Kalbzayn's Writing World

Blog Moving Day

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 12:38:47 -0700

I'm going to be moving this blog later today. I have detailed my reasons on the new site.

I am going to try and update the feed to automatically point to the new site. My next post over there will be talking about who I favor in the elections this year. If you don't see that post sometime today, then I probably did it wrong.

You can go to the new home page at http://www.kalbzayn.com. If you have any sidebar links that you can point to the new site, I would greatly appreciate it.

I don't have any plans of taking down this site, but I will be turning off comments and trackbacks in a couple days as I move forward with the new software.

Let me know if you have any questions/concerns.

Help a NaNo Writer out

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 12:39:38 -0700

Struggling Writer is trying to write his NaNoWriMo book. He is at an important juncture in the story and is asking for our help.

Here is what he wants us to do:

My plot involves a 23 something guy who visits his parents looking for one of his favorite books of his childhood. He doesnt find the one he is looking for, but does find one that looks interesting that he didnt remember. As he opens the front cover he sees something written inside. It is a note to himself he wrote when he was eight years old urging him to do or remember something.

Here is my problem: what does the message say? What is it urging him?

Now, I happen to know that he is a full time worker with a young baby. He needs to get over this hump quickly because NaNo is a cruel taskmaster. I'll try to come up with something tonight, but I know some of you will have some better ideas than anything I could come up with. Some of you are published after all.

So get over there and help him out. If he chooses your message, you can even be a character in the book. And, I bet when it gets published, he'd be willing to send you an email telling you when you can go buy the book.

I haven't asked you slackers to do anything for a long time because I still owe somebody a bookmark for the last writing project I held way back in another lifetime.

Go. Suggest. And mention it on your blog to get some of your many-more-readers-than-I-get to go suggest their great messages, too.

My car made me angry today

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 09:33:39 -0700

Let me start by saying that I like winter. I don't mind the cold and snow and near constant darkness.

My car made me angry today. I warmed it up because I did not feel like scraping windows this morning. About 15 minutes later I returned to my car to head to work. The car was still a little chilly inside but at least the windows were clear.

I pulled out of the driveway and started my trek to the office. At the first stop sign, my car started taunting me and would not drop the issue no matter how much I cursed at it.

It just kept saying to me, "It is only 22 degrees," over and over again. Sure, by the time I got to work, it had eased up a little bit. "It is only 24 degrees."

At 6 in the morning, at the beginning of November, I do not need to be constantly reminded that it is only 24 degrees. Global warming my cold butt.

I think I might have to reprogram the little temperature display to 70 degrees no matter what the outside world thinks.

Need a little more Halloween?

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 11:52:01 -0700

Can you still feel the sugar digging into you teeth? Are you still looking for black cats before you move? Do you still have face paint stuck to your pillow case?

I bet you are suffering from INeedALittleMoreHalloweenitis. There is no cure, but the symptoms can be treated. Studies have shown that reading Halloween short stories the day after Halloween can greatly reduce the discomfort of INeedALittleMoreHalloweenitis in 7.42 out of every 8.951 patients.

Doctor StruggingWriter has some medicine for you at his site. Go read one story and call me in the morning if you still are suffering from the dreaded INeedALittleMoreHalloweenitis .

Want to read a story I wrote?

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 22:27:18 -0700

It is not the big story that I have been promising, but it is something to hold you over in the meantime. And, it ties into The Curse of the Five Pennies, too.

The story can be found over at Fictional Musings. Kelly Parra posts a lot of flash fiction stories that writers send to her. If you have something around 700 words or less, you should consider submitting it over there. Anyway, here's the link to my story.

Cursed by my own story

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 13:08:26 -0700

Unfortunately there were no monkeys and my story, Curse of the Five Pennies, is not going to be finished in time.

After reading my rough draft, I was very unhappy with the basic story arc as well as most of the writing and decided that it needed a pretty big rewrite and I did not get enough time over the weekend to make that happen.

I will post the story when I get around to finishing it and hopefully it will turn out to be a better story with the rewrite.

For those of you who are spitting mad that I teased you all along and now have nothing to show for it, I have a story that will be showing up tomorrow I thing on Fictional Musings. When it goes up for sure, I will mention it again with a direct link.

