Sunday, December 14, 2014
Saturday, November 8, 2014
free 1st chapter: rest stop
Rest Stop is my 3rd novel, set in a fictionalized version of my hometown of PoHo, just as Red/Nerd Girls Go 2 Hell was. What follows is the unedited Intro and 1st chapter. I hope that you like it.
ALWAYS OPEN WITH A JOKE
A drunk gets up from the bar and staggers to the men’s room. A few minutes later, a loud, blood-curdling scream is heard. A few minutes after that, another horrific shriek. The bartender runs to the men’s room door.
"Cut that shit out!” he shouts. "You're scarin’ my customers!"
From inside the bathroom: "I'm just sittin’ here on the crapper! Every time I try to flush, somethin’ comes up and squeezes the hell out of my balls!"
The bartender opens the door.
"You moron! You're shittin’ in the mop bucket!”
Friday, October 10, 2014
author-guy interview
what follows is an interview pertaining to my written work. since no magazines, etc., were jumping at the opportunity to do one, i decided to ask myself a bunch of questions found at random via google. you know - in the interest of saving future wikipedia curators time.
Q: When did you first realize that you wanted to be a writer?
A: I was a voracious reader, one of those kids that you used to see coming out of the library every Saturday with a stack of books tucked under their chin. When I was 10 or so, my mom gave me a paperback copy of The Princess Bride. It changed my life. From then on, I knew that I wanted to write.
Q: How long does it take you to write a book?
A: The writing part is relatively easy; I can usually churn out a first draft in about 6 months. Editing takes just as long. But it can take years to get the story right.
Q: What is your process when you're writing?
A: In the early days of a book, I usually do a fair amount of research, taking notes and building up an idea of the characters and the world they live in. Then I usually do a bullet list of story points in Excel, and swap them around until the order feels right. Sometimes I'll write key scenes down first, just so I know what I'm writing toward. I used to do character sketches and whatnot, too, to help me picture them better.
When it comes time to do the actual writing, I try to stick close to the bullet points, unless something new occurs to me (this always happens), at which point I slip in new bullet points and sometimes change the order around again.
I used to edit as I wrote, but I've found that it's easier for me to finish a book if I just charge blindly ahead with the writing, no matter how ugly it is, then refine it and give it a solid beat during editing.
Q: You work full time at a day job, plus have a family. How do you find time to write, paint book covers and so on?
A: You have to make time. In my case, I stay up long after my family's gone to bed, plus I write during lunch breaks at work or whenever there's an unproductive moment. I also keep a small digital recorder in my car, so that I can record plot ideas, scenes, thoughts about business, and song lyrics at stoplights.
Q: Do you have a set number of words or pages that you try to hit each day?
A: No. Once I start writing, I keep on until I have to stop, either because I have to get back to work or because I fall asleep. If I'm away from it too long, I lose interest in the current story.
Q: Where do you get your ideas?
A: Port Huron, Michigan. It's that kind of town. People from PoHo - or Port Yorn or Port Urine, if you're a native - tend to either become musicians and leave, or stick around and drink a lot. Sometimes both.
Q: When did you write your first book?
A: I was 16, and wrote the first draft of The Ring Around the Rose for a creative writing class. Well, not really - I wrote it for a girl that I liked; the assignment was just an excuse. I gave her the original manuscript one day - the only copy - and never saw it again. I had to work from memory for the version that Amazon published.
Q: That was your first full-length novel, wasn't it? How did it feel to finally publish it?
A: Terrible. I still wasn't sure if the editing was right, and I knew that it had to be to get readers interested in the 2nd book. Luckily, Amazon lets you edit a book even after it's been released. I still find myself going back and tinkering with it. There are some bits that I've always liked, but I've learned so much since then!
Q: When will the second book in that series come out?
A: On my deathbed, probably. I learned everything that I know about deadlines from George R.R. Martin. It's all there in longhand notes, or a lot of it, and a friend was kind enough to type up the first 21 pages or so. I know how it goes, and it's a good story, but finishing it is going to be a lot of hard work, so I keep kind of hoping that people will stop asking. If they don't, I may actually have to finish it one day, and then they'll start whining about the 3rd book.
Q: There's a 3rd book?
A: Who told you that?
