Posts Tagged ‘Coffee’

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?

When a werewolf hunter faces his worst nemesis yet – a psychiatrist – who will come out on top?

A woman in a religious cult begins to hear voices but will they lead her to salvation or destruction?

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 -

“This books is awesome!! Amazing! Four stars… What? If you want more stars, it’ll cost you extra. Where’s my money?”

“I’ll say whatever you want, just leave my kids alone. Please.”

“Oh god!! Stop hitting me!! Okay, okay, Five stars. FIVE STARS!! Oh god, I’m bleeding.”

I’m very proud.

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

I know I did -

AKA – A long post about what I’ve been up to lately…

Due to unforeseen circumstances, it looks as though I may not complete NaNoWriMo again this year.

I say “may” because there is still time left, and if I were to write just over 5000 words per day for the next week I might finish… Though a daily word target like that is highly unlikely to be hit around here. I haven’t even finished cleaning my place yet.

But I have come up with a list of ways to NOT get it finished. Here is the top ten things to do if you don’t want to finish NaNoWriMo this year.

Number Ten – Procrastinate.

…Obviously. Putting things off is a great way to not get things done and there are so many ways in which to do this.

A few personal favourites include watching Tv, cleaning, twittering, or even just going for a walk. All of these are a great way to push work away for a good chunk of time.

When all else fails, I like to use coffee as an excuse to put things off for a few minutes. This works well as I love my coffee and it sounds quite reasonable to say “I’ll get started right after a coffee”

Number Nine – Quit your job.

This sounds like a good idea, and in most ways it is.

But it won’t help you if you’re looking for more time to write. With so much extra time there is no longer any urgency to get any of it done. There is always time to do things later, you have all day tomorrow to catch up and next week you can work extra hard all week to make up for what you didn’t do this week.

I quit my job a few weeks ago. For other reasons, not to make time for writing, but I did think that with all that extra time and with a little tenacity I might be able to get a lot done.

That was until I…

Number Eight – Burn your hand

A great way to keep yourself from writing is to incapacitate yourself. And what could be more laborious and slow than typing with one hand? I mean apart from typing with no hands.

Nothing. Exactly.

So that’s what I did.

This happened to me one night while saving a box of kittens from a burning building, I was set upon by a group of ninjas and robots… and robot ninjas. They were all packing microwave meals, overcooked and only seconds out of the microwave. They demanded the box of kittens and when I didn’t comply they began throwing the meals at me. I managed to dodge most of them except one, which gave me second degree burns on the fingers and palm of my left hand.

I swear all that is true… Except the building, the kittens, the ninjas, the robots and the robot ninjas.

Number Seven – Watch Television.

I know I put this under number ten as a form of procrastination but there are two reasons that it needs it’s own spot.

For one, Television is the enemy of creativity. It really is.

Just by having it on you’re slowing yourself down, but added to that it dulls the creative process. I’ve always found that days in which I watch less television, I get alot more (and better) work done. Unfortunately television works much like any addiction in that unless you cut yourself off from it completely, including all access to it, then it will slowly and inevitably creep back into your life.

And I’m not ready to do that just yet.

Maybe after this season of Dollhouse has finished…

And the second reason this got it’s own entry – I accidentally miscounted and when I realised I didn’t have something for seven this was the first thing I came up with.

Number Six – Get Tattoed

A great way to spend a sunday afternoon, having needles stuck in your arm and/or leg and leaving deposits of ink there. Ah, good times.

Got two done myself last week… After six years since my last tattoo, I finally got around to getting some new ones.

And if you wanted to waste a little more time you can do what I did and walk to the tattoo parlor. Then, once the tattooing is done, you can find out that you’re in some backwards place that doesn’t have eftpos and so you’ll need to spend some more time walking to the shopping centre down the road. All in all, I spent about an hour and a half walking that day.

** A haircut could be substituted here if you prefer not to get tattooed… Or you can do what I did and get a haircut aswell.

