True Life and Fiction

A s most of you know, I have quite the independent streak. Unfortunately, I'm also a cheapskate by nature. Sometimes my need to do things myself with whatever resources I have on hand gets me into trouble. So, this post is for all you independent cheapskates out there, especially those writers like myself who insist on doing everything the hard way. You want a great-looking cover for you book, right? You want your cover to express what your book is all about, right? Well, I got news for you. Sometimes these two things together are not what you might think. I've worked with a few authors (including myself) that have a tendency to show their main character on the cover, or put all characters on the cover, or show every element and aspect of the story on the cover but one must resist this urge and adhere to rule one. 1. Less is More While there are countless examples of bestsellers with covers so simple one might think it was an afterthought, I can think of very few examples...

I recently let loose another rant on FB about a current news item (sometimes I do this for fun and either take an unfavorable side or remain so ambiguous that no one really knows what I'm trying to say) that somehow turned into a discussion about the Zombie apocalypse. Funny how everything seems to fall back to the Zombie apocalypse for me. Anyway, someone mentioned how prepared I must be and that if the Zombie apocalypse ever happened, they were coming to my house. This leads to a critical question, should one travel during a Zombie apocalypse (or any other disaster?) The answer-yes and no. You should strive to be as prepared as you can to bug out. Spend some time putting together a bugout bag-something that can hold all the bare necessities without sinking you like a ten-ton anchor. And right there's the rub, isn't it? If the Zombie apocalypse were to begin right now, this very instant, the major of our population would be dead within a week. Our population ...

H ere's a little something I wrote a few years back. I suppose most would classify this in the "weird" category, although I don't see what is so weird about it. Okay, maybe it's a little weird. This is another piece of flash fiction I wrote for Eclectic Flash Magazine. At the time they limited their flash fiction to 750 words, and this comes in at 749 words, so it was a good fit. For those of you that might find this little story too hard to stomach, keep in mind that it is written in an epistolary format. That means that the story progresses through a series of letters, or in this case, emails. So, here it is, for your enjoyment: MY MIND’S EYE   29 January All-seeing Sophia, I send you this email from a hospital bed. After using your email psychic service for many years, I should be afforded proper readings and predictions of my future. If you truly are psychic, you should tell me to be more careful. Yesterday afternoon, just after rece...