Mark R. Hunter's Blog, page 51

Free E-Book To Celebrate Valentine's Day!

The e-book version of My Funny Medical will be listed for free over the next several days. Wait, let me rephrase that: FREE for the next several days! That's a heck of a buy, by which I mean you don't have to buy it.

Due to complications with KDP enrollment, the ebook will be free on Amazon from today until the 5th, then reset to free from Feb 6-11, giving most of the month; so it's free until three days before the big day. Did I mention free?

And of course I have a piece in there, which is why I can call it "our" anthology. I'm the one who had to sleep in the car. There are print copies available for anyone who wants one as a gift, but you can get your free e-version over on my Amazon page:

https://www.amazon.com/Mark-R-Hunter/...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Valentine's Day gets treated by some of the funniest writers in America: the people who win the humor contests, write syndicated columns, appear on comedy stages, create the jokes you hear on TV. A fun read, and an open invitation to laugh at the jokes that make the world go around.

Some samples:
I don’t need a special day to be awkward, uncomfortable and falsely selfless. That’s what dating was for. Blythe Jewell

This is not to imply that the only men who remember Valentine’s Day are philanderers. Some of them, for example, are only thinking about cheating. Greg Podolski

We lovingly refer to it as Valentine’s Day because "Sex for Chocolate Day" was vetoed by the greeting card industry. Leigh Anne Jasheway

Valentine’s Day is about those five little words: Charge it to my Visa. Jim Shea

Inappropriate Valentine's Day Gifts include: Tickets to a ball game, box of chocolates left over from Christmas, vacuum cleaner, herpes. Jonathan Shipley

Clubbing a man over the head with a bat and dragging him into your love den has been interpreted as somehow criminal, by people who belong to fringe groups like the "police" and the "courts". What in heaven’s name is a girl to do?! Kate Heidel

GRADY HARP, Hall of Fame Reviewer, says:
"One of those `must have' books not only because it is terrific reading but also because it has a lot to say about contemporary relationships. Kudos to a crew of writers who are very in the know about love and relationships. This is a little treasure of a book with some of the most terse humor being written today!"



And remember: Every time you buy one of our books, an angel gets its paper wings.

Book Review: For Your Damned Love

You should never start reading in the middle of a book series. But you should also never write in multiple genres before finding your audience, and I did that too, so what the heck.

But Doc Hardesty, American living in Mexico and sort-of retired mercenary, isn’t the main focus of most of this story, at least not at first. Instead it’s about Dancy, a rich debutant visiting Mexico with her over-his-head drug dealing husband. The husband has made a deal to turn Dancy over to a Mexican drug lord, who will use her and then have her killed.

But everyone underestimates Dancy, starting with the two underling kidnappers she beats up with a tennis racket—while naked. Soon Dancy has taken over the cartel herself, leaving a trail of death and destruction behind her, while Hardesty hires on to track her down.

“For Your Damned Love” reminds me of the old James Bond style spy books: full of sex and action (in this case much of it graphic), but also lyrical descriptions of exotic settings. You get a real feel for the territory, and it’s clear Linton Robinson knows Mexico. There also philosophical discussions that slow the story down, sometimes to a crawl. But here’s the thing: All the set pieces and talks about music and communism are so entertaining, and done so well, that going through them isn’t so much of a wade as a respite from the one-woman disaster squad.

In the end Mexico becomes a character, every bit as much as Hardesty, the chaos-loving Dancy, and the doomed men who circle around her. It’s not the kind of thing that would fly in the publishing world today … and maybe that’s what’s wrong with the publishing world today.

https://www.amazon.com/Your-Damned-Lo...

The Dreaded Rejection Letter

Dear Author,
Thank you for submitting your work to us. Unfortunately, it doesn't meet our needs at the present time, but we wish you future success.
Sincerely,
The Editor


Well, that's what they write. Any professional in the business will tell you editors, agents, and publishers don't reject writers: They reject pieces of paper with words written on them. However, that's not what writers hear:


Dear Loser,
We considered using your manuscript as a coaster, but it was stinking up the place so much we couldn't even be bothered to steam off the stamps. Hopefully we'll never hear from you again, but wish you success at a more appropriate profession, such as fish cleaner or stall mucker.
Go Away,
The Editors


And that's not fair, because in the publishing industry the gatekeepers are inundated with hundreds of--let's face it, sometimes desperate--writers every day. Sometimes a form rejection letter (more likely e-mail) is all they have time for; sometimes they don't have time even for that. There are lots of things to complain about with the publishing industry, but on an individual basis the people working there are pretty decent.

