I felt I had to share this blog post. It's well a written, entertaining and insightful look at the current state of politics in the United States of America by an Americanized citizen.

This particular bit struck me to the core in its philosophical accuracy:

"In the kindergarten of nations, we’re the kid with thick glasses and a book, the kid who grew up surrounded by adults and never really had a childhood.  Periodically we have to wade in and tell them they can’t play that way, because it’s against the rules and this is how it will end – and they resent us, of course, PARTICULARLY when we’re right.
(In that sense, btw, what we’re going through now is our attempt to act like the other kids, so they will like us.  It won’t work.  And it will end in tears.  And frankly, we’re starting to worry the other kids.  We’re too big and responsible to act like them.)"

So, do yourself a favor and go visit Sarah A. Hoyt's post
 http://accordingtohoyt.com/2013/01/17/it-all-ends-in-chickens/
from her blog http://accordingtohoyt.com/.

Flash Fiction inspired by a friend

One of my friends whose nickname is Mouse, and whom I used to play music with, offered up the suggestion for a story about a mouse who plays guitar after reading my facebook posts about my new book. I took his suggestion to heart and this was the result:

Die Shreddermaus

By William R. Hirons

Crooner, Thumper and Bottom End were in a panic. Plucker, the guitar player who had been with them since the beginning had taken off across country to chase after a girl and left them in the lurch. They had a gig the following weekend at one of the biggest jam bars in town and now they were stuck with nobody to fill out the melody parts of all the songs they had worked so diligently on to craft and refine for such an important showcase.

“What're we gonna do guys,” Thumper lamented.

“We could always give Chauncey Wiggenbottom a call,” Bottom End suggested, absentmindedly picking at a Ramones sticker that had been glued to the face of his bass guitar some dozen years ago and was now beginning to curl at the edges.

Crooner shook his head emphatically. “No way, that dude can't keep time for squat. He can play the notes but Thumper has to speed up and slow down his beats. Besides, the guy smells like old cheese.”

Thumper shook his head sadly. “Yeah, he's supposed to follow me, not the other way around. How about Fast Freddy Frackin?”

Crooner looked at Thumper out of the top of his eyes in disbelief and Bottom End snorted and said, “Not a chance, dude turns every song into a speed metal, scalefest of solos. He's like Yngwie Malmsteen on meth.”

Crooner got out his cell phone and started looking through his contacts list searching for a suitable replacement for their former picker while his bandmates sulked. Bottom End tilted his head in a pose that said he was hearing something but wasn't sure what it was.

“You guys hear that?”

Thumper stopped running his brush around the edge of his cymbal and cocked his head, listening intently.

“Yeah. What is that? Sounds kinda like my squeaky chair at work when I get bored and spin around to make myself dizzy.”

Crooner looked around trying to figure out where the noise was coming from, stalking around the garage they used as their band practice space like a cat hunting for prey.

Bottom end walked up to a row of shelves that his dad had all his woodworking tools on and gasped, “Whoa dudes. Check this out,” he whispered in awe and indicating a space next to the bandsaw his dad had never used.

Thumper got up from his kit and followed Crooner over to stand next to Bottom End and they all stared with their jaws hanging open.

Standing between the unused bandsaw and pickle jar full of screws, nails and other odds and ends was a little brown mouse, a tiny guitar strapped over its shoulder and hooked up to a miniature Marshall stack no bigger than one of the Hot Wheels cars that Crooner liked to collect.

“No flippin' way,” Thumper managed to say after an interminable length of time that the trio had been watching while the little mouse twitched its whiskers and squeaked out a long tirade of undecipherable abuse.

Crooner looked back and forth between his bandmates and the little rodent. “Where in the name of Django Reinhardt did he get that mini axe and rig?”

Bottom End shook his head. “No clue man. Hey, you think the little dude is trying to audition for us?”

Thumper raised an eyebrow. “I dunno, but there's no way that little amp is gonna manage to not get drowned out by my beats.”

The little mouse crossed his arms over his guitar and gave the three what could only be construed as a sign of wounded pride.

Crooner laughed. “Mousey be pretty confident,” he said to his pals, “maybe we should give him a shot.”

The other two humans laughed and then took a step back in surprise when the miniature guitar player flipped a switch on the tiny amp and a screech of feedback filled the garage that was loud enough to rattle the odds and ends on the shelf and caused the snare on one of Thumper's drums to rattle against the drumhead.

The mouse threw his head back in an unmistakable pose of satisfaction then placed his hands upon the threadlike strings.

A heavy metal version of Paganini's 'Andantino Variato' filled the garage and the three band members stared at the little virtuoso, all three with their jaws hanging to their chests.

As the piece came to its end, the little mouse proceeded to play their whole set list, from beginning to end, better than Plucker had ever been able to perform.

When he had finished, the band members all cheered and applauded as the mouse bowed as if ending a performance at Carnegie Hall.

