Posts Tagged ‘About Me’

It’s rather amazing how much things can change within the space of a few short months. It’s even more amazing when the changes come in just a few days, it’s almost frightening.

Just a few days ago I was but an unemployed house dweller with no prospects and too much time on his hands.

But now, low and behold, we have a full time student with too much travel time on his hands.

It was early Friday morning, while job hunting amongst the interwebs, that I logged on to the vtac website. I hadn’t done so for at least a week, maybe two, I had actually given up on the tertiary course of action for this half of the year after the disappointment of rounds one and two.

But log on I did and found that I’d been offered a place in a tafe out yonder… really, really out yonder. I rang and arranged for a meeting this coming Monday, today in fact, and hung the phone up. I’ll go as far as to say – I did a little jig that evening.

(I’m skipping over a rather good Sunday afternoon/evening here but that isn’t to say it didn’t happen, it’s just not pertinent to this story. Let’s just say it involved a festival, a russian girl, three dogs, a taxi driver and a few drinks.)

Then we arrive at today. Apart from missing the final connection and having to walk up an extraordinarily long hill, the travel was uneventful – I didn’t even get lost once! But still, I arrived at the meeting five minutes late. (the horror!) and sweaty.

I met, I talked, I listened, I posed for a photo…

And boom!, just like that I come out of the meeting a student. All ready to begin class tomorrow morning.

Wait. Tomorrow morning?

Oh, crap.

Death, Dismemberment and a Little Bit of Sass – my POD published book of insanely good short stories is now available at Lulu.com.

In the midst of a zombie apocalypse might one man have a second chance at love?

A family’s vacation is cut short when they try to help a stranded spaceship, but who really needs the help?

All of these and more in this collection of eleven murderously good short stories

There is –

• Where Wolf?
• Truckstop Unicorn
• Icy Dead People
• Dah’min
• Oneirophasia

And much, much more… Eleven in total.

Here’s what the critics are saying -

I’m very proud.

So, BUY IT NOW! and enjoy almost 200 pages of murdery goodness!

I know I did -

What goes up must come down. This is basically what my last month has been like, since I last posted anything here. I’ve been meaning to, but never got around to it. But, long story short, good shit happened, bad shit happened. Some other good shit happened. So it goes…

For a while there I was on a writing streak but then, as I often do with this project I’m working on, I stop and ask myself if I’m writing it the right way. Maybe it would work better in third person. No, First person. Maybe more linear storyline. No, go the disordered route. Second guessing my second guesses. So I’ve gone back to the drawing board… or writing board. And am re-planning the whole thing. This time on little cards.

Speaking of writing – The NaNoWriMo starts in less than a month. Will I work on this project? Or another one? Who knows. But whatever the case, I plan on being more prepared this year. I plan on getting some planning done first. Maybe. Also, whatever the case, I plan on totally rocking the 50,000 words this year. You just watch me.

You might’ve noticed that little guy in the corner. That there is a sneak peak. To what? Not telling. But that’s a little snippet of what I’ve been working on the last few days like a zombie with a hard-to-break-open skull in his hands. It’s all looking great and I’m hoping it won’t be too long till I get to show all of you people who care nothing about it. Wink.

Speaking of Zombies… Yesterday this little baby arrived in the mail -

It’s Forrest J Ackerman presents Anthology of the Living Dead. A great book full of awesome zombie-fied short stories. There’s some really good stuff in there so if you haven’t gotten a copy yet, you’re missing out. But never fear, for I is here, you can get a copy from Amazon – Click Here.

There’s something strange about this book though. I opened up to page 163 and found a short story whose title seemed oddly familiar and the Author of which had a very odd name. Here’s a picture of what I’m talking about -

Weird, hey?

It’s almost like it’s my short story in that book…

Oh wait, it is!

Booya!

I actually sat down and read it last night. It’s the first time I’ve looked at the story in over a year and the first time ever I’ve read my work without editing or any such thing, and I have to say I enjoyed it. Is it wrong to laugh out loud (several times) while reading your own short story? It’s not exactly akin to laughing at your own jokes, is it?

Well, in any case I found myself laughing throughout the story. All the things that I worried about not being funny, just being stupid and weak, they worked… for me at least. I hope they do for everyone else to.

Oh… I promised myself I wouldn’t cry. I’m just so proud!!

Wink.

