Six Sentence Sunday #6

Linda jumped up to her feet so quickly that her knee hit the table and her coffee spilled across the suspect list.  She danced around the patio.

“Damn it, damn it, damn it.  Why didn’t I see it?”  she yelled.

 It hadn’t taken her a minute to place that face.   There weren’t too many kids like her- with those big buck front teeth and the red hair. 

Summer time and Six Sentences- a perfect match.  Happy Sunday Everyone. 

 

Six Sentence Sunday is BACK!

I’m excited to spend a few hours communing with all the other awesome writers this week on Six Sentence Sunday!

Here’s my offering from my Work in Progress, It Would Be So Easy.  I am getting it out to my “first readers” this week and then I’ll be nervously awaiting their valuable feedback.

“Have a seat on the couch,” Eli said, “did they get that poor dead guy out of my garbage yet?”

The stocky one took off his uniform cap.  Eli was wishing he could touch the officer’s beautiful red hair when the officer leaned forward and looked at Eli hard like he was trying to read something small and far away.  “Sir,”

Eli reached for the wall to steady himself.  It had been a long time since he’d been called sir. 

“Sir,” he said again, “there was a dead body on your property and you called 911 to report it, is this correct?”

Happy Sunday, everyone!

 

No Six Sentence Blog this week- other thoughts on the internet and life

Well, the wonderful Sara Brookes over at Six Sentence Sunday is taking a break this weekend to move the blog to another site.

I love reading everyone’s six sentences every Sunday and meeting great new authors and their works, but posting my own and reading/commenting on Saturday eve and Sunday morning does take a big chunk of time.

I’m taking advantage of this week off to write about some topics I’ve been pondering and to work hard at the final revision of my forthcoming novel, It Would Be So Easy.

I think a lot about technology and how it affects our lives.  It seems it is possible to integrate tech into nearly every aspect of our lives.

Here is a list of just some of the things we can currently do with internet technology:

1. track everything we do online at specialize websites- gardening, book reading, exercise, health, sex acts, driving, hiking…

2. participate in social networks to discuss and advertise everything we do on networking sites.

3. read about other people’s lives, specialized or not, on their blogs, websites, tweets and status updates.

4. research everything we ever wanted to know and more, including that weird pain in your right ankle and who is dating Shania Twain,

5. communicate with experts in many fields, teachers, mentors, and colleagues.

6. see what addresses across the globe look like and locate goods/services/activities everywhere.

7. pay our bills, transfer funds to friends/businesses,  and manage our banking activity.

8. download music, lectures, videos, vlogs, tv shows, movies…

9. learn about individual perspectives of people living anywhere with access to the internet,

10. create and store: music, documents, art pieces, new technologies…

11. ask people to donate money toward your latest project, favorite charity or kid next door,

12. play games.  play games with people across the globe.

13. manage the addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, websites, birth dates of your family, friends and colleagues.

I know there are more.  And more being created at this very moment!!  I’m wondering if I can even live without the internet, let alone- TV, cell phone, gps…oh my…they’re adding up, aren’t they?

What if one were to go “full tech” for a year and then a year as a luddite?  

And yes, I know that Luddites were really pro-worker and not so anti-tech,

I just like the word!!

I think the only way I could do that would be to move to a new very luddite place..Amish country?  Don’t worry, being from Amish Country in PA, I know I can’t just “join” them…but could I find some sort of anti internet community??  I think it would be very hard to just stop using the internet in my “normal” life.  How could I….well…see above!!

What about you, reader?  Do you think you could live without the internet for a few months?  Would you want to?

What is your favorite internet use?

Six Sentence Sunday #5- Mystery

I haven’t been much of a blogger lately, just getting my six sentences up every Saturday eve, but now that school’s out for summer, I’m hoping to be a better blogger and get that book done as well.

I have 39 days of freedom + a very supportive darling husband and kiddos, a plan for hubby to finish the house and me to finish the book and offer it for sale electronically.  YES!!  It will be done.

Here’s my six for this week, still from the current Work In Progress, It Would Be So Easy, a murder mystery that includes a trip to Amish country, a facebook connection and a fear of dogs.

Here’s some of a conversation between Eli and an Amish man, Hiram:

“Don’t you work?” Hiram asked.

“Yeah, I work in Philadelphia, but I had to take off because there was, uh,  some,  trouble at my house,”  Eli said, thinking he should have just pretended to be on vacation.

“Oh, trouble? Are you ok?”  Hiram asked, exhaling smoke.

“Yes, but I found a dead man outside my house on Monday night and now everyone thinks I did it,”  Eli told him, dropping his cigar to the ground and stamping it out.

Hiram visibly flinched, taking a step back, “Did it?  You mean you killed him?”  he asked.

Go to http://sixsunday.blogspot.com to read more than 100 awesome excerpts!

Six Sentence Sunday #4 Mystery

 Standing in front of his gorgeous koa wood framed full-length mirror, he admired his pectoral muscles and listened to the distant ring of his cellphone. 

“Leave a message,”  he muttered, thinking about how he hated to be tethered to a phone.

After a shower he would get dressed, eat his frozen lasagna and call his mother. 

He wondered if he should he update his Facebook status.

“Dead  body next to my garbage cans- not a good way to end an already bad day.” 

I’m having a great time building community with all  the other writers at Six Sentence Sunday.

Love it!!!

Publishing these six each week forces me to work on my word choice and sentence structure as I revise my mystery novel It Would Be So Easy for electronic release in June.

