WHAT WILL BE THE LAST THING YOU DO THIS NEW YEAR'S EVE?

What will be the last thing you do this New Year's Eve?

Or if it has passed, what was it?

What will be, or was, the last meal for you in 2018?

STRANGE NEW YEAR'S EVE BELIEFS

1.) IF YOU DON'T KISS SOMEONE AT MIDNIGHT, YOU WILL BE UNLUCKY IN LOVE ALL YEAR


2.) EMPTY CUPBOARDS MEAN THEY WILL STAY EMPTY ALL YEAR

I wonder if that goes for empty heads as well -- which would explain the politics of this last year!


3.) OPEN ALL THE DOORS JUST BEFORE MIDNIGHT

That is to let out the Old Year and let in the New Year will all its promise.

All the Democrats across America are not only flinging open all their doors tonight, but their windows, too!


4.) EAT 12 GRAPES AT MIDNIGHT

One for each month -- that is just in case you do not like cabbage and black-eyed peas!


5.) NO LOANS TONIGHT

A full wallet seems to give promise for a full bank account during the New Year!


6.) NO TEARS AT MIDNIGHT

Lest you have a year full of sadness.

HERE IS MY WISH 

FOR ALL OF YOU TO HAVE 

MORE SMILES THAN TEARS 

THIS NEW YEAR!

AS THE OLD YEAR DIED

The old year was dying,

the tolling bells ringing out its dirge in the night.

Alice squeezed my hand tight,

her death-cold fingers reminding me that I had someone to be strong for.

Shadows were heavy in the LaPrete Mansion's upper dining room.

Of all the places I wanted to spend New Year's Eve with the ghoul of my dreams --

this was the very last.

Cezar Prodanescu, wheezing the prelude to his death rattle, spoke from the oak chair at the head of the dining table.

"Victor Standish, you and your ghoul cost me. That building was going to be my last project."

I shook my head. "The thousands of Katrina orphans needed that place."

"You made the buyers think it was haunted!"

"What can I tell you? My mother's good at making ghosts."

Cezar's son scowled at me. "Because of you we have been made to endure this tedious Romanian ritual."

His wife, sitting beside him, patted his hand. "Andrei, remember your blood pressure."

Cezar snorted, "All you care about, Andreea, is the million dollar bearer bond right beside that New Year's Eve Mask."

Her daughter whined, "Grandpapa, must I wear this mask, too?"

He flashed a dying wolf's smile at her.

"If you want your own bearer bond, Doina, yes.

Besides, I made yours a faerie princess. And you only have to wear the mask until the bells stop."

Her brother glowered at the mask on the table before him. It bore an uncanny resemblance to Alfred E. Neuman.


"Look at what he wants me to wear!"

Cezar snorted, "Then, don't wear it, Gavril. But you will receive nothing!"

Reluctantly, Gavril put it on.

Andreea looked with disgust at her own mask in the shape of a wrinkled old shrew. She fondled the bearer bond.

She put on the mask.

Andrei flicked dead eyes to the pig mask and barked an insult of a laugh.

"You have made me wear so many masks, Father. What is one more?"

He put it on.

Cezar pointed to the braying donkey mask in front of me.

"Wear it and I will call off my lawyers from delaying that orphanage."

I shook my head. "The deal was you would do it if I showed up."

His smile reminded me of a snake's - but without as much humanity. "The deal has changed."

I shook my head. "My word hasn't. I've showed up. No jumping through hoops."

Alice lightly touched her mask on the table top done up like a snake's face. "Victor, the orphans."

Cezar turned to her. "Don your mask, and I will still call off my lawyers."

She took her hand from mine. She picked up the mask, slowly bringing it to her face.

I went cold.

Something was brewing, but I knew Alice. If I told her not to, she would do it out of spite.

Cezar looked nothing so much as a vulture as he watched her, then turned to me.

"Tell her not to, boy. You want to."

"I - I love Alice too much to take away her right to choose."

Alice's eyes rimmed in black tears. "So I choose ... you."

She placed the mask down.

Cezar scowled and put his skull mask on.

He slid Alice's mask to Doina. "Wear it, and you will receive ten bearer bonds."

"T-Ten?" She tore off the faerie mask, putting on the snake one.

The tolling bells were reaching the end of their countdown.

The Prodanescu clan glared at their patriarch. Alice smiled softly and took up my hand again.

