Jay Cantrell: Blog

I guess I forgot to consult the calendar when I sent the files to SOL.

The first chapters of "Death and a Life in Emerald Cove" are up.

Please ... please... please read the Author's Note before delving in too far. The note is either a separate link or attached to the Cast.

I hope everyone finds the story entertaining.

Best wishes,
Jay C.

I want to apologize to those people who took the time to send me e-mails over the past couple of weeks. I have been slow to respond and the mail has piled up.

As I've mentioned before, the company where I work was destroyed by fire in summer 2012. We kept going with a skeleton crew while we rebuilt and we opened the new facility the first of April. It has been a trial, to say the least.

Our workforce is comprised of older people, many of whom have never lived farther than 10 miles from where they were born and who have been at the same job for 25 or 30 years.

Change is not easy for them (obviously).

The new facility is one of the most modern in the nation. There is almost nothing being done the way it was done before the fire. It has created issues - and it has fallen upon me to train the old dogs how to do new tricks. That sound you hear is me groaning in despair but it was a tradeoff I willingly accepted. The owners proposed the alternative of terminating the long-term employees and replacing them with young and energetic workers who were used to a modern workplace (and who, oh by the way, would make a hell of a lot less money).

It still may come to that. There are some who are unable (or unwilling) to accept the new reality. I'm not certain if they view themselves as indispensible (they're not) or if they're just too set in their ways to do things any way but the way they've always done them. I have only until mid-May to get things lined out or 20 or 30 people will lose their jobs (and, given their age and lack of marketable skills, I don't believe they will find anything else except something paying minimum wage).

So now I have to go to the office every day. I grew used to working out of my house. I miss being able to grab a nap in the middle of the afternoon if I've finished what I needed to get finished. Instead, I'm spending 10 to 12 hours a day beating my head against a wall (albeit a shiny, new wall).

Checking my e-mail has been a pretty low priority, I'm afraid.

I hope this blog post will suffice to let everyone know I truly appreciate their feedback on where my next story should go. Your input was invaluable.

My next story, "Death and a Life in Emerald Cove" will begin Monday morning on StoriesOnline. I found that a great many of the readers either didn't know about FineStories or rarely accessed it. So I will stay on this site for now.

Lazeez has now linked your StoriesOnline password to FineStories, which should help drive traffic to the site. I have decided to do my part for FineStories by posting an original work there later in the year. It is a shorter piece (20 chapters or so) that I finished a few years ago. I'm going through and cleaning up the dated material. I will keep the readers apprised through this blog as to when they can expect to see it.

I also want to thank the kind readers who have offered congratulations on the Clitoride Awards. For those who haven't checked out the site, "A Flawed Diamond" was voted "Best Romantic Story" and finished second in the balloting for "Epic Story of the Year."

I offer my sincere thanks to all who took the time to vote - not only for my story but in general. It is another way for the reader to let the men and women who've spend countless hours working on a story that their efforts were not in vain.

I think that catches me up on everything. If I've forgotten something, I hope I will be forgiven.

Jay C.

Hi all

I was reveling in a welcomed respite from winter the other day and I think it affected my thought processes.

I believe I've been clear about my feelings in regard to the work it takes to get a story ready for SOL. I'm not talking about just stringing the words together. I'm talking about the countless hours the editor spends fixing my stupid mistakes; the time the proofreaders spend fixing my stupid mistakes that slipped passed the editor because his correction fingers got tired; or the time I spend going back through rewriting sections that the editor found awkward, boring or just plain ill-conceived.

After all that, I still have to spend time with each file getting formatted properly, checking to make sure I've last accessed the file on a word processing program that doesn't turn punctuation into gibberish and giving it a final look to ensure I didn't simply end a chapter in the middle of a paragraph. I would be much happier just posting the entire file on a shareware site and letting you cull your way through it on your own.

And yet a strange thought popped into my head. I have a story that is perfect for FineStories. It contains no overt sex and it probably fits better there. At the same time, I have 120 chapters done for a story that can be posted solely on StoriesOnline. I thought to myself, "Self, why I don't I post them both at the same time."

