FUCK ME HARD: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Sense.
   I saw this.
   In seeing sense, I decided not to call this post FUCK ME HARD. It might have attracted a different style of comment. I'm not saying the comments would have been good or bad.
   Different.
   Is the product as advertised? Recently I blogged about being offered a meal and receiving a different kind of meal. That was one of those writerly moments packed with symbolism. I wasn't offered the wrong meal in an actual place.
   No, I made that up to illustrate a point.
   If I want steak, don't bring me soup unless I asked for soup followed by steak. Is the product, the service, the thing, meant to be that way?
   Okay, mistakes are made in restaurants. But not with spam. Spam is a category of mistake all to itself.
   I'm going to fuck you hard = I'm going to spam you hard.
  The comment means something else uttered under different skies. In a bedroom, or a mocked-up bedroom in Ikea, I'm going to fuck you hard takes on a certain connotation.
   This is true of a scene in a movie, whether comedy, porno, or comedy porno.
   In my in-box, it means spam.
   I'm going to fuck you hard in your in-box.
   Okay, that could still apply in Ikea or at the movies.
   But this business of pumping me hard or offering to ride me hard, fuck me hard, do me hard, by telling me this in multiple e-mails...
   That clutters my in-box. This is not a euphemism.
   Anyway...
   I know this spam doesn't work. Viagra? No thanks. Rolex? No. Does Dr Dre really need the help of spammers to promote his headphones? I think he'll get by just fine without me.
   And advertising?
   I don't run around waving books in faces.
   This is how I used to purchase books...
   In the vast past, I'd walk into a bookshop with a definite idea of what I went there for. I'd heard about a book. So I went looking for the title, or the author. I'd go and look in a category.
   Finding what I wanted to check out, I'd read the blurb on the back cover. Then I'd read the first page. If you didn't disgrace yourself on the first page of your book, you did well.
   I've changed my mind about an essential book on reading that crucial first page. Back on the shelf you go.
   Recently, I was offered a loyalty card in the last bookshop. Accepting killed the shop. It closed. Am I now without a bookshop? No. There's always Amazon.
   I search for a book by title. By author. Perhaps by category. I check out the blurb. And I click to read the free sample. Same procedure as I used in the vast past.
   But now, that's all electronic. There's no bookshop here. The bookshop is everywhere. Was there spam, in the vast past?
   Newspaper book reviews, perhaps. The cosy kind, where who you knew in the writing world outbid what you knew about writing. Hell, that hasn't changed. The devious business just upgraded to a better seat.
   Being offered an unspecified service - admittedly related to being fucked hard...my cynicism suspects financially - turned my thoughts to author spam.
   Spam by authors, rather than spam aimed at authors.
   I write of spam periodically. It grows more devious by the hour, that stuff. Devious...and desperate.
   How often have I bought a book based on receiving an automated Twitter response in my Direct Message in-box, asking me to like the author's Facebook page?
   My (three) regular blog readers already know my views on Facebook. Facebook is for stalkers, cat-obsessives, and cat-obsessed stalkers.
   Sense. I threw sense out of the window and changed this blog post from FUCK ME HARD to SPAM ME HARD. Then I saw sense and changed back. Putting SPAM in the title risks attracting an audience of carnivores.
   Spam, as a meal, is likely to be the best thing to eat in a Zombie Apocalypse. It's the tinned food that comes with its own can-opener.

EDITING MELISSA C. WATER'S LADY INJURY: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

How goes the editing in METRO-LAND? And is there honey still for tea?

*

Files fall apart; the centre cannot hold.
   I really have to quit these poetic references. Betjeman strolled through METRO-LAND. Rupert Brooke asked after honey.
   Yeats is yer maaan, on questions of falconry. Though I've quoted loosely from his poem, and dropped my own word in for reasons of the plot.
   Cynically, I think of honey as fossilised bee-spit.
   On with what's left of the show...

*

Dealing with non-fiction is a bit like going through customs with a gold brick in your suitcase. You have to shift over to the other mode of thinking.
   Nothing to declare?
   Something to declare?
   Oh, shit, that's right. I have something to declare. This is fact-based stuff, and must be handled as such. No Zombie Apocalypse in this scene. Or in any of the scenes.

