New Story Published - The Buddy Well

I have a collection of stories that are more on the horror side, disturbing maybe, I hope I build them with the right twists to catch the readers off guard. It's over on my Wattpad profile and I call it Creepy Spine Tinglers. In there am putting my short stories that fit this genre. The stories run from a 500 words up to 5,000. Short to short-ish.

My latest I call The Buddy Well. This one is one of the more morbid ones I have put on paper, it definitely could have been more graphic but I left it to the readers to fill in the gaps. I am still working on writing and creating suspense, but that's how you learn. You write many things that suck to get the good stuff out.

Go check it out, leave feedback, enjoy it either way.

Time to turn the page.

Wattpad profile.

Back In The Writing Swing

I am begging to find my writing groove again. I am writing every day trying to focus mainly on fiction, creative works but also blogging meaningful posts on my other blogs that are more aligned with my career works.

I am using Wattpad as my posting place and where I write the most. Here's my profile.

All the little ideas I have I am putting into collections or writing them as stand along short stories. My goal this year, like last, is to ramp up and participate in the NaNoWriMo this year. Either complete my Emerald Event novel or start a new one. I may trash and re-write The Emerald Event but between now and then I may get motiviated on something else in my journals of ideas.

Either way I am getting my routine and loving it again. I have finally figured out how to let go and stop over analyzing my works to an impossible goal of 'perfection'. Create, mold, then let it go.

WOOT!

Time to turn the page.

Book Review - The 5th Wave

Originally posted on my other blog - Binary Blogger.

I love to read and do it any chance I can get. Whether it’s short stories delivered via email daily, books about the latest in IT Security or Management to fiction novels, reading is a fantastic activity that everyone should do when they can. I use Goodreads regularly to find new books to read, authors to follow and skim other people’s reviews and I find it to be very helpful. However, every book I read I don’t write a review for, some just aren’t worthy of my time to give my thoughts on, others are either really good and deserve support or are on the other end of the spectrum and need to be called out. The 5th Wave falls into the latter category.

The 5th Wave is categorized as young adult (YA) fiction and seen as in the same class of style as The Hunger Games, Divergent and the The Maze Runner but that’s only because of the style and target audience. After I read The Hunger Games, a series I was consumed by and read all three books in a week, I have kept my eye on the young adult genre as it shows from time to time it’s not as young as they claim. The 5th Wave I saw sitting on bookstore shelves for a while now and started to see more hype about it. After I went back in time and started reading older books I haven’t before and got worn out by my mass consumption of political thrillers I decided to give The 5th Wave a chance.

The 5th Wave is about an alien invasion of Earth. A large spacecraft arrives in orbit, no contact can be made, and extinction level attacks start to happen that the society on Earth call waves. The 5th Wave is the assumed final wave where the remaining population is wiped out. It has aliens, invasions, fight for survival what could go wrong?

SPOILERS AHEAD

As I got into the book about 50 pages in or so the plot started to seem awfully familiar. I could place it at first but then as the waves were being described and talked about by the characters it became clear to me why I recognized it. The alien arrival and attacks or waves are a rip-off from a Discovery Channel series called When Aliens Attack. A TV series I was greatly interested in and watched whenever it was on. The series was exactly this book, how aliens could arrive on Earth and take us out without ever stepping foot on the planet. From the Manhattan sized craft approaching and entering orbit, sending down non-explosive massive mile-long rods to destroy cities with using kinetic energy and leaving no radioactive residue. The book even had a radical idea from the TV show about burying nukes and drilling huge pillars filled with water to super heat the water to steam and sending metal caps into space at the ship. All lifted from the show. The show and book went on to talk about using the birds to spread disease and and so on… This was a big disappointment when the pieces came together for me. Young adults would never catch it, unless they watched Discovery as much as I do.

The next major downfall of this book was a clear case of blatant plagiarism. I will use this term freely and loudly because anyone cannot deny this. There is a scene where the children and teenagers are going through a boot camp situation. The Drill Sargent and the dialogue is almost a 100% word for word ripoff from the movie Full Metal Jacket and the Gunnery Sargent Hartman. This was more apparent than the TV show plot lines.

Aside from the plot the writing style of this book was tough to follow. It would switch from 1st person to 3rd person back to 1st person and at times you weren’t sure which first person you were reading. You’d have to remember the scenario or location to put the pieces together whether it was Cassie or Ben you were following. The other supporting character Evan was never 1st person perspective. Stick to one throughout, don’t hop around.

By the time I got 3/4 of the way through I stuck with it to just finish it. I rarely abandon any book I read once I start and this wasn’t that bad to quit on it but it was close. The end was loose, non-climatic and attempted to leave you on a cliffhanger but I never saw the cliff.

There’s a sequel coming for this book but I don’t think I will rush out and get it. When I get around to it maybe, and that’s a big maybe, which means probably not. I have a 100 other books I want to read and this didn’t make itself worthy to stick with through any kind of long series.

