You’re busy, so I’ll keep this quick.
Source: The Two Minutes It Takes To Read This Will Improve Your Writing Forever — An Idea For You — Medium
In keeping with the theater them of the Shakespeare’s words and phrases (posted earlier), follow the flow chart. (Click on it a couple of times to enlarge to readable size.)
Tampa crime author sings praises of jazz great | TBO.com, The Tampa Tribune and The Tampa Times.
TAMPA — Michael Connelly is no stranger to crime.
After all, he is the bestselling author of 27 crime fiction books that have sold 58 million copies worldwide, most featuring detective Harry Bosch or defense attorney Mickey Haller.
A television series “Bosch” is under production by Amazon Studios, and Matthew McConaughey played Haller in the 2011 film “The Lincoln Lawyer.”
Once upon a time, Connelly also covered the crime beat for the Los Angeles Times.
Yet even Connelly admits he was uncomfortable attending a jazz concert in California’s San Quentin prison in 2012.
“Everyone in that audience was pretty much a murderer,” said Connelly, who has lived in Tampa since 2001. “The night before the concert a sergeant from the prison spoke to us about precautions and how there is a no-hostage policy.”
But once the music started, Connelly noticed a change in the room full of hardened criminals.
“You saw it in their faces — how the music affected them,” he said. “It showed that there was still humanity in them, and where there is humanity there is a possibility for redemption.”
The concert, in fact, was filmed and now is featured in the documentary “Sound of Redemption: The Frank Morgan Story.”
Connelly is executive producer.
The name Frank Morgan may ring a bell to fans of the Bosch series. His real music emerges as a character in the books, bringing solace to the troubled fictional detective.
The film tells the story of the man behind that music.
To read the rest of the article: http://tbo.com/arts_music/tampa-author-sings-praises-of-jazz-great-20140726/
In sports when an injured player can’t practice, he can still get “mental reps,” the coach says.
For a writer, that would be called day dreaming.
Filed under current events, writing, writing humor
I edit, write, design, edit, even do some the photography for a neighborhood newsletter for the historic neighborhood in which I live. Below is what I am working as part of the newsletter. I did not take the photos, but have cropped and processed them. They were color. They are now black and white, because the newsletter is printed in black and white.
Some of my neighbors went on rafting trip a couple of months back and the photos are from that day trip. The poem, “The Captain said,” is mine.
Neighbors Lauren Rider (left) and Pete Creel (right) head into some rough waters.
The boat is fine, the captain said;
he said it to our face.
The boat is fine, the captain said,
the river sets the pace.
The boat is fine, the captain said,
and then he said no more.
The boat is fine, the captain said
as we sailed away from shore.
The boat is fine, the captain said,
as the river tossed us about.
The boat is fine, the captain said,
as some of us wanted out.
The boat is fine, the captain said,
steering for the roughest part.
The boat is fine, the captain said;
he’d said it from the start.
The boat is fine, the captain said
as the waves thumped into the boat
The boat is fine, the captain said
as some of us tried to float.
The boat is fine, the captain said,
Come back again next year.
The boat is fine, the captain said —
but captain, I hope you’re not here.
Pete Creel takes an unplanned dip in the river.
Pete said the best place to sit on the raft was in the center, but two people had quickly seized those seats before he and Lauren could get in. He said he also felt that at times the captain / person steering the raft, aimed for the roughest patches of water to make sure he and the other members of the crew got their money’s worth in experience.
Filed under neighborhood, newsletter, poetry by author, writing
[Editor’s note: this is the start of a novel I have written and am rewriting. Thought I would post the beginning to see what reaction it might get, to see if it holds your attention and piques your curiosity. Comments welcome.]
Steve shoved on his sunglasses, but they didn’t help. Pulsing reds and blues still stabbed at his eyes. Even the reds and blues bouncing off the concrete Interstate divider took aim at his pain.
Dusk dragged an evening shroud down from the sky, but it wasn’t promising relief.
Of his few remaining friends in the Knoxville Police Department, one had called and told him Stephanie was in an accident. She had pinned a motorcyclist against the barrier and had painted with him and his bike for about 300 feet.
Steve took twenty minutes to move with the knot of cars until he stopped behind a police cruiser blocking a traffic lane on I-40 west. A police scanner in his beaten up Subaru wagon popped up with occasional chatter. He heard talk of the motorcyclist being a preacher of some sort. He heard other things, some of which he didn’t want to, especially when they established that the driver of the SUV was his wife, though estranged wife was closer to the truth. It wasn’t an official legal status in Tennessee, but it was a reality. What he hadn’t heard was whether or not his kids were with her. She shouldn’t be driving, suffering from random blackouts doctors couldn’t explain, other than to say she didn’t have a tumor.
