me,meing...

Steve Hockensmith meme'd me. In this case, I need to find the closet book and give you lines 6, 7, and 8 of page 123. Sadly, I sit pretty much equidistant from many, many books. I'll skip the dictionary and Art in Theory: 1900-2000 and give you some lines from Paradise Lost by John Milton:

"Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers,
Hear My decree, which unrevoked shall stand!
This day I have begot whom I declare"

And from another book, The Hudson Book of Poetry:

"These events repeated themselves for three days.
However on the third day the prince
covered the palace steps with cobbler's wax"

("Cinderella" by Anne Sexton)

And from The Fields of Praise by Marilyn Nelson:

"a jar of dried grasses,
a painted cross on an easel,
a sad-eyed ikon"

and from The Classical Greeks by Michael Grant:

"queen's dead son Hector, is torn from the arms of his mother Andromache and slain, and Menelaus, king of Sparta, comes to take back Helen, whose elopement with Paris had caused the war. The city of"

This could go on for quite a while. Do I have to tag others? Is that it?

A Question - Political

Okay. The Republican nomination for President has been figured out, but the Democratic nomination is still up in the air. Does that mean there's still time for me to enter the race? Not that I would win, mind you. But then I really don't think anyone is going to WIN the presidency this time. I think it's pretty much everybody's race to lose. I mean I'm beginning to think that none of the candidates in the running would make a good president. I can't remember. Is this the appropriate feeling for this point in the campaigning? Am I just fatigued from months of people spouting off and trying to say things that will make Americans like them?

Or am I missing something?

Bullet Ball...

For the many, many people who are wondering "Since Torres isn't posting on his blog, what on Earth IS he doing?" here is just a sample:

I've been thinking, recently, (like the last five minutes really): whatever happened to that guy on American Inventors who claimed to have invented "Bullet Ball"? In case you didn't watch, (few did) Bullet Ball is a game where you take a ball about the size of a golf bal, but not as hard as one, and try to smack it past your oppenent on the opposite side of a round table. You're thinking "Ping Pong" on a round table, but no. No paddles, for instance...Oh Hell, just take a look.

There. In any event, when he first explained the game, I thought he was like one of those guys on American Idol who can't sing, but thinks he can. I thought "I've played that game a thousand times in the school cafeteria with a wad of paper...and an opponent. That's not even an invention...If that's an invention, then I'll invent a game where you kick a can or one where you skip stones on a body of water. Or falling down."

So it wasn't the invention I was really thinking about. It was his story. In trying to get this game to the market, he claimed to have gone through $100,000 in American money (which was worth something then). And he lost his wife. Not carelessly in some mall, but through divorce. Just imagine the heated arguments.

In any event, the people on the show told him he didn't have anything, and I agreed (not that anyone asked). The man cried. Told them that he had to have something there, otherwise his life was without meaning. That's tough. I meant really tough. Noir on a lot of levels. Before he left the room, I wanted him to have a better product, know what I mean? I thought if he had only put his energy into a good idea, he'd have something. I just couldn't see a way around the game he had developed. The product simply wasn't up to snuff. Or so I thought.

Now I see the website. The table seems snazzy, the video looks like people are having fun (I don't currently have audio) and there seems to be market potential for instance in occupational therapy. I don't know how far this can go. I don't see it sweeping the nation any time soon, but then it does look like the guy actually had something, and you know what? That's remarkable.

Writings and Readings

I've written two horror stories in the past couple of weeks. At least I thin they're horror. They don't scare me, so it's hard to say. In any event, both stories are in the hands of Jen4 Jordan, and we'll have to see what happens from there. Another of my stories will be included in an anthology next year, but I have to wait a bit before I can release more details.

My serial killer novel* is at 20,000 words, but I haven't seen it in a couple of weeks. March was harsh. I'm assuming the words are all still where I left them and haven't gone sour or anything.

Reading Empty Ever After by Reed Farrell Coleman. My goodness is that a well written book. Somebody ought to give that man an award next year. About halfway through - it's about a dead guy who might not be fully dead and the effects this circumstance causes for a range of people - and the prose is tight, the story moves as it should and everything is right with this book.

I've just heard that some editor might actually be interested in my goatsucker novel**. That's exciting news since, well, how many people you know can claim someone is looking at their goatsucker book? Frankly, I'd be a little surprised if I'm not the only one.




* I call dibs on the trademark for the phrase "serial killer novel".
** Trademark on "goatsucker novel" as well.

Links...

Just as proof that I am, in fact, still alive, I present two links. The first is for a Youtube interview I did. A young man, Allan Vega, asked me some questions after I'd given a talk at the Hartford Public Library in, well..., Hartford. Here is the result. The young man is talented, of course, I, on the other hand, was quite tired. That's my defense and I will stick with it until I can think of something better.

I have also had the honor of being published in Mysterical-e. Now, there are plenty of other stories and articles there all by fine people, but, I am the sponsor of this link so it takes you where I want you to go. It is a Precinct Puerto Rico story. If I could make money off the Precinct Puerto Rico stories, I'd write hundreds of them. That reminds me...

Next year there's supposed to be another PPR novel out and about. Don't know when or what it'll be called (I'm hoping for "A Daughter of Precinct Puerto Rico," but so far I've had zero luck naming my novels) but it's a good story if I do say so myself. And I do.