Tag Archives: United States

Hello, World

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Wordpress World 29Aug2013

For you WordPress bloggers out there, this pic will look somewhat familiar. Yours may have more colors in more countries, but this is mine so far, and I’m justifiably proud and excited about it.

For those not in the knowage, this is the visual representation of your blog’s readership around the globe.  As a American blogger, you can see I hit the USA well, followed closely by our nicer-in-numerous-ways neighbor Canada.  I also get a little love across the pond from my nation’s progenitor, Jolly Old England/Great Britain/The United Kingdom (honestly, you guys have the most diverse sense of boundaries on what you include in your polity — as a former grand empire, your borders are downright confusing — check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNu8XDBSn10&list=TL9SPp7grZ2vgA39EfcFKcotivcdIFuwXe for an in-depth explanation). Then there’s the others.

I can get the EU countries.  I’ve been to Europe a few times (LOOOOVE IT!).  You guys speak and read English much better than I speak and read your various languages and dialects, so WELCOME TO THE IMPROBABLE AUTHOR (ugly Americanism requires me to speak loudly to dang furiners in order to brute force the language barrier).  I cast my appreciation and respect to Ireland, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Romania.  My goal is to physically get to those of you I haven’t stepped foot in yet (Belgium, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy), so keep the visits coming.  New contest:  whichever country visits the most gets my sweet American tourism dollars and my wide-eyed, bubbly wonder next!

The site visits that surprise my provincial expectations (pleasantly, mind you) are the outliers that I wouldn’t have expected: India, Macao, Israel, Argentina, Antigua and Barbuda.  I’m not sure if I’m only speaking to spambots that pepper my comment queue, but I’m hoping y’all are genuine fans.  That would be awesomely amazing.  I would love it if my blog posts and my stories (and hopefully my upcoming novel) would reach a wider audience.  Not the countries I would have expected a visitation from, but all are welcome here.

Now, how do I get some love from you other regions?  Australia and New Zealand?  Where are y’all at?  I’ve been to your countries, so why come you ain’t done visited my site yet?  Russia, I know y’all love some SF and American materialism.  This site is right up your alley.  Japan? China? Indonesia and Micronesia? I’ve been all through your regions, so how do I get some hits from you folks?  Africa?  I’m missing a whole continent, a continent I have indeed touched.  Where’s my African American-SciFi fans?  Greenland?  You’re so huge and pristine up there.  I must have you!

I love the colors on my map thus far, BUT I NEED MORE COLORS.  That’s all I’m sayin’.  🙂

Oo-Rah!! Get Some (breakfast)!

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One of the little idiosyncrasies of The Job is that they like you to stay in shape. This is a noble goal and standard in and of itself, but being The Job, asking you to maintain a culture of fitness is not enough. Nope, they’re gonna test you.

It does not matter how fit a lifestyle or how much working out you do, the semiannual Physical Readiness test is always a hassle and a blow to the ego, especially if you have a “writer’s physique” like I do. And I don’t mean the physique of the skinny coffeehouse writer always working on his next play. I mean the other side of the stereotype spectrum.

I’m not quite Orson Welles.

I prefer to claim the title Chubby Adonis.

Anyways, we have this little semiannual suckage, for which I usually fast and ramp up the exercise for (completely contrary to the program’s goals) and now it is done for another six months. So now I commit to my own semiannual tradition: the grand breakfast pig-out, for which I am sure to feel guilty over later.

This time, it’s at Charlie’s Cafe on Granby in Norfolk, VA, where I’m having the Granby Plate, recently enjoyed by Tom Hanks as he filmed a movie here.

Mmmmm, chicken fried steak and eggs.

So, I now dig in, followed by some outstanding writing on “ILYAMY” and the “Strategic Deployment” script, then I’m off to run some errands for the day.

Maybe I should have a bacon chaser. . . .

On The Job Writing

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My apologies, as I have been a poor new blog host.

Here I am, with a content-filled outpouring of my unfiltered id, and what do I do? After addicting vast numbers to the sweet honey that is every word I write, I abandon you for an unspecified number of days to do something as tawdry and mundane as work The Job. How could I be so cruel?

Ah, well. Though the particulars of The Job matter little, the hours it fills are not insignificant. I work about a 12 hour shift (easy, he’s only working half a day!), tack on an hour for work spillage, then an hour-to-45-minutes each way for my commute from the Outer Banks to the communist enclave, I mean commonwealth of Virginia and you have a lot of time spent Not Writing. Then, of course, you gotta help the kids with homework, watch an hour of “Justified”, and then patiently explain to your wife why it’s not your turn to do the dishes, when any damn fool knows it is. I go to sleep earlyish or latish, depending on which particular 12 hour shift I’m working, then rise to begin the process all over again.

I’m still getting used to the flow of things and working out The Job vs. home-life, but I trust that it will settle out soon. The good thing is that I only have about a four to five day work week, so I will have a chance to catch up.

Until then, I write on my breaks and at lunch, whenever I can. And I HAVE been writing. I’m currently working a new draft of a new short story “ILYAMY”, thinking about how to progress “Echomancer”, and working on some new side projects for stories already written, notably new life for “Strategic Deployment” and “The Falling Sky”. Good things are coming, and I hope to have the chance to have more fresh content in the next post.

Until then, make sure you’re caught up on the stories and chapters included here. Happy Reading! (and back to The Job!)