Harry Carton: Blog

I'm a nouns guy. I grew up in the newprint business. The news magazine I worked for was heavy on the nouns. They didn't want to hear about the pasty hue of Nixon's visage -- the editors only wanted to hear about his breakdown with Kissinger.

As a result, I don't believe in adjectives. Those are the little words that describe things, as opposed to merely telling what they are. Those adjectives makes stories more interesting to the reader, but make are newspaper article less acceptable.

Now I find myself having to find more THINGS to describe because I can't put enough words on paper -- or in pixels -- to write a decent story.

I recently read a story where the author spent paragraphs and paragraphs to recount in detail an event that I would probably have described thus: "he drove his whatsis into her whosis and they did it for x-teen minutes."

Personally, I think that 7 'graphs to talk about that single event of attempted procreation is overkill. And when it happened again in the next chapter and the next and the next, I found myself skipping over all the extra verbiage. But boiling it down to 14 words doesn't cut it.

Maybe there's something in the middle. Who knows?

I've gotten more feedback from this little story than from anything -- except the IO series. Thanks for writing and I'm pleased to see you like it.

And for those of you who wrote me about the errors in the blurb or word errors in the text: as with my other stories, those were put in intentionally after the edit so sharp-eyed reedurs will find them and not be boared.

I am planning on more Lightfoot stories, since I don't have the emotional strength to write a really long tale. There will be more about the Waabanow coming soon. I gotta write it first -- LOL.

This is a short story that's going to be posted in its entirety within a couple of weeks. It's short and it's weird... Teaser: "You knew that wolves set up a den in our woodshed and didn't want to mention it to your wife? The person who takes care of your son?" --- and that's the sane part. Hope you enjoy.

Some months ago, I started on a new story... "The Dragon." It's about... well, it's about 'not finished' because I've hit a dry spell in that story.

So... I started a new story, which doesn't even have a title yet, just initials, and my editor hasn't even got a sniff of it, cause I'm not sure where it's going. Yet.

SO... I wrote a little, bitty story that is so different for me, and from either of them that it kinda cleared my mind. Like lemon sorbet between courses of a gourmet's meal. That story was "Allie's Cucky."

I knew that it wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea. But it was short, and had a little zippity do dah at the finish. It's also the lowest rated story I've ever put out. Not that I care about how something is rated. I just write what I write. I do LOOK at the ratings, so I must care a little, but not much. Maybe a 1 out of 10. LOL.

So, that's it. I just wanted to let y'all know wassup with 'Allie's Cucky.' I think I'll stay with the 'initials' story. It'll be a 'Io's universe' story. She's just awsome, yaknow?

It's hardly worth noticing it's so short. But I've written an ending and a ending redux to Troubador's How High a Price. Read it if you haven't.

If you don't like it, don't blame me. My muse, Erato, made me write it. It came into my head one night while I slept. Who can refuse to put something like THAT into pixels?