Q: What do you like to do when you're not writing?
A: Spend time with my family. Our daughter is heading off to college next year and our son isn't far behind, so I want to spend as much time with them now as they'll let me. We like to travel. I also write songs and paint.
Q: How many books have you written? Which is your favorite?
A: Two novels (Red, which will soon be republished under the title Nerd Girls Go to Hell, and The Ring Around the Rose), and a short story collection called Grimmer. Next up will be a new horror novel (Rest Stop), set once again in PoHo, but with a different set of characters than Red.
My current favorite is Red, because the main character is so funny, and she's easy to write.
Q: Do you have any suggestions for new writers?
A: Write all the time. When you're not writing, read. If you don't do both of those things constantly, you're a doodler, not a writer. There's nothing wrong with being a doodler, but if you want to be a writer, take it seriously. Learn as much about spelling, grammar, and punctuation as possible. Writing is no different than any other job - you have to have good tools. If people can't understand you, they're not going to listen to anything that you have to say. You can't expect to pick up a guitar one day and become a famous musician the next. Everything takes work - lots of it. Anyone who says different is selling something.
Q: What do you think makes a good story?
A: Characters that we can relate to and care about, living in a world that we can smell and taste. From there, any obstacle or problem can be thrown in; we just want to see what the characters do, and compare it to what we'd do in a similar situation. Anything more than that is icing on the cake.
Q: Who are your favorite authors?
A: In no particular order, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, William Goldman, Hunter Thompson, William Burroughs, Clive Barker, Christopher Moore, Tim Dorsey, and Kurt Vonnegut. When I was younger, I read a lot of Stephen King, too.
Q: Do you do all your own editing?
A: I do, but I also have a muse who reads all of my stuff and tells me when people will have a hard time understanding what I mean, or what they probably will or won't like. I don't always agree with her, but I always listen, and I write with her in mind. She's an excellent barometer.
Q: How about book covers? Is it better to hire them done, or create your own, as you do?
A: Not if you're no good at it, and by that I mean, would people buy your book based on your cover art alone? Your cover is all about selling your story's tent pole character or idea. Every book sold on Amazon is a thumbnail image that you're trying to persuade shoppers to click.
Stay away from fancy fonts - if the title and your name aren't clear in the thumbnail, people won't buy your book. A generic cover that doesn't really have anything to do with your story won't help, either - especially if you copied it off the web, which can lead to lawsuits for copyright infringement.
Q: Is it possible to make a living selling your work on Amazon?
A: No - not unless you're already J.K.Rowling or George R.R. Martin. Although Amazon made publishing on the Kindle platform easy (for which I am eternally grateful), self-publishing has substantially upped the number of authors that you're competing against. It's difficult to rise above the noise, unless you've got a large advertising budget, which most self-publishers don't. And like anything else, most of the competition is crap. That's what got me started writing in the first place: I read a book by someone else, and knew that I could do a better job than they did.
Q: Did you?
A: No. My first stories were even worse. But I worked at them, and tried to figure out what I liked about my favorite authors' work. Some of the best advice I ever got was to be merciless when editing. Never use a long word when a shorter one will do. Hack out anything that doesn't have to be there, even if you've fallen in love with it. That's hard; editing is hard. Three-quarters of everything that I write ends up in the circular file, and some of those pages are my favorite parts, but it's got to be done. If it doesn't have to be there, rip it out.
Q: When did you first realize that you wanted to be a writer?
A: I was a voracious reader, one of those kids that you used to see coming out of the library every Saturday with a stack of books tucked under their chin. When I was 10 or so, my mom gave me a paperback copy of The Princess Bride. It changed my life. From then on, I knew that I wanted to write.
Q: How long does it take you to write a book?
A: The writing part is relatively easy; I can usually churn out a first draft in about 6 months. Editing takes just as long. But it can take years to get the story right.
Q: What is your process when you're writing?
A: In the early days of a book, I usually do a fair amount of research, taking notes and building up an idea of the characters and the world they live in. Then I usually do a bullet list of story points in Excel, and swap them around until the order feels right. Sometimes I'll write key scenes down first, just so I know what I'm writing toward. I used to do character sketches and whatnot, too, to help me picture them better.
