 Isn't the title of this post ridiculous? Someone emailed me a list of 50 words GUARANTEED to attract readers. By the way, guaranteed is one of the words.
"You'll be astonished. You won't believe what happened next, etc" Then I read the post and, you know what? I'm not astonished, I do believe it because... yawn that's what usually happens. This post is really supposed to be about my new book but I'll get to that later. The email with the 50 words almost frightened me. Not because I fall for the words but because I no longer do. The overuse of superlatives is killing my sense of excitement, and I bet it's doing the same for yours. If something is interesting, just say so. If you loved something just say, I loved it, I hope you do too. Anyway, that's my rant for the day. If I got you here under false pretense and you were not astonished, stunned, etc my apologies. My next post will absolutely be about Shapeshifter Prophecy . All I will say at the moment is it's now available on Amazon as a pre-order and will become immediately available on Sept 15th. http://www.amazon.com/Shapeshifter-Prophecy-Cancordian-Adventure-Book-ebook/dp/B00N2WPEVI/ Also, isn't the cover great?
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 Yesterday I took a day off from working on my new book. I went to the Del Mar Racetrack to cheer and jeer at all the horses I bet on that won and that lost.
I'm a big better. I've been know to bet $10 on a boxed Exacta. That's where you bet which two horses will come in first and second, then you cover your bet by boxing it. Which means the same two horses have to be first and second but it doesn't matter which wins and which is second. In other words, I'm a small time better. It wasn't always that way. I spent one summer at Del Mar (years ago) with a friend betting in the thousands. We were absolutely delighted when we came out slightly ahead for that season. Imagine the fun of winning a $10 bet and collecting maybe $30. Now magnify the intensity of that fun (not to mention possible heart attacks) by hundreds. Ah those were the days, Anyway, I had a great Mexican lunch, a few drinks and came away with a profit of fifty cents! Fun in the sun! Actually I wasn't really shirking my work. As soon as my alter ego, Jess Allison finishes the Cancordian Adventures series, I'm going to start work on a romantic mystery series that takes place at various racetracks. Next blog I promise to show you my cover for Shapeshifter Prophecy, the second in the fantasy series.  A few weeks ago I was traveling though a small town in northeast California. I stopped at a hamburger joint for lunch. Afterwards I was getting into my car when I glanced up the street and saw something that made me smile.
Three men, or rather two men and a boy were getting out of a pick-up truck, I imagine they were father, son and grandfather. All three wore jeans, boots and cowboy hats. Now there's nothing unusual to see men in boots and cowboy hats getting out of a pick-up truck west of the Mississippi. But I smiled because I thought I recognized them. Mind you I could barely make out their features, in fact I was mostly seeing them in silhouette. So how could I recognize them? All three were lean as a whip, and I do not exaggerate. And that's what I recognized. That's why they were familiar, yet very strange in this time and place. When I was growing up, all the way into my teens, most of the men I saw, including my father and brother, were lean. Not thin, not "not fat", but lean. After watching the two men and the boy with great pleasure I looked around me. About half of the people I saw were "not fat" and some I saw were a little overweight, and a lot of people were downright obese...including myself. What have we done to ourselves? What have we allowed to be done to us? High fructose corn syrup is in just about everything we eat. We are seduced by fat, corn syrup and salt. Remember the nicotine that the tobacco CEOs swore wasn't addictive? What has been added to our food so that we are never, never full enough until were are sick to our stomachs and sick of ourselves? Why is there a multi-billion dollar diet industry? Yes, we need to get off our asses and move. But it's become like a treadmill, the faster you run, you're still in one place. I loved seeing those guys. I loved being reminded of one thing that really was better in the good old days. Thanks for letting me rant. Next blog I really must get around to telling you about my new book, Shapeshifter Prophecy!  When I first started this writing gig (I was five or six when I wrote my first book) I had no idea of the shear volume of things a writer was expected to do.
Just sit down, pluck a story from the hundreds that swirled around my head, write it down and voila! Yeah, right. Mind you, I'm not complaining...well yes, I am. I still wouldn't have any other job. Take Gray Eyed Glory, that's its new cover in the corner. Why does it need a new cover? My answer is, why do I need a new dress every once in a while? Why, every once in a while, do I add new metadata to the front, and now the back of the book? Because I want my book to stay relevant. Not too long ago, authors were regarded, by me at least, as far away gods. In fact, it was hard for me to believe real people actually wrote these magic tomes that carried me away to other worlds. Now they have websites and blogs. At first I almost resented learning my favorite authors got toothaches and had to pick their kids up from school. In fact I think I wrote a blog about it. Now I've come to think of them almost as friends. And that's what this blog is all about. It's kind of nice to step back and say to my readers, "Hi, I'm a real person and I think I'd like you a lot if we ever get to meet. |
AuthorAlison Blake is both a novelist and a playwright. At the moment she is in a traveling mode and will be blogging from various stops on her journey. Archives
December 2015
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