POLITICIANS

POLITICIANS I met a 90 year old woman who told me she quit voting for politicians on her 76th birthday and wishes she had done it earlier. When I asked her why, she grinned and said, "I don't want to encourage them."

Zero Sum Universe

Yes, the odds are good that a suicide bomber is making intolerance destructive across the sea somewhere, and closer to home, even more likely, a college girl is raped and her neighbor the wife beaten to a pulp by her death do us part husband and let's not forget the children in refugee camps hundreds of thousands dying of malnutrition nor forget the laughing couple whose laughter is interrupted by the attacking drone overhead and all this just scratches the surface of our worldly horrors; so please keep these in mind when I tell you that I walked out onto my deck this morning under a stunning blue sky and took a deep breath and counted my blessings and thought, What a beautiful morning! It's great to be alive! It's great to be alive!

The Writing Life II: Amazon.com: Emil's Last Adventure (Stories In Overdrive)

The Writing Life II: Amazon.com: Emil's Last Adventure (Stories In Overdrive):

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Lesson

 I'm an old man and I'm tired and I'm disgusted
 with human affairs. But Sketch our rat terrier
 doesn't disgust me and the butterflies that returned
 to our bush this summer don't disgust me, nor
 the birds at the feeders off our deck. D. H. Lawrence
 said all this more eloquently than I can in a poem
 about living with animals, and I get some comfort
 that my disgust is not a personal hallucination.
 Sartre said hell is other people, which I believe
 is true, but heaven is too. The obvious lesson
 is be careful who you hang with. Very careful.

Eden

No matter what the day brings it begins here and now at 4 a.m. in silence as comforting as breath the mind without distraction the streets empty, the dogs asleep only thought alive in reflection of good fortune, of past blessings enjoyed before the engines start the lights come on, the dogs bark and day begins here where noise and frantic action drive the hour and no one knows how to be still.

Nature's Mercy

Nature's fierce response to what cummings called our prodding prurient fingers may be a blessing in disguise, a distraction from the bleeding soul of a divided nation, an external violence that keeps us from tearing one another apart, letting us rush to extinction as united enemies, the Mother of all Ironies, final proof that God has a dark sense of humor. R.I.P. Amen.

A poem comes to mind

Nostalgia

With violent chaos in Cairo

a gigantic cyclone in Australia

monster winter storms across the U.S.

all on the news tonight

(Yes the revolution will be televised)

I think how nice it must have been

to be outside on that distant afternoon

working in the field on my farm

in the recent state of Oregon

all cares underfoot

when a wagon approaches

a neighbor visiting

and I walk to the wagon

where the neighbor says

Did you hear the news?

which I had not

so he tells me

President Lincoln was shot!

President Lincoln is dead!

and I can hardly believe it

and ask when? how?

Last month

the neighbor begins ...

Maybe the shock of the world

Mayb the shock of the world is how much good will is found in the deeds of those who refuse to embrace the inevitable decline of the planet. As if on the deck of the Titanic an old man drops his wallet and a young boy, seeing what happened, retrieves and returns it, sinking ship be damned, because this is the right thing to do. As if death is no reason to compromise life and a sinking ship is just a sinking ship.

Second Life

It really feels good, giving all these stories I created 20 years ago as screenplays a new life in a modified form as Stories In Overdrive. The experiment is one month old and going better than I expected so far. Long way to go, of course. A marathon. But I'm hopeful that I have something unique, and maybe even important, going here. We'll find out ha ha.

The Writing Life II: Perseverance

The Writing Life II: Perseverance:

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Marathon

 This Overdrive project, which I've called a marathon, also is like doing everything in slow motion, certainly when compared to the obsessive sprinting of my youth. Still adjusting.

Is Using a Free Ebook Still a Viable Strategy for Increasing Overall Sales on Amazon? | The Passive Voice |

Is Using a Free Ebook Still a Viable Strategy for Increasing Overall Sales on Amazon? | The Passive Voice | Writers, Writing, Self-Publishing, Disruptive Innovation and the Universe:

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Celebration

 The best way to celebrate the 4th
 is to treat vets with care
 the rest of the year.

The Writing Life II: How I got a blank book to the top of the Amazon charts | The Passive Voice |

The Writing Life II: How I got a blank book to the top of the Amazon charts | The Passive Voice |:

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Comes A Time

There comes a time when it's just too much this accumulation of disasters and mayhem Nature's indifferent anger the worst because the most preventable and I have to turn away and distract myself with work that won't matter in the ash heap of the future but which today is my sole grip on this semblance of sanity I call my life and in this way one day follows the next and I thank the gods repeatedly repeatedly that I am an old man and thus will be spared the worst to come, and I can remember what I thought were better times, before the trigger to this point of no return, deliriously happy in my human ignorance of the sowing and its eventual crop of disaster, it appears we were a mistake from the beginning in the larger scheme of things, one day to be studied like dinosaurs, just another extinct species, a mistake of Nature a realization offering no relief whatever and all the more reason for distraction my work in the present tense daily and normal routine cooking reading music enjoying what I can hello Harriet hello Sketch it's a beautiful day in small perspective thank the gods for age, we'll be gone soon enough in the meantime Gerry Mulligan sounds great a signature comfort breakfast! a new Overdrive. to bring out let's bbq steaks for dinner Does it get any better than this?

Slow week

This, the week leading up to the 4th, is my least favorite of the summer, just as the 4th has become my least favorite holiday. It's not that I'm unpatriotic; it's that I see Sketch hiding under the bed and see images of all those vets diving for cover the holiday I spent in the VA hospital 20 years ago. Not much fun to watch fireworks, thinking of vets diving for cover.

So maybe I can get a plan for downsizing this week. Overdue.

And a small start on the new Overdrive stories. Three out already! The first promo has resulted in over 1100 downloads with two (slow?) days to go. I used to spread the 5 free days out, one day at a time, but a marketing book convinced me it's better to do all five at once in the beginning and get the freebies over with. So that's what I'm doing. In fact, I am following "advice" on all the marketing strategies this summer. Hoping it works.