Horton Deakins's Blog, page 12

If you dont rite good you will be sorrie

Something happened recently that really ticked me off. I was perusing the list of various reviews I had posted on Amazon for books and other products when I ran across a comment someone had made about one of my reviews from over three years ago. The book I was reviewing was a rather large, expensive, and mostly useless compilation of publishers and literary agents.

The person who left the comment, and who did not leave his/her real name, said that I needed to polish my writing before searching for a publisher.  Keep in mind that at the time I wrote my product review, I had only just begun researching how to find agents and publishers.

That little bit of unsolicited advice set my teeth on edge, because I wrote my review quickly and meant only to supply information, not to create a literary masterpiece.  Now that I’ve had time to cool off, however, I’m actually glad about it.  It highlighted something I’ve known for a long time but haven’t been sufficiently tuned-in to, namely that everything we write in a public forum will be scrutinized.  For a writer, that is very important, because that implies that everything we write is an advertisement for our work, and it can be positive or negative.

For non-writers, the lesson here is that words mean things.  Be careful what you write, even on facebook—especially on facebook.  In print, you don’t have the opportunity to embellish or elaborate with voice inflections, expressions, and gesturing in order to communicate your point.  People may interpret your words in a way you did not mean, and people often do.  Feelings can be hurt, and your fb “friend” may decide not to be so friendly anymore.  Just saying.

Any frustrated writers out there?

You know who you are.  You’re a writer—or, at least once you were.  Now, life has other plans for you.  Whether it’s your job, school, or just life’s little interruptions, you can’t seem to find time to write.  And when you do find a moment to write—and when you insist on not beginning sentences with conjunctions—do you give up because you really don’t have enough time to do justice to a pair of paragraphs?

Has writer’s depression set in?  Has creativity fled?  Do you feel, as  do I, that your muse has done an armadillo and stepped out in front of a moving vehicle?  Have you resorted to hitting the bottle to stimulate creativity, only to find that when you reviewed your writing the next morning, it was crap?  Have other things caused you to be so depressed that you just didn’t feel like writing anymore, but at the same time you knew that if you couldn’t write you were just going to bust?  Has your muse become a zombie that is eating away at your entrails?  Is it literarily drawing and quartering you?  Is your ileum ill because you just can’t get the creative juices going?  Does your prose need some prune juice?

You writers out there—I want to hear from you about this.  Oh, feltercarb!–You won’t respond.  No one ever responds to my calls for action.  No one ever responds to anything I write on my blog.  Perhaps—perhaps that is because I reach no one!  Ah, now that makes sense.  Wakatta yo.  Eso dicen.  Das ist richtig.

So, have you got the alimentary canal to respond?  Or are you just poultry in motion?  Perhaps you tire of my rants, and you would prefer I said nothing at all?  I know some of you wish I would just eat my own book and get a blockage in my transverse colon.  No, that was unfair of me.  All of you do.  At least one of you does.

Woo-hoo! Mad, riotous celebrations have ensued!

Half a hundredweight, half a hundredweight,

Half a hundredweight downward.

All in the valley of Dieting

Rode the big losers.

(That’s half a light hundredweight, by the way, for you sticklers!)

Yep, there be raucous celebratin’ and riotin’ afoot–can’t you tell? Don’t I sound absolutely raucous? And riotous? And well I should, because I’ve only this very morning achieved my first major weight loss goal:

I have lost 50 pounds this year!

Actually, I think I’ve lost most of it the last several months, but details, schmeetails.

Now onward and upward–uh, downward. I have not yet begun to fight. No, that’s not right, either. I’ve got a good beginning, but I’m only two-thirds of the way toward my goal, and I’m not buying new clothes until I knock off about another eight pounds and drop another inch in my waistline, even though I’m getting comments that my clothes are looking really baggy now… Wednesday should be about right (just kidding!).

No dieting during the cruise later this year, though. I’m not missing out on either the delicacies or their respective quantities. I’ll be another 12-15 pounds lighter by then, so I don’t care if I lose a little ground at that point—I’ll be walking around the deck quite a bit, anyway, probably reading my Kindle as I go (I once chastised someone for doing that very thing, but I tried it recently on a sidewalk next to a busy thoroughfare and found it not difficult or dangerous at all—one can watch the sidewalk without having to focus on it). I don’t have a particular time frame in mind for my goal, and if the last third takes twice as long as the first two thirds, then so be it.  But I think 75 pounds down will be just about right for me.  Just think—that’s the equivalent weight of nine gallons, three pints of water!

…and miles to go before I sleep…

Thank you, giveaway participants.

A googlebangplex thanks to the 708 goodreads members who participated in my latest giveaway for two signed copies of Time Pullers.

Fair warning, vampires. Here I come.

’nuff said?

There can be only one.

Hurry—giveaway almost over!

Very little time left to enter for two signed copies of my book, Time Pullers. 
Enter on goodreads, here:

http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/enter_choose_address/32755-time-pullers

If you go to sleep Tuesday evening without entering, then you will miss out!

I’m destined to be a vampire hunter!

Vampire hunters subclade migration

This map received a rather cool reception on my fan page, so I thought I’d try it here.  Follow the logic with me.  Notice that the R1b subclade goes right smack dab through Transylvania. However, my subclade, R1a, branches off near Kazakhstan to go through Eastern Europe and on to Scandinavia.  If the vampires came from R1b, then isn’t it obvious that the vampire hunters must needs be have come from the same haplogroup, R1?  Am I right, or what?  It is inescapable.