Bottom End nodded in satisfaction and said to his buddies, “well, looks like we have our replacement.”

Thumper fairly gushed, “straight up. What a promotional hook too. World's smallest guitar virtuoso!”

Crooner smiled in agreement, then cocked his head questioningly. “But what's his name? Gotta have the right tag to be in a band."

The other two looked at him for a moment then all three looked at the little mouse.

The tiny stringsmith got what could only be considered a satisfied smile and flipped his tiny little guitar over so that the back showed.

The three aspiring musicians all leaned over and squinted to see what was painted in fancy script on the tiny guitar. All three nodded approval at what it said.

“Die Shreddermaus.”

Is Twitter truly relevant to a new author?

With the publication of my new book, 'Windows to Other Worlds: Essays, Short Stories and One Novella' (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AZBO7NA), I have of course been researching marketing techniques for ebooks and the like. Facebook, Goodreads and Twitter seem to be the biggies for getting word out, however, I'm unsure of how effective Twitter is.  I haven't tweeted in quite a while, over a year, and so returned to the world of tweeting as a way of promoting my book. It seems to me that this cannot be a very effective tool. I don't have very many followers which would seem a detriment to my intention, but even with so few followers (only 28) and not many more that I follow (81) the tweets just whiz by and I have to scroll maniacally just to find anything amongst even those few folks whose tweets show on my wall.  How then can this be an effective marketing tool.  If someone who is following me has even just the limited amount of followers that I have, how can they weed out just that one post of mine which will lead them to my book. Is someone really going to pick out my tweet with the link to my book when it's surrounded by a flock of tweets by the likes of Barack Obama, William Shatner, Stan Lee and whoever is the Tweetmaster du jour?  I'm not sure that this avenue is even worth my effort.

Watch out World... I'm Published!

After a whirlwind marathon of editing, formatting, rewrites and searching for just the right cover art, I've finally gotten my first book published.  It's a collection fo short stories, essays and a novella.  It's an eclectic menagerie of various writing styles and genre's so I hope that there will be something within that most people can relate to and enjoy.  It's not Homer or Michener or even Bill Bryson, but it's mine. I wrote it. I edited it, I formatted it and I self-published it.  Eric Schumacher did the cover for it. Gotta give a brother his due.  At any rate, I'm hoping now that people will buy it.  It's up on amazon in the kindle .mobi format and can be found at:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AZBO7NA

For $2.99 I think that most folks can search the couch cushions and dig up enough to get their own copy.  Get to reading folks.

I think I've decided on the cover for my new ebook....

Found some great nuggets of info to day from various blogs, this one in particular struck a chord with me.

"When I write, I understand that I am not in control, and I don’t fight that. I throw the reins to the characters and let them go where they will. It works, because I feel tense and nervous when I’m in charge of other people, and characters, well…. They’re other people. They’ve got pieces of me in them, all my characters do, but they’re not me, and they have their own desires and personalities. They act upon those. I let them make their decisions, and the system just works."

From :  http://crimsonleague.com/2013/01/04/fear-of-the-unknown/

on Victoria Grefer's Blog at: http://crimsonleague.com/

Writer's Block or Writer's Overexposure?

Anyone who knows me personally understands that I have a half a dozen writing projects in progress.  I've found that, although I know where the project is heading and how it will end, I often get stuck at a certain point and despite all efforts, can't seem to move the project forward.  For the last half of a year or more I've been working on a Criminal Minds type FBI murder mystery type novel.. I've gotten very close to the end and know how it will end up and how I will swing the twists and turns that lead to the end, but for quite a while now I've been writing and re-writing a chapter that really shouldn't be all that difficult, but I can't quite seem to get where I'm happy with it.  This has happened before and why I have multiple projects on various back burners.  I decided to re-read some of those other projects and in doing so got an idea for a fantasy novel I have in progress and BOOM! I've written four chapters in as many days, about four times what I've accomplished in the last few months. I'm very satisfied, almost ecstatic, about what I've done with this Fantasy novel and so have decided that I am not one to suffer from Writer's Block, but instead I suffer from Writer's Overexposure. After working on the crime book for so long, I just was weary of it and needed a change to get the creative juices flowing.  As such, I'll be working on the Fantasy book until I start to get bogged down.  At that point, I'll look at my other Works In Progress and either get back to the Crime book or maybe do something different like work on the Civil War novel or the CSI parody.

In the meanwhile, I am also very close to publishing a Young Adult Historical Fiction book as an ebook, probably through Amazon or the I-store.  Keep your eyes open for it, once I have the cover and the particulars down it should be hitting the virtual shelves...

A New Beginning

My old blog has gone the way of the dinosaurs and I've decided that since the bulk of my time is spent writing, researching or reading that I would dedicate my blogging to anything related to such. I'm presently in the midst of research concerning publishing and writing so most likely that will be the bulk of what is to come... Stay tuned...