Six Sentence Sunday #3

“Now Eli, “  Mr Jordan said, “I will call that judge in the morning and we’ll get this all  straightened  out.  You don’t need to report to jail, it will all be fine in the morning.”

Oh, Eli loved him, he was saying everything that Eli wanted to hear. 

Then Eli told Mr Jordan everything that had happened and all that he had done, Mr Jordan giving Eli a lot of ideas which Eli wrote down, nearly filling the  little spiral notebook Susan bought him at the 7-11. 

“I’ll get your name cleared and those reporter idiots apologizing all over themselves before Monday,”  Mr Jordan promised.

Then Mr. Jordan started to laugh-a wild, crazed sort of laugh, “You mental murderer, you deserve to be hung.”

From my Work in Progress, It Would Be So Easy, which is almost ready for early June electronic release.

Go to Six Sentence Sunday to read lots more awesome excerpts!

Thank you to everyone who I’ve “met” through Six Sentence Sunday.  I’m having a great time discovering new Mystery and Romance authors.

Six Sentence Sunday #2

“Linda,” said an unfamiliar voice on  the telephone.

“Yes?”  Linda said.

“Retired cops should stay retired.

You’ll get yourself into trouble if you keep trying to prove Eli is  innocent,” the voice said.

“Who is this?”  Linda asked.

“I’m just a concerned citizen who thinks you ought to butt out.” 

From my current Work in Progress, a mystery called It Would Be So Easy, awaiting electronic release in early June.

This is my second “Six Sentence Sunday” offering.

I’m eternally grateful to  Sara Brookes, Six Sentence Sunday creator.

There were 68 views to my blog on Sunday, an all time one day high.

I’m having an awesome time reading other writers’ six sentences and more on their blogs.

And, a special gift for you to send to your own mother- make a video starring your mom (instantly!)  Check it out, it’s awesome!

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Six Sentence Sunday!!

Two huge Dobermans came bounding out of the room straight towards Eli. 

He pivoted back against the wall, making  himself as tall and thin as possible.

“What were they doing in there?”  Susan asked. 

Eli leaned against the wall trying to catch his breath.

“Do you remember when I was attacked by a dog, Aunt Susan?

I think you were two or three years old,” Susan said, “and you haven’t gotten over it yet?”

These are six sentences from the middle of my current WIP (Work in Progress) It Would Be So Easy, which will be released in early June.

If you are interested in posting six sentences from any work of your own, visit http://sixsunday.blogspot.com/   (Go to the “about” page for more information about how it all works)

While you’re here, go ahead and comment with a link to your blog or website.  Don’t have a blog?  Howsabout a link to your favorite blog?

Metaphorically pregnant

I’ve been working hard on the novel this week.   It is developing slowly.

Three days home from work with a nasty cold really helped, believe it or not!

I’m definitely in the home stretch as far as completion goes, but like a very pregnant mother awaiting a natural birth-

the last few days can be the longest. My littlest was a full week overdue, so I know a bit about this waiting game.

Also like a pregnant mother, I’ve been preparing the nursery for my “baby,”  the novel.

In the “old days,”  before the epublishing revolution began, preparing the metaphorical nursery meant finding a  publisher or at least an agent.  It meant years of rejection, revision and stress until the baby was perfected, accepted and published.

In recent times, preparing the nursery has gotten a whole lot wilder.

Since I plan to epublish, I need to establish a “platform” (the baby’s room)

complete with a blog (crib), facebook presence (changing table) and twitter followers (cloth diapers).

I need to have a cover designed (baby clothes) , a book trailer made (stroller) possibly pay an ebook  formatting company (baby swing)

to make sure the book looks good on all of  the different ereaders.

Some “mothers” also pay copy editors (midwives), although I’m lucky enough to have my writing group for that (midwives  who barter).

I don’t think that epublishing a quality product worth reading takes less  time  or work than publishing in the traditional  route.  I feel like there is more responsibility on my laboring  shoulders to figure it out and do it right the first time.

The baby is the most important part.

My book blurb and Caption Friday

Eli Waters is tired of his life as a Middle School Music teacher- the commute, the uninspired students, the lack of time for his own composition. 

When he finds a body in his trash bin and the police locate numerous clues to link him to the crime,  Eli discovers that being wrongly accused of murder can change your life.

Besides writing, revising and editing, there are many other chores to get a book to market.

This morning I  worked on the blurb,which was difficult because, especially in a murder mystery, you don’t want to give too much away.

Two tips for today:

1.    If you work on several computers and are constantly emailing things to yourself or saving them on your jump drives, check out dropbox.com.  You install it on your computers and it AUTOMATICALLY updates your files through the web.

2.  It’s much easier to navigate your novel, or other large work if you use the “document map” feature in Word.  You can make chapter titles as headings so it creates a kind of table of contents that you can view right next to your work.  No more flipping through page after page trying to find that section about the guy with the dog. 

One strange/funny thing:

1.  There’s this thing in my novel about making a cake to welcome someone home from jail.  I blogged about it over the summer while I was writing it.  One of my most common search engine hits comes from people googling:  “welcome home from jail cake.”  Maybe truth is stranger than fiction.

Today is also Friday, and in an attempt to make this blog more entertaining, I’ve decided to being “Caption Friday.”  Every Friday, I will post a picture, and you my blog  readers, get to write a caption.  Just for fun, Just for Fridays.

Here’s the first picture: