THE VOTES ARE IN!!

THE VOTES ARE IN!!

And not a NO among them.

Victor and the spirit of Bruce Lee are irritatingly smug about it, of course.

THE NEW DRAW DATE for my FANTABULOUS CONTEST is

OCTOBER 1ST (October being my birth month and all.)

WRITE A REVIEW ON AMAZON ABOUT ANY OF MY eBOOKS, AND YOU RECEIVE 5 ENTRIES FOR THE CONTEST TO WIN :

A STEPHEN KING AUTOGRAPHED copy of NEEDFUL THINGS or

A DEAN KOONTZ AUTOGRAPED copy of THE TAKING or

A LAURELL K. HAMILTON AUTOGRAPHED copy of DANSE MACABRE!!

THERE WILL BE 3 WINNERS on OCTOBER 1ST.

I know many of you do not have much time. Three of my eBooks are short and not too exxpensive (99 cents) :

THE LAST SHAMAN

{Think Stephen King and Louis Lamour teaming to write their explanation of 2012.}

LET THE WIND BLOW THROUGH YOU

{Not unlike what Louis Lamour and Raymond Chandler might have written if they tried for a GODFATHER tale with a bit of ROMEO & JULIET thrown in.}

BLOOD WILL TELL

{What if STEPHEN KING visited the blood center in which I work and wrote an alien invasion tale certain to have you never donating blood or sleeping sound again.}

I'm not saying you should read and review those particular novels of mine -- just that they are affordable and short.
***

This just in : John Locke paves new road for self-published

It seems that perhaps John Locke has paved the way for us Indie Published Authors in a new way by signing with Simon & Schuster :

John Locke is not giving up any rights. He has not signed a “publishing” deal, but a distribution deal.

He will remain the publisher of the print editions. Simon & Schuster will distribute them. And he retains complete control of the digital editions –

no deal has been struck there.

Rather than abandoning the indie path, John Locke has leveraged his huge self-publishing sales to strike a highly unusual print deal.

It’s extremely rare for a publisher –

especially a major player like Simon & Schuster – to sign a “print only” deal of any kind. The reason for this is obvious: print is in decline and digital is exploding.

Normally, a print deal will involve the publisher licensing the rights to sell your book, for which they pay you royalties (and often an advance on royalties) in return.

This is very different. Essentially, as Mike Shatzkin points out, John Locke is hiring Simon & Schuster to distribute his books.

Details are scant at the moment. I don’t know if John Locke is paying them a percentage for their distribution services, or a flat fee, and I don’t know who is going to cover things like printing costs.

Either way, this is a fine deal for John Locke, and a progressive approach from Simon & Schuster.

They get a piece of the print action from a bankable self-publisher who was unwilling to sign a traditional publishing deal, and he gets access to the vast majority of readers who haven’t made the switch to e-books yet.

Everyone will make money out of this. Which is why it won’t be the last deal of its kind.

Many successful self-publishers aren’t interested in a traditional deal which forces them to give up the vast majority of their digital royalties.

Indeed, many of those who signed with Amazon’s imprints said that they wouldn’t have signed with anyone else, with the vastly increased digital royalties on offer being a major factor.

There position is understandable. They have built up a huge readership own their own, and they are loathe to hand that over to a publisher for a small slice of the digital pie.

Even though the vast majority of readers are still in print, self-publishers know which way the market is headed,

and often don’t want to be locked into a deal with poor digital royalty rates just to gain access to print readers (whose numbers will continue to fall).

If this deal is a watershed,

if the large publishers are now prepared to sign print-only deals, or distribution-only deals, there will be a lot of self-publishers interested.

It makes sense for publishers too –

at least in the short term. They have control of the print distribution network, and they can produce quality physical books at low prices.

They also know that the very best self-publishers are experts in targeting their readers, and selling to them.

Interesting, Roland

***

TIME TO VOTE

TIME TO VOTE!

SO FAR THE "YES" VOTES ARE AHEAD.

WHICH MEANS OUR PLATFORM BUILDERS FRIENDS WILL HAVE MORE TIME TO ENTER

MY FANTABULOUS CONTEST in which by writing a review of one of my books on AMAZON you could win :

NEEDFUL THINGS autographed by STEPHEN KING

or

THE TAKING autographed by DEAN KOONTZ

or

DANSE MACABRE autographed by LAURELL K. HAMILTON!