Number Five – Buy a new computer

Who doesn’t like a new toy? Especially a nice big-ass super-expensive one like this –

This is my spanky new bitchin’ all-in-one touchscreen multimedia high definition yada yada computer. Ain’t she sweet? The touch screen is fun to play with. It’s heaps big monitor-wise and it’s all new and pretty.

The best thing about new toys like this?

You can spend all day just setting it up. Installing all your favourite programs and getting all the settings to how you like them and so on. I’m still not finished doing all that.

Number Four – Have a personal life

I’ve been trying this out lately. Doesn’t seem to be working for me. I’ve learned that there is nothing better to get in the way of writing than to have a personal life. Especially one as disasterous as mine.

People lie, people betray, people confuse and humiliate, people leave voids and people leave sorrow.

And you can’t control them or understand them like you do the characters you’re writing.

Bastards.

Number Three – Work on plot

Stop and think about your plot. Are things flowing as you want them too? Is the right information revealed at the right stage? Which scene goes next? Is the story moving to slow? Or too fast? And so on…

This is a great wait to slow down your writing. And if you really think about it, it may stop you altogether.

I did this. I decided to do a bit of plot planning, starting with listing all the scenes/elements that I wanted in my story. I came up with a list of 105 things, and it’s still growing… much more slowly now but still it’s growing.

Here’s a wordle of the list -

(because I haven’t posted a wordle in a while)

Anyway, working on the plot always seems to lead to –

Number Two – Starting from scratch.

Yeah, I’ve started to do this…

Well, I will when I’ve finished with everything else on this list. I’m still working on the plot a bit more. I’m going to put all of the elements/scenes that I listed in order and then write more on each one… and all the rest of it. You know how plotting is.

Writing is like eating soup with a fork, only you keep missing the bowl and stabbing yourself in the forehead.

Number One –

Instead of writing the story, write a top ten list about how to fail at writing the story.

To be fair, it’s not exactly a top ten list. It’s more of a ‘first ten things I thought of that I’ve been doing lately instead of working on NaNoWriMo’ list…

There are probably more that I could think of but I have some writing to do… So I’m going for a nap now.

Hey, how ya doin?

I’m doing Awe… wait for it… some.

I am doing awesome because of a recent purchase which arrived just yesterday. It’s a little Toshiba Mini Notebook, an Nb205… Just to get technical on ya.

Aint she pretty? I shall call her Abigail.

She arrived in the mail just yesterday afternoon, a mere half an hour before I had to go out and due to a late (and long) bus ride I only arrived back home with an hour before I had to leave for work.

I had to wait so long to play with my new toy.

But Abigail has been worth the wait. I’ve just finished installing and setting up all the programs that I know and love and now I’m getting a chance to just click and play and type.

She has some pretty decent hardware, almost on par with my larger notebook I bought just two years ago but the biggest selling point for me was the nine hour battery. On high power saving mode, the battery is supposed to last nine hours! Now that is awe… wait for it… some.

Now, I’m off to do some writing… either that or some procrastinating.

either way – I need a coffee.

Until next time, This is Captain Awesome signing off.

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.

It seems like such a nice day.

It’s a little colder than it has been the last week or so, perfect weather for a nice hot coffee any time of the day. In fact, I’m having one now… Mmmm Coffee…

I slept in today. After four days in a row of getting up at 3 am it’s pretty sweet to roll out of bed after nine. I got up and had a coffee while I read a bit of American Gods. I had a bit of a ride on my stationary bike and then settled in on the couch to watch some Tv while I read some blog updates.

Aaaah…

Then I remembered I had to do some work today as well.

Especially since I’ve barely written two thousand words in the last eight days.

Urgh!

I have done a couple of things, though. You may’ve noticed a spanky new static front page to my site. Internet high five!

Okay, that’s about it. Just one thing.

I’m supposed to be starting my novel but alas, find myself as unmotivated as a post-coital praying mantis. Tired, drained and headless.

Every so often I try looking for a better way of working. Some way that keeps me going. Something that flips a switch in my brain and makes me crazy productive and nutty creative.

I’ve read about how several authors, Neil Gaiman for example (since I’m reading some of his work at the moment), write long hand pen on paper style for their first draft. And I’m considering trying that again.