The tolling died away.


Andreea wrenched her mask off. Doina screamed wetly. I felt like screaming myself.

The mother's face was an exact copy of her mask.

Andrei ripped his mask off.

A wet pig's snout quivered at me.


Doina sprang from her chair, sending it to the carpet.

She raced to the ornate mirror. A snake's face stared slit-eyed back at her.


She started screaming in peals I knew would never stop until her last breath.

Gavril just sat shivering in his chair. Alice slowly, slowly reached out to Cezar's mask.

As soon as her fingers touched the mask, the rubber band crumbled to ash.

Cezar's skull mask dropped.

Andreea began to titter in gibbering madness.

Though dead, Cezar looked merely asleep.

I turned to Alice. "Next New Year's Eve? No parties."

***

SUPERSTITIONS OF NEW YEAR'S EVE

What will be the last thing you do this New Year's Eve?

Or if it has passed, what was it?

What will be, or was, the last meal for you in 2017?

STRANGE NEW YEAR'S EVE BELIEFS

1.) IF YOU DON'T KISS SOMEONE AT MIDNIGHT, YOU WILL BE UNLUCKY IN LOVE ALL YEAR


2.) EMPTY CUPBOARDS MEAN THEY WILL STAY EMPTY ALL YEAR

I wonder if that goes for empty heads as well -- which would explain the politics of this last year!


3.) OPEN ALL THE DOORS JUST BEFORE MIDNIGHT

That is to let out the Old Year and let in the New Year will all its promise.

All the Democrats across America are not only flinging open all their doors tonight, but their windows, too!


4.) EAT 12 GRAPES AT MIDNIGHT

One for each month -- that is just in case you do not like cabbage and black-eyed peas!


5.) NO LOANS TONIGHT

A full wallet seems to give promise for a full bank account during the New Year!


6.) NO TEARS AT MIDNIGHT

Lest you have a year full of sadness.

HERE IS MY WISH 

FOR ALL OF YOU TO HAVE 

MORE SMILES THAN TEARS 

THIS NEW YEAR!

FIND WRITING SUCCESS BEFORE NEW YEAR'S EVE

These insightful authors can help you far better than I can:


“You were once wild here. Don’t let them tame you.”
— Isadora Duncan


“Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
— Steve Jobs


“Talking endlessly about something instead of doing it depletes you of the drive to get it done.”
— Milli Thornton, Write Your Screenplay in 29 Days


“By consciously rising to meet challenges, we transform them into opportunities.”
— Sharon Jeffers in Cards of Destiny


“A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.”
— Richard Bach


“We all have big changes in our lives that are more or less a second chance.”
— Harrison Ford

“When your heart speaks, take good notes.”
— Judith Campbell


“Why are you trying so hard to fit in when you were born to stand out?”
— From the movie What a Girl Wants


“Never, for the sake of peace and quiet, deny your own experience or convictions.”
— Dag Hammarskjold



"You know how it is in the kid's book world; it's just bunny eat bunny."

-  Victor Standish

 

Don't explain why it works; explain how you use it.

- Steven Brust

 

 

I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing 

 

and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly.

- Edgar Rice Burroughs



If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor.
- Edgar Rice Burroughs

The reason 99% of all stories written are not bought by editors is very simple. Editors NEVER buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.
- John Campbell

People on the outside think there's something magical about writing, 

 

that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn't like that.

 

You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and that's all there is to it.

- Harlan Ellison




"Thank your readers and the critics who praise you, 

and then ignore them. 

Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe:  

Write to please yourself."
- Harlan Ellison

"Writing is the hardest work in the world. 

I have been a bricklayer and a truck driver, and I tell you 

-- as if you haven't been told a million times already -- 

that writing is harder. Lonelier. And nobler and more enriching."
- Harlan Ellison

And lastly from the master:

"At one time I thought the most important thing was talent.

I think now that the young man or the young woman must possess or teach himself, 

training himself, in infinite patience, which is to try and to try until it comes right.

 He must train himself in ruthless intolerance--

that is to throw away anything that is false no matter how much he might love that page or that paragraph.

The most important thing is insight, that is to be--

curious--

to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does,

and if you have that, 

then I don't think the talent makes much difference, whether you've got it or not."
- William Faulkner

One last:

"Style is less the man than the way a man takes himself."

