Recently my family and I decamped to the Polish coast for a week of quality time before the annual school grind sets back in for another year. I didn’t plan to write anything substantial while there, if for no other reason than the Baltic is at its warmest at this time of year: sometimes the water is as mild as +5 degrees and, if one can dodge the icebergs*, one can have quite a refreshing swim. However, these swims do not promote creativity. Instead, afterwards I indulge in my guiltiest pleasure: taking photos of strangers. Continue reading “Writer on Vacation: A Guilty Pleasure”
Patrick Turley Announces New Release
Author Patrick Turley is pleased to announce the release of his new book, Welcome to Hell: Three and a Half Months of Marine Corps Boot Camp.
The only existing first-person, insider account of Marine Corps Boot Camp, documenting the good, the bad, the ugly and the hilarious in the making of the Few and the Proud. Patrick Turley captured it in his forthcoming book “Welcome to Hell: Three and a Half Months of Marine Corps Boot Camp”. John Patrick Shanley said it only as a former Marine and Pulitzer Prize winner could: “It’s great to have gone to Marine Corps boot camp. It’s terrible to be in Marine Corps boot camp. It’s fun to read about Marine Corps boot camp.”
“This well-told and entertaining insider’s description of the deadly serious and also sometimes humorous process of making Marines will bring back memories to all former Corps members and provide some understanding of their special quality to those who only occasionally glimpse them in an airport.” – Publisher’s Weekly
Welcome to Hell: Three and a Half Months of Marine Corps Boot Camp was released on on August 14, 2012 by Chronology Books (an imprint of History Publishing Co.). It is available on Amazon.com, Amazon UK, and Barnes & Noble in print and as an e-book.
Taking Your Pulse – A BookPulse Tutorial
Quick heads up: Since I only uploaded my one book, I didn’t anticipate a problem with this. Apparently, you can’t upload more than one book unless you have a separate Facebook page for each one. This is important information BookPulse might want to place front and centre, just sayin’.
There are some things I am extremely lazy about. Unfortunately, one of those things tends to be self-promotion. I am not good at it and have no great love for it. Actually, it’s worse than that: I actively dislike it. But we’re constantly told (let’s be honest, “harangued” might be a better word) that it’s an essential part of the writer’s toolkit… and not only independent writers but those poor captives of the publishing industry, the traditional writers, too. I kid, of course: we are all brothers and sisters of The Mighty Word, and “Kumbaya” sounds exactly the same when sung by my gruel-spattered co-minions as it does in the lofty yet slightly sterile halls of Simon & Schuster… although the soft moans of existential despair accompanying the former can be a little disconcerting.
But I digress. As I tend to do. Probably because I can already feel the ennui descending as my main topic looms like a grey, haunted, driverless engine on a fog-blanketed night.
So. Once in a while, I break out of my truculent, indolent recalcitrance and stumble on something potentially useful to our collective writerly aspirations. (Apparently, I also break out the Thesaurus.) Continue reading “Taking Your Pulse – A BookPulse Tutorial”
Celebrate Writers and Editors
Like every month, September contains a basket load of oddball holidays and observances. There’s National Lazy Mom’s Day, Wonderful Weirdos Day (technically, September 9th, but celebrated every day in my house), Stay Away from Seattle Day, and the delightfully amusing Talk Like a Pirate and One Hit Wonder Days. Although we just missed International Enthusiasm week, I hope you might have a little excitement left for one of my favorite September observances: Be Kind to Writers and Editors Month. No, I am not making this one up. In 1984, someone at Lone Star Publishing fielded one too many questions about to when use “lie” or “lay”, went completely off his nut and covered the entire office with red-Sharpied conjugations of several naughty Latin irregular verbs. Continue reading “Celebrate Writers and Editors”