Like a Bug on a Windshield

Life has been throwing a lot of changes at my wife and me the last few years. First, my job cut me back to part time and then eventually laid me off. I made a valiant effort to find a new job--a new career, really, since the printing industry, my home for over thirty years, was vanishing into the mists of time. While training and traveling in a new line of work, I began to have symptoms that led to the discovery of an encyclopedia of health problems. Between the medical bills and reduced income, we were forced to take a long hard look at life and decide what we wanted to do with what was left of ours. In the end, we decided we wanted to get away, simplify life, lose the drama and enjoy the simple things we loved. The first step was to liquidate what assets we had left, remodel and sell our house and find our perfect home. While the contractors were busy creating sawdust, we began our search. Our goal was simple: find a quiet place with lots of shade and room to relax. A view wo...

It's been a couple of years since my last update, but I have a really good excuse: my dog ate my password. Okay, not so good. The truth is I've been getting to know lots of doctors and spending lots of time in hospital beds. Perhaps in some future post I will explain what that was all about, but for now, I want to try to get back in the saddle and start a new saga. Before I move on to my next post, I am proud to announce the release of the long-awaited sequel to Eaters--Eaters Too, now available as a Kindle e-book on Amazon.com. Stephen P.

For those of you who missed it in previous posts, my new novel Serving Murphy is now available as an ebook at amazon.com. I'm proving the link below. www.amazon.com/author/scottstephen Those of you on the east coast will want to hurry and download it now, so you'll have something to read while the power is off. I hope you come through the storm without a scratch, whether you buy my book or not. --Stephen P.

Life is what happens while you're neglecting your blog. The Kendle edition of my new novel, Serving Murphy, is now available on Amazon.com. It's a dystopian-futuristic suspensish story about a guy who has a kind of dull life serving warrants, until things start to fall apart and it gets complicated. You can "look inside" or download a sample for free. Also, on the subject of my novels, Eaters will be free to download Sunday and Monday, October 21, 22, 2012, so get your copy and read it. Eaters II will be out in a couple of months. Like most of you (big assumption there), I'm looking forward to the season premier of Southland, coming soon. Michael Cudlitz does a fine job of anchoring the cast and C. Thomas Howell plays the biggest jerk I've ever seen anywhere. The show makes me want to stay the hell out of south LA, but it's entertaining to visit there every week. I'd be sad that Lucy Liu is off the show, except that she is Dr. Watson on the new ser...

It's not easy juggling career changes, job hunting, lurking about on Facebook, writing novels, neglecting a website and maintaining a blog. This probably is not the first time I've used the excuse that I am currently preparing one novel for publication while writing two more, but these are actually different novels. Serving Murphy has moved from being written, to the preparation for publication stage, Eaters II is now at 40,000 words and growing every day, and Terry's Rise, the sequel to Jordan's Fall, is in the early stages of note taking and research. If I don't find a full time job in the next few weeks, I will probably be blogging from a homeless shelter, but whatever. Life is good. In the wonderful world of television, if you have BBC America you must be fully engaged in the new season of Doctor Who by now. If you don't have BBC, you'll have to wait for this season to come to PBS next year, but you're likely watching previous seasons. If you aren...

Sorry, it's been a long time since my last post. I've been overwhelmingly busy starting and ending a new career and finishing my latest novel. I won't even go into the career, but I spent months taking classes and getting licensed before finding it just wasn't for me. The novel, on the other hand, I've likely referred to in previous blogs as Murphy, Sean Murphy and Serving Murphy. The current title and most likely for the novel to be published under is The Last Alias. I will wait a few weeks before rereading it and doing final revisions and rewrites. After that I will publish it on Amazon.com. My next novel, Eaters II, is already in the works and will likely be finished sometime next spring. In my last post, I promised to comment on all the television shows on my viewing list for the summer season. So much for that. If you've been paying attention, you probably know that most summer shows have already had their season finales, so I'll just provide a ...

Where have I been lately? I'm glad I asked. It's been so long that I've forgotten what I've shared and what I haven't, but this is my second month of unemployment and I still don't like it. I swear I had more free time when I was working. I spend at least thirty hours a week online looking for jobs (in case you've been gainfully employed for the past decade or so, all job hunting is now done on the internet). The few times I've ventured out asking for applications, they told me to go home and apply at their websites. Applying for a job online takes about three hours, including the personality profile. After spending all that time filling in little boxes, you get a message that says "thank you for revealing all your personal information, now click here to fill out the application for the company you thought you were applying to." Another three hours of filling in boxes and answering psychologically tricky questions and you get a message that...