Still, writers get more rejections than a nerd at a sports bar, and I should know. (Just kidding--I never went to sports bars.) In fact, if you're doing it right you're going to get lots and lots of rejections. But sometimes, especially if you're having a down day overall, your umpteenth rejection will show up and just hit you harder than most. That's what happened to me, anyway.

When I first started out, back in the days of snail mail delivered by the Pony Express, I collected enough form rejection letters to paper my office walls ... which would have looked better than the wallpaper I actually had at the time. Later I'd get the occasional encouraging note at the end of one. Then I'd get brief, but personal, rejections. Then more detailed ones, and then, one day, an acceptance. A few times after that, I received some detailed letters describing why they were rejecting the manuscript, or even asking for some changes and a resubmission. Now it's decades since I started out: I have nine published books, and stories in three anthologies.

And I still get form rejection letters.

So yeah, it gets me down sometimes, especially this time of year when the days are short. But after all this time, I've developed a method of dealing with these bouts of sudden depression: I go to my laptop, open up a word document ...

And start working on another story.

It doesn't get me published ... well, not immediately. But it does remind me of why I'm doing this to begin with.

When Your Car Is Smarter Than You

SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK

When Your Car is Smarter Than You


I totally loved my last car, so it’s ironic that it got totaled, which I didn’t love.

Normally I’m not one of those who falls madly in love with automobiles. They’re just something to get me from one place to another until they don’t anymore, which with my track record happens sooner, rather than later. My first car exploded; a wheel fell off my second; my third died at a rest stop outside of Chattanooga, Tennessee; my fourth froze solid on a snow swept rural road half a mile from the nearest phone.

And so on.

So when a car comes along that does me good, I appreciate it. So it was with my Ford Focus, which lasted over ten years despite … well, me. Yes, it had its problems, but it was as reliable as the American election cycle, and way more fun. It was easy to drive, had great brakes, accelerated me out of trouble more than once, and the back seat was kind of comfortable to sleep in as long you curled up. (That’s another story.)

Then, like a vampire, it was killed by sunlight.

Well, it was killed by another driver who was blinded by sunlight. To be honest, we grieved: because it was a great car, and because it was paid off. But life goes on, so my wife, who was laid up with a broken foot (see above about the blinded driver killing the car), started researching a replacement.

We wanted a domestic model, which is silly because these days half of American cars are built in other countries, and half of foreign cars are built in America. Still, I never forgot the time the transmission broke in my Renault Alliance (see car #3), and they had to order a new part—from France. I’ve bought American ever since (except for car# 8), which didn’t save me from the Chevy Chevette (see car #4).

We also wanted something that could transport both of us, plus our dog and the grand-twins. A 95 pound dog and two kids in one back seat adds up to someone being crushed.

We wanted something that would get us around a little better in an Indiana winter (see car # … well, all of them), but that would still get decent gas mileage. (Car #5 got awesome gas mileage, because engines don’t burn gas when they never start.) The answer: a mid-size SUV.

We picked out a Ford Escape before discovering that it was built on the same chassis as the … wait for it … Ford Focus. Maybe that’s part of the reason why we fell in love with the car. (Can I call an SUV a car? Too late.) It’s burgundy, although it has one of those non-color names, like pink grapefruit, or tangerine, or something else with vitamin C.

Oh, ruby red, that’s it. Where did I get food from? I’ve hated that trend ever since I accidentally ate a macaroni and cheese crayon.

There was one problem. (Well, two, as we had to start making car payments again.) Our old car was over ten years old, which in terms of today’s electronics meant it was about eighty.

Things had, to put it mildly, changed. And not because I’d never owned a sport utility vehicle. I don’t even like sports.

To this day I’m always a little surprised not to find preset buttons on my car radio. You know what I found when we got into a 2014 SUV? A TV screen. That’s sixties-era science fiction movie stuff.

“Look at this!” I said.

“You’ll have to be more specific,” the car replied.

Because you can talk to the car. And it can talk back. You can use it as a phone, or an internet hot spot. Also, you can use the car to get music and news from a satellite orbiting the Earth. In space.

Think about that.

