Although I'm not officially pulling up roots and hitting the road on my all-American tour until August, I will be on the road this weekend to pick up my trailer in Yakima, WA and spend my first weekend camping. If I have any readers or fellow-authors in Yakima who'd like to share a cup of coffee or a beer on Saturday 6/15, please let me know.
Also, if you'd like an invitation to follow my travel blog when I take off, send me a note and I'll put you on the invite list. There will be both a non-fiction blog that most people will be able to access, and in the near future, a fiction blog that will contain stories that might have happened but probably didn't. I'm pretty sure those will be more interesting than what I had for dinner in my travel trailer, but sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.
In the meantime, I'm doing a full book edit of "The Prodigal" for release in eBook form in July. Stay tuned!
Well, no, you can't read the whole story yet, but I've finished writing, editing, and uploading all the remaining chapters of "The Prodigal." They'll post weekly until the conclusion on August 12. Actually, the last seven chapters will post twice a week. That's because the last three chapters got so long and unwieldy that I was encouraged by my editor, Old Rotorhead, to cut them up and expand them. The result was seven chapters instead of three, but I decided to still post them in the three weeks that they would have occupied as consolidated chapters.
If you get really impatient, waiting for those last seven or eight chapters to post, I'm expecting to release the eBook version on Kindle and Nook in mid-July. So if you just can't wait, or if you just want to show your undying love and support for the author, you'll be able to buy them then. :-)
What's next? I'm not absolutely positive, although I know there will be one last interview in Triptych Interviews after the last chapter posts. I've timed the conclusion to coincide with my departure on a long-awaited journey around the country. I'll be taking my time, but I don't know where, as the song goes. I have at least half a dozen book-length projects underway and I'm pretty sure my occult fantasy series will be making its debut here on SOL by September. Even though I began this series in 1980, it's never been published and the clean drafts will be a major project while I'm sitting in my travel trailer. I'm also determined to write my Erotic Paranormal Romance Western Mystery in November this year, possibly while my alter-ego writes another in his detective mystery series in the "real world."
I will say that I'm hoping to meet a lot of people as I tour the country, sometimes giving out books as I go, maybe even speaking to groups on occasion and reading from my "legit" works. I expect two new books in print by the end of the year, one of which will be my first erotic romance to jump past eBook into paper. If you'd like to meet up for a cup of coffee or a beer when I pass through your area, let me know. I don't know when it will be, but I'm more likely to travel places where I meet people than isolate myself after the first three months. There will be more about that trip and where you can get info about it in a future post.
Well, I hope you enjoy the last thirteen chapters of "The Prodigal." I'm on to the next project!
If you have followed the "Model Student" series, you might remember that from Tony's first appearance at Nationals, the song "Besame Mucho" (Kiss me a lot) was in his playlist. In his first mixed doubles Open competition with Lissa, they inadvertently cued their Argentine opponents with the music and "danced" on the court.
I happened across a bit of trivia today while listening to the radio that I had to check out and verify, then pass on to you.
Mexican songwriter Consuelo Velazquez wrote the song in 1940 and it became the most sung and recorded Mexican song in the world. Even the Beatles got in on it and it was in their stage playlist and was one of their audition pieces for Decca records who turned them down and told them to go home. The English words they used were not a direct translation. Jimmy Dorsey's recording was slow and mellow. Andre Bocelli's version is soft and seductive. Cesaria Evora's version is raw, primal sex.
The oddball thing was that according to Velazquez, at the time she wrote it, she'd never been kissed as she believed kissing was a sin. I sincerely hope she got over that!
I'm not a perv--usually--but I do appreciate some of the finer things in life. Girls with pony tails are among those.
We've had two sunny days in Seattle which is reason to celebrate in and of itself. But as I was driving to a friend's house yesterday morning my route took me next to a pedestrian trail and it ran parallel for about five miles. About every 400 yards, I passed a girl or woman running along the pedestrian way. Without exception these young women all had their hair in pony tails. As they ran, the swaying hair kept time with their footsteps swinging left then right.
Blondes, redheads, brunettes, one with a shocking pink, and even a couple with gray hair. One was pushing a baby jogger ahead of her. Two were a little overweight and their butts bounced twice for every step they jogged. Some were pretty; some weren't particularly so. Some were fit hard bodies, others were working on it.
Each--no matter the age or shape--wore spandex or lycra shorts that showed the exact shape of the parts it clung to. Most ran in either a crop-top or just a sports bra.
On the second sunny day (today) I went to the local mall to get some groceries and books. In addition to the pony tails, there were shorts. Of course, several mothers with their teen or preteen daughters wore sensible golf-type shorts, full legs nearly to the knees. Their daughters were more likely to be in gym shorts. Between the two there were shorts of all lengths and legs of all shapes.
With the temperature just at 70 degrees and the sun shining, Seattle is a beautiful city. Especially the scenery that only comes out in the summer.
Man, I love girls (women, old ladies, etc.) with pony tails and shorts.
I'm about at the point where the writing timeline and the reality timeline cross (among the chapters that are posted). I've never made a big deal about what year it is in the "Model Student" series. We know the three books cover Tony's college career from entry to graduation (at least we assume he's going to graduate eventually). But unlike many series, I haven't given date references down to the year. I'll say things like "by the second of June . . ." but I leave off the year.
Nonetheless, I use a calendar to be sure that if I say something like "Saturday the second," I don't turn around and call the next Saturday the tenth. I have a massive timeline in an Excel spreadsheet that is nearly 2,000 lines long with what the day, date, and action are. For every day of every book. I'm a little CDO about consistency. (That's the same as OCD, but the letters are in alphabetical order like they should be.)
It also works to have events take place at the right time of year. What were the dates of the National Intercollegiate Championships during Tony's freshman year? Well, I have them written down. When I started writing the book, I chose to have everything two years in the past so I could reference real events, dates, and even weather. So when Model Student started posting in February of 2012, I was writing about September 2010.
Well, it's only May of 2013 and The Prodigal has progressed to the point where the dates I write about are no longer in the past, starting in the next chapter. When it was reasonable to do so, I went back and tweaked a few things just before the story posted, but that soon became impossible, too. So, in chapter seven the writing timeline and the story timeline crossed. July first, the posting timeline (when you read the chapters) and the story timeline will cross.
What all this drivel means: From here on out, things you read may deviate increasingly from what really happened "in the world in which we live in" as the Beattles said ("Live and Let Die"). I no longer know who actually won a competition before I write about it. I don't know how many inches of snow were in Fremont, Nebraska at Christmas. I don't know if it rained on Valentine's Day. Usually, those details aren't that significant, but I know some people (me) try to match up dates, landmarks, events, laws, and anything else that sound like facts in fiction.
Well, just remember it's fiction, and not even historical fiction. If Tony makes a billion dollars in the stock market at exactly the time that the market crashes and we all end up living on the street, I can't help it. Tony's world--always a little different than our world--is now his own and resemblances to actual people living or dead are increasingly accidental or however they say that.
Okay. Merry Christmas. Hope you continue to enjoy the story!