It seems so long ago…atop the mountain, at Button Top with my wife, Susan, and two growing children, Nick and Gwen…Christmas approaching, the kids yearning for another dog. Truth to tell, so was I.

While I was away on a business trip, my wife had been forced to bury our friend, “Irving,” an exhausted, cast-off collie who had, one winter evening,  limped into our family circle out of a blizzard roaring through the surrounding woodland. The bedraggled Collie entertained us through that next summer with numerous porcupine chases, all ending painfully for Irving – though happily enough for “Dr. John,” our local veterinarian over in the town of Meshoppen. Irving’s porcupine adventures came to an end one sultry summer day, in the shade of my wife’s car where the old fellow breathed his last. My wife, along with a visiting woman poet and the children, solemnly laid Irving to rest in the clearing behind the cabin. Read the rest of this entry »

Whenever you pull alongside a big truck and glance up at the driver, you may spot another face staring down at you, that of man’s best friend. Truth is, many drivers – not to put down their womenfolk, at home with the kids – welcome a dog’s company. Reciting your troubles to a canine pal won’t get you any answers; on the other hand, it won’t produce any criticism. When you’re all done kvetching to your four-legged friend, what you will get is an impulsive slurp or two on the kisser accompanied by an enthusiastically wagging tail. Your long haul pooch is happy just to have you all to him or herself.

A trucker faces often impossible delivery deadlines, grueling hours behind the wheel, arguments with his dispatchers, and telephone battles with the home front – if there’s anything left of the marriage after a few years of regional or long-haul driving. You want to rest assured there’s no one breaking into your cab while you’re in a truck stop shoveling down a meal or enjoying a good, warm shower; a snarling beast steaming up the windows of your truck is a wonderful deterrent. Read the rest of this entry »

Growing up during World War II, one of the things I most looked forward to was running to our roadside mailbox and greeting the weekly arrival of the Saturday Evening Post. Each issue was sure to feature a cover by Norman Rockwell. I didn’t realize it then, but those incredible magazine covers – and the associations they represented – were to become an indelible part of my life.

In the course of nine years of long haul truck driving – the main purpose being to gather information for my recently published novel, 3 ACES – I often ran trips to New England, each time routed up I-84 to reach the eastern portion of the Mass. Turnpike. Only once did I run the western section, unaware, at the time, that I had passed a few miles north of Stockbridge, Mass. and the Norman Rockwell museum.

Last Saturday, returning home in my car from a holiday visit in Boston with my son’s family, I found myself driving west on Mass. Route 102. I decided to both reawaken a few childhood memories and make up for that occasion I’d missed visiting the Rockwell Museum. At Route 183, a bit beyond Stockbridge I turned left, then left again less than a mile down the road, into the tree-shrouded Museum drive. Read the rest of this entry »

Looks like there was some unfinished business in last week’s piece…too much for a single additional blog, so let me take it one subject at a time.  Let’s settle, this week, on a relatively quick discussion regarding book reviews and their purported suppliers, the review purveyor.

Anyone who publishes (whether through a NY Trade house, or via the self-published, POD route) comes to the realization that their book must be reviewed many times, and each time as well as possible. I don’t speak for authors published by major Trade Publishers, but am assuming their publishers have made arrangements to have their books reviewed in venues such as the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Poets and Writers, etc. This may NOT always happen; I have been told that, in some cases, the author has been called upon to assist in lining up reviews for his or her book. Should the reviews disappoint, or the cover, title and edited contents not enthuse the publisher’s marketing & sales department, money and effort earmarked for the promotion of that book may be applied elsewhere. The author is deprived of a sincere sales effort by the company’s distribution arm; book tour and advertising money is diverted. What else might set off this ugly chain of events? Perhaps a block-buster book by a certain celeb. needs a greater initial push (if only to recover a huge advance). Suddenly, a chill wind is felt – you are left very much alone. At publishing conferences, I’ve heard several such stories directly related by the victims. Read the rest of this entry »

When an author finishes writing a cherished piece of work – be it poem; an essay; a memoir, popular, or paranormal novel; perhaps even a humorous work – at that very moment, the writer’s creative enthusiasm has him teetering at the edge of a precipice. If he hasn’t already landed a book or magazine deal, he’s either looking for an agent, or thinking deeply about having the work printed and distributed independently. Let us then count the peddlers of provender gathered in the valley below.  In a great sweat, without an agent or a trade publisher, that writer is virtually forced to take the independent leap…possibly into the arms of one or more scammers.