There will be THREE WINNERS.

You could be one of them.

Should I delay the drawing to allow the Platform Builders a fair chance?

YES or NO?

Making a black and white silent movie now takes courage. I will go see it, for it seems to have heart and creativity.

***

BRUCE LEE, SPIRIT_On WRITING : THERE ARE NO LIMITS. THERE IS NO SPOON.

BRUCE LEE, SPIRIT

On WRITING :

THERE ARE NO LIMITS. THERE IS NO SPOON.

Many of you enjoyed my post on writing enough to ask me to come back. And to answer your question : yes, spirits watch movies.

I enjoyed the first MATRIX. The second not so much. The third not at all.

But I am here to talk writing not movies. I have read many of my friend Roland’s posts, watched the videos, and disagreed often.

Take what the esteemed Mr. King said : “ Writing cannot be taught.” He is wrong. Do not blame him. After all, he is but alive, boxed in the prison of his mortal mind.

But what a thing to say to struggling writers! Most of you are filled with self-doubt and uncertainty – as are all novices. And what do you hear?

Writing cannot be taught. Genius cannot be taught. And so is killed hope.

No, Mr. King, writing can be taught, genius can be awakened.

You wrinkle your face and mutter, “But genius is so rare.”

Ah, my friend, you, too, are wrong. Genius is as common as the dreams of dogs.

Have you not watched your pet, twitching and softly barking, as he is caught in the throes of dreams?

Every dream, every nightmare, reaches deep into the well of imagination and of magic. If common dogs can tap into that reservoir, surely you can as well?

To say that writing, that genius cannot be taught is to place limits on your mind.

If you begin by putting limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work, into your mind … into your entire being.

There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. But you will die fully alive!

A man must constantly exceed his level.

Ask a successful writer how he wrote his famous novel, and he will become uncomfortable, muttering about the unconscious and how writing cannot be taught.

Not so. He just does not know his own mind. How many do?

Do not listen to ignorance. Instead focus on your own mind and heart. Anything which blocks the path to self-awareness, prune from your life. Be it drink, food, or habit, if it blurs your sense of who you are, it must go.

Study the Masters of writing. Get a sense of their technique. But beware copying them. Though they play an important role in the early stage, the techniques should not be too mechanical, complex or restrictive.

If we cling blindly to them, we shall eventually become bound by their limitations. Remember, you are expressing the techniques and not doing the techniques.

Let the words flow through you in your own unique way of looking at life and at others.

Do not become the slave to your or anyone else’s expectations. In writing as in Jeet Kune-Do, one does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.

If you see a bulky sentence, strip it down to its essentials. If you do not, the reader will simply do it for you, skipping ahead – and perhaps missing the key phrase that was meant to add life to your novel.

In creating a statue, a sculptor doesn't keep adding marble to his subject. No, he keeps chiseling away at the inessentials until the truth of its being is revealed without obstructions.

Thus, contrary to other disciplines, being wise in Jeet Kune-Do and writing, doesn't mean adding more.

It means to minimize, in other words to hack away the unessential.

Like limits. Grow strong in writing, in your daily living. Drop the chains of what others say is possible from your mind.

There are NO limits. There is no spoon.

There is only the limitless horizon. Good journey, my friend. I will be watching.
***

THE FINAL WEEKEND!!

Now, that I have your attention!THIS IS THE FINAL WEEKEND TO ENTER!!

JUST WRITE A REVIEW OF ONE OF MY BOOKS

ON AMAZON ...

AND YOU GET 5 ENTRIES TO WIN EITHER :

NEEDFUL THINGS autographed by STEPHEN KING!

THE TAKING autographed by DEAN KOONTZ!!

DANSE MACABRE autographed by LAURELL K. HAMILTON!!!

The drawing for the three winners will be held on SEPTEMBER 1ST!!!

***

BRUCE LEE, GHOST_THE WAY OF THE WRITER

There are things only the dead know, views only the dead see.

Victor Standish, impudent pup that he is,

asked me to write of them here anyway.

At least in how they shape the art of writing.

What do I know of writing you ask? Each of us is the author of our lives, though many insist upon making them boring, repetitive.

The way of the writer is the way of water :

Most of you restrict yourselves, limit your vision. Be instead water.

You put water in a cup, it becomes the cup;

You put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle;

You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot.

Sometimes it is still like the hush before dawn. Sometimes it is wild like the heart betrayed. But it is always alive to the world around it.

