Scott Burtness's Blog: Scott's Thoughts, page 8

Remember when you were the big winner?

Here's a fun remembrance for you from Oct. 2010.

There's a bar/restaurant in Minneapolis called the Herkimer Pub. They brew their own tasty beers and have a solid menu with tasty food.

At my old job, I used to work until 10pm at night. On occasion, my wife would pick me up and we'd head over to the Herk for their late night happy hour.

One evening, we rolled in and saw that they had a contest going.

I know, right?!? Who doesn't love a good bar contest?

Anywho, the contest was to guess the number of sliders (tiny burgers, in case you didn't know that due to inexcusable ignorance...) they'd sell for the month of October. That was it. Make your guess, write it on a slip of paper and drop it in the big jar. Easy peasy.

So we got to figuring. I'm talking like NASA-level math. We counted up the seating capacity in the joint, made some educated guesses on what nights they were busiest, when they were slow, etc. Then we drilled down into the psychology of Uptown, Minneapolis, a hipster enclave of post-college-but-still-too-young-not-to-habitually-drink-themselves-stupid-every-weekend kids. Sliders were having an indie restaurant comeback, so we figured a lot of these drunken twenty-somethings would probably gobble them up like pigeons at the scene of the breadcrumb truck accident.

After much calculating and psychologizing, we came up with a number. If memory serves, it was...

1,172

We dropped in our ticket and didn't think twice about it until a few weeks later when I received an email.

We won!

Oh yeah. That's right. We were SMART mofo's. We out-estimated, out-calculated, out-psychoanalyzed the best of 'em. We. Friggin. Rocked.

Now the funny parts.

1- The prize was a $50 gift certificate to Kramarczuk's Sausage Company, a NE Minneapolis institution. It's packed wall-to-wall with meat. Any kind, any flavor. You want meat, you go to Kramarczuk's. Their true specialty, though was right there in the name. Sausage.

My wife? She's vegetarian.

2- We guessed 1,172. As in, the Herkimer Pub would sell 1,172 individual sliders in the month of October. Want to know how close we were? The actual number was 1,170.

The funny part? Despite our otherwise excellent calculations and educated guesses, our expansive and well-defined theories about the eating habits of the average twenty-something Minneapolis hipster, despite all of that... we missed one important detail.

The Herkimer Pub sliders are sold 5 to a plate.

Work in Progress Blog Tour - Dammit! Not again!

Oh crappers. Can nothing stay pure? Can nothing stay sacred? Woe to this world, a world in which all must crumble and wither and die.

On the upside, at least no one's every actually died from being melodramatic ;-)

So here's why I'm so 'woe to the world' right now. The blog title says it all.

"Not Even Remotely Helpful for Authors"

My last post (in which I promoted Vampire Books for Blood month to benefit the Red Cross - http://on.fb.me/1oeFdTf) was an acceptable exception. Hell, it's the Red friggin' Cross. I can bend the blog rules once for an amazing organization. That's allowed.

But now this? Challenged by super-awesome author and super-awesomer person, Shay Ray Stevens, I now have only two options: 1- Start a "Scott's Totally Helpful for Authors blog," or 2- Bend the rules again.

Fortunately, I'm sure that Ms. Stevens (and many of you, dear readers) adhere to the belief that rules are really just guidelines. Notes of a sort. Kind-of a, "it's usually best to color inside the lines, but if you scribble all over the damn page, Mommy will tell you it's gorgeous anyway and still hang your massacred picture of a pony or teddy bear front and center on the fridge" sort-of thing.

So here's the deal: Shay Ray tagged me for the Work In Progress blog tour. If you don't know her, start now. Her first book, "Lost: One Pair of Rose Colored Glasses" is adorably fun, and the sequel is on deck for my next read. Plus, she just released a new novel, a supernatural thriller from what I'm told, called "The Me You See." Early reviews are fantastic, so add it to your list. You can find Shay Ray and her books here - http://www.shayraystevens.com/ or on Twitter: @shayraystevens.

