July 2005 Archives

With the looming uncertainty surounding the recent acquisition of my company I thought it would be a good idea to update my resume. I managed to summarize a dozen years in high-tech marketing into the following:

Will Work for FUD

With the seas of the telecom industry swelling into a tsunami once again, I've been spending less of my time at home working and focusing more of my personal time on better things: like my beautiful wife, my plethora of animals, and (of course) my writing. Anyone who reads this page regularly knows that my writing is one of my greatest passions, but that it also tends to suffer due to heavy workloads and a rather preoccupying career in telecom marketing.

Well, every now and again I slap myself and come back down to Earth so that I can enjoy some of this here life.

With thoughts running through my head such as "Merger? Acquisition? Employed? Unemployed? " I figured that now was a good a time as ever to regain some self. And so my latest on-again/off-again project has been dragged out again.

That's right - I'm talking about "Cluck", the horror/comedy/mystery novel that involves a haunted farmhouse and a small horde of undead chickens. The story is now also sporting the working subtitle of "A Murder Most Fowl", although I don't know if that will stick. I just completed the first draft in its entirety, and it's weighing in at about 55,000 words -- which is light but then my first drafts tend to be.

Oh - and I found myself an illustrator somehow. He's a very talented old colleague of mine who has the same problem with his art that I have when writing "Cluck" - his work is sometimes a bit too creepy. But it's excellent stuff - I will post some here if/when I get his permission.

This will go through an additional revision to clean things up and then I will be officially looking for a literary agent. Though I'm proud that my first book (almsot) won an independent publishing award, I want to go the route of non-independent publishing this time in the distant hopes of actually making some money off of all this hard work.

I was going to post about my latest karate-induced injury when I realized that I had an almost identical post here. Well, read that again and I'll spare us both the repetition.

A few interesting differences this time around:
1. I hurt my shoulder, not really my neck, although the pain in my shoulder is making me guard my neck which is making the symptoms (i.e.,t he pain) surface there. And it also makes me hold my head at a funny angle.
2. The reason I hurt my shoulder this time around is because both my head instructor Bob and I really wanted to grapple. But I have a smashed finger (very smashed, due to some dexterously impaired stone wall building), so I cant grip with my right hand for fear of pain and even more damage. So what do we do? Why, we tuck our right hands in our belts and fight one-handed, of course! It's really no wonder that my left should hurts so much.

And a few similarities:
1. Still absolutely no pity and/or sympathy from the wife
2. Bob tried to kneel on my face again (but I avoided it this time)
3. Bob won.