I’m also wondering If I’m focusing on the right project. So I move from one to the other to the other again. I have one project that I know how it begins, unless I change something, but I still have no idea what the story is. I was hoping I could write a sentence or two and it’d show me itself but no. It’s to lazy to do that.

I have another project that I’m just not into working on at the moment. I think I made a wrong turn somewhere a while back, and I’ll have to go back and do something about it.

Then there’s another project that I know the whole story (I’ve mentioned this one a lot before – Project Apocalypse) but I don’t know how to write it. I’m starting to think I just don’t have the skills to write it yet. Also – I think there’s something missing. One tiny element. Not sure what, yet.

Mostly I think I’m just looking for a reason why I can’t get past the first page.

So, What’s your excuse?

Go on, talk about it.

Okay, I’ll go first.

Today, I got a lot of work done… at work!

I’m serious!

On the weekends I get to work at around quarter past five. I set up everything for when I open and then I sit down for a coffee and a cigarette or two. Then, at six a.m., I open the store. It’s always very quiet for the first hour and a half to two hours, sometimes even a bit longer.

First off I make my way through all the paperwork that needs doing but that still leaves me with a whole lot of time before it gets any busier than a customer every twenty minutes or so.

Sometimes I use the time to do some cleaning around the store and sometimes I spend the time reading…

(If my boss is reading this – I swear these are all lies! ALL LIES!)

But today I decided to get some writing done. I keep all of my writing files synched to my treo 650, so I can write or make notes wherever I am.

I’ve been working on a short story for several months now, (not because I was working very hard on it but because I kept pushing it aside for other things but always kept it on top of my work list.) and yesterday I picked it up again and got a few hundred words done… see yesterday’s entry, I think I remember mentioning it.

But, anyway, At work this morning I picked up my Treo 650 and the words start flowing out of me and I tap out over a thousand words on that little keyboard.

Over a thousand!

So, I actually got a whole lot of work done at work.

Oh, the irony!

Then, once I was home, I had a bit of lunch. Then a nap. (hey, I was up at 3 a.m.!!) and then finally finished off the story. And gave myself a pat on the back. Good boy! Good boy!!

It’s called Out of Reach. It’s about a family heading out on holiday… in outer space!… and they run into trouble….

- insert suspenseful music here.

I’m really happy with the way it turned out but it’s kinda funny. Not ha ha funny but weird funny. I began writing this story because there was a scene in an old crappy short story that I wanted to keep, so I started writing this story to fit it in.

Then I didn’t write it in.

I know what you’re thinking – Osh me gosh! are these things probable?

Yes, Yes they are.

Bye now.

I’m as nervous as a haemophiliac vampire hunting.

Well maybe not that much. At least a Haemophobic though.

If your remember back here. My short story Icy Dead People is being published in the Anthology of the Living Dead

Well, a couple of days ago they sent me back the story with a couple of editing notes added here and there. A couple of small things to add or change, no biggy.

I think I made some good changes. Cleaned up the story a bit and yadda yadda yadda. I think it came out good.

And now I’ve sent it back to them.

Eeeeerghk!

apart from that, I’m feeling pretty good with my first dealings with editors and what-not and people who seem to know what they’re doing.

Back to work on my other projects now. Well tomorrow anyway, my brein is feeling a little fried right now and I also have work tonight. Gak.

P.s. – I’m not adding the changes to my site just yet. There might be more changes to make.

also, just a note, – This is my 101st blog entry. I guess that deserves a coffee.

Welcome to Blog entry #45 for this year, which means I have already surpassed the amount of entries I wrote last year. I’m on fire, I’m on a roll. I am a rolling fire. Watch out I’ll burn you. Then I’ll administer sub-par first aid, leaving you twisted and scarred.

Oh yeah!

Last week I decided to set myself a deadline for Doug of the Darkness updates. After some serious consideration involving a coin, I decided on Thursdays.

I’m happy to say I missed my deadline… by only 14 hours. How is that? Sa-weeet!