Be water, my friend.

Do not think, feel....it is like pointing your finger towards the moon. Do not concentrate on the finger or you will miss the stars!

The ghost of Thoreau tells me only that day dawns to which we are awake. Water is always awake. But are you?

A child is acutely aware of his expanding world, for it is new, ever-growing, ever fascinating. The way of the writer is to stay that child.

Most of the living become calloused by their flow of experiences, falling into the sleep of habit.

They wrap their personal problems about their eyes so that they walk blindly through all their days, listening only to the musak of their sorrows.

They put on layer upon layer of habits, clothing themselves in restriction until the water of their souls become stagnant like a swamp.

You living become so insulated in this manner that only the knife of tragedy or great joy can stab through to you.

Most of you have stopped being aware sometime in high school. Have you not noticed men whose fashion sense halted in their mid-twenties?

Since most of you are not laying up new stores of awareness and observations each day, you must go back to the same stale, old ones when you were still awake.

No wonder that so many authors write and re-write the sensations of their early years or childhood. Have you not known an author who seems to be able to tell only one story?

No matter the heroine’s name, the snowflakes will still melt on her fluttering eyelashes. The hero will always be strong, silent, misunderstood.

Ah, but the truth is that all of us remember strongly the things we saw through the clear, warm light of childhood. And when we want to bring a scene to life, we return to those sensations that sing to us of life, of being aware.

But if we endlessly return to that same pool, soon our writing grows stale, repetitive, and lifeless.

The ghost of Henry James just strolled by, saying, “Tell them to be one of the people upon whom nothing is lost.”

You cannot do that overnight.

No. Take ten minutes of each day to practice the innocence of the eye,

to ask how a child would see what is around you. Do this in different locales, never the same.

Taste the breeze. Listen to the robin in the tree to your left. Watch the stroll of the ambling dog outside your window, studying where he stops, watching his eyes, looking at his wrinkling nose and shifting ears.

Turn yourself into a stranger in your own life.

What colors are the things around you? Why would someone paint his house moldy green? What colors are the cars that pass you? Did the persons want that color? Why?

Close your eyes. What are the smells? What are the sounds? What could a blind person tell about the world you perceive this way?

Truth has no path. Truth is living and, therefore, changing. Awareness is without choice, without demand, without anxiety.

In that state of mind, there is perception. To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.

Awareness has no frontier; it is giving of your whole being, without exclusion.

Be awake, my friend. Be a child. Be a writer.
***
Don't forget to join Rach's PLATFORM -BUILDING CAMPAIGN!
http://rachaelharrie.blogspot.com/2011/08/third-writers-platform-building_02.html
***

THE COST OF YOUR CHOICES

There is a cost to your choices.

Take my FANTABULOUS CONTEST!

ONLY 10 MORE DAYS LEFT!

Just write a review on Amazon of one of my books and you could win :

NEEDFUL THINGS autographed by STEPHEN KING!

THE TAKING autographed by DEAN KOONTZ!

DANSCE MACABRE autographed by LAURELL K. HAMILTON!

Let these 10 days slip by. OUCH! You've lost your chance to win.

THEN ...

There is the cost of what you choose to do with your life ...

Few actors go to the movies. For one thing ... like seamtresses, they can see the seams in each part of what makes up the movie.

In like manner, writers tend to see the seams, too.

I've been reading Jim Butcher's GHOST STORY ... and I'm seeing the seams.

He wanted to write epic S.F. and Space Fantasy. He backed into Harry Dresden.

I think he wants out, just wrapping up loose ends and going through the motions. But when a great writer goes through the motions, he can still tell a great story.

The seams just show.

In the beginning, you can see him pushing against the inertia of his heart not being in the novel :

He stretches the beginning as if forcing himself to write.

He introduces new characters, putting off bringing in the family of characters that the reader has been worried about since the cliff-hanger ending of the last novel.

He's almost a fourth of the way into the book, and he is just now getting to the stuff loyal fans have been waiting to find out.

You lose readers like that.

Eric, a friend at work, tossed the book, saying, "He's lost it. He's just writing to fulfil a contract."

GHOST STORY took months and months longer than was promised. I can see why. The fire is gone.

The story is building momentum finally. But I feel like I've been pushing a stalled car with Jim.

Have you ever felt like that with a writer? Has your enjoyment of the read been spoiled by spotting the seams, by being chilled by the lost fire of the author?

