy all of them (all rights to cover image remain with current holder).

•I looked up how to start a Patreon. More detail if I actually set one up.

•I reread all the notes I got from my beta-readers for Southern Discomfort, and distilled everything down to specific problems/suggestions. Despite the inevitable white noise (this takes too long to get going! No, it’s just the right speed!) going over it all in one swoop (albeit a swoop stretched out over a day or two) made it much clearer where the problems/potential lie. And it got my brain starting on finding fixes for some of the bigger issues. More on that as I progress.

•I submitted my next And column, on why compromising with the anti-equality forces is always a political mistake (the ethical side I covered last column).

•I released Sex for Dinner, Death for Breakfast, my book on the James Bond films.

•Lorelei Signal published The Savage Year in which a Secret Service mage and Doc Savage’s daughter go up against a renegade British sorcerer (a Story Behind the Story post will follow next week). And I think it has one of the best illos I’ve ever seen grace one of my stories, courtesy of Lee Ann Barlow (all rights to the image belong to the current holder).

•I began work on a book based on my Undead Sexist Cliches blog posts. With the massive right-wing backlash against women’s rights (along with most other rights for people who aren’t straight WASP men), this seemed like a good time. It may be self-published, though I’d jump at a publisher if I can find one.

That’s pretty good, given everything I had to distract me. Wednesday, TYG came down with food poisoning and was utterly miserable. So was I, of course. Fortunately, it cleared up and yesterday morning she headed out for a big alumni event, the same annual event that brought about our New York trip a year ago. I’m very glad she went because she’d have been kicking herself over whatever part of the plane ticket, hotel reservation, etc. she couldn’t get refunded. More importantly, she’d have been dismayed not to get to hang with all her friends — much like the Mensa national gathering, there are people she only gets to see once a year.

Of course that meant she was in a rush to pack Thursday morning (when her work schedule is normal, she packs way in advance) and I got dragged in to help, which of course threw me a little off-balance. After dropping her off, I then seized the moment to mail off copies of Now and Then We Time Travel to family, and to hit the Kroger’s nearby. They’re talking three to 10 inches of snow starting this evening (would you believe TYG told me back when we were dating that it almost never snows here? It’s snowed every year since then), so I figured getting the shopping in early couldn’t hurt. But after all that, I could not seem to get my head back in the game. And I didn’t do much better today — solo dog parenting often has that effect. So my plans to redraft Trouble and Glass didn’t get far. I did get a rough outline of the story for the next draft, and began working through it, but I’ll have to finish up next week.

Next week may be even crazier, as we have a vet appointment, a car inspection and the start of Illogicon. Plus wondering whether the snow will keep TYG from returning Sunday (they weren’t predicting this much when she left). Time will tell, as it always does.

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Filed under Nonfiction, Now and Then We Time Travel, Personal, Sex for Dinner, Death for Breakfast, Short Stories, Southern Discomfort, Writing

January 6, 2017 · 5:10 am

Life isn’t just goals and lists (#SFWApro)

Which in listing my 2016 goals accomplished (or not) I didn’t really acknowledge. So it probably sounded like the year’s events were just stuff to tick off a list, with no emotional content, and that’s hardly the case. Here, therefore, are some of the things that made me happy in 2016:

•I’m married to TYG. That’s not exactly an accomplishment as we’ve been married since mid-2011, but it still makes me incredibly joyous.

•The pups make me happy too. For all the work they take at times, I can’t imagine not having them.

•Now and Then We Time Travel came out. Which is a goal accomplished but it also felt really, really good (all rights to cover image remain with current holder).

•I finished Sex for Dinner, Death for Breakfast (which is now out too).

•TYG and I traveled to New York a year ago, which was an absolute blast, for example seeing Van Gogh’s Starry Night.

•We hit San Diego for the Mensa national gathering last July. That was a blast too, particularly the San Diego Zoo.

•I read a lot. That’s always nice. And I finished my (re)watching of both John Sayles and the Coen Brothers’ films.

•I went back to northwest Florida again. That’s always nice (though given how right-wing the community is as a whole, I’m glad to be out of it during the Trump presidency).

And there were lots of little things. Evenings out, the occasional party, snuggling on the weekends, bicycling (I must do much more of that this year), cooking … and I’m still a full-time writer. And that’s what I want to be. Plus I’m still married to and in love with TYG, did I mention that? Well I don’t care if I did, it’s worth saying twice.

So on a purely personal level, it was a good year.

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January 4, 2017 · 3:46 pm

Sex for dinner, death for breakfast (#SFWApro)

Huzzah! Sex for Dinner, Death for Breakfast, my self-published book on the Bond films is now up for sale, vendors listed at the link (updated for correct link). All rights to photo reside with current holder.

I’d originally thought the book would be just a re-edited compilation of my Bond posts on this blog. But as I worked on it, I put a lot more into it: more on how the series’ tropes and conventions change and develop, more on the real-world political background influencing the film, more on some of the nastier bits of sexism, racism, etc., more on the way the series assumes the continued greatness of Great Britain. So even if you’ve read the blog posts, there should be something more to digest in the book itself.

Mood: feeling good.

