Dmac9000’s blog

It finally happened. On Tuesday, September 9, 2008, I had Six Sentences published on the Six Sentences (http://sixsentences.blogspot.com/) website.

I’ve blogged about Six Sentences before, but basically, you write six sentences about anything you want. Then you submit them, along with a short biography. Then you wait to see if they are accepted.

If they are accepted, Robert McEvily (how cool is that name?) will send you an email notifying you. If your submission is not accepted, then you are rewarded with silence. Sounds easy, right?

I had it all figured out. I was submitting my short stories all over, working to get them published. I figured that in

the meantime, I would submit six sentences and get the publication credit for a quick, easy win. Well, that’s not exactly how it worked.

I submitted three separate submissions before one of them was accepted. It wasn’t nearly as easy as I thought it might be. But, I am happy to announce that I now have been published on the Six Sentences website.

But along the way, something else happened. I fell in love with Six Sentences. I’ve been following the accepted submissions for a couple of months now and I have to say that they – for the most part – are pretty dang good. I even went out and bought the book, 6S Volume 1. 6S is short, of course, for 6 Sentences. But also, if you say it out loud, it sounds like success.

Anyway, I’m a fan, not just because they finally published one of my submissions, but because the stuff they publish is pretty good. If you haven’t checked it out, I suggest you do. You might be pleasantly surprised.

~Doug

So I recently had one of my short stories, Woman Called Witch, turned into a podcast by the folks at The Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine (http://dunesteef.com/). Okay, some of this is just bragging, but it also brings up the conversation of where podcasting fits in the bigger scheme of publication.

I’m a pretty big fan of podcasts, at least in the form of short stories and serialized novels. I regularly listen to Pseudopod (http://pseudopod.org/), Drabblecast (http://web.mac.com/normsherman/Site/Podcast/Podcast.html), and Scott Sigler (http://www.scottsigler.com/).

I also believe that the publishing industry is a little behind the times. I remember an agent telling me in 2007 that she just got a book deal for one of her authors and that it would be published in 2012. That’s 5-6 years out. Holy cow!

Now, I may be wrong, but an industry that’s locked in 5-6 years out in this fast-paced, Internet-rich society seems to be a little out of touch. At the speed technology is growing, in 5-6 years we will have solved problems we don’t even know will exist yet.

Now that’s not to say that podcasts will replace the publishing industry. I don’t think it will, at least not for some time, but it is an interesting niche. You see, podcasts aren’t just like audio books. They’re more like the old radio broadcasts of the thirties and forties. They incorporate some sound effects, like gunshots or footsteps.

So what’s the answer? I don’t know. What I do know is that the Internet and technology will play a much larger role than they do today. What that will turn into is anybodies guess, but I think it’s an exciting time to live and help formulate.

~Doug

This past Labor Day weekend, my family and I went on a road trip to El Paso from Austin. It’s about 600 miles, a hard one-day drive, but we like to break it up across two days so that we aren’t killing ourselves.

The trip was to go see my father-in-law who had just been diagnosed with prostrate cancer. He’s a stubborn old coot and hard of hearing. We originally thought, when making this trip, that his condition was much more serious than it actually was. Come to find out prostrate cancer is pretty easy to treat – as far as cancers go.

So as visits go, we wouldn’t have had to drop everything to run out the door, but a visit was overdue and it was good for Maria to see her family again.

But on the way home, we did something that was really pretty cool. I had picked up a copy of Cynthia Leitich Smith’s book, Tantalize, for Sarah, our 12-year-old. But Maria thought it would be a good idea for us to read this one first, since it looked like it might be a little risqué.

I don’t know how it happened, but Maria started reading the book aloud to me while I was driving on the way home. When we switched and she drove, I read. I’ve never done anything like this before, but it was really neat. It was intimate, and personal, and just between us – Sarah was busy in the backseat watching movies on the portable DVD player.

The book was actually pretty good. It wasn’t as bad as we thought and we’re going to let Sarah read it. When we got home, we still had about 25 pages left to go. We quickly unloaded the car and went in on the bed to finish the book.

If you’ve ever listened to audio books as you drive, you probably know what I mean when I say that it really made the miles tick by. But the added touch of having Maria read to me – or vice versa – was really something I will cherish. It was a wonderful experience and I’m glad we did it. In fact, I’m kind of looking forward to the next road trip!

~Doug

It’s pronounced “delicious,” and it’s a website where you can put links to your favorite websites.

I know, it doesn’t sound too exciting, but actually, it kind of is. I mean, imagine that you can get to your “favorites” from whatever computer you happen to be on. Think about it – ever had a computer crash and lost links to all your favorites? It sucks.