When I was a kid, you could barely hear the radio station during a thunderstorm. We could pull in three AM stations: country, NPR, and WOWO radio 1190, which was the top 40 rock station. Now some guy was downloading all Beatles songs into a computer in London and beaming them to a satellite thirty thousand miles in space, which was then sending them straight to my friggin’ car.

I don’t care if you’re a millennial or not: If you stop to really think about this, how can you not be amazed? (In case you’re wondering, no, we didn’t continue the satellite service after the free trial was over. I wasn’t that amazed.)

You touched the screen to change radio stations. Then you touched it again to turn on the air conditioning. You can set a different temperature for each side of the car. You know what the air conditioning was on my first four cars? Rolling the windows down (with a hand crank) and driving real fast.

If it’s a nice day, we can now push a button and open the roof. Dude.

So we were test driving the Escape, and I put it in reverse, and the “environmental” information on the screen disappeared. Instead, I saw what was behind me. ON A TV SCREEN.

A little voice said, “What are you doing, Mark?”

“Um … I’m backing up.”

“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that. There’s a car three blocks away that will go by when you’re four feet onto the roadway. Please wait until it passes.”

“But … how do you know my name?”

“I knew it as soon as you sat down. Butt cheek recognition software.”

Okay, I might have been making up that last bit. But the seats are all electric, so who knows what they’re feeling?

Next thing you know, cars will be driving themselves.

Everybody Jokes About The Weather, But Only the Desperate Move

(We only got a few inches of snow and a layer of ice. My plan worked! My predictions are always wrong.)
------------------------------------------------------

Somebody asked me the other day why I don't write humor columns about the weather these days. It's the same reason why I don't make many political jokes: They're just not funny anymore.

I've endured Indiana winters for so many years that they've become like my chronic back pain: I don't notice it as much unless I think about it. Another way to put it is that winter is like having dental work done while on nitrous oxide: You still feel the pain, but you just don't care anymore.

(No--the original source of my chronic back pain was not weather-related. But that would be a reasonable assumption.)

It's amazing how quickly people adjust to weather, which is seldom moderate in most of the country. After last week, thirty degrees suddenly looks good. In August, forty seems horrible. (Twenty is always bad. Anything with a minus or triple digits is always bad.)

As a volunteer, I've fought fires over a 130 degree temperature range, and that doesn't include the fire itself. One summer I took off my boots while on a break from a hayfield fire, only to have the asphalt pavement melt to my socks. At a mobile home fire one winter, as I've related before, it was so cold my breathing air regulator froze up while I was inside the building. It was like having a plastic sheet tightened over my mouth, only the plastic sheet was at minus fifteen degrees.

Before you ask, yes, I survived my headlong dive out the door.

Still, our winters here in northern Indiana have been relatively moderate, these last several years. I mean, moderate by our standards. Your average resident of, say, Key West wouldn't agree, but why would they be up here in winter anyway? Last winter the temperature only got below zero a few times. The Polar Bear Plunge, in which the insane dive into open water at New Years, was almost canceled for lack of a challenge.

But I remember the days when you couldn't open your downstairs windows, because the snowdrifts would fall in.

I remember having to chip the dog away from the fire hydrant. Very carefully.

Me being the pessimistic type when it comes to the weather, for the last several years I've predicted a return to truly winterish winters. "I have a feeling," I'd say every year, starting in October, "that this will be a really bad winter." My theory was that if the winter turned out to be mild, it would be a pleasant surprise, and who doesn't like those?

Every year I'd be wrong. I was okay with this.

But this year I've been right. I suppose I was bound to be right about something, sooner or later.

I'm never right about good things.

As I write this we've just passed through a record cold snap that put an ice coating over pretty much everything east of the Rocky Mountains. Several inches of snow are standing on a mountain in Hawaii, and California's turning cool and wet. Well, everything that didn't burn is turning cool and wet. The northeast is trying to recover from a storm so bad they had to drag out another obscure meteorological term for it. I just heard a prediction of a major snowstorm that will hit somewhere in the Midwest, but the forecasters say it's too early to tell exactly where--apparently it's the same system that's dumping rain on the fire-scorched Cali mountains.

I predict, here and now, that this major snowstorm will go right over northeast Indiana. In fact, I predict the worst of the snow will fall on Noble County, which I'm in the center of. It's Tuesday as I write this, and by Saturday we're going to be talking about the Blizzard of 18. And then, maybe, when I'm dug out, I'll come up with some new, original jokes about the weather.

But I doubt it.

January Brings Revision Weather

I haven't really given a full report on how National Novel Writing Month went for me way back ... gee, was that a whole month ago?