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Filed under Nonfiction, Sex for Dinner, Death for Breakfast, Writing

December 31, 2016 · 5:06 am

Summing up: my goals achieved (or not) in 2016 (#SFWApro)

Wow. Looking back it seems a)incredible 2016 is over (setting aside any questions about how good a year it was). Where did all that time go? b)It seems like a very busy 12 months, full of stuff that used up time. Short stories. Snuggling with TYG. Lots and lots of puppy care. Traveling to San Diego in the summer. And working on my goals for the year, of course.

I was initially disappointed that I only accomplished around 55 percent of my 2016 goals. Then I looked back at this time last year and saw for 2015 I only managed 18 percent. So this year is 300 percent better. Not that I was 300 percent better or more efficient, but Now and Then We Time Travel hogged a lot of time (ROFL!) in 2015, more than I’d expected. It did this year too, but there was less work on the book to do, so the effect wasn’t as bad.

My monthly average is actually better, 70 percent. But that reflects that I include lots of little goals each month that aren’t part of the year-goals. For example I set the amount of hours I’m going to write based on all the other activities (vacations, TYG’s schedule, contractor visits, etc.) I have to handle; that’s better done at the monthly level.

Regrettably most of the goals I accomplished were personal, not professional, like reducing my cooking schedule so I don’t have too many leftovers; having multiple irregular social events (i.e., in contrast to my writer’s group, which is a regularly scheduled event); traveling outside the triangle four times; watching films without doing stuff (email, work, whatever) during them (watching all the time-travel movies on the job gave me bad habits); and keeping up a regular cleaning schedule (45 minutes a week, which seems to be the most I can pull off between dogs and writing).

(All rights to cover and cover image reside with current holders)

I did make two of my big writing goals. I wrote another draft of Southern Discomfort and I finished Now and Then We Time Travel. So both of those deserve a huzzah! I wrote four short stories, and kept Questionable Minds out constantly, instead of letting it lie fallow after a rejection. I finished Sex for Dinner, Death for Breakfast, though it isn’t actually out (via Draft2Digital) yet. And the dogs and I have successfully adapted to a work day where I’m typing most of the time, instead of just watching movies (and therefore have hands free to pet them).

I wanted to sell five short stories; I managed four. Which is good, but didn’t let me check off the goal. I also wanted to sell one to a magazine considered a major market, and I didn’t manage that either (no disrespect intended to the magazines that did publish me).

And I really wanted to make more money than I did. I wasn’t fantasizing about a six-figure income, just something comparable to what I earned as a journalist. While I did make some sales for actual cash, I’ll end up with a net loss for the year. Fortunately we’re a two-income family, and I will be able to claim a legitimate loss on our taxes for this year.

The personal goal I most regret not making is that I wanted to bike to the Raleigh trailhead of the American Tobacco Trail again. After we adopted Trixie and Plushie slightly over two years ago, our bicycling time plummeted, and it’s hard to get back in the groove. I thought we’d be more back in it by now, but nope. So I’m putting it on next year’s goal list.

I’ll be back tomorrow with plans for 2017.

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Filed under Movies, Nonfiction, Now and Then We Time Travel, Personal, Sex for Dinner, Death for Breakfast, Short Stories, Southern Discomfort, The Dog Ate My Homework, Time management and goals, Writing

December 30, 2016 · 3:36 pm

Ending the year with Bond (#SFWApro)

So after taking Monday off, I started Tuesday with one primary mission left for the year: finish up the manuscript of Sex for Dinner, Death for Breakfast. Today I completed a final readthrough, and I was right to make it. Once again I found several errors — nothing factual, just sloppy writing, repeating a description in two successive sentences, that sort of thing. And I rewatched part of Moonraker after my friend Ross pointed out a detail I’d missed (he was quite right. I adjusted the text accordingly).

I then hunted a cover photo and found one, an image of Sean Connery as Bond. Finally, today I decided there were no miracle insights going to come to me at the last minute (though I had a few good thoughts while perusing the final draft, and incorporated them). I began the uploading process at Draft2Digital, and it’s way easier than Smashwords (which I used for Philosophy and Fairytales). However when I got to the proofing process, I discovered I couldn’t make the .mobi file appear on my phone’s Kindle app. So I will have to figure that out before we go live (I’ll have TYG try it on her kindle and if that objects too, I’ll see if the D2D people can explain where I’m screwing up).

That work aside, I was pretty laid-back. I did some research reading for Southern Discomfort (very productive), cleared off some bookmarks, worked out plans for the coming year and month. I started looking at how to redesign my WP page: having gone to the effort of writing Sex for Dinner, Death for Breakfast, I’d like to show it a little more prominently on the blog.

And that’s pretty much it. Oh, except for having my copies of Now and Then We Time Travel arrive yesterday, woot! Still feels very good.

This weekend I’ll be doing year-in-review/year-ahead posts instead of reviews. In case anyone cars.

And Happy New Year. Hopefully 2017 won’t be another celebrity die-off year. In light of which, I’ll post the following image (all rights to image and component images reside with current holders). After General Organa’s death this week (and her mother, to boot—I’m old enough to miss Debbie Reynolds too), it made me smile a little.