Snoozelets

8:56:07 PM EDT

Just a note to redirect you to the active SNOOZELETS site over on Blogger!

My main blog is THE DAILY SNOOZE which is also mirrored, more or less, on AOL's AIM service at The Daily Snooze II.
 
Feel free to contact me via email. The addy is "<olddog299 at gmail dot com>"
I hope to see you at the new old digs.

By the way, for the linkage impaired (you know who you are, Lois), you can visit Snoozelets at http://snoozelets.blogspot.com and The Daily Snooze at http://dailysnooze.blogspot.com.  Just remember, after highlighting, that Control-C copies and Control-V pastes, OK? And the mirror site for The Snooze is now http://journals.aol.com/hewasolddog299/snoozeII so you haven't any excuse for not finding me. You can even send email to the AIM screenname and it will get to me eventually. But do use that gmail address up there if you want a prompt reply, okiedoke?

It's been a nice run here at AOL. Aside from the obvious problems we have all complained about, AOL Journals is a great community. While I'm moving out of the neighborhood, I'll still be around to bedevil you and do trust you'll come over and criticize me, too. It's only across town, for criminy's sake!

Written by olddog299 Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

7:36:54 AM EDT

Virtual Postage Meter
If you are an average writer, you have a variety of manuscripts out in the slush piles of publishers, others waiting to go out and some returned with pink slips.

The Toolbox provided by Syne Mitchell is a virtual postage meter that allows you to calculate the weight of a ms and thus cost of postage needed to be purchased online or at the post office. Second, she's created a script that calculates the number of days between two calendar dates to determine response or, more often in my case, lack of response for ms you have already submitted. Just in case you are getting antsy-pantsy.

via Heather Shaw

Written by olddog299 Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 3 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

8:55:56 PM EDT
WitNit has begun a chain story, set in Shanghai in an asian noir style. Come on, Whatevers, jump on in. The water's plenty warm...

The Rules: Add to the story with exactly 25 words, no more, no less. No consecutive comments, but feel free to come back and add more as often as you like. And Wired JAFA wisely reminds us to remember to hit F5 to refresh before you post!

And be sure to read each entry twice for story coherence.

Also, use BloggerWit for the story, NOT HaloWit.

The story title is ORIENTAL NOIR. And so we begin...

Written by olddog299 Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

6:32:38 PM EDT

Ethereal, sea foam visitor,

graces us but once in a blue moon.

Half a hand span and more.

Twenty times in my lifetime, maybe more.

Not rare, but never frequent.  

 

 

Picture Credit: Ohio State University,  Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center. Copyright ©2003, 2005 All Rights Reserved to the Board of Regents, OSU. Full Size Link

Written by olddog299 Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 2 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

12:24:40 AM EDT
A blogging acquaintance was complaining about the difficulties she was having writing a book about havng been raped. She was trying to edit herself as she went along. Here are my thoughts, left in a comment, about the writing process. Your mileage may vary -- you probably have a Prius.

"Allow yourself the freedom to write the way you want to write without self-censoring the first time through. Plenty of time for rewrites. Just let it come, spelling and grammatical errors and all (we all make them).

Once you have the tale you want to tell down on paper -- give it a rest. Take a week off. It's not going anywhere.

When you come back to it, bring your red pencil and go to town - be merciless, mark it up and indicate the rewrites desired. Let those sit a week or two, simmering.

Now go back and rewrite, using your marked up manuscript and your fresh view -- the one you have now that you have it all down on the page. Here it comes - now is when the turn of the phrase is polished, the extraneous cut, the explanation exposited upon - you get the idea.

Once you are done a major rewrite, farm it around to your writing support group for comments and suggestions. Once they have weighed in - edit or not, as YOU see fit.

Ready? Send it off to your chosen publisher or to your agent and let her market it for you.

Good luck - as someone has already pointed out, write from the heart. All the rest is just editing."

Written by olddog299 Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 5 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

8:23:07 PM EDT

 Simon of Space

Hello, my name is Simon. Or so they tell me.

I Think, Therefore

Do you remember the first moment of your life?

I do, but then most people suffer from the inherent deficits of infancy when they're born, whereas I had the special indignity and privilege of being thirty-six years old at the time.

Thus begins a new novel, a blognovel by Matthew Frederick Davis Hemming, better known as Cheeseburgerbrown to his afficianados. I know others have touted this novel, not the least of whom was AOL's own blogfather, John Scalzi. Still, I'm going to pimp it here, because I love this book so far and I haven't any reason to believe it'll tank before it ends. Give it a try folks and be prepared to lose many minutes a day to reading the further adventures of Simon.

Written by olddog299 Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

4:59:14 AM EDT
I recently stumbled onto this blog by one of my favorite contemporary authors, David Brin. He describes it as: "Contrary Brin -- An occasional online journal to handle discussions generated by "The David Brin Site" (http://www.davidbrin.com/ ) Courteous argument is welcome..."