Then I shook my head to clear the cobwebs and to shake that asinine notion right out of my noggin. There is no way in hell I'm going to try to keep up any sort of posting schedule on two stories on two different sites at one time. I almost left the house without pants last week (although I did have on long underwear because it was Brrr-freaking-cold - again!) so I recognize my limitations.

But that left me to wonder: What are the readers' feelings about FineStories? Personally, I enjoy it (although I don't access it very frequently). I don't want to alienate the readers who have followed me for years by forcing them to move to a different site to find my work but, at the same time, I'd like to support it as much as I can.

I don't want to post the same story on two sites at the same time. I will refer you back to the pants incident.

I'd like to know how many SOL readers have a membership at FineStories and how pissed off my regular readers would be if I moved one of my stories there exclusively.

I'd appreciate any comments from readers or insights from other writers.

Given the amazing number of replies from people willing to cull through my older stories for errors, I'd thought this might be the perfect spot to solicit input.

Thanks,
Jay C.

I have a few confessions to make. No, they don't deal with my previous blog post about the confusion between my pen name and the real name of an accused child molester. I am still not he.

These are about my stories on SOL.

I admit that I very rarely revisit the chapters once they go up on the site. I don't check to see that things came out the way I intended; I don't go back and fix the errors that readers kindly point out; I don't re-read the stories in order to stroke my massive … ego (Mind above the beltline, Sunshine).

They are out of sight, out of mind.

Until the past few weeks, that is. I recently pulled up some of my older works on the site (mostly to see the evolution of my writing and to see how some coding I'd tried came out).

It was somewhat startling. For instance, I found the first two chapters of "Always on Guard" almost unreadable. Because I use a variety of editing and word processing programs depending upon which computer is free in the house (with a professor for a wife and a houseful of children, my writing is low priority when assigning computer time), almost every instance where I used a long dash or an ellipses was garbled. It led to a host of run-on sentences and some paragraphs that were difficult to follow. When you toss in the missing and misused words, it was a chore to make my way through it. Hell, I knew what I meant to say and I found myself reading a paragraph two or three times trying to figure out what in the world I said. I'm surprised that anyone who fought through the first two chapters bothered to come back for Round 3. I wouldn't have.

Now Confession No. 2: I'm still not going to go back and fix things. It isn't that I don't care about the readers (OK, that's a part of it. We'll call that Confession No. 3). The truth is that I find it boring. Not because I don't believe myself to be talented beyond all belief - Confession No. 4, I'm a legend in my own mind - but because I already know where the story is going.

As difficult as it is to believe - given the mistakes that dot my stories - I've already read through these chapters dozens of times before they ever see the site. By the time I reach the end of a story like "Guard," or, God forbid, one as long as "Daze in the Valley" or "A Flawed Diamond" I am so sick to death of it that I just want it over. I just can't see myself going back through them and fixing things.

But I still would like the shitty text fixed. It isn't because I ever plan to publish these anywhere but SOL. It most is so I don't look like a complete dumbass when someone opens a story and finds a sentence with 33 words and not a punctuation mark in sight (yep, back to the ego thing).

I hope to solicit the kindness of the SOL family. If someone with the time, talent and inclination would be willing to go through the files and fix them, I would happily ship the formatted chapters to them. I should warn you that this person will have to work with little or no guidance or feedback. In truth, I doubt I will even scan the chapters before I repost them on the site. I'll simply scroll to the bottom, add the nom de plume of the proofer (so he or she can share in the blame from the Grammar Nazis when it still isn't flawless) and move on with my life.

If anyone is willing to take on an arduous task with no payment except my praise and gratitude (which I will give in no small measure), please shoot me an e-mail.

Thanks,
Jay C.

Hi all,

I have recently been made aware that a Texas principal and coach named Jay Cantrell has been arrested for a litany of horrendous crimes against children.

My pen name is a pseudonym, not my real name. I do not live in Texas; I do not work in a school system -- oh, and I don't molest kids.

I have received a couple of emails this month asking if my legal troubles meant I would no longer be writing. The only legal troubles I am aware of is a few unpaid parking tickets so I think I am safe.

Best wishes,
Jay C.