*

Talk of poets sprang up as I attempted this blog post, but that was no coincidental hijacking of thought's train.
   No derailment here.
   I built a system for dealing with editing non-fiction. Melissa C. Water's memoir, Lady Injury, is free and clear of the old contract. Time to edit what will become the second edition.
   What am I editing? Melissa's journal entries covering her time in hospital. Self-harm. Eating troubles. Strapped to a hospital bed for her own safety. Sexual abuse, the root-cause of so many problems in her life.
   Not pleasant reading.

*

How do we tackle that? With a sense of humour. The work is edited across far-flung time-zones, using the inconvenience of the internet.
   Files transfer with great ease. Occasionally, files fall apart. We resort to scribbling notes on toilet-paper. Wax crayons aren't great for a high-maintenance level of operational detail, but, hey, use what's handy.
   Melissa disappears off-grid with grim regularity. Spasms, convulsions, falling down, neurology visits and overnight hospital stays, all carry her away from our work.
   Even a transatlantic business-call, via Skype, to clear up some publishing matters, carries risk.
   Her panic alarm may be inaccessible. I discuss this with her. If we go over editing in a Skype call and she falls silent after a thump, I am meant to wait for the sound of rescuers stomping through the Canadian undergrowth.
   She doesn't live in the wilderness. If there's no rescue, I send in a team of superheroes. Something like that.

*

How did I start editing her tale? By formatting the work. Taking the text away from a vanity publisher, I was aware that the typesetting had to go. Legal issue. The company offered Melissa the use of the formatting for a fee, once she was free of their clutches.
   I seem to be having difficulty with the word contract.
   After formatting the text to new specifications, I looked over the whole book and arranged a skeleton file full of hyperlinks - this would evolve into the Kindle book.
   I created a Table of Contents for months of the year. Each month linked through to a sub-table listing all the daily entries. Two months had loads of diary segments, so I split those in two. One month had no entries at all.
   This I draw to your attention as the vanity publisher included one hyperlink in Melissa's first edition - can you guess where that link led?
   To the company, of course.

*

I took longer on this than was strictly required. Melissa wanted to add a poem, so I sorted that out for her. She was concerned. What was happening over there in Darkest Scotlandia?
   One e-mail later and she thanked me for the formatting on the poem. It was just formatting. Nothing great. But to her, obviously, it meant that the book was starting to come to life.

*

We proceeded with caution. Melissa's story involves self-harm. Lots of it, or thoughts of it. She chose to share details with me that would not go into the book.
   Why not? I had questions. Background information was important. We couldn't have unresolved matters hovering over the book. For that reason, she very generously shared...
   And because she did, I saw ways to edit around certain legal issues. We went back in and added one or two pieces of detail whenever I didn't understand the meaning behind a comment.
   It's important to kill off the cryptic, in non-fiction. This is no murder mystery.

*

Technology deserted us. Files wouldn't transfer. She resorted to sending a photo of herself dressed as a pirate, to see if I could receive files.
   Internet piracy? I suppose.
   Melissa asked many questions. Often my answers fell into the technical category, as I had the pleasure of explaining why Amazon doesn't do things this way, or that, way, or any old way.
   Those of you who self-publish will know the rule by heart. Everything is three times more difficult than need be.

*

Scraping indelible code from transferred data, I wondered why everything in self-publishing had to be three times more difficult than need be.
   Obviously, if that weren't the case, why, all would be four times more difficult. Glad I could clear that up for you.

*

Things are going well. Not rapidly. Melissa's fans, looking for a cheaper more accessible book, will have to wait. The diary entry is dropped in place...
   I work on it, checking for typos, formatting glitches, continuity errors, legal issues, and lint. Always check writing for lint. Don't let lint catch you unawares. Or aware, come to that.
   Don't let lint catch you. Catch lint first.
   This is not a tale of the Zombie Apocalypse. You can excuse fiction in ways that non-fiction can't abide. And I am not editing fiction. I am crawling across a minefield.
   For there is a duty of care here that extends beyond assisting Melissa. Her audience consists of self-harmers past and present, and the point of her book is to help readers.
   You don't really set out to do that for anyone interested in a Zombie Apocalypse. Fiction? Nothing to declare. Fact? I have the documents right here, officer.

Images of Melissa used by kind persimmons, copyright 2014. That is, if I can prevent the keyboard from typing 1994. Luckily, I edited that.
   