Written by olddog299 Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 3 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

3:21:35 AM EDT
Feeling Mischievous

Jack Daw, that black feathered [censored],

taunting me until all I could see was rage,

lowered me down the well,

dangling from the ginn pole like a bindlestiff.

 

Clinging to sanity by a thread

no thicker than the spider's web tangled in my hair,

I searched for the cause of the foul taste

and Stygian odor in the dank atmosphere of the shaft.

 

It's cold at the bottom of a well.

Hence the old saying,

"Colder than a well-diggers arse," I suppose,

My teeth chattered, sparks flying from the fillings.

 

There, in the sidewall, tucked in a niche,

the corpse of a rat, source of my night terrors

and tiny bites upon my face and arms

when but a babe in swaddling.

 

I screamed silently,

lest my tormentor recover my wailing carcass

as fast as a bucket of water raised with no regard for spillage.

30 foot ginn poles can move like lightning.

 

With thumb and forefinger I latched onto the tail,

placing the odious flesh with my feet in the bucket.

Straining leaves and flotsam with the screen provided,

gorge rising as death wafted all about me.

 

Satisfied by the absence of solids

where liquid belonged

I released the bleach tablets in the sack at my side,

the stench of decay hidden in the acrid clean of bromine.

 

Now I loudly voiced my readiness to ascend

Job completed, yearning for the light,

the radiant warmth of the sun,

a hope for the future.

 

Jack Daw, that black feathered trickster,

went fishing, leaving me to dangle alone.

Now I am the alpha and the omega

of the stygian stink emanating from the well.

 

Never trust a Crow to do a man's job...

cc2005 Creative Commons Wil Mosher

 

 Verses created in response to a request by the Poet Ivy,
@ Ivy is here, seeking the weird, strange, etcetera
experiences of our lives. Whether it serves her purposes,
only time and Ivy can tell.

Written by olddog299 Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 4 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

1:47:16 PM EDT

Usually, I do this over in my regular blog The Daily Snooze and The Daily Snooze on AOL  but something got into me and what is usually just a word list then became it's own "mad libs" and I figured What the hell?


I say ... and you think ... ?


1. Detachment:: Dehisc 
2. Regard:: With Detachment     
3. Community:: Project
4. Strike three:: You're out
5. Congregation:: Christians
6. Generous:: helping
7. Pretention:: airs
8. Pregnant:: oops!
9. Drinking:: whiskey
10 Brilliance:: Diamonds

Like Diamonds

He looked with detachment at the wound on the end of his forearm, it's lips gaping open in mute testament to a poor job of sewing as flaps of dehisced skin gaped open. Oh well, slap an old sock over it and call it good... So much for finishing the Community Project. It would be many months before the average do-gooder would forget the sight of blood spurting rhythmically onto the floor of the meeting hall they'd been constructing below him. One false move up on the overhead with a circular saw and it's "Strike three ... you're out!" He didn't even feel any pain until he tried to break his fall with his missing hand. He'd screamed for hours at the hospital.

Passing through the soup kitchen line, he graciously accepted the generous helping from the fellow dishing out the stew. Looked like it might be beef today. Not that he was complaining, mind you. He wasn't like those sick fucks with pretentions to nobility, putting on airs and holding forth on nonsensical subjects as though their opinion mattered. No siree, not him! As long as he had enough bucks from his SSI check for a bottle of whiskey, a flop that was snug and dry, and no one messing with him, he was happy.

Once upon a time he'd had a future. But he was young, stupid and got her pregnant. Oops! Any hope for a future went down the drain almost as fast as the marriage and the baby's bath water. He was reflecting on the spiraling water when his mind was illuminated with a blindingly bright white light, it's brilliance like those of the diamonds in the window of the jewelry store behind which he was copping a squat in the alley. That was the last thing he remembered, as the light faded with his life ... "like diamonds."


You wanna play? Go sign up with Patricia, that crazy chica, she'll treat you right. Send you words every week and everything. What you make of them is your business. Except you gotta leave a link to your stuff in the comments at La Luna Niña, 'cause the rest of us want to read what you write, too.

Like Diamonds © 2005 Wil Mosher All Rights Reserved

Written by olddog299 Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 2 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

2:35:29 AM EST
 I'm alive and have been posting on my regular blog, The Daily Snooze on Blogger  and The Daily Snooze on Aol (they're mirrors) for a few weeks now. I haven't been writing anything except responses to memes, but its coming back and shouldn't be too long now.

I was reading Patrick's Writing Journal and he had this meme in there that I just had to do. I actually liked the results. Give it a try ... it is well thought out and the level of detail in the questions asked leads me to believe it will probably hit your genre on the head, or ass, too.


SUSPENSE! - High-speed adventure is where youre at!
Girls! Guns! Intrigue! Conspiracy! You want to
write it gritty with sharp heroes and
devastating babes. Rich and powerful villains
rule your world and your hero is out to save
it! Ian Flemming and the Die Hard movies are
your inspirations!


What Kind of Novel Should I Write?
brought to you by Quizilla



Written by olddog299 Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own