When it comes time to do the actual writing, I try to stick close to the bullet points, unless something new occurs to me (this always happens), at which point I slip in new bullet points and sometimes change the order around again.
I used to edit as I wrote, but I've found that it's easier for me to finish a book if I just charge blindly ahead with the writing, no matter how ugly it is, then refine it and give it a solid beat during editing.
Q: You work full time at a day job, plus have a family. How do you find time to write, paint book covers and so on?
A: You have to make time. In my case, I stay up long after my family's gone to bed, plus I write during lunch breaks at work or whenever there's an unproductive moment. I also keep a small digital recorder in my car, so that I can record plot ideas, scenes, thoughts about business, and song lyrics at stoplights.
Q: Do you have a set number of words or pages that you try to hit each day?
A: No. Once I start writing, I keep on until I have to stop, either because I have to get back to work or because I fall asleep. If I'm away from it too long, I lose interest in the current story.
Q: Where do you get your ideas?
A: Port Huron, Michigan. It's that kind of town. People from PoHo - or Port Yorn or Port Urine, if you're a native - tend to either become musicians and leave, or stick around and drink a lot. Sometimes both.
Q: When did you write your first book?
A: I was 16, and wrote the first draft of The Ring Around the Rose for a creative writing class. Well, not really - I wrote it for a girl that I liked; the assignment was just an excuse. I gave her the original manuscript one day - the only copy - and never saw it again. I had to work from memory for the version that Amazon published.
Q: That was your first full-length novel, wasn't it? How did it feel to finally publish it?
A: Terrible. I still wasn't sure if the editing was right, and I knew that it had to be to get readers interested in the 2nd book. Luckily, Amazon lets you edit a book even after it's been released. I still find myself going back and tinkering with it. There are some bits that I've always liked, but I've learned so much since then!
Q: When will the second book in that series come out?
A: On my deathbed, probably. I learned everything that I know about deadlines from George R.R. Martin. It's all there in longhand notes, or a lot of it, and a friend was kind enough to type up the first 21 pages or so. I know how it goes, and it's a good story, but finishing it is going to be a lot of hard work, so I keep kind of hoping that people will stop asking. If they don't, I may actually have to finish it one day, and then they'll start whining about the 3rd book.
Q: There's a 3rd book?
A: Who told you that?
Q: What do you like to do when you're not writing?
A: Spend time with my family. Our daughter is heading off to college next year and our son isn't far behind, so I want to spend as much time with them now as they'll let me. We like to travel. I also write songs and paint.
Q: How many books have you written? Which is your favorite?
A: Two novels (Red, which will soon be republished under the title Nerd Girls Go to Hell, and The Ring Around the Rose), and a short story collection called Grimmer. Next up will be a new horror novel (Rest Stop), set once again in PoHo, but with a different set of characters than Red.
My current favorite is Red, because the main character is so funny, and she's easy to write.
Q: Do you have any suggestions for new writers?
A: Write all the time. When you're not writing, read. If you don't do both of those things constantly, you're a doodler, not a writer. There's nothing wrong with being a doodler, but if you want to be a writer, take it seriously. Learn as much about spelling, grammar, and punctuation as possible. Writing is no different than any other job - you have to have good tools. If people can't understand you, they're not going to listen to anything that you have to say. You can't expect to pick up a guitar one day and become a famous musician the next. Everything takes work - lots of it. Anyone who says different is selling something.
Q: What do you think makes a good story?
A: Characters that we can relate to and care about, living in a world that we can smell and taste. From there, any obstacle or problem can be thrown in; we just want to see what the characters do, and compare it to what we'd do in a similar situation. Anything more than that is icing on the cake.
Q: Who are your favorite authors?
A: In no particular order, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, William Goldman, Hunter Thompson, William Burroughs, Clive Barker, Christopher Moore, Tim Dorsey, and Kurt Vonnegut. When I was younger, I read a lot of Stephen King, too.
Q: Do you do all your own editing?
A: I do, but I also have a muse who reads all of my stuff and tells me when people will have a hard time understanding what I mean, or what they probably will or won't like. I don't always agree with her, but I always listen, and I write with her in mind. She's an excellent barometer.
Q: How about book covers? Is it better to hire them done, or create your own, as you do?
