Musings of Two Creative Minds

When I started out on this writing journey, I never saw myself as someone who could a whole bunch of writing projects going at the same time.  That kind of thing was reserved for some of the great prolific authors like Isaac Asimov, who was notorious for working on multiple projects on a regular basis.  The man insisted on having a portable typewriter or two wherever he went.  And if he couldn't get his hands on a typewriter, he'd pull out a pad of paper and a bunch of pencils/pens and wrote the old fashion way, long hand. But me, I could never picture myself even thinking about working on more than one story at a time.  In fact, the very first novel I started working on was set in the early 1800's and I had gotten about 2/3's of the way through the tale when my wife pointed out that a historical piece would be harder to market.  On hearing this, I gave it some thought and put the story aside and began a whole new piece which eventually turned into my fi...

First I'd like to thank everyone who took advantage of my "Hobbit Birthday" party.  Over 30 copies of "The Vampyre Blogs - Coming Home" were snatched up.  While I would've loved to have seen triple digits, I'm not going to complain.  The book got into more readers hands and that is always a good thing in my opinion.  Hopefully, this will lead to some more reviews.  Sadly, Nathan and company have been stuck in the single digits as far as reviews go on Amazon, with absolutely none on Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and Smashwords. So I'm going to offer everyone who is interested the opportunity to get a free copy of the book (Kindle, Nook, Kobo, PDF, even paperback) in exchange for a fair and honest review.  Reviews are important to bringing a book to a wider audience.  We all know that whenever we think about purchasing a book or almost anything these days, we check online to see what kind of rating the item has.   Naturally, I'd love to see ...

The party has begun, we've got presents, cake, candle, plates and above all else a gift for you.  Namely a FREE Kindle copy of our latest book.... Just click on this link to grab your copy: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MDO8SLO/ref=series_rw_dp_sw And don't forget to grab a slice of cake to enjoy while you're at it.  Remember, cake and reading go hand in hand, as does sharing this link with everyone you know.  The party comes to an end at midnight on April 3rd to spread the word and thanks for coming.

For those of you not familiar with a Hobbit Birthday Party it goes like this... ​ ​ My birthday is coming up on March 30th, but instead of asking for presents I'm giving one away to anyone who wants it. The present in this case is a FREE Kindle copy of "The Vampyre Blogs - Coming Home"! The catch... none. I simply want to get the newest installment of the Para-Earth Series into the hands of as many readers as possible, because word-of-mouth is THE best promotion tool out there. So stay tuned and start spreading the word. It all begins on March 30th and will last until midnight April 3rd. That's a whole five days to grab a copy and meet the newest vampyre in town. What is he like? For starts, he does NOT sparkle. He's much more your traditional style of vampyre: drinks blood, sleeps in dirt, shape-shifts (animals, mist, etc.). Best of all but he's a hundred and fifty years of fun with life experience both here and in other versions of Ea...

Well, we're mostly settled into our new place, so the dust is slowly settling from all of that. Well mostly settled.  Still unpacking and organizing where we want things to go and how, but that's just normal  after a move.  But sometimes figuring out how to organize your story and where you want certain events or revelations to go can also be pretty tricky.  It can even lead to problems I'd never  thought about, like Writer's Block.  Or, as it was with me recently,  STEALTH WRITER'S  BLOCK! Now what I mean by that is a kind of Writer's Block you aren't even aware of.  To give you  an example, this is what happened to me.  I had finished a particular scene in my current novel  and had moved way beyond it with the rest of the story.   But for some odd reason, I kept  finding myself going back to that scene and wondering about it.  It would happen every so  often then I'd...

Isaac Asimov is well known for his extremely numerous writing contributions to science and science fiction.  But not everyone knows he was also a mystery author and regular contributor to Ellery Queen Magazine, as well as a few others.  His most famous crime sleuths never actually went to a crime scene, nor did they go into police headquarters and announce they had cracked an important case.   No, these amateur sleuths, who call themselves the Black Widowers because once a month they come together for a dinner of just themselves and one invited guest, a man.  Women are not allowed to attend this function, hence their nickname.  For one night a month they can enjoy just the company of each other without female company, not that they object to women.  It's simply their own little club.  The members of this little club are based on friends from the author's own life and are listed here: Geoffrey Avalon, a patent attorney (based on  L. Sp...

Have you ever felt like you would never fit in?  Of course you have, we all have at one point or another.  But for some this is not simply being awkward socially, but much more.  For 10 year old Matica, the problem is a physical one.  She is not growing.  Despite her age and having a younger brother, Matica has the body of a much younger child which has made her life a real challenge as far as making any friends in the little village in Peru where her parents are missionaries trying to help the local tribe.  The tribe finds Matica's situation strange and tend not to associate with her, making her more lonely than ever. However, Matica does have knack for making friends.  In this case its a pair of condors, which seems to fascinate the local villagers.  But they are even more surprised when the bond between the undersized girl and the huge birds becomes so strong that when their egg is threatened by poachers they allow her to watch over an...