So check out the new update here – Link

Also, I HAVE A NEW JOB!

okay… not really.

But, in an effort to be more productive, I’ve decided to do things a little differently… Or at least attempt to do things differently. You know how I am with sticking at stuff.

I’m going to try and treat writing as more of a job. With a schedule and a lunch break and shit.

The way I do it at the moment is this – My laptop sits on my coffee table, a file or two open. I write a bit when I feel like it, sometimes inspiration seems to hit and I’ll suddenly type out about five hundred, maybe a thousand words. I manage to get things done, for the most part, but I feel like I could be getting ten times as much done if I did things differently.

The other problem with doing things the way I have, is that it feels like I’m always writing and yet I hardly ever am. I don’t really have a time where I say “Nope, I’m on a break. I’ll just write a note and I’ll get onto that after lunch.”

And it’s not that I won’t write after my “work hours” because I will. But I won’t feel guilty about stopping every five minutes to watch whatever is on TV.

So I figure I’ll start about 9 or 10 o’clock. I’ll work for about three hours and have a lunch break. Maybe a half hour. Then I’ll come back and work another two hours and Bang! I’m done for the day. Five hours of work everyday, and still plenty of time to read and watch movies and shit.

So, what’d you think?

Will it work and I’ll suddenly be a super-productive writer and finally get a novel or two finished? I hope so.

I plan to start this on Monday. So I’ll let you know how I went that afternoon.

After work.

Four, if you include this blog entry…

Due to a long afternoon nap yesterday and a few too many coffees I wasn’t getting any sleep, or even attempting it. At around one o’clock I finished editing some photos of me in my spanky new glasses and uploaded them to my various sites as profile pics.

With my procrastinating finally done, I was free to go back to writing the next Doug update. I had been, well not blocked but… stalling, for the last day or so because I wasn’t sure where I was going but suddenly – Inspiration struck me like a cricket bat wrapped in tin foil – And I was off and writing.

I finished the entry two hours later and uploaded it – Check It!!.

I think it’s one of my favourite scene’s for a while now.

Also, as I mentioned a blog entry or two ago, I finished a new short story. I’ve finally given up editing it and Have uploaded that too. It’s called Alterations. It’s gotten a little bit of good feedback so far over at writing.com, but some have also complained of it’s ambiguity. Maybe I’ll turn it into a novel sometime, but not just yet.

There was also the short story I finished a couple of months back. I finally got around to rewriting it and I’ve finished editing that as well. It’s called Dah’min. So that’s posted on my site too now. Read, enjoy, have a coffee, pat a kitty.

In other news – I’ve entered Icy Dead People into a contest at Writers Cafe, where the winning prize is being published in an anthology! Do I think I’ll win? Not a chance, unless no one else enters. Cross your fingers for me?

And here’s the bonus… for me… I’ve finished one of my New Years Resolutions!

Booya!!

#3 – Complete 3 short stories.

Now – Onto the Novels!!!

So, All in all it’s been a pretty eventful few hours of the freezing cold morning. It’s now 5am. I’m going to bed…

Good thing I’m still on holidays.

Good night/morning and remember to check out Dangers in the night Sky, The latest update to Doug of the Darkness… and my new short stories Alterations and Dah’min.

Photos, photos, photos!

It’s day four of my holidays and I’m still going strong… apart from the getting things done part.

But!! I do have a more substantial reason for my worklessness today then yesterday.

I had shit to do.

First I donned my shoes -

Then I played with a yoyo -

Then I went digging through the garbage -

… for which I have a reasonable explanation. – I’m a stalker… wait no, that’s my garbage!

I had to go and pick up a shirt that I’d ordered (damn no-having-stock-in-my-size stores!) and realised that while I was cleaning up last night, I’d thrown away the reciept. (cut to me at the store not needing the reciept anyway)

Also while at the store – I got my hair cut, I bought some pizza pockets, I bought some wine, I got my eyes checked at the optometrists (and I didn’t giggle!) , and I bought some new glasses.

Quite an exciting day!

Then I came home and had a coffee with my sister who has come up from Melbourne.