- Robert Frost

All right, another one:

Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything really good.
- William Faulkner

  
"The struggle is always worthwhile, if the end be worthwhile and the means honorable;

foreknowledge of defeat is not sufficient reason to withdraw from the contest."       
- Samuel McCord

There is no WE in Greed_Ghost of Napoleon

 

GENEROSITY

 You are about to be honored.  

I, the ghost of Napoleon,

am here to dissuade you  of a dangerous illusion.

Though I know that scoundrel, Clemens, cheated me in that poker game, 

still I will honor my word, and write to you 

of how to succeed in the war in which you have chosen to engage.

Some of you still cling to the dream of obtaining an agent for your work.

I caution you:

they are not interested in you because of their generosity ...

but for what you can do for THEM.

And they know you will be able to do

 little for them 

until you garner an AUDIENCE.

Do not think of a group when you think AUDIENCE ...

Think individual.

No group reads a book.  A solitary person does.

What do individuals want?

Spare me your platitudes.

An individual wants the universal desires:

Power and Sex.

It is a fact of life ...

most find themselves lacking the power to accomplish what they would.

They read to vicariously live a life of powerlessness growing powerful.

I saw some of you wince at my use of "Sex."

Romance is merely the acceptable way of saying "sex."

I see all of you punching into your devices of communication 

while growing ever more distant from one another

as technology widens the chasm between hearts.

Technology has become your all too real GAME OF THRONES

Winter has come.

The winter of loneliness, each of you cut off from the hearts of the other.

Write so as to make the powerless feel in touch with power

and the lonely in touch with the hope of connecting with another ...

And you will garner an audience and the attention of agents.

Now, I am off to have a reckoning 

with that card-cheat, Clemens!

TO SHARE LOVE_HAPPY BOXING DAY!

One of the great things about love ...

is that it grows in ever larger ripples when shared.

One shares with another, 

then that heart touched by love shares, too.

One becomes two. Two becomes four. And four becomes eight.

Not every heart which receives, gives, of course.

Who of us has not received compassion and felt the better for it?

We are let into a busy traffic line, and we wave thanks.

But do we give it? 

Do we let another in somewhere else down the line?

Or do we just go on our way, too much in a hurry to return the favor to a stranger?

Have we received compassion, wisdom, kindness repeatedly from a friend, 

but then have been hurt by that same friend?

Can we find it in ourselves, that after having taken so much, to give one thing ...

the benefit of the doubt,
to trust in the past acts of friendship to give ...

forgiveness?


That is the secret of Boxing Day, 

still celebrated in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United Kingdom ...


(though not as widespread as it once was --
like many customs of kindness and compassion)

to give from the surplus that we have received on Christmas Day.

One of the clues to Boxing Day's origins can be found in the Christmas Carol, "Good King Wenceslas."

Wenceslas, who was Duke of Bohemia in the early 10th century, was surveying his land on St. Stephen's Day — Dec. 26 —

when he saw a poor man gathering wood in the middle of a snowstorm. 

Moved, the King gathered up surplus food and wine

and carried them through the blizzard to the peasant's door.

Christmas love and magic is better when shared. 

Just like laughter is somehow more than doubled when the joke or 

the funny movie is shared with a friend.

What is more beautiful than a unicorn in the snow?

Two unicorns racing through the flurry of snowflakes together.
***

CHRISTMAS THOUGHTS

“And when we give each other 

Christmas gifts 

in His name, 

let us remember that He has given us 

the sun and the moon and the stars, 

and the earth with its forests and mountains 

and oceans--

and all that lives and moves 

upon them. 

He has given us all green things 

and everything 

that blossoms and bears fruit 

and all that we quarrel about 

and all that we have misused--

and to save us from our foolishness, 

from all our sins, 

He came down to earth 

and gave us Himself.”
― Sigrid Undset 

  MERRY CHRISTMAS, MY FRIENDS!

Bottleneck At Our Nation's PRINTERS!

Hardcover sales are up, and
unit sales at independent bookstores 
have risen 5 percent.

But what should be good news for

 publishers, agents and authors 

has created headaches during 

the crucial holiday sales season, 

as printing presses struggle 

to keep up with a surge in demand.

Midnight has a solution: 
Kindle Books

Ah, He's a cat.  

Cats don't know shame.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07KQ8XMJR

Midnight does have a point ...

ah, a mouthful of them actually!

But it is never too late to give an eBook.