Former Oakland Athletics ace pitcher Barry Zito once said during an interview with Playboy magazine that the only real difference between a minor-league player and somebody who is starting in The Show is that the guy in the big leagues believes.  At that level, the issue is no longer physical talent.  Virtually everybody in Triple-A ball, Zito ( Read more... )

If you can read this, you're on a new filter.  Joy to the world, joy to you and me.

No work today and probably no work tomorrow as well.  The shoulder is slowly on the mend, but the idea that I was going to be able to manhandle a 20-ton bus around the streets of Sacramento was a blindly optimistic one.  I'm not really sure what my doctor had in mind ( Read more... )

I used to put myself through the wringer on daily basis, if not an hourly one, because I hadn't yet taken off and conquered the world yet.  You know?  You ever do some shit like that?  I sort of liken it to Tyler Durden's speech in Fight Club... you know the one I'm talking about.  It's the one that ends:

We've all been raised on television to ( Read more... )

This novel is a work of fiction.  Any resemblance to real events as described in this book is, granted, highly suspicious, but for the purposes of legality, they are entirely coincidental.

That was my own version of a copyright page back in 1992 and although it seems absolutely astounding for me to type these next words, that took place fifteen ( Read more... )

As stated last year and now stated again: I hate tax season.

Not for the reasons that most of you hate it, though.  See, I'm married to an accountant so that means while everybody else is freaking out, running a shaking hand through their hair and scrabbling madly through envelopes and boxes trying to locate their W-2, my lady has it handled.  Our ( Read more... )

Thus far, I have not gotten any kind of a decent response from ADV Films regarding what I have now to refer to as The Farscape Fiasco.  I have talked with "Jack" as delineated earlier, and have left two voice mail messages with their customer service department.  Not-so-shockingly, I have yet to receive either the promised e-mail response or a ( Read more... )

NOTE:  This was originally typed at about 1:30 PM today, and is now being posted at just shy of 11:30 PM.

I'm currently typing this update here at the Starbucks at Alhambra and N Streets here in gorgeous, sunny Sacramento.  Once I'm done with this entry I'll go back to doing what I'd originally came here to do, which is transcribing some more of my ( Read more... )

(editorial note:  Over the weekend my maternal grandmother died, but I'm not going to write about that until I have all my feelings on it sorted out.  Instead, like any well-adjusted modern American, I'm going to stick my head in the sand and talk about something else.  Namely, writing and being lame.  I'm sure you're all a-twitter.)

One lof the ( Read more... )

Well, I've decided not to puruse the e-publishing route.  At least, not at this time and certainly not with the house I came up with.

Looking at their list of offerings and the author bios made me... cringe.  I don't want to sound like an elitist because, really, what right do I have to be in this department?  I'm unpublished through the last seven ( Read more... )

Okay, so it appears that thus far, the whole agent thing hasn't worked out the way I'd hoped it would.  Apparently, Lizzie McGuire is what the big market booksellers are looking for these days, and the concept of "quality literature" has been thrown out with the bathwater and that hypothetical dead baby.

This is a disappointment, but it is by no ( Read more... )