EMERGENCY BLOG POST NUMBER THREE. DIVE, DIVE, DIVE! TORPEDOED BY KACEY VANDERKARR: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

I just discovered that I've been booted out of an aeroplane into clear blue sky. The rest of this blog post will be spent checking for a parachute.
   Who did this to me? Kacey (insert expletives here) Vanderkarr. She just blogged about me, and left me flapping in the breeze. I'll do something a bit different...
   Yes. I'll publish this post now, and continue writing. Kacey is part of some cult called a blog hop. At the last second, she ambushed me with kindness and praise and all that evil stuff.
   Readers of her blog have been steered to my café, in anticipation of GOOD EATS. (See any Harold Lloyd film for details.) I must now frantically scramble literary eggs.
   Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. Abnormal service will be resumed shortly.

*

Well, this is a first. Publishing the blog - going live - and then publishing more of the blog post as the world turned. Readers who came late to the show, you'll just have to take my word for it. That asterisk was your signpost of events in the dim and distant.
   Onward.
   Must be a change in the weather. I’ve been bombarded from all sides by people telling me how nice I am. Maybe someone will come along and accuse me of being a grumpy bastard.
   Take Kacey Vanderkarr, for example. If you were steered here from her blog, you'll know that I am Scottish. How Scottish? Really grumpily Scottish.
   It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.
   P.G. Wodehouse was not wrong.
   I am grumpy. A professional curmudgeon. Kacey Vanderkarr would have you believe otherwise. (Insert expletives here.) Apparently, I drive her crazy with this whole writing nonsense nonsense.
   Why? How? Oh, I do outrageous things.
   For example. I tell her she can write, and that she has to publish her work - just in case she's swept up in a Zombie Apocalypse. That drives her crazy. How crazy?
   Crazy enough to publish. Here's a link.
   KACEY'S FIRST BOOK.
   Is that crazy enough? No. She likes to embarrass me, she says. How? Oh, by throwing a dedication my way. Here's a link.
   KACEY'S SECOND BOOK.
   On her blog, Kacey says I teach her things about writing. As authors, we are in this business to learn stuff. We'll learn by looking out the window, or staring inward to the heart of darkness.
   And we'll learn stuff by researching. Reading books. Trawling websites. Talking to other authors. I learn from Kacey, from Missy, and other writer contacts too numerous to bribe.
   Writers are not rivals.

*

Ow.
   I've been sapped over the head and dumped into this blog hop. Which means answering four questions. Is there no end to the torture?

1. What am I working on?

More than one book at once, as usual. I'm dividing my time between JAPANESE MONSTERS and many other things.
   JAPANESE MONSTERS is a tale of demonic possession, betrayal, and supernatural spookiness in Old Japan. Expect a dash of Lafcadio Hearn, a hint of Akutagawa, and a hefty dose of Kurosawa. What's not to love?

2. How does my work differ from others of its genre?

I don't know, for a rather obvious reason. To write in a genre, read outside the genre. (This is what Kacey means when she says that I drive her crazy with writing help.)
   If you've never had this advice handed to you before, here it is. On a plate. With yummy sprinkles. Get stuck in. Read outside your chosen area.

3. Why do I write what I write?

I must write. Writing is breathing for scribblers.

4. How does my writing process work?

I could stop to analyse that. Hmm. I'm sure the process would fall apart if I tried to dissect it. However, as you are here looking for substance...
   Come up with an idea. Write it down. Worry about fixing things later. Right now, let the words flow like molten lava. There's a time for editing. A special time. Called LATER. That's a technical term. Remember it.
   Editing? Look for typos, formatting glitches, gremlins, continuity errors, and holes in the plot. Fix all that stuff. Don't rewrite your story. Trust to your gut. Stick with that instinct.
   Endless rewriting leads to endless rewriting. Skip that madness. Develop the ability to cut loose of your story. Wave it goodbye. Treat it like a cake in the oven. Cook it. Remove it from the oven. Slice and serve. Write another tale.

*

At this point, I'm supposed to hand the hopping blog over to some people. They were too busy to participate. But you can still visit places on the internet.
   Try here. E.B. Black. She just moved house, and is about to get married. Which is why she won't be answering the four questions above. E.B. BLACK.
   Or here. Chris McMullen. He's teaching physics as I speak. The founder of READ TUESDAY has been putting out valuable blogs on the writing game. CHRIS MCMULLEN.
   No blog for this next one. Instead, there's a video station, broadcasting to the world. Melissa C. Water is a mental health activist on YouTube. MELISSA C. WATER.

*

It remains only to invite writers reading this to mention Kacey Vanderkarr and drop links back the way, if you feel like answering those four questions. Here they are again, for ease of copying and pasting...

1. What am I working on?

2. How does my work differ from others of its genre?

3. Why do I write what I write?

4. How does my writing process work?

DOUG CHAMBERS: ZOMBIE! (17.)

I'll end as I started. This serialised zombie story is no longer on the blog, for impending contractual reasons. It's an Amazon thing. Once the story is published on Kindle, I'll post an announcement to that effect.

DOUG CHAMBERS: ZOMBIE! (16.)

Almost done redecorating. I remember writing twenty episodes, but seventeen made it to the blog. Kept the story going to the end of the book chapter, even though I was still aiming at blog episodes.

DOUG CHAMBERS: ZOMBIE! (15.)

Hard to believe I recreated Twitter in story excerpts that went into BLOGGER. For the novel, yes, easy enough to do. But staring at the archaeological dig that is BLOGGER formatting, I am astonished that I pushed so many boulders uphill.
   It's too late to switch to AbsurdPress now.
   (I think I tried to set up a WordPress clone of this blog. It's probably still out there, somewhere, in the dark.)

DOUG CHAMBERS: ZOMBIE! (14.)

Extra coffee rations saw me through this...redecorating. Wallpapering over the cracks in the blog. You can see what was painted beneath, here, there, in the form of old blog titles. Maybe those are really pieces of newspaper under a carpet that's about to be replaced.

DOUG CHAMBERS: ZOMBIE! (13.)

Though, on a fiddly point, 10% of the Kindle book is free to read on Amazon. Taking preamble into account, that means the first chapter of the book is free to read - the equivalent of the first five blog posts, back when I serialised this.

DOUG CHAMBERS: ZOMBIE! (12.)

What is this exclusivity anyway? Oh, the usual Kindle deal. The book goes into KDP Select, and can't appear elsewhere electronically. Result? Scrub the blog clean.

DOUG CHAMBERS: ZOMBIE! (11.)

Technically I am away from the blog, but here I sit updating these zombie posts to remove material affected by an Amazon exclusivity deal.
   I'm blogging, on average, monthly during my supposed break. But I'm fixing something like seventeen blog posts right now, plus a few more that are caught in the blast.
   

DOUG CHAMBERS: ZOMBIE! (10.)

Bearing the last zombie blog post in mind, 9, if you've just tuned in...
   Doug and company are all away. They moved to a Kindle file, for reasons of exclusivity. Along the way, he had his colon removed. Well. He is a zombie.

DOUG CHAMBERS: ZOMBIE! (9.)

Something I won't miss is the quirkiness of the blog stats. I don't bother with blog stats, but, now and again, when I am updating material, I'll catch sight of a strange stat.
   People came in and read the zombie serial from the halfway point on. As though readers deliberately sought out episode 9 and decided to stomp on through from there.

DOUG CHAMBERS: ZOMBIE! (8.)

Time flies when you are reconstructing the blog. For those who wonder at the writerly lifestyle...yes, it helps to be a Night Owl. This post was originally published via automation, half an hour after midnight.
   But I am updating this manually, not far off midnight, many a moon later. At a distance of two years, though the entry may not show that.

DOUG CHAMBERS: ZOMBIE! (7.)

Deleting these blog posts and writing observations instead, I see something you don't. And that's the JURASSIC formatting inside earlier blog posts. BLOGGER, what were ye thinking?!

DOUG CHAMBERS: ZOMBIE! (6.)

Chapter six on the blog translated into the opening of chapter two of the book. It made sense at the time. I used to blog a minimum of 1,500 words, and blog story snippets of 2,000 matched the larger plan to novelise the serial. Five posts equalled one chapter.

DOUG CHAMBERS: ZOMBIE! (5.)

One MASSIVE change to the story is the loss of the colon from the title. The Microsoft Word file won't accept a colon in the title, and, now that Amazon no longer supports PRC files, the book is created straight from the Word file.
   So treasure the label of DOUG CHAMBERS: ZOMBIE! It's on this blog as a relic. I mean...as a special treat for dedicated readers.

