Latest from the Blog

September 30, 2010 | 3 Comments

Flash Fiction: After the Fall

It’s not as short as Hemingway’s shortest story (For sale: baby shoes, never worn.) but seeing as I don’t compare myself to him, it doesn’t matter. It is, however, my shortest story, barely scratching 450 words.

She feels the pressure at her knees, because this roof is on more of a slant than the hill behind her house, and she’s only used to running down dirt and grass. Something about this hard tile surface hurts.

Looking toward the sunset she’s excited by how far her vision extends. She’s only ever seen the curve of the earth when she visits the coast with her parents, and somehow, it never seemed as powerful a view as this does now. She wishes, for a snatch of time, that she could just extend this sunset into tomorrow. Read More…

September 30, 2010 | 0 Comments

250! A milestone!

Well, this is my 250th post!

September 28, 2010 | 23 Comments

Breaking by the rules

I’m a regular reader of the various “How I found my agent” stories that pop up all over the Web at a slow simmering rate. Part of it is because I enjoy a good pick me up tale in the midst of all the mass-murder, spree-killing, pandemic-virus, certain-doom narratives that flood the information superhighway every day. But I’ll come to Jesus and add that I’m also looking for patterns, as anecdotal as the occasional agent article is. Is there something successful authors are doing that I should adopt as a practice? Is there any kind of aspect to their attitudes, their community base, their writing environment that I can leverage? Read More…

September 28, 2010 | 0 Comments

Food from a truck

In college, a battle took place every Friday and Saturday night, at the edge of the campus. Two white trucks served hamburgers to students, competitors looking to be top dog in some kind of feud. There was the Wimpy Wagon, and then there was the other one. I guess Wimpy’s won out, since nobody I know remembers the name of the other one, but there was a war, all right. Because this was Syracuse, New York, getting a late night burger anytime after October 15 meant trudging through at best, several inches of snow. That’s a kind of commitment to something that university students rarely muster.

Food trucks weren’t exactly bastions of quality cuisine in this environment. They were just cheap and available, and if a wagon were sixteen steps closer than the dining hall, a good percentage of students would make that their preference, easy. I have no trouble attesting that as a Syracuse University alum, if presented with a no-brainer, I will option that every time. This is why the wine tasting class was booked solid every year, as was Theater for Non-Majors. Read More…

September 27, 2010 | 0 Comments

Now available from Amazon

I put all of my Friday Flash stories and a bonus short story in one collection, titled Spinning Around a Sun: Stories by Everett Maroon, and slapped it up on Amazon for their Kindle reader, at the bargain basement price of $2.99. Hey, as an author, I’ll take what I can get in terms of income, so hopefully $3 isn’t too much to ask for months of my work. Anyway, feel free to purchase one!

September 27, 2010 | 0 Comments

Remains of the Phone

When we moved to Seattle, we calculated that we did not need a land line for telephone service. After all, we’re only here for 6.5 months. That’s just enough time to get around to giving out a new number and then telling people it’s not our number anymore. When I’d done the initial walkthrough I’d called Susanne, so I knew our phones—which are the same model, only in different colors, and no, I don’t need any jokes about having the same phone, thanks—would work in this space. Hence no need for a land line.

But the super gave me a warning: DSL is terrible in this part of the city. If you want actual bandwidth, get the cable modem. This made me flash back to the last time I had a cable modem, four years ago in DC. I almost threw the thing out my third-story window, because the provider sent each line out to too many customers, and when 8p.m. rolled around—otherwise known as The DC Porn Watching Hour—bandwidth thinned to a few blips an hour. It was mind-numbing. I went directly to DSL without passing GO and was rewarded with a cheaper monthly rate. Read More…

September 25, 2010 | 2 Comments

Coming up next week

On Monday I’ll post my review of Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation over on I Fry Mine in Butter. I’ll hold back for now on my opinions and reactions, save to say that this is not your mother’s transsexual.

The Good Wife starts its new season next week on CBS. I was enthralled with the series last year but annoyed by its cell phone cliffhanger. So I’m hoping we get past the wannabe love triangle and return to snappy courtroom drama. Besides, is anyone ever going to get picked over Chris Noth? Please.

I’m doing an experiment with Amazon’s direct digital publishing doohickey. Read: I’m releasing some flash fiction to see how the process works. Look for a link early in the week.

For some worthwhile reading of other good stuff, check out: Read More…

September 23, 2010 | 1 Comment

Rainy day excerpt

This is an excerpt from Bumbling into Body Hair that I may strike out entirely as I get my word count down to more publisher-attractive levels. But I thought I would share it here out of the goodness of my heart, and because it was a troubling moment within the LGBT community. One of the places I had the hardest time transitioning was among my queer peers, which shouldn’t have been the case.

Jeffrey and I were late to bowling. By the time we got to the alley, there were only five minutes of practice left. This was also annoying because in each of the previous weeks in this new league we’d joined, they ran behind schedule on the practice and start of play. Not so this week.

No sooner had I sat down to put on my shoes than the president of the league was sitting next to me. Buddy was a round, older, very smiley man who was every bit as laid back as the last president of the other league was over-engaged. I liked Buddy.

Buddy looked serious. “Everett, can I talk to you about something?” Read More…

September 22, 2010 | 6 Comments

Writer beware, or how to ask questions

Last week, Jane Friedman, an alum of Writer’s Digest and an advocate for writers working to get published, posted an article over at WD in which she steered very new writers away from hiring professional Web designers when those writers are just starting out on the Web. I can appreciate advice like figuring out what one wants from a Web presence before dropping money on some pricey design that may turn out to be a poor fit for one’s needs. But to me, this just means that writers should spend some time assessing those needs before they do anything else, even before they select a theme on WordPress, for example. Read More…

September 20, 2010 | 11 Comments

I like a little ventriloquism with my ultrasound

Susanne and I went to the fertility clinic today to see how close we are to another insemination attempt, after a trip last week to make sure her body had a green light for IUI. This was our second trip to that office after the now-infamous “two uteruses” comment from the counselor. I was pretty much over that episode, understanding that she’d been doing her best to explore all of our options for getting knocked up, even if it was a ridiculous conversation to have with her.

This being Seattle, a populated city that despite a decent bus service, has a lot of passenger cars crowding its roadways, I couldn’t find a convenient parking spot outside the clinic, which is just off of Lake Union. I do wonder idly why people who can afford Mercedes-Benz cars and yachts insist on taking all of the free parking available. Perhaps they need whatever help they can get to finance all of their payments. Whatever the case, I found a pay space, but the convoluted interface for getting a parking ticket was more puzzling than a Rubik’s Cube, so it took me a good 7 minutes to pay and join Susanne, who’d gone on ahead to the doctor’s office. Read More…

← Older posts
Newer posts →