A: Not if you're no good at it, and by that I mean, would people buy your book based on your cover art alone? Your cover is all about selling your story's tent pole character or idea. Every book sold on Amazon is a thumbnail image that you're trying to persuade shoppers to click.
Stay away from fancy fonts - if the title and your name aren't clear in the thumbnail, people won't buy your book. A generic cover that doesn't really have anything to do with your story won't help, either - especially if you copied it off the web, which can lead to lawsuits for copyright infringement.
Q: Is it possible to make a living selling your work on Amazon?
A: No - not unless you're already J.K.Rowling or George R.R. Martin. Although Amazon made publishing on the Kindle platform easy (for which I am eternally grateful), self-publishing has substantially upped the number of authors that you're competing against. It's difficult to rise above the noise, unless you've got a large advertising budget, which most self-publishers don't. And like anything else, most of the competition is crap. That's what got me started writing in the first place: I read a book by someone else, and knew that I could do a better job than they did.
Q: Did you?
A: No. My first stories were even worse. But I worked at them, and tried to figure out what I liked about my favorite authors' work. Some of the best advice I ever got was to be merciless when editing. Never use a long word when a shorter one will do. Hack out anything that doesn't have to be there, even if you've fallen in love with it. That's hard; editing is hard. Three-quarters of everything that I write ends up in the circular file, and some of those pages are my favorite parts, but it's got to be done. If it doesn't have to be there, rip it out.
Sunday, September 7, 2014
of faith and foxholes
in the comments section of various articles about atheism, there always seems to be at least one deist that throws out the old "faith in a foxhole" cliche. i've never understood how that argument works in their favor. what you're saying is, if we put someone in a situation where they are in so much distress that they can no longer think rationally, then they'll believe in god?
really? that's your argument - that faith requires the total abandonment of reason? heck, if that's true, why did we ever come down out of the trees? no wonder orangutans always look so pious - they're obviously several rungs above us on the faith ladder.
listen, folks - is a shit-your-pants moment really the ideal time to reorder your worldview in favor of an invisible old man who lives in the sky and takes advice from sarah palin?
really? that's your argument - that faith requires the total abandonment of reason? heck, if that's true, why did we ever come down out of the trees? no wonder orangutans always look so pious - they're obviously several rungs above us on the faith ladder.
listen, folks - is a shit-your-pants moment really the ideal time to reorder your worldview in favor of an invisible old man who lives in the sky and takes advice from sarah palin?
Sunday, August 24, 2014
i'm tarzan
my experiments with towels-as-capes notwithstanding, the superhero that i aspired to be as a kid was not the as-yet-only-a-cartoon spider-man (whose costume was missing most of its webs, to save money) nor adam west's milk-chugging bat buffoon (remember, this was pre-dark knight)... no, my hero was an olympic swimmer and competitive yodeler from pennsylvania.
you got it: tarzan. specifically, johnny weismueller's tarzan.
every kid in my neighborhood watched those old movies, of course, along with the three stooges, the marx brothers, godzilla, and lost in space. there were only 3 channels back then - imagine! - plus the occasional fuzzy canadian transponder drift, so homogeneity was more-or-less inevitable. but there was something about weismueller's big, dumb brute that spoke to me.
for one thing, all he wore was a butt-flap, and no one gave him guff about grass stains. kids in my neighborhood wore shoes exactly 8 months of the year; the other months our feet became as tough as tar paper. if you walked on a piece of glass, it powdered, and any drops of blood could be remedied by a quick run under the sprinkler.
did i mention the trees? we were lucky enough to live in an area of town where there were still tracts of land that had yet to see a bulldozer. we lived in those woods, swung from the trees, caught snakes and praying mantises, built forts, and snoozed in the shade of old oaks while their leaves sighed like the tide. if a tree had branches, we climbed it, claimed it, and didn't regret it a bit if it turned out to be poison sumac (that happened a few times; we were slow learners).
in tarzan's jungle, right and wrong were absolutes, unlike the war in vietnam with its endless shades of grey (if it wasn't an actual war, why were we there? why couldn't we leave? how the heck did we lose?) and what happened during the dnc convention in chicago. on tarzan's escarpment, good guys were bloodied, but bad guys got eaten, and we didn't feel a bit sorry for them. tarzan was boss of africa, and any lions, cannibals, nazis or crocodiles that had a problem with that could put up their dukes and take their best shot. when it was over, his triumphant yodel proclaimed that all was right with the world.