Still here? Weirdo. OK. Whatev's. But seriously, check out Shay Ray Steven's work soon. You'll enjoy :-)

So this WIP thing: The rules for the WIP Blog Tour are simple: Link back to the person who tagged you (and tell everyone how awesome they are). Tell a little about your WIP, share the first sentence from the first three chapters, and then tag four more authors to do the same.

So here goes:

I'm working on the sequel to my first novel, "Wisconsin Vamp." The first book followed Herb, a bowling line cook turned vampire. The sequel follows his best friend/nemesis (befremesis?), Dallas, an HVAC repairman and egomaniac turned werewolf. Queue hilarity, mayhem and a secret society of monster hunters.

Chapter 1
Dallas’s alarm clock was a right bastard.

Chapter 2
Mandy was gone by the time he got back from Jerry’s.

Chapter 3
“You’re needed.”

Aw hell. If I was you reading this, I'd ask for the 7 1/2 wasted minutes of my life back. Or 5 minutes if you read fast. Or an hour if you're easily distracted and/or narcoleptic.

On the upside, I think this has worked out pretty well. This post would have a damn hard time qualifying as "helpful for authors."

My work here is done.

Oh - wait! Four more authors. Hmmm...

Just kidding. It's super easy. I'm tagging the four other authors helping out with Vampire Books for Blood month by donating proceeds from their Oct. sales to the American Red Cross!

Kimberly Anne: http://amzn.to/1sqOGfB
Jeanie Grey: http://bit.ly/1xEwAHg
Steven Montano: http://bit.ly/1xEwDmx
Sentu Taylor: http://amzn.to/1C7oJme

P.S. The tags for this post are "Work in progress, mushrooms, no-stick frying pan, camomille, underbite." I hate tagging things.

Rebel rebel, breaking the rules!

OK. I feel really weird doing this, but I'm so freakin' excited about October that I can't not do this.

I'm writing a blog post that is helpful for authors.

I've declared October "Vampire Books for Blood" month.

I was looking for ways to promote my book and had just been tagged for the ALS Ice Bucket challenge (thanks, Greg at 2bookloversreviews.com...) I really liked the idea of using my royalties to support a charitable cause, so I put my thinking cap on.

"Vampires. Hmmm. What charities pair well with a vampire book? River dolphin rescues? No... Um, the Naked Clowns? (A completely real charity, BTW)... No."

Well, you get the point. And then I happened to see a banner ad for the American Red Cross. They were in the final "100 Days of Summer, 100 Days of Hope" promotion. Lightning struck (figuratively, thank goodness... If it had been literal, I wouldn't be typing this blog post), I realized that the Red Cross wasn't just the organization I'd like to help, it's the one my main character Herb Knudsen would want to help.

That crystallized it. If Herb wanted to help (despite being a completely fictitious character), so would I. I contacted my local Red Cross Blood Services Center and pledged to donate 100% of my net royalties from October sales of "Wisconsin Vamp."

The result is "Vampire Books for Blood."

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Vampir...


Rather than being all by my lonesome, I figured it would be a lot more fun if other authors jumped on board, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS-rD...

October is going to be awesome. Authors from across the country are coming together to support the Red Cross. How cool is that? The Facebook page for the event makes it easy for participating authors to post their book(s) and readers to find books from authors that have pledged to help.

I'm very excited about this event, and hope that more authors take part, that lots of readers find us, and that we can all give a lot of support to the American Red Cross at the end of the month!

#VampBooks4Blood

The Importance of Being an Earnest Dog Owner

You gotta dog?

If you aren't a dog owner but you could be, I'd highly recommend taking the plunge. Get a rescue, be super patient even when they make you want to scream, give them consistency, affection, structure. Keep them entertained. Take them lots of places, play games (like hiding little pieces of bananas around the house and then telling them to "Find it!", get food toys like puzzle balls and Kong Wubbas). Let them on the furniture. If you're worried about 'dirty dog feet,' 'slobber,' or 'all that dog hair,' you'll get over it once you accept that it's inevitable, and just like that, you'll find yourself accepting all sorts of things you used to be weirded out by. Seriously - anything you used to think was germy or gross you'll be totally cool with after having a dog.