My NaNoWriMo novel, Fire On Mist Creek, topped out at 58,735 words on around November 26. I even managed to write a few hundred more words on a short story before the thirty day period was up, so all in all it went pretty darned well. Of course, as I've mentioned before, I started November 1st with a full (if messy) outline, character sketches, and other research all done.

But things happen, and I now face major rewrites. One scene is going to be replaced, a character is going to make more appearances and be more antagonistic, and another character just popped into existence in the next to last chapter and now has to be back-written into the story. I also need to add more description. One can't just spend a single month writing a story and be done with it. Well, most of us can't.

December got crazy, as December tends to do. there's still some craziness to come in January, but just the same, it'll be time to start the whole process again. Editing, polishing, submitting, promoting, tracking down agents, editors, and cheerleaders (also knows as reviewers, bloggers, and word of mouth ... mouthers), planning the new books and pushing the old ones, stuff ... things.

It's either that or go outside. In January--no contest.

The 21st Century is old enough to vote!

Happy New Year!

Well. That was kind of anticlimactic, wasn't it? I was at work when the ball dropped, and we were busy enough that I missed it.

I don't do resolutions per se, although I do resolve every year to look up what per se means. My goals remain the same as they are every year: Write, sell my writing, give other people a little smile when I can, avoid negative people to the extent possible (that's a really hard one), and avoid pointless arguments with people who aren't willing to consider all sides of an issue (that's a really, really hard one). The latter explains why I continue to avoid talking politics.

I hope you winter lovers are satisfied

Well, everybody wanted a white Christmas. There you go, if you live around here: White Christmas. So, Christmas is over now. It can all ... un-whiten up. Here, let me check the forecast.

Nope.

Some people out there say they like long, cold winters. We have a word for that: lunatic fringe. Okay, two words, and a few others I'd add if this wasn't a family column. Well, it looks like they're going to be getting their wish this time around.

I hope they're satisfied.

I hope they're freaking satisfied.

Because I just saw a nine day forecast that never hits twenty for high temps, but goes into minus territory for lows. That's Fahrenheit, people. I learned to spell it just for this.

For several years now, I've predicted that the next winter is going to be a particularly cold, snowy one here in northern Indiana, which used to be the very heart of cold, snowy winters. (Yeah, yeah, I know, Alaska and North Dakota for cold, Vermont and Main for snow, blah blah.) Being an eternal pessimist in the area of winter, my feeling has been that every mild winter gets us one year closer to an un-mild winter, and it's better to be pleasantly surprised compared to just being unpleasant. So every fall, I predict a horrible winter.

It just goes to prove rule #14 of weather forecasting, which is: If you forecast the same thing all the time, sooner or later you'll be right. (Rule #7 continues to be never invade Russia in the winter.)

I was enjoying global warning too much, that's the problem. What the heck, I'm a thousand feet above sea level. More, from my bedroom. We've been getting very mild winters, but the summers haven't seemed unusually hot at all ... or maybe we were just used to them. My wife thought our winters were still cold, but she's from southern Missouri, where the insect problem lessons in July because bugs burst spontaneously into flame. They literally have fireflies.

But I remember the early 80s, right after I became a volunteer firefighter. I joined up on my 18th birthday, which was in July; if I'd known what was coming in January, I'd probably have stayed home and taken up a solitaire hobby. Or a solitary hobby. Or a solitary solitaire hobby. I'm such a card.

I remember coming home from fires and standing my fire coat up, because I couldn't bend it to hang it up. It would be frozen solid. I had a reputation of fighting to be the guy on the nozzle, but it had nothing to do with being brave or some kind of action hero: The nozzle guy was closest to the flames. It was the only place on the fireground that was warm. My fire gloves once froze to a ladder. I had to leave them hanging, literally. Once, during the late stages of a mobile home fire, the regulator on my breathing air tank froze up while I was inside, which is to say it stopped flowing air to my mask. You'd think I wouldn't have minded, since the air was cold, but the whole experience just left me breathless.

But at least back then every joint in my body didn't hurt whenever the temperature fell below forty. I felt the snowstorm that led to this cold snap coming in, and by "felt" I mean I could barely move despite unsafe levels of ibuprofen. When did I become a human barometer? And what kind of a lame superpower is that?

I guess what I'm saying is, winter just isn't my season. But some of you people out there want it. Well, you're going to get a good, long, frozen taste of it this year, and I hope you put your tongue to it and get stuck there for months.