i miss that. it's been a long time since i felt that all was right with the world. (plus he got to skinny-dip with maureen o'sullivan, something that impresses me more now than it did then.)
i'm old, now - old enough that a butt-flap won't quite do the job, and there's unlikely to be a vine in all of africa that can support me. but as i hang out next to our woods, smelling the riotous green rot, don't think that i'm not tempted to chuck it all and climb.
if only the jungle had wifi.
you got it: tarzan. specifically, johnny weismueller's tarzan.
every kid in my neighborhood watched those old movies, of course, along with the three stooges, the marx brothers, godzilla, and lost in space. there were only 3 channels back then - imagine! - plus the occasional fuzzy canadian transponder drift, so homogeneity was more-or-less inevitable. but there was something about weismueller's big, dumb brute that spoke to me.
for one thing, all he wore was a butt-flap, and no one gave him guff about grass stains. kids in my neighborhood wore shoes exactly 8 months of the year; the other months our feet became as tough as tar paper. if you walked on a piece of glass, it powdered, and any drops of blood could be remedied by a quick run under the sprinkler.
did i mention the trees? we were lucky enough to live in an area of town where there were still tracts of land that had yet to see a bulldozer. we lived in those woods, swung from the trees, caught snakes and praying mantises, built forts, and snoozed in the shade of old oaks while their leaves sighed like the tide. if a tree had branches, we climbed it, claimed it, and didn't regret it a bit if it turned out to be poison sumac (that happened a few times; we were slow learners).
in tarzan's jungle, right and wrong were absolutes, unlike the war in vietnam with its endless shades of grey (if it wasn't an actual war, why were we there? why couldn't we leave? how the heck did we lose?) and what happened during the dnc convention in chicago. on tarzan's escarpment, good guys were bloodied, but bad guys got eaten, and we didn't feel a bit sorry for them. tarzan was boss of africa, and any lions, cannibals, nazis or crocodiles that had a problem with that could put up their dukes and take their best shot. when it was over, his triumphant yodel proclaimed that all was right with the world.
i miss that. it's been a long time since i felt that all was right with the world. (plus he got to skinny-dip with maureen o'sullivan, something that impresses me more now than it did then.)
i'm old, now - old enough that a butt-flap won't quite do the job, and there's unlikely to be a vine in all of africa that can support me. but as i hang out next to our woods, smelling the riotous green rot, don't think that i'm not tempted to chuck it all and climb.
if only the jungle had wifi.
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
'red' is out
 | Meet Andi McCarthy, a brilliantly nerdy, ginger teen who plays a mean guitar and walks around with a talking raven named Nevermore on her head. Andi must solve the murder of a beloved cheerleader before a mysterious force damns her family - and, incidentally, her hometown - to Hell, all while being accosted by shoe repair shop spies, Greek vampires, a psychic single mom named Tumblina DuPrey... and Death itself. |
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
get 'red' for free!
i truly appreciate the support (and patience) you've shown to my author guy persona, and want to give something back to show the love.
here's my idea: if you'll take a moment or two out of your day to write a review on amazon when you're done reading it - positive or not - i'll send you the electronic version of my new novel 'red' for free the moment it's published (the 1st edition hits amazon on saturday).
just let me know which file format you prefer - word, acrobat, html, text, or kindle. send your request to davidpmaurer@gmail.com.
if you don't receive it by next monday, please text me at 952-356-4588 and i'll beat my i.t. trolls 'til they cough up goats.
thank you, gang - you are terrific!
here's my idea: if you'll take a moment or two out of your day to write a review on amazon when you're done reading it - positive or not - i'll send you the electronic version of my new novel 'red' for free the moment it's published (the 1st edition hits amazon on saturday).
just let me know which file format you prefer - word, acrobat, html, text, or kindle. send your request to davidpmaurer@gmail.com.
if you don't receive it by next monday, please text me at 952-356-4588 and i'll beat my i.t. trolls 'til they cough up goats.
thank you, gang - you are terrific!