You'll feel appreciated. You'll feel valued. You'll learn patience and laugh more than you thought you could laugh. You'll experience something really hard to put into words. There is something amazing about gaining the trust and love of a dog. Bad days aren't as bad. Good days are so much better. All in all, having a dog rocks.

If you have a dog, you probably know what I'm talking about. Feel free to post a comment sharing one of your favorite dog stories! I'd love to hear about it :-)

Dogs. Nothing short of awesome.

Or a kid? Um... well, sure... I guess you could have a kid. Sure, you'd get some of the same experiences.

But let's be real, here. You can't hide a banana around the house and tell the kid to "find it." And you can't put their cereal in a puzzle ball so the kid has to roll it all over the floor to try and get pieces of cereal to fall out, or let your kid poop in the park. I mean, you could, but sooner or later social services will get wise and then there's all this paperwork and parenting classes and disapproving looks from the neighbors...

Dogs. Way better.

I had the strangest dream

Seriously. It was a weird dream. Well, the part I can clearly remember was pretty weird. Given how strange that part was, I'm disposed toward accepting the very reasonable hypothesis that the rest of the dream must've been pretty damn weird as well.

That, my friends, is logic.

So here's the weird part of the dream that I recall...

I'm standing by the kitchen sink. It was my kitchen, my sink, none of that, "Huh. That's not actually my sink, except in this dream, it is my sink," crap. Thank goodness, too. If I had to try and discern the meaning behind having a kitchen sink in a dream that wasn't actually mine, I'd Thelma and Louise myself straight into the Grand Canyon.

Anyway, my actual kitchen, my actual sink. It's a single-bowl porcelain farm sink, by the way, with a trendy stainless steel, single-handle-on-the-side faucet, set into a solid oak counter top. The oak counter rests above white, faux-beadboard cabinets. I say 'faux' because that sounds classier than 'imitation.' After building up the image of a very chic kitchen complete with a farm sink, fancy faucet and oak counter tops, I would be remiss to just say 'imitation beadboard cabinets.' It'd be like ordering Shasta with a steak dinner at a 5-star joint. I'm too honest to deceive you, but I still want your approval, so 'faux' is the word for it. Hopefully, after describing my kitchen, complete with faux beadboard cabinets, you'll think, "That Scott guy's got a little class. Sure, he hasn't hit the big time yet. No custom cabinetry in his 672 square foot house. But you know what, I think that his day will come, and he will be a classy SOB when it does."

If you aren't thinking that, it's OK. I wouldn't be, either. In fact, if I was you, I'd be wondering when in the hell I was going to get on with the damn dream.

Well, fine. If you're going to be that way about it...

So there I am, standing by the sink, holding out my left hand. The palm of my hand is completely covered with these tendrilly weeds, the type you'll usually see growing up between the cracks in the sidewalk. Long tendrils extend outward like a face-planting octopus, and little round leaves run down both sides of each tendril.

If you can picture what I'm talking about, you've most likely seen them in the sidewalk cracks outside of your home. You've probably noticed them in a, "Yep. Nature will always prevail," sort-of way, and continued to give them no additional brain space at all until your wife suggested that since the weather was nice, you should help clean up the yard.

"Sure," you'd answer, always the dutiful and helpful husband. "I'll mow."

But this time, things got a bit tilted. "Nah," your wife says. "I've been sitting all day. I'll mow. It'll be good exercise. You can weed."

Weed. I hate words that are simultaneously nouns and verbs.

So you head to the sidewalk (yeah, that's right. I changed verb tenses, bitches!), and there are those tendrilly weed plants that you have to weed. That's ok, though. There are worse weeds to weed. These suckers, you can just gather up all the tendrils, wrap them up in your hand, twist, pull and, wallah! the tap root comes up out of the crack. Little ones usually have a root that's only a few inches long. Satisfying in their way, but not truly anything to write home about. But then you work your way to the big one. The huge sucker that, if left unchecked, would most likely swallow your little one-bedroom, one-bathroom bungalow you lovingly call home. So you wrap up those tendrils, twist, pull, twist, pull and - finally! the taproot comes free of the soil it had been so greedily clinging to. Those big ones could have a tap root that's easily 6 inches or even longer.