Book Review: Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

Here's a book review I wrote over on my other blog, Binaryblogger.com. I copied it here because it's a book review and is relevant to the art of writing. 

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Here are my thoughts around the book The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. That's right, after 30 years I finally got around and read the darn thing. I succumbed to the hype, the praise, the massive cult following. This book somehow became the entry book to geekdom or something. I was reading so many political thrillers, reference books on IT Security practices and non-fiction I needed a break before I tackled the 1000+ page Shift Omnibus. I opened it up on my Nook GlowLight eBook Reader and began. Spoilers ahead, don't worry, you aren't missing out on much.

A little background, I have started this book many times since I was a kid. I always seemed to make it to the destruction of Earth to where Ford and Arthur make it to the ship and then I stop. Reading it this time, determined to finish it, I understood why I gave up so many times before. The book isn't that funny. It has promises of humor and in some places it is witty, but the English (England) style quips and short bursts of quasi-intellectual banter gets old really fast. Reading this book was like watching a child play jacks. Focused on the jacks laying on the ground then out of the blue comes a bouncing ball distracting you for a little while then back to the jacks. At times I wonder if Douglas Adams made this book up as he went along and yes I know it was a radio show before the book. That might explain the transition to novel form wasn't as smooth as it could have been.

I can understand why some people would like this style of books and stories but not me. I will give it credit though, if you take away the characters and attempt at humor, the underlying story is not bad. Planetary destruction, political turmoil, an all powerful hyper-intelligent computer, and a very powerful spacecraft. But unfortunately it wasn't that way. By the end of the book I wished all the characters did what Marvin made the computer do. Every character was annoying, whiny complainers, shallow and one-dimensional. The only character I found that had some promise was Trillian and that was because she spoke the least and when she did she was all business.

I seriously doubt I will continue and finish the self-proclaimed 5 book trilogy (so witty).

Like anything I am only one person with my opinion and I didn't care for it. If others love it, great. We are both right.

End of Line.

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Everyday Writing Exercises

Writers write always. Whether it's a blog post, journal entry, a letter to mom. As long as words are being put on paper it's writing. Now, I say that if you are trying to be a fiction writer then you need to be writing fiction everyday on top of the other compositions you may do but that's me.

Geek to Author is a slow go. Finding time to write is very difficult, especially with a full career, wife and 2 kids, coaching baseball, etc... but I see people do it all the time and they are writing books! Why can't I? Why can't you? I know the answer, commitment. Dedication. Failure to build a structured routine.

I came across a resources, several actually, that is specifically targeted for writing with a career. The common thread is ease into the routine but build into your day that you sit down and write. Period. I am going to share these writing exercises for everyone else as well as give an insight to my methods.

I haven't been blogging here much, but that's because I have been writing. Not putting anything out there for consumption yet, but I am writing. Short stories mostly but I have a very rough draft of 50,000 words toward a book. So I am doing it. The second part, editing my work, is where my analytical OCD is battling me. Tweaking the stories, expanding them, changing the dialogue instead of fixing the grammar and flows.

Each exercise I do I will start to publish them here. They are not ground breaking and most of them I tweak around to make them more creative and challenging for me. You don't have to follow them verbatim but use them in your own way for your daily writing. I have found it's very liberating and frees the mind to break away from your stories and structures and freestyle write about nonsensical topics as creative and in styles you may never use again. Experiment.

We only learn from failures.

Time to turn the page.

Geek To Author - Wattpad

Kindle MatchBook - Not A Wow Factor For Me

Amazon released a new offering called Kindle MatchBook. The idea is that you can get the Kindle eBook edition of a book you already bought in paper form... for a reduced price. From $2.99 down to free you can get the digitized copy.

I am not feeling this at all. First, I am a read once and move on reader. There are so many books, good and bad, and my reading time is not what I would like it to be I don't have the time to re-read something I already read. I want to read new things and expand. There has never been a book that I want to go back and re-experience because I know all the details already.

Second, I am sure the free MatchBook's are not exactly top titles so the reduced price for the paper copy you bought in the past is going up for re-buying the material again. As a Geek and the argument of copyright what are you buying then? The copyrighted material or the media it's on? Because once you bought the book you have the story? $2.99 for an eBook conversion is steep and $14.99 + $2.99 doesn't line up.

The only books I re-read are reference materials, manuals, help books and those I always buy the paper copy for. It's easier to flip through, get to the page I want, see the notes in the margins and I am not anchored to something with a battery. I like eBooks for convenience but what if the power goes out and doesn't come back on? There are some things you need to not have digital.

MatchBook will appeal to the hard core book lovers that love to re-read books. I will not use this not is it a selling point for anything good or bad toward Amazon. In the digital world it's very little work, comparatively speaking to printing, to convert something so why wouldn't you offer something like this?

From a business standpoint it's another revenue stream to eek out another penny or two from older materials. Amazon is in the business of profit, no matter how small the demographic is that will actually use this, it must be projected to be enough to make it worth the effort.

I won't be one of them.

Time to turn the page.