Thursday, April 3, 2014
i'm big in the u.k.
okay, maybe 'big' is an exaggeration. and it's not me, it's my business blog. for some reason, u.k. traffic for it is higher than u.s. traffic, which is odd, considering that the only promotion i do is the very-occasional link on linkedin. and right behind the u.s.? france.
i'm still tickled by the fact that it has by far the least content of all my sites, yet it continues to draw the most traffic. people love to read about work, for some reason.
my trivia blog, on the other hand, is looked at by more people on facebook than on its actual site, despite the fact that the site has more than 3 times the content. interesting lesson, there: go where the people already are, rather than try to make them go to someplace new. (thank you, angela, colleen, and maria, for that insight. you were right!)
my political blog still gets steady traffic, even if it's been 6 years since i posted revealing photos of amy smart, anne hathaway, ashley tisdale, and avril lavigne, a post which got 10 times more traffic than any other. which tells you something about the state of american politics, and possibility where americans' interests lie.
i'm still tickled by the fact that it has by far the least content of all my sites, yet it continues to draw the most traffic. people love to read about work, for some reason.
my trivia blog, on the other hand, is looked at by more people on facebook than on its actual site, despite the fact that the site has more than 3 times the content. interesting lesson, there: go where the people already are, rather than try to make them go to someplace new. (thank you, angela, colleen, and maria, for that insight. you were right!)
my political blog still gets steady traffic, even if it's been 6 years since i posted revealing photos of amy smart, anne hathaway, ashley tisdale, and avril lavigne, a post which got 10 times more traffic than any other. which tells you something about the state of american politics, and possibility where americans' interests lie.
Saturday, March 22, 2014
satanist much?
okay, lest you suspect that i spend my weekends sacrificing goats to steve jobs or other equally heinous hobbies, the black and white pic of me to the right is an experiment with a new cloud-based image editor called pixlr. why monochrome, you ask? because your hero is massively color blind. no kidding; i'm lucky to be able to tell red lights from green. also, that's not a beard - it's moss.
Thursday, March 6, 2014
fill my brain: now on facebook!
my trivia, quotation, and knowledge blog, fill my brain, is now available as a facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/FillMyBrain.
Saturday, February 15, 2014
testing, testing, 1...2...3...
this site, which will serve as the grand central station of my various kanoodles, is almost ready to launch. just a little more tinkering with the widgets and a few more bugs to squash - the digital equivalent of hiding dirty underwear before having guests over.
the ultimate goal, of course, is to build such a resplendent monument to myself that neil gaiman buys an elsewhen tee shirt and sting quits pretending to be such a sexy old guy. along the way i may accidentally answer some of your questions and/or contribute to the ever-growing stack of love-to-hate-me mail that my loud and opinionated mouth encourages. (i'd get bored without it.)
okay, i lied: the real point is to make money, right? because that's what life is all about, giving money to me, and i've built in as many ways as i can think of to help you fulfill that dream, from buying my books and paintings and clever tee shirts and underwear (really... sadly, my greed knows no bounds) to giving you an address that you can use to send any money that you find in your parents' pockets to, if you're under 16 and don't have money of your own.
eventually, if you work hard enough and support me the way you should, it's my goal to create a multimedia empire that makes walt disney look like a chain-smoking union-buster.
so wander, my dearie dears, drop breadcrumbs as you go, and bask in the knowledge that no matter how much you love me, it will never be enough.
the ultimate goal, of course, is to build such a resplendent monument to myself that neil gaiman buys an elsewhen tee shirt and sting quits pretending to be such a sexy old guy. along the way i may accidentally answer some of your questions and/or contribute to the ever-growing stack of love-to-hate-me mail that my loud and opinionated mouth encourages. (i'd get bored without it.)
okay, i lied: the real point is to make money, right? because that's what life is all about, giving money to me, and i've built in as many ways as i can think of to help you fulfill that dream, from buying my books and paintings and clever tee shirts and underwear (really... sadly, my greed knows no bounds) to giving you an address that you can use to send any money that you find in your parents' pockets to, if you're under 16 and don't have money of your own.
eventually, if you work hard enough and support me the way you should, it's my goal to create a multimedia empire that makes walt disney look like a chain-smoking union-buster.
so wander, my dearie dears, drop breadcrumbs as you go, and bask in the knowledge that no matter how much you love me, it will never be enough.
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