I also hope you're freaking satisfied.

T'was the Poem Before Christmas

I’ve been going through all the boxes of old paperwork in my garage attic—there were a lot of them—and I stumbled across some of my old columns. How old? Well, so old they’ve never appeared online.

There was a time when stuff didn’t appear online. No, really.

Since time has been very short lately (see above note about going through stuff, and also recently born grandbaby), I’m posting this as my annual Christmas column, a little more faith based than my usual fare … and you’d have never known it wasn’t brand new if I hadn’t told you. Well, except it mentions my youngest daughter’s fascination with Sailor Moon, which dates back to the turn of the century.

I’m typing this in without reading it first … I wonder if it’s any good?




SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK


Twas’ the night before Christmas, and all through the house
No noise could be heard but the click of my mouse
As I searched on the net for some gifts I could use,
To keep the kids happy, and thus stop abuse.


The reason, for me, was that Christmas meant presents,
And a lack of the same could make my life unpleasant.
For I have two daughters, who I thought could be mean,
Because one still knows Santa, and the other’s a teen.


So I surfed on the net, and I found Sailor Moon
Comics, two dolls, and all things cartoon.
For the old: books, tapes, her piece of the pie,
And she wanted orange clothing—don’t’ ask me why.


So my credit card screamed as I roamed cyberspace,
Begging for mercy while I wore down its face.
My bank account suffered, collapsed, and then died.
No team from “ER” could keep it alive.


Headlong for bankruptcy, I found myself hurrying.
Yes, I was broke, but I wasn’t worrying.
After all, I was experiencing the joy of giving,
And that seemed to me the way to be living.


Then in my computer I heard such a clatter,
I thought it was crashing! Almost emptied my bladder.
A new icon appeared on my desktop display:
“Press here for Santa—now, don’t delay!”


With a trembling hand I ran virus scans first,
But it said “nothing detected” so it wasn’t the worst.
I couldn’t resist; the button I pushed,
And suddenly Santa appeared with a “whoosh”.


Although no longer fat, he still had that grin.
“My wife gets the credit for the shape that I’m in.
The doc said lose weight or one day I’ll keel over,
So Mrs. Claus feeds me stuff that tastes just like clover.”


“You’re looking good, Santa,” I had to agree.
“And you’re in my computer—high tech now, I see.”
But something about my words made him frown:
“That’s why I’m here: You’ve got it all turned around.”


“But Santa,” I told him, “I’m into the spirit.
This stuff isn’t for me—I wouldn’t hear it!
I like buying for kids, it’s the spirit of giving;
Thinking not of yourself is the way to be living.”


He shook his head sadly. “You just don’t understand.
A big present exchange isn’t what should be planned.
What good does it do? What do your kids learn?
To get lots of things? To spend more than you earn?”


I sat there in shock—didn’t know what to say.
This didn’t sound like our Santa today.
“Why do you say this? You sound kind of blue.
Is material hoopla getting you, too?”


“It was different before,” Santa said with a frown.
“There wasn’t this focus on cost all around.
People were thankful, whatever they got;
Gifts came from the heart, that’s what they were taught.”


“Do you think what they want, or what you think is nice?
Do you buy best for each, or balance out price?
I know you like giving, but is that what they learn?
Or do they just know ‘get’ and you’ve money to burn?”


“All the gifts in the world don’t play a part
In the meaning of Christmas if He’s not in your heart.
And you know who He is! So get off your can.
If you can’t afford gifts make your kids understand.”


And then he was gone. He left no gifts from his sack.
But he did leave some interesting thoughts to take back
To consider for people who go fret and worry
About gifts and cards and the holiday hurry.


There’s nothing wrong with having a nice holiday
(At least until January’s bill paying day.)
But Santa’s not the Big Guy of the season, you see.
So relax and have fun … don’t just load up the tree.


Merry Christmas!

Happy Short First Winter Day Birthday, Emily

It's the shortest day of the year, and the first day of winter.

But on the brighter side, all the days are getting longer after this, and it's the birthday of my wonderful wife, Emily.

It's been a rough year for Emily, and she deserves more than my usual lame and last-minute acknowledgements of special dates. Just the same, I try to make her aware every day that I love her more than chocolate. That's a big deal for me. I really love chocolate.

And I love you, Emily. Just as the days got brighter after you were born, my life got brighter after we met.