It is clear to me what I must now do, what my mission is:  I must purchase the entire set of Buffy episodes and sit down with pen and pad (right next to the popcorn) and begin to learn how to apply my new calling.  I am sharpening my sword now, with which I shall begin to sharpen stakes.

I know you’re out there!  I’m coming, and Hell’s coming with me!

My farming roots

Grampa Deakins tending his field corn (mid-to-late 1920′s). The farm was located just south of the Ft. Smith Junction of I-35 and I-40. Of course, that junction wasn’t there until some time after 1957. He used a five-row Van Brunt (John Deere) corn drill, pulled by a team of horses, to plant that corn.  I don’t think he ever planted sweet corn, as he needed a cash crop as well as feed for his livestock.  He leased the right-of-way on Grand Boulevard all the way from Reno to Southeast fifteenth street, a mile south, and planted corn all the way up and down on both sides.  This was in addition to his own ten acres.

After Grampa died in 1930, my father, thirteen at the time, tried to hitch the horses to the plow to continue the work, but he lacked the strength. At that point, Granny realized she would have to hire someone to help.

My father was the last generation of a long line of farmers. Although he left the farm in his early twenties, he tried his best to “inflict” the art of agriculture upon me. Perhaps that has something to do with the reason I still have the plow and the corn drill, and why it was so hard on me when finally we were forced to sell the old farm.

I have but two pieces of advice for you: Plow with the contours, and rotate your crops.  Oh, yes, and don’t prune your grapes back too far.  And use a can of kerosene to collect your potato bugs.  Also, plant several rows of corn together to get it to pollinate, and after it comes up thin it to one foot between stalks.  Peanut hay is good for feeding your rabbits.  Keep your hoe sharp, and clean it after every use.  Plant your corn far enough away from the fence that the horses don’t eat it.  Don’t plant your onions with your beans.  Consult the almanac to find the best time to plant your okra.  Despite what your teachers will tell you, gourds will cross with and mess up the flavor of cantaloupes.  There’s nothing better than a mess of Kentucky Wonder green beans and an new golden potatoes, unless it’s fresh, ripe tomatoes.

I used to hate working in the garden, but now I’d give anything to relive some of those experiences, with the chance to ask more questions… and to taste those fresh vegetables once again.

Quick, everyone — learn to read French!

Or you can learn to use Google translate.

Here is my latest four-star review for Time Pullers as given by “Ikebukuro” (screen name), from France.  She is not a native speaker of English .  This review can be found on www.goodreads.com, as well as on www.babelio.com and www.libfly.com .  Among other comments, the reader likens the atmosphere of Time Pullers to the movie The Right Stuff, which she says she really likes.  You can find a copy of the Google translation here: http://www.facebook.com/AuthorHortonDeakins

C’est un livre que j’ai lu en VO et j’avoue que j’appréhendais un peu d’être freinée dans ma lecture par un vocabulaire trop technique (mais je l’aurai été tout autant en français) voire scientifique et pas du tout. J’ai lu ce livre très facilement et sans souci particulier et j’ai vraiment beaucoup aimé ma lecture. Je suis tout de suite rentrée dans l’histoire car l’auteur a particulièrement réussi à nous tenir en haleine régulièrement. De simples petits détails nous intriguent tout au long du récit et viennent relancer l’intérêt et les questionnements du lecteur.

Mais ce qui m’a particulièrement plu dans ce roman, c’est l’aspect très cinématographique qui se dégage de l’ensemble, cela apporte une vraie dynamique au récit. On imagine les personnages, la base… l’énergie et le dévouement de ces pionniers qui mettent tout en œuvre pour réussir leur mission et cela donne du rythme à l’ensemble. J’ai retrouvé avec ce livre l’atmosphère d’un film que j’aime beaucoup “L’étoffe des héros”. La phase préparatoire de leur mission donne du poids et de la crédibilité à l’intrigue.

On finit même par trouver cette théorie et cette possibilité des voyages dans le temps complètement plausible grâce au soin du détail apporté par l’auteur mais à aucun moment l’ensemble est ennuyeux… bien au contraire. Cette partie du récit soulève beaucoup d’interrogations sur le rôle des personnages principaux. Ces derniers sont particulièrement intéressants dans leur évolution et dans la façon dont ils s’imbriquent dans l’histoire, tous ont un vrai rôle à un moment donné dans la mécanique du récit et une vraie personnalité qui se dévoile petit à petit au fil des pages.

Le récit est bien construit, rythmé dans une écriture fluide et vivante, l’histoire vraiment intéressante et prenante. Ce livre est un bon moyen de se lancer dans la science-fiction et le thème, pourtant déjà traité par de nombreux auteurs, a vraiment été développé dans ce livre de manière originale. On aimerait vraiment retrouver les personnages dans une nouvelle histoire…

Lord Kelvin, on the Future of Steampunk

“They never will be able to use dirigible balloons as a means of conveying passengers from place to place. There never was and never can be any commercial value to any such affair. It is all a delusion and a snare. Santos-Dumont is a very bright young man, but an air ship as planned by him is not practicable.”
      — Lord Kelvin