Anyways, get yourself a copy. It’s awesome. I’m off to read the rest of the book soon, it’s all been great so far. Then up next on the To Be Read List is this odd little number –

You might’ve also noticed the picture of yours truly up in the banner. It’s not there because I’m vain or anything, I’m just that pretty. Actually, it was just a bit of practice that turned out much better than expected. And so I’ve taken to putting it up there. A little howdy do.

Anyway that’s it from me, catch ya later.

This is my favourite coffee mug…

Well? Say hello!

One may very well ask why it is my favourite coffee mug. One may say “Jeremy, while they hold the same quantity, you usually prefer the taller mugs where as this one is squat and fat… wouldn’t that immediately disqualify it from being your favourite coffee mug?”

And to this I would answer “Yeah, but…”

Ofcourse one may then rudely interrupt and continue with their observational questions. They might then say “But jeremy, this mug has a small handle only allowing for one or maybe two fingers where as you usually enjoy a handle large enough for at least three or more fingers. Would this not disqualify it from being your favourite coffee mug?

And to this I would nod politely because I knew that one had not finished and would thus interrupt any attempt on my part to answer at this time.

Then one may continue on this path of questioning and ask “Also, I notice this mug is brown and therefore does not go with anything in your closet! Wouldn’t this also disqualify it from being your favourite mug?”

And to all this I would say “This is true. I’m not sure why this is my favourite mug.”

and this is true. I’m not sure why this is my favourite mug. But it is. I’ve had it for at least five or six years now and it’s still holding coffee as well as it did on that first day when I brought it home, peeled off its price tag and then scratched all that sticky stuff that the price tag left behind and then cleaned it because you should always clean mugs when first bringing them….

I lost my train of thought.

Anyway, the best thing about my favourite coffee mug is -

It has coffee in it.

I just finished reading it.

When I was a kid, I don’t know about six or something, I saw the movie. Loved it. Forgot all about it.

Years later I had one of those flash backs when you remember something you loved as a kid. This has happened to me on several occasions that left me searching for a name of a movie with little more than a vague description of a few scene’s. (one of which was Dark Crystal)

But all I remembered of The Princess Bride was a man (that turned out to be Inigo Montoya played by the great Mandy Patinkin) climbing up somewhere (The Cliffs of Insanity)

and that’s all I had to go on. Until one day (after carrying that vague scene in the back of my mind for, give or take, five years) my father asked me in the midst of a conversation “have you seen The Princess Bride?”

to which I replied “The What What?” – sounds stupid, girly, and boring I thought. ha!

he went on “The Dread Pirate Roberts, The Fire Swamp, The Cliffs of Insanity…”

something clicked inside my head. “did some dude climb some cliff with just a rope?” I said.

yes. I bought the movie at once. on Video Cassette! (for those who don’t remember cassettes – think of giant computers that take up whole laboratory rooms and can do the times tables in an hour flat) and when it came out I upgraded it to DVD.

Then just a few weeks ago when I was in Angus and Robertson, skulking the classic section as I do every so often, I saw it there. I bought it without a thought. Well that’s not completely true, my one thought was – I LOVE the movie, why haven’t I thought of getting the book earlier?

and so I just finished it. I Loved it.

and you have to laugh.

because as I sometimes do when I finish a good book, I went online to see what other people have said about it. I especially like to check out people’s negative reviews. And here’s what I found – (I’ll try to put this in a way that won’t give anything away, but just in case you haven’t read it and want to, don’t read on…

Every negative review said it was because they preferred S. Morgenstern’s writing over William Golman’s!!!

Oh! People Huh?? What will they come up with next??

When I was in primary school, about grade two or three, our teacher told us that the Manatee/Dugong/Sea Cow was made when god tried to create a mermaid but made a mistake.

I have started several blogs before – each time thinking the same thing ‘this time I’m going to keep it going to keep it up’



and each time I haven’t.



I recently started using Firefox which has a cool little add-on for blogging called Performancing – a little icon sits on your status bar and when you click it up slides a window for typing in – you can add to an entry all day and just hit publish when your done… and i thought to myself ‘this is great, I’ll start another blog and because of this tool It’ll be simple to keep it going’



I signed up for this blog almost a week ago and I’m doing the first entry now.



So maybe it won’t last.





But I want to have a blog and keep it up for two reasons – I want to be a writer



so for one – It gives me a chance to write everyday about anything – even if I’m suffering from a bout of writer’s block and

for two – hopefully some people will read my blog and maybe when I finally finish a book and get it published they’re be people ready to buy it – or at least help get the word out.





that’s it for now

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