DOUG CHAMBERS: ZOMBIE! (3.)

Yes, breaking the story into chunks was a good idea at the time. Each chapter in the book runs about 10,000 words. But I wrote 2,000 a time for the blog.

DOUG CHAMBERS: ZOMBIE! (2.)

Damn it. Starting to regret chopping that zombie story into so many blog entries. But Amazon exclusivity struck on the blog before, and I redecorated then.

DOUG CHAMBERS: ZOMBIE! (1.)

I decided Doug would be an Amazon exclusive, in the end, once transferred to the Kindle. So, with that in mind, he leaves the pages of this blog far behind.
   But I wanted something to sit here on this blog post, as a reminder of dusty days long-gone. Also, there might be hyperlinks out there, pointing the way to this blog entry. And it's a pain to sift through those if I just delete the post in its entirety.
   I'll blog when I publish Doug's misadventures, and link through to that.

ON THE RUN.

Final blog post in this latest cycle. Now I’m on the run. Foolish in my attempt at optimism, I ended a post by stating the next event would be…

   Whatever that event was. Publication of a particular item.

   When I published to a strict schedule, I made my deadlines. Then my deadlines switched to a looser format and I managed to publish entries in my FICTION FACTORY line with minimal fuss and negligible bother.

   You publish when it is right to. WEREWOLVES was delayed by a week. All these soft deadlines were flexible. Bloody good job, too, as life got in the way. Some days, I may have pushed too hard. But you have to try, to find out what you can do.

   Pacing is important. When I started out with my fixed deadlines, I made sure I could hit those nails on the head. Even if I took a mad detour one night to talk to a fear-filled author in Michigan. I still don’t know what possessed me to do that.

   Helping other authors is an avenue of exploration marked on Google as a two-way street.

   Strict deadlines. Loose ones. Everything came together, roughly or smoothly. This hasn’t quite been the case with collected versions of REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE. I learned, the usual hard way, that I had to set up a different production-line for those. Technical considerations and publishing decisions multiplied, swamping me.

   Yes, I still generated (or reformatted) a million words of material in that first year of self-publishing. But I didn’t publish everything I wanted to. Newsflash. I never will. There’s always going to be something simmering away on every ring of that stove.

   Irons in the fire. Fish to fry. You know the drill. I looked at a list of things I planned to write, expand, edit, and format over summer. Too ambitious. Still, I compiled that list anyway. And I’ll get back to most of that stuff before the end of the century.

   This year, the list is twice as ambitious. After all, the first list still haunts me.

   What now? Or…what next? More of the same. Plans. A few of those will run a-gley. I’ll adapt. Survive. Continue. Never give up writing. That’s code for never give up reading. It’s also code for never give up writing.

   I may write fiction in my next run of blog posts. Short queasy zombie stories. Who knows. I have one Zombie Apocalypse to be getting on with as things stand. Hey. Why not add another, just for the hell of it…

   An experiment. In writing. Maybe I’ll scribble about an incident in a lab. An experiment that goes horribly right and cures heavy traffic – the hard way. For now, I’ll stick to the general format. Blog repeatedly. Bundle the blogs with fiction to create an e-book running at least 100,000 words.

   Which reminds me. I have to put those REPORTS out. Finally. The first volume went over the proposed word-count. That’s no bad thing. I feel as if I’ve been learning how to run faster than the wind. Self-publishing is an event. Even if nothing seems to happen, pots are on stoves. Fish are frying. Irons glow in the fire.

   Optimism. I’ll end this post with the news that another volume of REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE is published. And it will be. Not immediately. But it will be. In a pessimistic world, it’s good to have some optimism in that near-empty cracked glass.

   And any announcement that you’ll publish…

   Must be backed up. Each proclamation serves as a goad. I spent a night mapping out hyperlinks for files. Straightforward stuff. Until I uncovered an unintentional glitch. My REPORT series has to be the most gremlin-infested thing I’ve worked on so far.

   I feel that I learn formatting afresh every time I come to it. That’s okay. I feel the same when I write a story. Anything is possible. Much is plausible. There’s a hefty dose of the downright silly. Hell, that’s no crime. Blank space must be filled.

   Ever see a movie? Watch a play? Catch a show on TV? Listen to dramatic action on the radio? Someone wrote it.