That's all. Carry on.

And a monkey might fly out of my butt

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 21:06:05 -0700

I have a short story that I am supposed to finish by Monday night for the Paperback Writer eBook Challenge. I am horribly behind schedule and have a ton of other stuff going on between now and then. What are my odds of finishing on time?

As they say on Wayne's World, "Yeah, and monkeys might fly out of my butt."

I will type frantically between now and then and try to get it finished. After all, it is just a short story. How hard could it be to finish one of those?

UPDATE:I just stopped by over there to get the link above and noticed that I jujst won a free book. If you write fiction and are not reading her site regularly, you should be. She gives a lot of great advice and had drawings to give away free stuff from time to time. Plus, she has a ton of books published so you should at least go over there to try and figure out how she does it. As far as I can tell, she seems to put most of the emphasis of the magical experience of getting published on actually sitting down and writing...a lot.

Which reminds me. I need to go look for a monkey.

Books found at the county fair

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 12:23:27 -0700

The big county fair that we go to in Wisconsin every Labor Day has long since passed but I still haven't put away my big find. Every year, one of the local historical societies sells a bunch books that people donate. This year you could get whatever books you could fit in a plastic grocery bag for $2.

This was the first year that nothing amazed me, but there were a few that I thought I wouldn't mind having. My mother-in-law is starting her post-retirement career selling books online. There was an interesting collection of Wisconsin state historical society journals that we figured she might have some luck selling, so we committed to buying a bag. I threw in a few books that sounded interesting and ended up with a pretty decent haul.

John Grisham - The Firm and The Pelican Brief
Scott Turow - Presumed Innocent
Margaret Atwood - The Robber Bride
Richard Ford - Rock Springs
Robert Ludlum - The Bourne Identity (Hardcover)

I just heard from my wife that her mom made something like $25 plus shipping for the magazines. Not a bad haul for $2. Now I just need to get around to reading them and the other books sitting on my bookcase unread.

A Random Thought

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 07:15:08 -0700

I had a thought when I walked into work today.

I am tired of walking on concrete all the time. Everywhere we go, it is concrete. There is a little island of grass in the middle of the road between the parking lot and the building. I always make a point to walk across it and get my 4 steps on the grass everyday. Where did all the grass go? Are we afraid of getting our shoes dirty?

Why is it that kids run wherever they want and hardly ever seem to find a sidewalk, but adults let ourselves get trapped within the little strips of allowed walking space?

Walking on the grass is better for us. It has less impact on our joints and the uneveness of the ground is good for strengthening our feet and ankles.

I go watch Iowa football games. One of the things I love about the stadium is that the players are playing on grass. But, I normally do not take one step on any grass the entire day that I spend at the stadium.

If you see me walking through your yard someday, please try to understand.

Curse of the Five Pennies - Teaser

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 09:57:43 -0700

This is just a little teaser for the Curse of the Five Pennies which is due to come out on October 31st. None of the teaser stories will actually be part of the official story. These are all just side stories around the events that happen in the story. This one takes place one day after Curse of the Five Pennies ends.

Aftermath

The head football coach walked into the locker room. The team quieted as Coach stared at the floor.

"I just got some bad news." Coach struggled for his next words.

"Is Tyler sick? If so, we'll be fine. These guys suck."

"No, Randy. Tyler isn't sick," a tear rolled down Coach's face. "Tyler is dead."

The locker room exploded with questions. Coach waved his hands to try to silence the team. One of the assistant coaches whistled to get the locker room back under control.

"Nobody knows anything right now. Something bad seems to have happened. The game is canceled and there is going to be a city wide curfew tonight affective immediately. You all need to head straight home. Now before you guys get all macho and go sneaking around, it appears that somebody is running around killing people, really butchering them up. This is no joke and you all need to get home."

The assistant coaches took over hurrying the kids into their street clothes, coordinating transportation, and creating checklists to keep track of which kids called when they got home. Coach drove through the small town to his neighborhood on the outskirts. The newer subdivision with fresh siding and small trees contrasted with the small ranches throughout the rest of the town.