That has been said of Charlaine Harris. I gave up on the Sookie Stackhouse books a few titles ago.

Tell me of your similar experiences.
***

ONLY 17 DAYS LEFT!!!

ONLY 17 DAYS LEFT!!!

Just write a review on Amazon on one of my books,

and you get FIVE entries into my FANTABULOUS CONTEST to win

an autographed copy of

NEEDFUL THINGS

THE TAKING

DANSE MACABRE!

How cool is that? KING. KOONTZ. HAMILTON.

What a trio!

ONLY 17 DAYS LEFT!
***

ONLY 2 WEEKS LEFT!! __ I HATE YOU entry encore _ I HATE YOU AS ONLY THE UNDEAD CAN HATE

ONLY TWO WEEKS LEFT!!

Actually 18 days left to write a review of one of my books on Amazon to enter ...

ROLAND'S FANTABULOUS CONTEST!!!

See? Even Megan Fox is writing a review.

(Of FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE by the way. She wants to play evil Maija or the revenant, Empress Theodora, or the ghost of Meilori just so long as she gets to play a scene where she kills Speilberg!)

Just think you may actually win an autographed copy of NEEDFUL THINGS, the last Castle Rock story. Someone has to win it. Why not you?

Sandra has already told me that if Megan Fox enters the contest, she is not letting me in the same room as the jar of entries! Sigh.
***


I HATE YOU blogfest entry : I HATE YOU AS ONLY THE UNDEAD CAN HATE!

http://tessasblurb.blogspot.com/

[From the soon-to-be published, THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH :

Victor Standish and his Victorian ghoul friend, Alice Wentworth, have survived more horrors than a Stephen King movie. Almost. It seems Victor has died saving his hero, Sam McCord.

The ANGEL OF DEATH has come for him. Despite his protests to save her, Alice insists on coming along, as do Father Renfield and the mysterious Sister Magda. They are standing at the head of the stairs leading down to the haunted jazz club, Meilori's] :


Everybody and their cousin could read my mind it seemed. Now, it was time to use it for me instead of it being used against me. I focused all the will I had and thought at Father Renfeild :

‘Now, Padre, now! Hold Alice. Hold her tight!’

“Ow, lad,” he snapped. “You didn’t have to shout.”

Alice frowned, “I heard noth ….”

She yelped as Renfield grabbed her from behind. Magda added her arms around Alice, too. I smiled bitterly. My girl sure struggled just the same. Then, she stabbed me with her words as I raced down the stairs.

“I hate you for this, Victor. I HATE YOU!”

She screamed, "I trusted you! Trusted! Do you know how hard that was for me after all these years?"

My steps slowed. "Yes, now you realize what you have done. I hate you, Victor. I hate you as only the undead can hate. I hate you so that there is no pity, no compassion, no ghost of the love you have killed by doing this! My hate will burn long, LONG after you die. I HATE YOU, VICTOR STANDISH!"

I stopped halfway down the steps and slowly turned to Alice, her neon blue eyes flaring and said, “D-Don’t let those be the last words I hear you say, Alice. P-Please.”

Black tears streamed from her strange eyes as she stiffened as if I had stabbed her as she mewed, “Dolt, imbecile, moron, dunce! Of course, I love you.”

I smiled despite my heart breaking. “I like it when you talk dirty to me, Alice.”

She whimpered, then managed to squeak out the words, “You are Victor Standish, and you will find a way back to me.”


***

FREE STEPHEN KING AUTOGRAPH

FREE STEPHEN KING AUTOGRAPH

on his last Castle Rock story, NEEDFUL THINGS.

How do you get it?

All you have to do is win the contest that ends August 31st.

Whose contest? My contest.

Write an honest review of any of my eBooks on Amazon, and you get 5 entries. Yes, FIVE entries.

Of course, I hope you love my book you review. But as the psychology professor told me when talking about kids who misbehave to draw attention from distant parents : "Bad breath is better than no breath at all!"

There are two more autographed books offered in the same contest, but more of them tomorrow.

DRAWING IS SEPTEMBER 1st

Check eBay to see what Mr. King's signed books go for :

http://shop.ebay.com/i.html?_trkparms=65%253A12%257C66%253A2%257C39%253A1%257C72%253A5049&rt=nc&_nkw=signed%20stephen%20king&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14.l1513&_pgn=1

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