I know, right? Damn. And to think that think fit into the crack in the sidewalk...

Oh, right. The dream. So now you've got this picture forming in your mind, yeah? Me standing by my sink: Check. Tendrilly weeds that grow in the cracks and have this impossibly long root in the ground: Check.

So here's the thing. My left palm is covered with the tendrilly weeds. Covered. Like what the Jolly Green Giant warned Sprout about when Sprout hit puberty, only it wasn't like that. The dream was weird, sure, but not like that kinda weird.

Anywho, I'm casually pulling and twisting the weeds, and those crazy long roots are coming out of my hand! As each root clears the skin of my palm, a hole about the size of a pencil remains. No blood, just this fleshy hole where the weed's root use to be. Each weed that I extract I toss into a glass in the sink. It's a little 8-ounce Ikea glass, kinda like a rocks glass, wider at the top than the bottom, with a few large colored bubbles in the glass. If you've wandered through Ikea, you've seen 'em. Some have blue translucent bubbles, others, a nice shade of green. The dream glass had green bubbles, two of them; a large one covering most of one side of the glass, and a smaller one marking the other. This asymmetrical craftsmanship is what makes them such a find. They really do look nice.

So here's this classy little glass in my sink that I'm filling up with weeds. Despite twisting, pulling and tossing weed after weed, the glass isn't filling up and my palm isn't weed free.

And then, like a grave that's dug in a TV show where somehow, in the span of an hour, the WB-handsome twenty-somthing protagonist tosses out the last shovel-full of earth and climbs out of a perfectly rectangular hole in the ground with smooth, vertical walls and not a speck of dirt on him besides that one little smudge on his forehead so you know that he was actually working very hard, and at one point even had to stop and wipe his brow with the back of his hand...

Where was I? Oh yeah, that jerk that digs perfect graves in an hour. So just like that, my hand went from Chem-Lawn poster-child to completely weed free. Looking at it, I was surprised to notice that there really weren't even that many holes from the roots. I also couldn't help but notice that the glass was full, but not overwhelmingly so. It's like the Ikea glass really was the perfect size for the whole ordeal.

Told you those glasses really are a find.

Now one more detail to layer onto this coconut layer cake...

At no point during this whole surreal ordeal did I feel any pain. Each twist and pull, each inches-long root being drawn from the flesh of my palm, none of that caused any pain. Slight nausea, yes. In the dream, my stomach had that "I'm about to go over the top of the biggest rise in the roller coaster and plummet down, I'm sure I'm gonna be sick, I just know I'm gonna be sick," feeling. But I didn't actually get sick. I was just stuck in that pre-nausea nauseous state of being the whole time.

So that's it. That's what I remember from my dream.

Weird, right?

Anyone else terrified of wood ticks?

Just curious how many other people flat-out hate wood ticks. Am I alone here, or is this normal?

I grew up around ticks, and have always hated them. My buddy's dad lived in rural northwestern Wisconsin. We'd spend summer weekends out there doing stupid stuff in the woods, and would almost always collect a wood tick or seven. And every time, I felt like I'd been attacked by a devious, ill-intentioned space alien (or seven). In fact, I was pretty much convinced for a long time (and still have my suspicions today...) that wood ticks are not from this planet. Frickin' space monsters. I hate 'em.

Spiders in general are on my list of least favorite things. However, spiders don't lurk - yes LURK - waiting to grab on and dig into your skin. Anything that lurks, grabs and digs in is a rotten sonuva no-good so and so.

*shiver* Ugh. Wood ticks.

I hate 'em.

Customers who bought this also bought... WHAT?!?

Here's some crazy fun for your night. Jump on Amazon, shop for stuff, and look at the section where Amazon shows you the OTHER stuff people buy in addition to the item you're considering.

