Shinerdrinker: Blog

Hi Everybody!

Let's keep this short and sweet, shall we?

Chapter 28 of Mayhem in a Pill is currently with the first editor. Once he finishes, I get it back and do the corrections he suggests. Luckily pretty much all of them make the story better and for that I am greatful.

Umm... let's see. I've been writing and waiting for the NFL season to restart. That comes up this weekend. College football already started and with a few shockers. I won't go into them but damn.

Oh yeah, I wanted to let everyone know that they should get caught back up with the everyday goings-on with our Tim Murphy in high school otherwise known as Chapters 24 & 25. The story shifts back to that timeline.

Let's see... anything else... nope that'll do.

To my decuplet of fans, please enjoy.

Well, well, well.

The weather gurus were right about the rains and winds, but they were wrong about where they were going. And for that, I am thankful. No we didn't get away scott free or anything. I'll take 4 inches of rain over 3 days rather than 14-20 inches they were forecasting.

Me and mine were ready as could be to face this storm. We even had bug out plans in case the rain got to be too much to deal with. But luckily, the most we saw was a fine, sheen of water the grew to halfway up to the top of the curbs on the road. But that lasted for only a couple of hours and then the rain stopped for a few hours allowing the run off to well run off.

So a weekend wasted with nuthin' to do but talk to your family and worry. No writing and very little reading done this weekend. I will try to write again this upcoming week and I generally want to since college football season starts up again this weekend. I know myself and once there is actual live football with something to win and/or lose, I doubt I'll be writing. But I have in the past and I will in the future.

So long story short... we good here in San Antonio. But damn... Houston, try to stay dry and know that San Antonio is here to help. Unless it is to help the Rockets, I don't think there is anything we can do for them. Or more to the point, want to do anything to help them.

Well. Apparently Hurricane Harvey is getting all worked up and ready for landfall around Corpus Christi, Texas. It will be a big one and here in San Antonio, we are actually worried about being hit with basically 20 inches of rain and sustained winds of over 70 miles per hour.

The weathermen or rather weather people are calling for a Biblical-qualifying rain and windy weekend for us here in Texas and I'll tell you the truth, the last time the weather folks were this worked up; well, let's just say they were pretty right on about the amount of rain.

Earlier this year back in February, we here in San Antonio got hit by a few tornado. Yes, your friendly, neighborhood SOL auteur heard the roar of the winds as they tore up trees and roofs just a couple of streets over and even found a few oddly matching sets of lawn furniture planted upside and intertwined in his yard.

But the folks on teevee are waving at green screens and showing footage of people invading the local grocery stores and buying all the bottled water and batteries they can find. I know because I saw them all around me as I placed a few packs of AA batteries beside my packs of bottled water in my cart. Also got a few Shiner Bocks because well, it was Thursday. Also, let's not forget about the bunch of canned stuffs and easily cookable like frozen pizzas and pizza like derivatives.

Oh and let us not forget the chili. It's Texas. It's a law.

So this weekend I'll be sitting around in my Ark, watching the weather marionettes pointing at their water-logged views of my lovely hometown. When the heavy rain really gets going, I'll sit outside under the back patio and listen to the deafening yet soothing waves of rain on the tin roof.

So, long story short (too late) I had planned to do some writing this weekend but I don't see myself doing any writing this weekend. But I am here to let you know since, I won't write this weekend, I will write as much as I can this evening until I am forced to go to bed. And because I love my scores of fans, I won't even open any of those beautifully chilled and refreshing Shiner Bocks staring at me oh so lovingly high atop their perches on the shelves in my refrigerator. So the writing tonight will at least be in modern English rather than Medieval Klingon.

Ark stocked. Check.

Spider Man pool floaties blown up and fastened on the biceps. (I wanted Superman but my wife bought me Spider Man. I don't think she likes me.) Check.

Hot Pockets ready for the microwave. And I also have my white sunblock for the nose cause I ain't sure if the whole sun and moon thing is actually finished with us yet. Check.

But tonight, I shall write. I'm still shooting to get this chapter done quickly since I'm also ready to find out what happens next!

Okay, that's it. No more blogging. Time for writing.

When I put up the first chapter of "Mayhem in a Pill," I was initially amazed by people actually reading my story and some of them emailing me to generally approve of my attempt at story writing. This was a very good feeling.

Then the score basically treading water and staying just below 8. I was happy with that and saw room for improvement. I mean I know I'm supposed to be saying that scores don't matter but hey, they do matter to me. Especially for my story.

Another factor was the download numbers. Many other authors I've traded emails with here have said they prefer to use the download numbers rather than scores as a barometer for the success of the story. I decided I also like that idea. The first couple of chapters took nearly a month to reach 10,000 downloads and I tried to use that as a deadline for having the next chapter ready.

But today, I realized I'll never be able to meet that deadline because in less than a week, Chapter 27 has already surpassed my arbitrary download deadline and is still going strong.

That to me is breathtaking. So thank you to my readers. And especially thank you to my editors for turning my deranged second draft of the roomful of monkeys pounding away on a computer, into something readable.

As a thank you to everyone, I want to give everyone a present.

If everything goes correctly, then my scores of fans out there will be able to read the next chapter sometime before the end of this month. I know some of you will scoff at my deadline but this time I mean it.

Sincerely.

Hello all.

Apparently I have to apologize to my legions of fans. I had told in past postings how I was well ahead in the writing of chapters. And now I did not lie, it was an absolute truth.

I have explained before I use OpenOffice for my writing because I am a cheap bastard. So each of the chapters in my small story equal between 10 - 14 pages on OpenOffice. When I last wrote, I was already a good 6 pages into the chapter. Damn near halfway depending on how the rest went. But then real life reared its ugly head and turned all my wants and desires into a mish mash of self loathing and dandruff covered artwork.

Yeah. I don't know what the hell I'm talking about either. Come on Shiner, keep focused!

Okay. I had a few things come up in real life and they all conspired to keep me from writing. Even kept me away from a vacation I was all set to go on. But fortunately, through a couple of good friends we are agreeable to postponing the trip and we will go on it this week rather than when we were supposed to go last week. Flexibility is a great byproduct of retirement.

And unfortunately, my score of fans had to wait for the next chapter and have told me they were tired of waiting. I used to have a score and a half of fans, but the waiting caused me to lose a few.

But never fear, a new chapter approaches and is this very day sent to the first editor and hopefully I'll be able to post it once the red ink monsters carve my vacuous thought and word-blanks into something hopefully useful.

I'll post it when the editors finish and I do the corrections they suggest.

Again I'm sorry you had to wait. But if I just put out whatever I write, it would sound kind of like the word vomit of a certain... oops, don't get political Shiner.

It never works out well for any involved in that.