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!

World premier of "War + Love = Drama!"

I just read that Kim Kardashian says Bruce Jenner, her stepfather, looks beautiful in a dress. I understand being open to the choices of others, but this man lived with you as your stepfather for many years. I can't imagine if my father announced he wanted to wear dresses. Actually, that would be really funny - "Jesus, this thing don't fit. How in the hell do you zip this thing? Whoever designed this dress ought to have it shoved right up their ass!"

On to more important things, like my latest Sanford News column. It's about the new dent in my truck. If you've ever had a vehicle hit in a parking lot, and the person who did it took off without leaving a note, you'll probably relate to this.

And here's something even more important than my column: my son Samuel's Lego movie. It was made on an iPad and he's a pretty good director for an 8 year old. I think it's really cool and I'm proud of him for his creativity and effort. And now, for your viewing pleasure, here is War + Love = Drama!

Smart investing can lead to the freedom to buy a 2012 Kia Forte

Here is my column from this week's Sanford News. It's about the mind-boggling financial success I've had investing in stocks. Those of you who are considering investing will probably decide to do so after reading this. I hope that those people who are inspired to invest because of my column and experience tremendous success will remember me and share a small portion of their success. Or a large portion. Either way.

Speaking of financial success, we bought a 2012 Kia Forte this week. Yes, with financial success comes the freedom to purchase things that once seemed unattainable, like a 2012 Kia Forte. Actually, it seems like a good car. My wife likes it and that's the important thing, since it's her car.

I finished reading Jaws, which was different in many ways from the movie, including the way it ended. In some ways, I liked it better than the movie.

One thing I always have problems with when writing a story is coming up with names. This morning I was working on a novel and couldn't come up with any names, so I opened an old phone book for some ideas. For instance for the name of a high school principal I found the last name Craggy. Principal Craggy. I like the sound of that.

I usually mix and match - a first name from this column, a last name from that column. I do this quite often when writing stories. I should probably just ask my 8-year-old son for name ideas, I'm sure he'd come up with some good ones.

The world's greatest mug

Yesterday, I was given a new mug. This is no ordinary mug. It has a picture on it that Samuel made in art class earlier this year. It's a guy riding a wave and saying "da da da da da." I thought it must be because of me - Sam used to call me Da Da - but he looked at me like I was extremely dense and said, "He's singing the Batman theme - "da da da da da da da, Batman!"

Spring has finally arrived, it's been over 50 degrees every day and the snow is gone. I'm hoping that the change in weather is going to give me the ambition to write a great novel. Or even a mediocre novel. Any novel, really. Even a short story would be nice.

I'm reading Jaws, the novel by Peter Benchley that the classic movie is based on. It's pretty good, but it's very different in some ways from the movie. For instance, the character of Hooper, played in the movie by Richard Dreyfus, is really good looking and sleeps with Brody's wife. That would have made for a very different movie, for sure.

I think I'll do some writing now on the new novel I'm chipping away at. I don't want to give anything away, but let's just say it is fantastic and unlike anything ever written before. Are you interested yet? I know I am. I can't wait to finish writing it and find out if the hype is true.

Smaht phones and computahs and whatnot

The hard drive on my laptop died a couple of weeks ago. I had it for exactly a year, I think - since having our taxes done I can't find the receipt - and it's already fried. I had two computer guys look at it and there is no retrieving anything from the hard drive. Which means that the novel I was working on for the past month is no longer with us.

Well Gary, you say, you backed everything up, right? You aren't a total idiot, are you? Well, I answer, not a total idiot. I do back up my documents once a week on a flash drive. Except it had been a month since my last backup, for some reason, so everything written over that last month is gone, poof, goodbye. I think I need to start using an online backup service, just to be safe.

So I bought an HP laptop, the least expensive one I could find. It's a lot bigger than my last two laptops and the touchpad is awful, but hopefully I'll get used to it. And I also got an iPhone 5 this week, my first smartphone. A wicked smaht phone, as we say in Maine. So far I really like it, much more than I expected to. Except that with the case I bought, I can't hear anything. So I can find the weather and check stocks and get directions in an instant, but I won't be able to hear anyone who calls me. That's progress.

Just so it doesn't appear that technology is taking over my life, I should make it known that right now I am listening to a very scratched copy of Led Zeppelin III on vinyl.

I began reading Ken Follet's Fall of Giants, the first book in the Century trilogy. It's 1,000 pages long, as are all three books, and I can't stop wondering, what have I gotten myself into? I'll let you know how it is six months from now when I finish it.

5 Star Review of Rock Star

This post is dedicated to a review of one of my books, Rock Star. A blogger, SBR Martin, contacted me a few weeks ago about doing a review of Rock Star. It would be an honest review, she told me, which meant it could have been good or bad. Luckily, it was good. You can see it here, along with other reviews she's done, or you can read it below:

For many, being a rock star would be a dream come true… But, for Dark Cross axe-grinder Sonny Wells, it was a living nightmare. Sure, it was great to play on stage and share his artistry with the world—and, the fame, fortune, and feral females were fabulous, of course. But, everything else? Not so much. As Dark Cross rose to dominate the 70’s rock scene, Sonny stood by as everything else around him fell apart and crumbled to the ground. The long-term friendships amongst his bandmates deteriorated almost as quickly as the drugs destroyed their minds, and creative differences, greed, and ego further forged a drastic divide. Enough was enough, and Sonny opened his eyes. He took a deep breath, walked away from it all, and never looked back again… until now.
“Rock Star” by Gary Sprague finds fifty-something Sonny in an unlikely place and unthinkable situation. Clad in work boots, mud-stained flannels, and a John Deere cap atop his scraggly grey strands, Sonny makes his home on a farm in rural Maine, where he lives in peace under an assumed name and no one is privy to his past. He’s clean, sober, and bedding a babe over thirty, and, for the past three decades, he’s strummed only for his faithful canine companion, the disabled kids at a nearby school, and the rock icons who hang on the walls of his well-hidden music room. But, unfortunately for Sonny, most of that’s about to change… When an overambitious journalist discovers Sonny’s whereabouts, there’s a media frenzy and corporate chase to get Dark Cross back on the stage. Equally as concerned with the band’s legacy as with his own serenity, Sonny is deadest against it at first—but, when he sees an opportunity to help those he loves, he reluctantly signs on and embarks upon a very lucrative reunion tour. Yet with the millions of dollars comes innumerable woes, and Sonny is once again forced to face those things he tried so hard to avoid, including coming to terms with the consequences of the decisions he’s made.

A delightfully down-to-earth and entirely entertaining piece, “Rock Star” takes readers on an incredible journey to places they might not necessarily want to go. Very realistic, revealing, and raw, it presents a world stripped of all the glam, glory, and gregarious good times we rock-star-wannabe-dreamers dream to find and shows how, believe it or not, the grass ain’t always greener on the other side.
Read it for pleasure; read it for perspective; read it for any reason, or for no reason at all. “Rock Star” gets five stars for its touching, thought-provoking portrayal of one.