Coach grabbed a beer and stood on his back porch staring at the woods behind his house. Small towns were not supposed to have problems like this. But, then again, the woods were not supposed to have some of the sounds he had been hearing recently either.

Curse of the 5 Pennies

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 09:37:39 -0700

I just updated the sidebar with a semi-official title for one of the stories. The Curse of the 5 Pennies.

Whether I finish it in time or not, I'm writing it in response to the E-book Challenge of at Paperback Writer's blog.

I'm hoping to finish it on time. The story is a campy horror story with lots of action and a fair amount of violence. There are only 6 characters and 1 monster so there can't be that much violence, eh?

And it takes place between a dirty, run down gas station and a creepy, old, abandoned bridge with evil looking drawings on it. On Halloween, of course.

And there's a monster that just can't possible exist...right?

The stories in the challenge don't need to be creepy or have anything to do with Halloween, but with an October 31st deadline, how can I resist.

No matter when I finish, and it better be before October 31st, I will publish the story over here in PDF format. I'm working on getting in touch with an artist friend to make a cover that will make downloading the story worth while on its own. He's good and can do creepy with the best of them.

So far, I have finished doing an extremely quick and dirty run through of the plot. It has sentences for everything that needs to happen from start to finish. Now, I need to go back and fill in all the details, dialogue, and killings. Oops, did I say that out loud.

Are you planning on entering the challenge? If so, how is your story coming.

Surviving the grocery store lines

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 09:38:38 -0700

There is just no escaping it sometime. Every once in a while you have to go grocery shopping on a Sunday afternoon. Despite the dozens of check out lines, only three of them will be open. You will have two gallons of milk and two kids that do not want to be in line any more.

And somebody in your line will be using coupons that they forgot to dig out of their purse before the last second, writing a check they did not prefill out, and need 10 price checks.

People like to make fun of the military and how poorly they manage everything, but line problems do not exist at the commissary (grocery store on the military base for all of you career civilians).

What did the commissary figure out that the rest of the world still can't get?

You only need one line.

They forced everybody into a single file, waiting for the roller coaster type of line. You wove back and forth as the line steadily advanced. When you popped up to the front, you were directed to the next empty register. Any register that was taking a long time, did not impact any individuals waiting for that register. Amazing. Simple. Efficient.

And apparently something that only the military can coordinate. It's almost enough to make me want to sign back up.

Finding directions for your characters

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 21:31:22 -0700

Do you have a character stuck in the woods? Does she need to find her way out or further in? It sure would be nice to know which way was north, right? Tired of having your characters look for moss on trees?

Go read article of 13 ways to find north if you're lost int he woods.

Make sure you do your research before using them to make sure the methods listed are acurate. If you ever get lost in the woods and get more lost using these techniques, don't come looking for me.

What the hell. Come looking. You won't find me. Your already lost in the woods.

Writing progress and a sidebar update

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 13:44:18 -0700

I'm writing again. Buy me a cookie.

I'm going to try to write a minimum of 50 words for each of 3 stories that I am working on. I'm not planning on having many 2000 word days and don't really care at this point. I figure if I make myself write 50 words every day, I will normally write a little more. For example, today I wrote 75, 193, and 78 for the stories.

50 words can't possibly scare anybody. I can cough fifty words. Typing them takes about 2-3 minutes. Our new hamster could pound out 50 words a day. My big fear with this new experiment is finding out that the hamster writes better than me.

A couple friends recently have been politely pestering me to write something. So, I figured if I can put a little progress bar like you find in the sidebar, they can see my progress and only pester me when the sidebars don't move for a few days.

The Dead Zone

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 18:50:18 -0700

Verizon has a couple dead zones on my route home. My new cell phone which is actually an old piece of crap that my sister lent me because I lost my phone makes the dead zone even bigger. There is now about a 10 mile stretch of road where there is a huge amount of traffic that I cannot use my cell phone. It was only about 2 miles with my old cell phone.

I thought cell phones in the heavy population areas had finally gotten to the point where phones worked everywhere. At least, that's what I learned from the commercials.

Verizon, can you hear me now? No? Wait until I drive out of this giant dead zone and try again.