Need a POD publisher?.. A website?.. Editorial help?.. Guidance in finding an agent?.. Promotional help?.. A distributor?.. Book designer?.. Cover artist?.. on and on goes the list. No end to the services available, ’til your credit card  registers dry on an emptied checking account. Read the rest of this entry »

Hmm… I wanted to. And I did. And I’m now having second thoughts about what I did. Let me provide the final chapter to the “3 ACES Cover Story” as presented in my August 3rd, 2008 blog…

Now that the book has been read by a good number of folks, gone through the hands of more than a few critics, contest judges, etc., the feedback cometh in strong (whether I welcome it, or not). THE most negative feedback has been centered around my vaunted 3 ACES front cover, which I conceived all by my lonesome and had executed by two local artists, with the desert background brushed in by my book designer. The story inside (by those brave enough to ignore the front cover) has been well received, and granted a Book Of The Year award in November, 2008, by THE INFINITE WRITER ezine,

Unfortunately, my front cover does NOT tell the book purchaser what type of story lies beneath its surface – and, as far as I am concerned, that’s a disaster. Worse, it leads some to think it’s a Harlequin Romance; others tell me it’s a book about gambling; still more tell me they really haven’t a clue what the hell the book is about. If that isn’t a publishing disaster, what is? Read the rest of this entry »

Your local writers group has already used you…”ha-ha, made you join didn’t we?” So why not use it – to the fullest?  It’s not just a place to socialize, it’s a way to glom onto the tools and techniques that will improve anything you write.

I don’t care how far along you are in the craft of writing, there are lessons to be learned and relearned. No one’s writing is that sanctified that it can’t benefit from your local group’s collective critical eye. Read the rest of this entry »

Simple…the key word here is FEEDBACK.

You can sit in your room for hours, days, hammering away at a novel, article, or short story on your typewriter or computer keyboard (hopefully, you are using a computer!..) and acquire a major case of literary blindness.

By that, I mean you are zeroed in so tightly on the task at hand that you lose the ability to stand back and view just what it is that you have finally hammered out. When fresh eyes hit your pages (that may look dandy to you) something else ALWAYS happens: those new eyes see something other than what you felt you put on the page. Maybe it’s punctuation; possibly a detail or two don’t make sense – like dates or technical references; perhaps you’ve overpopulated your novel or story with extraneous characters that are muddying up your plot; your sentence structure may lack clarity; maybe your overarching STRUCTURE is muddy, sections cobbled together, scenes indistinct – or, even more disastrous, the basic premise of your novel, article, or short story just doesn’t make sense to the majority of the group. Tough stuff to face, eh?… Read the rest of this entry »

Last post, I promised we’d discuss my personal reactions to the psychiatric community regarding PTSD. I’ll cite two experiences: one from my childhood; the second from an attempted visit to a regional Veterans’ Hospital.

I’m the first to admit that, in my teens, I began to have emotional problems – a delayed result from a traumatic accident to my feet as a three year old and the experience of subsequent multiple surgeries. My parents sent me to a respected  psychiatrist in a neighboring city. The shrink listened an hour to my problems, then asked: “…Have you ever considered it may be your parents who are the real problem?” – and with this advice sent me packing. What’s a confused sixteen year old boy to make of that analysis? Read the rest of this entry »

When, at the age of three, you have your feet lopped off in a hayfield by a horse-drawn haymower and by some miracle a surgeon delicately reattaches them; then, over the next 14 years have one surgery after another that solidly fuses the fragmented ankle joints and prepares your feet for an active adult life – wouldn’t you think you qualify as some kind of an expert in survivial?

And when the research for a trucking novel you are writing, concerning a recon vet suffering from PTSD, discloses to you that YOU also have been suffering from PTSD, probably from the very day of your accident a lifetime ago – wouldn’t you also say you have some kind of credentials when it comes to discussing PTSD?

Well, guess what?…you don’t! Read the rest of this entry »