   I write these blog posts for collection alongside fiction. Writing regularly for an unseen audience, I play the sedulous scribe. There’s no way to emulate Alistair Cooke, but I can nod in his general direction.

   So what about you?

   You want to publish. Do it. What’s holding you back? Fear. An illusory fear.

   Write a few stories. Plan a book. Rattle off poetry. Don’t forget to read. Anything. Everything. Fact. Fiction. Opinion. Outright rant. Read.

   Learn what you have to deal with, to publish. Look at the Amazon site and scroll down to that obscure line inviting you to self-publish. Check it out. Hunt for articles on formatting for Kindle. Read copyright law. Be aware of legal obligations to noted libraries, be they the British Library in London or the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. To name but two.

   Think about book covers. If you can design your own, great. And if you can’t, ask yourself if you can. Have a go anyway. Yes, there’s much to learn. That’s the fun of it. Be patient. Long-haul. Invest time. Make mistakes. Learn from them.

   Persist.

   Advance your cause every day. Learn something. Even if all you did that day was tie off a loose end or return from a dead one. Write. Read and write crap. Then read the good stuff. Write better. Make sure that what works for you actually works for you.

   Endure.

   Change plans. Shift goals. Be fluid without being wishy-washy. I feel as though I’m in a martial art movie, dishing out advice. Never turn your back on your opponent. Unless he’s really big and you can run faster than him.

   I don’t mind admitting mistakes in a writing blog. It’s important to fail. To rise again and try a second time. A third time. Countless times. It’s important to let other would-be writers know this. Even if you fail, and doubt as a result, you LEARN. And you can always RECYCLE what you attempted.

   If you chase a medal at the Olympics, you don’t just walk into the stadium and take up position. The crowd never saw all the private failure that led you to that public starting-point.

   Survive.

   I think of all the failed stories I attempted. And every failure shows you something. You learn structure. And learn, sometimes, to dispense with structure. Suddenly, it’s all at your fingertips. You remember the trudging you did to get that far. Progress isn’t always enjoyable. But when it is, progress is effing amazing.

   Research. That is to say, search and search again. Try to get it right. I’m not here to place undue emphasis on mistakes. No. The emphasis is on learning from them.

   You mean there weren’t Daleks in Hitler’s bunker? Pearl Harbour wasn’t a stripper? Ghostbusters are all fictional with the exception of Abraham Lincoln? That man behind the curtain is the Wizard of Oz? What do you mean, George Michael is gay? Not Sir Elton too. He was married. (And will be again.)

   I hated myself every time I spotted an obvious typo. At times I marvelled at how good a short piece of writing was – wondering who the eff wrote it. (Then realised that was me. Can’t have been me.) I could soar as a writer, but I don’t. Gravity claims me, every time.

   Oh, I have my moments.

   You’ll have your moments too.

*

Office routine washes over me. I think my printer is destined to have one book sitting on top. It’s a different book every time I mention this in a blog post. You knew that.

   I was learning how to run faster than the wind. At first, the wind obliged me by moving at five lowly miles per hour. Things picked up. I had to learn how to go on the run.

   There’s always the chance that I’ll pull the pin on the blog and cut dead so that I can write more stuff. I like having that pin there. It’s my unsafety-pin. We should all have one.

   Play safe. Sound advice. Here’s sounder…

   Scrape your knees. Learn the pain of flames. Bleed a little. Note the sharpness of vinegar in that cut. Go on the run. Type like a maniac. Race to the summit with a flaming brand and throw it on the bonfire. No one is there to cheer you on. Only the wind witnesses your quiet gasping triumph.

   Try writing a story. Fail writing a story. Recycle the ideas. Arrange a next time and do better. Listen to advice. Go with your gut. Educate yourself. Help others. Feel numb. Ignore the numbness. Keep moving. Try harder.

   Storm the beach. Take the castle. Invent the cure. Save the day. Blow it all up. Put it back together. Run. Then walk. Crawl. Get back up. Walk. Then run. Win by participating. Enjoy reading.

   Ever read a story?

   Someone wrote it.

   Be that someone.

NEXT EVENT: REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE (VOLUME 3) IS PUBLISHED.

*

Update. I scrapped the collected blog posts. The blogs exist on the internet, but not as collected volumes. HERE'S A BLOG POST ABOUT THAT.