On top of that, your friends can all get access to your favorites too. Another author friend of mine had a link to an agent query website, and I kept forgetting to ask him for it. Once I did, he kept forgetting to get it for me. Finally he put it up on his website but if we’d been using de.licio.us at the time, I could’ve just taken it from his favorite links.

Of all the “social networking” I need to do to promote my writing, I think that de.licio.us is one of the ones I’ve found most useful.

~Doug

Thursday night, with little or no fanfare, I received word that one of my short stories, My Superpower, had been accepted for publication by The Tiny Globule. And not only had it been accepted, it was already published.

This is the fourth story I’ve had accepted for publication, but the first one actually published. It was a strange feeling.

First of all, it was strange to actually see a story I had written posted out on someone else’s web site. That meant that someone else enjoyed my story enough to go to the trouble of posting it (and having converted material to web content, that’s a lot of work). And it was all without warning. There was no email first announcing the acceptance of the story, or contracts to sign releasing the First Electronic Publication Rights, or anything. It just happened.

I guess I somehow expected my first publication to be heralded by the blare of trumpets, a release party, champagne, caviar, and much well-wishing and congratulatory slapping of my back.

None of that occurred. What did occur, it being Thursday night, was that I got to clean out the cat litter boxes and take out the trash in preparation for it to be picked up early Friday morning. On top of that, I realized that we were out of cat litter so I had to make a quick run to the store to pick up more at nine o’clock at night.

As I was checking out with my cat litter, I wondered to myself if the cashier had any idea that she was dealing with a published author, and then I wondered, maybe she was one too.

~Doug

Tonight at my writing group, we started talking about blogging and micro-blogging and Kelly, one of the group, asked why he should care about blogging. By extension, he was asking why Twitter, or MySpace, or FaceBook.

Fair question.

And one I couldn’t really answer right away. Granted, I’ve attended a workshop at a writer’s conference on the importance of social networking for up-and-coming authors, but I found that I had a hard time articulating my answer. So I thought about it, and it inspired me to write this blog.

A little background, without trying to offend anyone’s sensibilities, but we’re not a young crowd. Not old, but not young. I may be the oldest of the group, or nearly so, at 44. I don’t remember. Kelly may have a year on me.

But the point is, we grew up at a time when we went outside to play with each other, rather than staying inside and texting, or IMing, or blogging, or whatever. But my son, 19 years old, has. He also goes outside. He’s on the swim team for his university, he plays basketball, he runs, you get the idea.

But does that mean we’re too old to text, or blog, or Tweet? Hell no! It just means that we have to spend more time figuring out how to do it.

So to the topic of the blog. I guess that Kelly’s asking, “What’s in it for me?”

There are a lot of easy answers. For one, I’ve lost contact with a lot of my old army buddies. Sure, we can find each other again, maybe, but with something like MySpace, or FaceBook, or LinkedIn, it makes it a lot easier.

It’s also easier to let everyone know what you’re doing, all at once, than it is to send individual emails to all of your friends and family. By blogging, they all get the news at once, therefore, everyone stays informed.

For me, it’s also a way to connect with other authors and potential fans. Maybe that’s a bit conceited on my part to think about fans when I don’t even have anything in print yet, but I’m in this for the long haul. I want to get the mechanism in place now so that when I do get published, I’m not scrambling to do all of this then.

If I have a book picked up for publication, it’s going to create a bunch of work with editing and re-editing, etc. The last thing I want to do is try to build my social network then. For me, I’d rather have it in place so that when the time comes, I can announce when my book is going to hit the shelves.

So, as an aspiring author, I’m going to blog, and tweet, and MySpace, and FaceBook, and anything else I can do to build up potential interest in my writing. But on top of that, I’m actually having a lot of fun doing it.

~Doug

Last night I checked my email and discovered that one of my short stories, Woman Called Witch, had been accepted for publication by The Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine. Rather than publish in print, the magazine creates Podcasts of the stories they buy, which means that my story is going to be turned into a Podcast.

I have to admit that I’m thrilled by that. I’ve been listening to serialized novels and short stories in Podcast form now for almost a year and I think that Podcasts are one of the up-and-coming methods of publication in the future. I’m ready to embrace that technology!

The Dunesteef Team even asked me to record an introduction to the story. I’m thrilled about that too! I mean, what an opportunity! I know that marketing my writing is going to be a lot of work, but they just gave me a little help!

Then, to top it off, I received word from The Monsters Next Door Magazine that they want to publish my story, Number Two for Brains, in their fifth issue that comes out in mid-November 2008.

I can hardly believe it! I’ve been sending out short stories since early March 2008 and now, finally, magazines are starting to accept them. Now all I need to do is find an agent to represent the book I’m trying to sell.

