Catching up . . . again.

I put up a post last week that after a few hours, I thought came off as whiny and petulant, so I deleted it. But it was there long enough for the most loyal reader of this blog to do something very nice, and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.

However, among the non-whiny things in that post, I mentioned that in order to increase my visibility (and learn what all the fuss is about) I finally signed up for the Facebook machine. I have yet to really figure out how to use it, so be patient. (Funny, I took to twitter real fast, but Facebook frightens and confuses me. I suppose in time, I’ll figure it out.)

At any rate, I understand that after 30 people like me, I get a free sandwich or something, so if y’all could head on over to my new Facebook author page and like me or friend me or however it works, I’d surely appreciate it.

In other news, I’m still trying to find the right blend of free and paid stories to get people interested in my writing, and in support of that effort, I’ve again made a few shorts available for free over at Smashwords. Most have been free before at one time or another, so loyal readers of this blog might already have read them. But check them out anyway!

In other news, I’m about two-thirds of the way finished with some new horror. It will probably end up in the novelette range (12,000 words or so) so I may combine it with one or two other unpublished shorts, maybe even one or two of those “Friday Fiction” I used to occasionally offer on this blog. Took a look at a few of those recently, and if I do say so myself, some of them don’t suck all that bad.

Still working on the hook for the in-progress short. So far, it goes something like this:

"Meet Jill. She’s a People Person! She’ll be your flight attendant today. A word of caution, though. Do NOT make Jill mad, or frankly, irritate her in the slightest. Because if you do, you may find your flight turned into a living hell . . . that is, if you survive it at all."

Something like that. So far, I’m having lots of fun with it (though still have no real idea how it will end.) But the steaming pile of crap I’m heaping on my poor protagonist has me almost feeling sorry for him. Almost.

I'm having so much fun, in fact, I wish it were novel-length. But all the action takes place on a four and a half-hour flight. Still, I remember Stephen King with "Gerald's Game," where literally (at least the way I remember it) all the action takes place with a woman handcuffed to a bed.

Now, it's been years since I've read "Gerald's Game," and in fact, now that I think about it, it was that book that turned me off King -- once my favorite writer -- for more than a decade (maybe I'll go into that in a future post.) But what I can't remember is, HOW DID HE MAKE THAT NOVEL-LENGTH?

Must have been lots of flashbacks or something . . .

As always, thanks for reading!