Gleaned from ancestral archives. How to successfully poach game.

First, get a perambulator and a new born child. Pack a twelve-bore shotgun under the child and take it out to the woods for ‘fresh air’. Dead birds/small game can be packed underneath the aforesaid child, along with the gun after mission accomplished. Legal, no. Successful, oh yes.

Fortunately, this would not work in the modern day with strollers, but it did way back when. Bad ancestors.

Free Stories.

This is very similar to birthing a child. However, a baby is the sum total of its DNA, while a book is the brain baby of its author. This brings me back to memories of an unfortunate whale watching excursion just off Vancouver Island. We were trying to take in the ambiance and the whales. Trying being the operative word here as there was a young couple intent on thrusting their sprog into people’s faces. Maybe they were aware of how unattractive their angry orange with a black wig was? Children do improve, if not attractive at the onset. I really hope this child did, as it might possibly have become traumatized at being thrust into the faces of strangers. We moved position at least six times to avoid the thrustings of the angry orange.

This brings me to nurturing. A new book, like a baby, has to be nurtured. Yes, there is a need for the product to be admired and it must be displayed so the reader can see the product. This also has to be done in such a way that the new born book has something different mentioned about it every time it is trotted out for inspection, much like the new born child. Thrusting an angry orange with a black wig in the face of readers will produce exactly the same results as happened on that day back when. People will run away.

Cats are fans of boxes. Writers should step outside of them.

Casper.

It has been a while since I released a new short. I guess I got all caught up in the euphoria of my ‘Perfect Murder’ being released to the third world by World Reads. However, I feel the need to release a new freebie on my webpage. Now which one shall I choose? Decisions, decisions. Watch this space..

1. Dear Eastlink, I would like you to know how monumentally unimpressed I am with your miserable apology for a service. It wasn’t just the fiber fracturing that knocked out all of Alberta for a good twentyfive hours, or the outages last week. When I try to phone you to find out why the service I pay for is not working, I do not want to hear the automated message telling me to unplug my router for ten… seconds. I can assure you I know this one by heart and have tried many times and I have also tried connecting directly to my desktop before I ever call you. I do not want to hear the second automated message encouraging me to go online to hook up with a tech there to save me time waiting for a real person. If I could go online, then I wouldn’t be calling you in the first place. I had, however, never heard the third automated message telling me of the fractured fiber. Now that was new and different. So new and different, as it turns out, that a goodly few of your phone techs were blissfully unaware of it.

   The first tech I spoke to mumbled about checking something when I declined to unhook my router after multiple times of doing this and when I explained that my cable tv was also offline. I was then cut off. The second tech told me the problem was resolved and therefore the fault was in my system, despite the tv still being down. Yes, I did check before each call. The third tech advised me the problem was not fixed and they had no idea when this would be accomplished. Always good to know.

   Having given up on trying to get an answer from internet techs I tried the tv techs. Wow, night and day. The lady pinged my tv and I now have service. She also pinged my internet, and guess what? It is back again. Imagine that? Why didn’t your internet techs try this? Does this happen to be restricted information they can only achieve after they have scored a certain number of pissing off customer badges? Is this how it works? Do tell.

   Oh, and I was asked for a pin number to get access for help. Do you imagine anyone in their right mind would want to steal your service? Really???

   No love,

   Me.

It is said that there are only seven basic plot lines for any form of speculative fiction. Probably true when a clump of well-know books are studied in depth. So what makes the work stand apart? One of these things can be the characters.

In a really good book, there is no such thing as a good, or a bad character. The hero/heroine will have flaws and the bad guy will have good points. Why is this important? Because the reader can relate. The majority of the human race will have flaws or saving graces. It is what makes us human and how we are able to relate to each other. Sympathy/empathy stems from feeling sorry for someone essentially good who flubs. Forgiveness stems from the nicer traits of the less than stellar person who tries to do something right for a change.

So who was the best flawed good guy/girl and who was the best bad guy/girl and why?

The ones that come to mind for me are out of Lord of the Rings. Aragon was the good guy, and yet he has his moments of selfishness and indecision. Had he been less wrapped up in himself, then maybe Boromir wouldn’t have died. Golem, the quintessential bad guy is shown agonizing over killing Frodo. He likes Frodo and he battles with his evil half to stop the killing and yet he can’t help himself in the end as the ring is his master and drives him on. Nevertheless, there are moments when a reader can feel sympathy for him.

Who do you choose and why?