Like a Bug on a Windshield

I hadn't planned on posting three times in one day, but things just happen sometimes. I just wanted to make a few flimsy excuses and justifications while this was fresh in my mind. First of all, I try very hard not to start a blog post with "I," so, sorry for that, but this is a special case. Second, I know I used to indent the first line in my paragraphs, but the interface changed and the tab key doesn't do it and I can't for the life of me remember how I did it before and just don't have a whole heck of a lot of time to spend learning yet another word processing program and why the heck can't they make these things a little more obvious like on a Mac? Next, quotation marks: I know I'm using inch symbols for quotes and foot symbols for apostrophies. Can't help it. Same answer as number two. And why? Why are those the defaults? Who ever uses foot and inch symbols in a text document anyway? Okay, fourth, missing hyphens: I caught those too late an

Writing is really hard, sometimes. Like when your computer thinks it's smarter than your are. My computer has been driving me crazy since I got it. It's a low-cost laptop (I'm not going to call it "cheap" for fear of offending it), with Windows 7 and Office 2010 installed. The little scroll pad has all kinds of enhanced functions that I didn't ask for. I just want a good old fashioned mouse-type thing that let's me scroll and select and maybe right click once in a while. This thing jumps back to the beginning, cuts and pastes, deletes, changes views, changes text formatting and targets long range missiles against countries I've never heard of, all while I'm just trying to type. Earlier today I was working on a new novel when Windows decided to update and reconfigure itself without even asking me. As if it wasn't bad enough having an alien entity take over the very machine I need to get something done in the precious little time I have availab

Today I'm happy to announce three big happenings in the world. First, I'm writing a new one of my inane blog posts (the one after this one, not this one); second, my third novel, Eaters, is finally available as a Kindle ebook on Amazon.com; and third, tomorrow, Sunday, April 1, 2012, is free download day for my second novel, Jordan's Fall. Please feel free to read any of these (although reading Eaters wouldn't actually be free, but it wouldn't be very expensive and you'd help support me while I write my next novel, which is coming along nicely and will probably be available some time in the future). http://www.amazon.com/author/scottstephen So there you have it--a great weekend in the history of literature written by me. Enjoy! Or heck, enjoy your weekend even if it has nothing to do with me. I'm not as vain as you seem to think. Really. --Stephen P.

Thank you so much to all the nice people who downloaded copies of my digital novel My Year in the Barrel this past weekend. If you haven't downloaded it yet, better hurry before Amazon.com runs out of digits. I hope that most of you will read and enjoy the book and that the rest of you will "kinda like it." And I hope that you now want to read Jordan's Fall . And that you recommend them both to everyone you know. And that you will feverishly anticipate the publication of my next novel Eaters .  I'm doing the next-to-the-last edit of Eaters-- that's my top priority project. Next I have a shortstory to finish (titled "Warmest Regards, J") but that shouldn't take too long. Then my fourth novel, a thriller, is in the research phase. I had a title idea for it but I didn't write it down and I can't remember it, so the working title is Murphy. I have a few other concepts floating around but they'll have to wait 'til I clear a few oth

Tomorrow is a big day. Starting at 12:00am and running until 11:59pm, downloads of my novel My Year in the Barrel are free on Amazon.com. That means that potentially several people will discover the joy of reading over 50,000 of my words all in one place! https://www.amazon.com/author/scottstephen As the late, great Douglas Adams once told me:  "How did you get this number? Don't bloody call here again!" by which I think he meant that an author's work is in and of itself a gift of love to the reader with nothing more required. Just as we understand that when a cat leaves a small dead rodent on our doorstep it is intended as a message of love, we can only wish that it had been understood that when I left that large dead rodent on an old girlfriend's doorstep it was a message of love, not a threatening gesture requiring all those damn police police cars, a night in jail and that restraining order. But I digress. I think what I'm trying to say is that I hope

It's been a while since my last post, but it couldn't be helped. I've been busy getting two of my novels ready to publish on Amazon.com, as Kendle ebooks, and doing a final rewrite on a third novel. The first two, My Year in the Barrel and Jordan's Fall are now live and available for download. The third, Eaters , will be available in the next month or two. I'm also working on a new website, but more about that later. I hope to get back to writing my smile-worthy humorous blog posts (or at least not groan-worthy) in the near future. Until then, I hope you'll read free samples of my books at Amazon.com. www.amazon.com/author/scottstephen Stephen P.