He cupped his hand near his face and exhaled, breath bouncing up into his nose. He found an old piece of gum on the dash and popped it into his mouth. He glanced around to make sure there weren’t any loose bottles in the car cab.
Steve parked the car and got out, his door scraping against the damp barrier. He could see the headline now: Ex-hero’s ex-porn queen wife kills minister on I-40.
An officer approached to shoo him away – another petty gawker come for the carnival – then backed up when she recognized him. He recognized her, Jeannine something. She didn’t wave, but nodded once.
The SUV was close to the dividing wall that separated the east- and west-bound lanes, but the vehicle had been eased far enough back to remove the body from the mangled motorcycle. Steve knew what the body looked like. He’d worked a similar accident once. Once was enough.
He ducked under the crime scene tape. The plodding traffic beside him began to pick up. One or two horns rang out. Gawkers were giving way to angry drivers.
“What the hell’s he doing here?” It was a detective.
In the growing darkness and flashing lights, Steve caught glimpses of his features. Older fellow. Probably retire in a few years. Old school. He was working the scene and making his wife wait in the car. He probably made her watch them remove the body. Figured he get her to talk and not want a lawyer present.
Jeannine spoke,” He’s the driver’s husband.”
“Arrest him.”
“Collins, he’s KPD.”
“Don’t care if he’s the second coming. Get him out!”
Steve made a move toward the SUV. Jeannine stepped in front of him. She was about five-ten, red hair, and little on the heavy side. She looked like she could hold her own and probably wouldn’t mind doing it.
Steve glimpsed Stephanie in the driver’s seat. She looked stolid, almost vacant. He could guess what she was thinking: Really, officer, this isn’t my world. I wouldn’t do something like that.
He stepped back and something crumpled under his tennis shoe, a shattered motorcycle part. Collins would probably want him arrested for tampering with evidence.
He glanced at Jeannine’s name plate above her shirt pocket. He could barely make it out: J. Kerres. He probably had the Jeannine part right.
“Jeannine, where are my daughters?” There were two: Megan and Emily, ten and five.
Before she could say anything, he heard yelling: shrill, piercing, accusing – all at the same time.
“You lying bastard.”
Stephanie charged around Jeannine.
“She came and took them away. Had some lawyer with her. Had some paper with her. Said I was an unfit mother. Said she would raise them. You told her where I was.”
Stephanie lunged at Steve, fingers curled into claws. He couldn’t step away without backing into traffic. He raised his arms to block her thrusts, but she knocked his sunglasses off. He had not told his mother where Stephanie was. At least he didn’t remember telling her.
Temporary flood lights clicked on and white light drenched the area. Steve glimpsed the full magnitude of the mangled bike and the blood smeared along the barrier wall. Like a gawker, he turned to get a fuller look when Stephanie landed a claw near his eye and raked it into his cheek, digging deeper as she dragged her nails downward.
Steve knocked her hand away and before he could stop, he hit her hard on the nose. He heard something crunch and saw Stephanie’s head recoil. She staggered backwards through the tape and fell into the next lane of traffic. She looked like a runner stumbling over the finish line the wrong way, arms flailing and knees giving way.
“Kerres!”
Steve heard Collins yell, knew it was not at him, and didn’t much care anyway. He reached down, grabbed Stephanie’s leg and dragged her back beside the SUV just as a car swooshed by.
Her nose was bent, blood on much of her face, and tears streamed out from her eyes. His shirt was wet with his own blood. He did what he could to help her.
At first she took his help, then she slapped his hands away, telling him to go to hell. Jeannine stepped in and did what she could until the paramedics arrived. Collins ordered her to go with them to the hospital. “And write down every damn thing she says.”
After the paramedics left, Collins, too, told him to go to hell. What was he, Stephen David York, doing contaminating his crime scene?
“It won’t make no difference, hero boy. Your wife killed a youth minister and she’s going down for it. She already told me she shouldn’t be driving, so she’s going down for it. Your hero status can’t do a damn thing for her.”
Steve saw the glowing hatred in Collins’ eyes and knew that for some cops you don’t rat out corrupt cops – up to and including the chief – even if it was the right thing to do, and because Steve had, his wife could now expect no leniency.
Filed under The painted Beast, writing
Sometimes it’s hard to do a good cartoon.
Thought I would try this version. You can decide which one you prefer, if either. The earlier one appeared on Tuesday, July 17, 2012. You can also click on CarToonsday in the links below and it will bring up that CarToonsday cartoon as well as others.
Filed under cartoon by author, CarToonsday, writing
I was somewhen gliding over Virtuosity when I woke up from my copy/paste coma. I was ten thousand bar stools above pay dirt, but the drinks had stopped coming long before the last sequence of route rot procedures was done. I tried to perk up with three quick and awful coffees and a Hershey’s kiss left over from my last intrusion into the real world, but it wasn’t helping much. The coffee was a tannic acid man’s dream, bitter and beyond redemption no matter how I tried to doll it up. And the kiss, well, I am a sucker for chocolate, even old chocolate, but this kiss had seen its last sweet pucker long ago, maybe even in a candy gallery far far away.
She walked into my room the way all sycophants do these days – with an air of predestination. She sat down in the old overstuffed chair next to the old overstuffed couch I was crouched on. She placed her legs in just such a position that a trigonometry professor would’ve been had pressed to explain, and it was all I could do to keep my eyes from triangulating on them. They were her best feature, but the rest of her was at least suborbital as well. She dressed in clothes with sharp angles, some of which would probably frighten an armadillo. Her lips were as full and shiny as a waxing moon and her hair gleamed as if it were a source of light all its own. In short, she was as textured as the night, and just as dangerous.
She dragged out a smoke and was about to light it.
“Not in here.” My head was a series of dots and dashes in binary world, and lighting up wasn’t going to help.
She pouted and then put them away. “The boss sent me.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
She looked perplexed, lost in the great heartland of non-sequitors, a trollop with a message trying to make connections with polarized plugs in a non-polarized world.
“The boss says—”
“I know what the boss says. He says it every time he sends one of you floozies down my rat hole with a message, and every time he promises me my freedom and every time he finds a way to wriggle out of following through. Tell Lucy, Charlie ain’t kickin’ at the ball no more.”
She looked even more nonplussed. I could just imagine one big minus sign stretched above her pretty little head, like a halo dancing black hole mambo with an event horizon. One day enough neurons might come burrowing out, Steven Hawking style, to make a moment of enlightenment, but age and propriety would keep me from waiting that long. After all, it’s not polite to stare indefinitely at a glacier, no matter how easy on the eyes.
[Editor’s note: not sure what to do with this. If I should pursue it or let it go. if you have read it, any thoughts or comments? is this an interesting beginning? Thank you for stopping by.]
Filed under story, Sunday story, Virtuosity, Workshop weekend, writing
In case you’re wondering, and even if you aren’t, I would like to take a few moments and explain the new layout I am adopting for this blog. I have decided to make at least every work day specific to something. For example, Monday morning writing joke will be a joke focused on writing or about writing. It might also be a limerick (though nothing too naughty) or pun, which is something I have a weakness for.
Next: CarToonsday will be a cartoon, usually based in some way around writing, but not always.
Writing Tip Wednesday will have writing tips. It could also have recommendations of writing books to try, or information about writing conferences, or agents looking for new clients.
Haiku to you Thursday will be a haiku. At least for as long as I can write what I consider to be good quality ones. Sometimes I’m sure I’ll spit out a clunker, but sometimes you have to fail in order to succeed.
At times, the roadmap might be under construction.
Freeform Friday will be another poem, maybe not a haiku but something else, or writing such as a Blathering idiot installment, The Devil’s Dictionary, an essay. Maybe even something I haven’t tried before. Could even be another cartoon. (As if one a week is not enough.)
Story Saturday will be a part of a story. Something I am working on. Could also be a Found Story (photo with piece of writing about the photo). Could even be a whole story, if short enough. Or I may write something about my struggles to write stories, though I am sure that would get old and boring quickly.
Sunday? I may just take off. Or take off Saturday and make it Story Sunday. Or the whole weekend could be titled Workshop Weekend.
I have noticed on weekends there are usually fewer visitors to my blog. People are off doing other things, I assume. Plus a day off won’t hurt. I have a regular job, family obligations, and am working on a novel and short stories as well. On my days off, I aim for between 300 and 400 words of new writing on my stories or novel. So doing that and a blog entry can be tough. I might also skip a day here and there if I don’t have something that fits that day’s theme.
Certainly, comments and suggestions are welcome. And visits, too. The more the better. I aim to keep humor and wit of one stripe or another going on this blog. You may not be rolling in the floor laughing and sometimes you might even be rolling your eyes and groaning at the puns, but at least you’re not having to pay for the self-inflicted humor wound.
Last, but not least, thank you to all who have visited my blog and especially so to those who have linked up to receive notification when I post something new. I do appreciate it. Very much. Part of the reason for trying to more regularize the format is so that you know what’s coming.
Filed under blog, Workshop weekend, writing
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