Sometimes, it makes perfect sense. I bought my pitty Frank a new elk horn and a Kong Wubba.

*Yeah, he's spoiled. So?*

Anywho, according to Amazon, "customers who bought this item also bought..."

Leashes. Poo-bags. Collapsible water bowls. Nylabones. Greenies.

That makes perfect sense. I bought dog stuff. Other people bought similar dog stuff. The world is in balance and all the little birds sing.

OK. Now let's take a look at my book's page. Customers who bought Wisconsin Vamp also bought...

"Zombie Attack! Rise of the Horde!"

No problem with that one.

"Apocalypticon"

Huh. Sounds dark, but you know, I'm still following.

"Studs and Stilletos"

Wait... WHAT? WTF? How'd we jump from a bowling, beer guzzling vampire in northern Wisconsin to, wait. Lemme look at the book description.

"She craves the bright lights. He shuns them.

Emily Murphy isn’t afraid to swap her fancy wardrobe for a worn pair of barn boots. Working on the set of a Kentucky movie might be just the ticket to landing a real acting job and proving to her sister she can accomplish something worthwhile.

Dan Barrett knows a lot about hard work and even more about horses. And while he’s drawn by Emily’s beauty and pluck, he wants a stay-at-home ranch girl. But fighting their attraction is difficult, and soon they both realize that what they thought they wanted isn’t what they really need.

Unfortunately, Dan isn’t the only person watching Emily. And the other one is a ruthless killer determined to keep a tragic secret buried."

Really, Amazon? Really? You're a jerk.

Are we there yet?

Declassified: The Government's Secret Plan For a Military Moon Base

http://gizmodo.com/declassified-the-g...

I don't even need to write a post about this. Actually, by just sharing the article and NOT writing a post, you'll probably find yourself wondering all sorts of things, which is way more fun than reading something I wrote.

Some of the things you might wonder include:

"Is that Scott guy a moon base conspiracy theorist?"

"Did he buy lunar real estate in the '90's?"

"How long would pizza stay warm on the moon?"

See? By just sharing an interesting tidbit and then keeping my mouth shut, your imagination gets to run wild.

You. Are. Welcome.

Favorite Roadside Oddity

Ever driven through Wisconsin? If yes, you know what I'm talking about, right? Yeah? That's right! You know what I'm talking about!

If not... get in your car! What the hell, man? Forget that bucket list crapola. All you need is two or three passes along I-94 from Hudson to Milwaukee and you can die happy.

Why am I so passionate about driving across the state of Wisconsin? Oh, I don't know. I guess because there is a gas station...

WITH A GIANT DINOSAUR FOR A FRONT DOOR!

You read that correctly. When you go to the Sinclair station at Wisconsin Dells, you will walk between the big, green legs of a gigantic brontosaurus.

Don't believe me? That's fine. Stranger-danger. I get that. So do yourself a favor:

1- Google Wisconsin Dells Sinclair dinosaur
2- Get in yer' frickin' car and drive to the middle of Wisconsin!
3- Send me a postcard from the Sinclair station with a polite apology for ever thinking I would mislead you about the existence of something so awesome.

Frank's Fav's

Frank is my Staffordshire Terrier. He enjoys many things. Here are a list of his fav's:

1- Bananas.
2- Peanut butter.
3- Sticking his nose behind my butt when I'm sitting on the couch trying to watch TV.
4- Sticking his nose in my armpit when I'm trying to sleep.
5- Bananas.
6- Running really, really fast straight at my knees and almost stopping in time... but not quite. He thinks it is hilarious.
7- Cream cheese.
8- Tearing up empty Kleenex boxes.
9- Leaning against me while chewing on a bone. The leaning part is important.
10- Stretching out like Superman on the bed in the morning with his hind legs sticking straight back, and having me pull him by the front paws across the bed while he groans in delight. We have a low bed, so it is also very important to pull him all the way over the edge, so his front paws are on the floor and his back paws/legs are still on the bed. He'll stand that way for 15-20 seconds to get a good stretch before finally pulling his hind legs off the bed.