This past weekend, my wife and I went up to Dallas for a couple of days. We had a good weekend, but that’s not the point of my blog. The point of my blog is that twice, on two separate days, at two separate locations, I was told that I look like the guy on MythBusters. For the record, that would be Adam Savage.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been told that I look like him. I usually get that about once a month or so. Even my son and his friends say it, but I figured it was just because they were kids and couldn’t come up with good comebacks when we’ve been verbally sparring.

But I’ve never had it happen back-to-back like this weekend. My wife says that it’s because the last time I got my haircut, the stylist cut it too short. I’m not sure I agree.

I have to admit that I really don’t like it when someone tells me that. Used to be, when I was younger – and thinner – people would tell me I looked like Chuck Norris. What happened? I went from looking like the guy who gets to blow things up in movies like Missing in Action to a guy who gets to blow things up on The Discovery Channel.

Now granted, either way I resemble someone who gets to blow things up, which in-and-of-itself is somewhat cool, but somehow, I feel like I’ve been cheated somewhere.

I mean, Chuck Norris is like, Chuck Norris. There are about a bazillion Chuck Norris jokes floating around the Internet – I’ve even blogged some that I made up. Adam Savage is “that guy on MythBusters.” No one even knows his name. What’s up with that?

Adam played “Jimmy,” the stockroom boy for “Mr. Wipple” in the old Charmin commercials. Bet you didn’t know that, did you? Chuck played Walker, Texas Ranger.

Adam works in the Special Effect industry. Chuck does his own stunts.

Adam was a voice for animated characters in Sesame Street. Well, need I go on?

Now, don’t get me wrong. Adam Savage has done a lot in his life that he should really be proud of. If you go to his website, www.adamsavage.com, you’ll see a lot of his creations and accomplishments.

So I guess what all this boils down to, after doing a bit of research on Adam Savage, is that he’s really not such a bad guy. He’s just not Chuck Norris. I guess that’s okay because neither am I. But then again, I’m not Adam Savage either.

It stands for the National Novel Writing Month and it happens every November. The idea is that you write a 50,000 word novel in just 30 days. That boils down to 1,667 words a day if you spend everyday writing. Typically, I can write 1,667 in less than two hours.

Fifty-thousand words comes out to about 200 pages, double-spaced, more or less. Catcher in the Rye and Brave New Worlds are two examples of what 50,000 words looks like, just to give you some idea about what you’re up against.

There is also a book that you can read along the way, called No Plot, No Problem by Chris Baty. Chris is one of the original founders of NaNoWriMo. It all started out as a bar-bet. What they discovered, once they began their daunting journey, is that when they ran out of plot, the characters took over and started doing things the authors didn’t expect. I’ve seen it in action – it’s true.

NaNoWriMo is a great exercise for a lot of reasons. One reason is that you don’t have time to go back and edit. You have to push forward. If there’s something from the day before you don’t like, you can highlight it, but never, ever delete it! Remember, your goal is to achieve 50,000 words by the end of the month. With that in mind, you have to understand that maybe you aren't writing the next great American novel. So what?

Speaking of writing novels, I participated in my first NaNoWriMo in November 2006, and I was a “winner.” That meant that I succeeded in writing 50,000 words in the month of November. But it was FAR more important to me than that. What was important to me was that was the FIRST novel I’d ever written. Everything prior to that had been short stories. By participating in NaNoWriMo, I discovered that I COULD write a novel, and that was a HUGE milestone for me. I’ve gone on to write four more novels since then and I’m shopping one of them around for an agent as we speak.

So, needless to say, I’m a big fan of NaNoWriMo and I plan on participating again this year. In fact, I’m already gearing up for it. I’ll also be poking all of my friends to try to get them to write as well. If you’re interested in participating, check out NaNoWriMo.org, the official website where you register and track your progress. If you sign up, look me up. I’m Dmac9000 on the NaNoWriMo site and I really hope to see you there!

I went to see Step Brothers this weekend with Will Ferrell and John Reilly. If you like Anchorman, Talladaga Nights, and Walk Hard, you'll like Step Brothers. There were some slow parts in the movie, but there were some spots where I just couldn't quit laughing. I'd give 3 1/2 or 4 stars.

But everyone at work is still talking about The Dark Knight. It is, by far, the movie conversation of choice and has been for a couple of weeks now. Kimmmbo, one of my friends at work, saw it this last weekend at the IMAX theater. I can only imagine that the picture quality must have been awesome (although the IMAX theater here at the Bob Bullock museum isn't the most comfortable theater in town)!

I may have to check it out once the hype dies down a little and I don't have to fight capacity crowds at IMAX.

~Doug