Just Another Writer's Journal

I’ve been setting up my next book in Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP.) This is the second book I have published through KDP, and it’s a reasonably straightforward process.   I first uploaded a draft of the book and cover months ago to check that I had the formatting right. This is something I recommend doing; if your text layout goes into the trim area, or has some other problem, the upload will be rejected. You want to make sure your design is right before you finish the layout of your whole book.     Anyway, I just finished the manuscript and went to upload it and the updated cover. When I did, I got an Internal Error for both the cover and the book. That confused me, as I hadn't made significant changes to the formatting. I tried uploading the previous version of the text and cover—the ones that had uploaded successfully some months ago—and got errors on those too!     I tried some different things uploading different versions and managed at one point to g...

  I’m really excited to share that my next book is almost ready for publication. Chasing Dante was supposed to be finished last year, and then…stuff happened. First health issues intervened, and then a succession of other things followed—what a weird year this has been—and so it was delayed. And delayed again. But now the book is on track to be published in October, which will be almost a year late. Doesn’t time slip away? Right now I have nothing to share but the title, and the cover, but I’m excited about it, so here’s the cover: Stand by for more news.

The longest novel, according to The Guinness Book of Records , is Proust's " Remembrance of Things Past ." (Also called “ In Search of Lost Time .”) It weighs in at 9,609,000 characters, including spaces. I immediately thought; ' here's my chance to get in the Guinness Book of Records. ' Then I did a little math. Let's say your typical novel is 70,000 words. And lets say that's about 371,000 characters. Then Remembrance of Things Past is the equivalent of 25 regular books. Unless you used VERY small type, I'm not sure you could even get that printed in one edition. I don't think I'm going to try and beat that record. Note:  Remembrance of Things Past  was published in seven volumes.

Alex Edelman is an American comedian who seems to be doing quite well in Britain. I came across him in an episode of As Yet Untitled (an English chat show) and then stumbled upon a comedy bit he did about coming out. He's not gay, but it's a funny bit. The premise is that he comes out every year at Thanksgiving to annoy his uncle, who hates gay people. It's become a tradition such that; "The turkey come out, the potatoes come out, I come out." No doubt about it, he's cute too...and some of the comments talk about that, one reading "I kept staring at his butt." Hey, if he's gonna do a routine about Coming Out, that's what's gonna happen! But let's not objectify him too quickly. I next stumbled on a radio series on the BBC (you can hear it online) called Alex Edelman's Special Relationships . It's a chat show with a variety of guests discussing a topic. Actually, it's sort of like As Yet Untitled . The episode on F...

This week, an article appeared hyping an audio tape of one of the last meetings of The Beatles during their final days, and the article makes the claim : 'This tape rewrites everything we knew about the Beatles." Before I go into full beast mode, let me note that no transcription or audio recording of the tape is provided, so maybe it does change 'everything we knew' about the end of The Beatles, but what is presented, does not change everything we know. Not by a long shot. Synopsis: The article makes the claim that it's accepted history that The Beatles knew that Abbey Road was going to be their final album ( Abbey Road is regarded by fans as their final album as it was recorded after Let It Be , even though Let It Be was released after Abbey Road .) The article goes on to talk about a recording of a business meeting just prior to the release of Abbey Road , where John and George are talking about continuing after Abbey Road , while Paul seems less than ...

It’s always interesting where ideas for stories come from. Even I don’t always understand—or remember—where an idea for a story came from. Often, an idea will come to me, and I start writing, and half an hour later, I can’t remember exactly what the original idea was. It’s already changed dramatically from the original concept. Some stories are based on people I see, and I try to imagine a back story for them. Other stories are based on situational ideas that come to me after reading something. Sometimes a story comes to you pretty whole, and sometimes it comes in parts. You have an initial idea, you write it, but then you need more. And more. And you slog away at it. And sometimes you get really lucky, and you encounter something that fits perfectly into your story. I'm currently working on a story about a guy that falls in love with a footballer. (English football.) I’ve already written a few thousand words of the story, but at the moment it is really ...

I was just reading about the latest conservative representative to be caught in a gay[1] scandal—it seems to happen every six months or so—and it made me wonder why. But it’s not; 'why do these people find themselves in this position?'—because being in the closet is likely to force them into these situations. And it’s not; 'why are there gay conservatives'?—that’s a topic for another day. The question I wonder is; 'why did these gay conservative legislators vote or promote anti-gay legislation?' Because, inevitably, these people turn out to have voted against the interests of LGBTQ+ people. Do they lack empathy, and think they have a get-out-of-jail-free card for themselves? Are they so full of self loathing that they do it to punish themselves? Do they think that if they pass one more piece of legislation, it might frighten themselves straight? Or are they using it as a beard? To hide the fact that they are gay? “ You know, that guy Jim, he see...