Shinerdrinker: Blog

Like the title describes, I am sooooo damned proud of myself for some quick thinking on my part.

The wife caught me looking at pictures of some young ladies in the 18 to 25-year-old range on the interwebs. Well, she, of course, took it the wrong way and started in on me but I had myself one of those eureka moments I heard so much about.

I told her the celebrity girls I was going to use in future chapters of Mayhem in a Pill were too old and not believable. When I started writing, I had girls set aside that I was going to use when the time was right. But I told her I realized the girls I had in mind were now way too old. I'm talking 30s here folks, you know the age when they should all be pushed off the cliff.

As an example, I had always wanted to use Jessica Alba, but then I realized she is now 37 years old and not likely to drop everything and try to woo our hero. Maybe, but not likely.

So that was why I spent a good half hour this afternoon looking at pictures of beautiful actresses, singers, models and now apparently YouTube celebrities. She said I needed a woman's touch in deciding who to base a character on or who to straight out use, I, of course, believe her.

(And no she is asleep and not helping me write this blog post. She'll see it in the morning but I'll probably just get a curt look. I like it when she gives me curt looks.)

Oops, I almost forgot. I have Chapter 40 of Mayhem in a Pill with the final editor and I expect to be posting it probably early next week. For those of you wondering, chapter 40 continues along the high school Tim timeline. I hope you enjoy.

Oh yeah, if anyone has any ideas for hot female celebrities might chase our hero, lemme know!

I was approached by the neighborhood kids a couple of days ago. They wanted to see if I would be willing to go as a guardian (or cab driver) for them to see if the Roosevelt Rough Riders could earn themselves a playoff spot with a win over the dreaded Churchill Chargers.

The game was a great game. Long touchdown passes. Long touchdown runs. Great celebratory dances after quarterback sacks. Even an interception in the end zone to stop a long, scoring drive. But in the end, the Rough Riders can up short 24-20.

Needless to say, it really helps put me in the mindset for writing "Mayhem in a Pill." It really helps me remember what I felt when I made my way down the halls of Roosevelt many decades ago.

It was fun. I had fun. The kids had fun. But everyone would have had more fun with a win but that's life.

My spirits were greatly improved this morning when I checked and saw that just under ten days after posting chapter 39 it reached over 10,000 downloads. And not that I'm really keeping score or anything like that, but the overall score also rose from 8.11 to 8.16.

I strive to be ever so humble and I am diligently working to continue writing chapter 40 for those of you eager for another read. I know I am.

Thanks everybody.

-- Shinerdrinker

Sorry, it took a little while but I have finally figured out a proper gift for my score of fans who have brought "Mayhem in a Pill" to over 500,000 downloads.

I believe it was fate that the Dallas Cowboys had a bye week in the middle of this season at the same time as "Mayhem in a Pill" reached 500,000 downloads. It was so I would use the extra time to the advantage of everyone and get off my fat ass and do some writing!

So I went ahead and wrote chapter 39 well ahead of time. That chapter is now with the final editor. They make all my writing readable and not like the end product of a room half full of monkeys pounding keyboards.

Thanks again to everyone for reading "Mayhem in a Pill." Thanks to my editors who do an amazing job and thanks to my readers who actually can see through this mess and find the story I am trying to tell.

The next chapter will be posted as soon as the final edits come in and I can erase all the red markings.

-- Shinerdrinker

Is that correct? Nah. Don't care.

But I do care that Mayhem in a Pill earlier yesterday October 26th, hit over 500,000 downloads.

I am so grateful. I feel like I need to give my score of fans something for helping reach that huge number. I still can't believe you guys actually have fun opening and closing chapters to make sure the count goes up.

Thanks everybody. I'll think of something to get you guys but it will have to interesting. I can't just give an uninteresting gift. Let's see what happens.

-- Shinerdrinker

Lemme tell y'all a quick story about "Mayhem in a Pill."

I came up with the title when I was first loading the first chapter up onto SOL.

Let that sink in.

I had previously written about eight chapters when I decided to go ahead and start uploading what I had to SOL. The story was not yet titled but I was already eight chapters into something I thought would be near fifty. (Since then I have not decided how far the story would go. I have a general idea of calling the end of book one at the end of the freshman year.) I was actually scared. I have several stories written and I could have uploaded any of those for my first story. But I decided to go with something fresh. Something I only had a brief outline prepared when I started. I now worry about publishing something that if I get a better idea for a better story line, I won't be able to go back and fix if I publish stories as I write them.

I'm actually glad I did because since then I have gone over some of my other short stories and I don't even want to try and reedit them since they also seem somewhat dated.

I mean one of them depended highly on alpha-numeric paging. Remember the late 1990s, you had to call a toll free 800 number and tell the operator what message you wanted sent to the person you were paging. You dictate and they type then read back to make sure it was what you wanted. It was texting with a third person involved.

I digress.

I was scared to upload "Mayhem in a Pill" because well quite simply, I didn't know what to name it. So when I uploaded the first chapter, and the site asked me for the name of the story and I just froze with my fingers over the keyboard. But quickly I found myself typing "Mayhem in a Pill" into the space when SOL asked for the title. I recently found my old list of possible titles and I didn't have anything near that. I ask you other writers, would you have had the marbles to publish a story without a title. Yeah, neither would I. So "Mayhem in a Pill" was born.

Bettcha didn't know that, huh.

Anywho. The next chapter of the story features a return to the escaping prisoner story line, is with the final editor and should be getting uploaded soon.

I find it perfect timing since not only is the next chapter almost ready but my little "Untitled" story has grown into something even bigger than I could have dreamed it would become. In looking back, yeah, I should have gone ahead and tried one of my older stories and built up a following of a couple score of fans. But no, my stupid ass needed to do things the hard way.

The more approving way.

The much more satisfying way.

The almost 500,000 download way.

Thanks a bunch and the new chapter is forthcoming.

-- Shinerdrinker