Children of Mother Earth - Free today!

My novel Children of Mother Earth is free as a kindle download today. So get it while you can!

I finished I'm With the Band. Thank God. She can stay there. What a waste of time and paper that book was. But good for her, I guess.

I'm now reading Stephen King's Finders Keepers. So far, it's really good. I really enjoy his writing and there's no horror, at least not so far. So that's good. The cover looks like a horror novel, but that's what happens when you've sold a zillion books in that genre.

So many books I want to read this summer. Next up will be Funny Girl, by Nick Hornby, then the last book of the Century trilogy by Ken Follett (that should take the month of July).
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I've been plugging away at my new novel. The working title is Coach Zim. I'm hoping to come up with something better when it's completed, although I kind of like the working title. I have about 17,000 words down of the very rough first draft. Funny, the more I write, the more ideas shoot into my head from out of nowhere, both for this book and future novels. I need to write faster so I can complete all the novels I have ideas for.

I don't plot, I don't outline or diagram or write anything down. Well, except for the names of characters and a brief description, otherwise I begin to get very confused after about 30 pages, which is what's happening now. I need to write the names down soon, I guess. I have an idea of how the story will end, though, or at least how it will get there.

I do sometimes think it would be easier to write everything down first, to plot it out. But I get ideas in my head of where the story is going, and wham! It suddenly takes off in another direction. I've always been like that, and I don't think I'm going to change, so I'll just stick with what I know. Just like my short stories - they all start with a situation. Boy listening to parents talk through vent holes, fishermen find dead body, etc. I sometimes know how my short stories will end, but rarely.  I wonder if anyone else writes the same way.

Reading a lousy book and writing a novel.

It's a pretty typical April day - cold and rainy. Unfortunately, it's June.

Last week, I finished reading Winter of the World, the second book in Ken Follett's Century trilogy. It was really good. The first one was good, but this one was better. Right now I am reading the Pamela Des Barres book, I'm With The Band. Not good. If you are an 18-year-old girl and aspire to be the plaything of a rock star, you may like it. If you have any level of maturity at all, you might want to avoid it. You know it's bad if it's too immature for me. I thought it would give me some insight into the lives of rock stars, but really it's about rock stars blowing her off after having sex with her a few times. Also, it's written like a diary that Marcia Brady would have kept about Davey Jones.

Why, then, am I still reading it? Because I feel the need to finish a book once I've started it, even the bad ones. I don't know why. I don't always make it, and it's a real waste of time, but I will push through this one.

I'm working on a novel about a high school teacher / baseball coach. It has everything - sports, sex, violence. Well, it will when it's finished. I wish I could write a mystery thriller sort of novel, because that seems to be what sells, but I can't. Maybe I could, but it probably wouldn't turn out so great. I do have ideas for my next couple of novels, but I have to finish this one first.

It's amazing to me that I finished writing Rock Star almost two years ago and I haven't written a novel since. I did write Love Lettahs From Maine earlier this year, but those are easy for me to write and only take a few weeks. So I'd better get to it!