Some of the books I have read in the last few months:

I read fast and have read quite a few books since I decided to actually write short stories. Stephen King (and most other authors, I'd guess) says to be a good writer, you have to read a lot. Here's a list of the books I have read lately with a short review:

Cell, Stephen King. Good story, interesting idea and the ending actually fit into the story. I enjoyed it.

Under the Dome, Stephen King. Very cool story with almost a typical Stephen King ending, tacked on regardless if it makes sense. The dialogue on this one felt weird to me, supposedly the book is set in the near future but the dialogue felt like it was straight out of the 70's. But, it's Stephen King and he does write good stories.

World War Z, Max Brooks. Excellent reporting style story telling. If you are a fan of zombie apocalypes, I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir.

Patient Zero, Johnathan Mayberry. A different take on the zombie tale. Gung ho and full of action. In my opinion , more zombies and less guns would have been cool.

The Return Man, V M Zito. Very interesting take on the Zombie Apocalypse. I really wish the story had gone more into the actual why and how the world had turned out like it had but a good story overall. The only thing I didn't like was that it seemed like the Author had spent a lot of time researching a couple of items and spent too long detailing them. But, still a very good book with an interesting concept.

One Second After, William R Forstchen Wow. This book is amazingly good. If you are looking for an apocalyptic fictional book that almost seems completely true, read this book. It is chilling, blunt and extremely good. Trust me, it is very good.

War Day and The Journey Onward, by Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka. After a very good start, this book took a turn into the absurd and then settled into boredom. The beginning of the book was very interesting and I was hooked. The two writers in the book decided to take a trip across a nuclear bomb torn America. It was interesting until they were headed into a town and stopped outside in a  nearby settlement. The writers find out the settlement is a refuge for rebels but the writers need to continue on. The Rebels say one can leave and one of them has to stay as insurance that they won't be ratted out.

At this point, I was very interested and couldn't wait to see what happened. What happened? Well.....ummmm, nothing. The writer that was allowed to leave walked down the road until he was out of sight, waited until night time, walked back to the camp, woke up his partner and they left. No conflict, no gun fights, nothing.

I'm not sure why I kept reading, but I just know the book was going to get better. Sadly, it didn't. There were a few pages of interesting story, too bad they were buried under many more pages of 'government ' lists, full of boring numbers of infant mrotality, radiation levels, grain production. I was both very disappointed when I finished the book and also just as happy I was done slogging through the book.

Resurrection Day,  Brendan Ducois. Interesting world created and a good read. The secondary plot felt thin but still a very good book.

More books next post.

Words, Michael, you're writing words.....

Sorry, always loved that line from The Lost Boys.

But, writing is simple, in my opinion. And this is where I run into problems when reading Writing Forums and How To Write books: it's just words! And again, I am not a published writer but writing isn't some huge mystical complicated thing. It's just putting words on paper and making a story.

More or less.

Sure, some people put words on paper and tell better stories. Some, like Cormac McCarthy, write novels using words that are sheer art. Others, like Stephen King, write novels using pretty normal words. But both use words.

I have always liked to write and always thought I could create a decent story, but always felt that words are words. And by that I mean it's not the words, it's the story.  Books that tell you how to write are wrong. You write like you write.

Sure, you can improve your writing, but like it says in 'On Writing, a memoir of the craft' you can write or you can't. I agree that you go from decent to good or good to very good but that you can't go from decent to very good. You can write or you can't.

Sorry, just got a little too much pompous elitist attitude from a writer's forum. But, I do feel better.

Added a few links...

That I think are helpful or cool. The word counting site lets me see how much I've written each night and how large my story is. 'I Write Like' is interesting. It claims to diagnose whatever you cut and paste and determines what famous Author you write like.

Father's Day reading...

I've got a pretty good hunch I'm getting 'On Writing, a memoir of the craft' by Stephen King for Father's Day. I found it at the local library and read it a few weeks ago and it really helped get me ready to write. It was full of good solid advice, no pompous overblown holier than thou attitude, just a bit of an autobiography, and details on the accident that nearly killed him.

It's a good book. Check it out if you're looking for some good solid advice.

Zap! Zap! Zap!!!

(Remember, I am not a published writer and my opinion amounts to very little to anyone but me. Me and my 8 year old son, who thinks I am cool. And my dog.)

Ok, trying to find time to write is tough. Anyone that writes probably has the same gripe. With work, three kids, a wife etc etc, finding a small chunk of time to write is hard.

But I have been trying lately to sit and write and get a short story out every two weeks. I've written two, and think they are pretty good.

I have been trying to write a short Post Apocalyptic story ever since I decided a couple of months ago to try to push out some stories. I have an idea and have started it but I can't finish it. I was working on it and had a good start and ZAP the first story I finished pretty much wrote itself. So, I wrote 'Here Kitty' in a night. I went back to the Post Apocalyptic story and made some headway and while at work ZAP ZAP!! my second story, 'Patient Zero' wrote itself. I finished it in a weekend and like it a lot.

I went back to the PA story and redid a part of it (I find I edit with a large, heavy and dull axe. Chop. Chop. Chop) and have been slowly working on it. I like it quite a lot and think it will be very good but last night ZAP ZAP ZAP I had a random memory, turned it a little, added a little, exaggerated a little and Voila! there is story number three to write.

I imagine it will be done in a day or two but I think it will be larger then the last story, which was larger than my first story. Maybe by the fifth short, I'll be writing novels :)

Thanks for reading and please feel free to post comments if you wish.

Read an article on Ray Bradbury today...

on CNN and he seemed like a pretty down to Earth guy. What really hit me was the author said Bradbury wrote 1000 words a day.

I read 'On Writing: A memoir of the craft' by Stephen King and it answered a lot of questions for me and affirmed some ideas I had about writing for years. King says he writes four hours a day, 4000 words a day.

To me, that's a lot. When I finally decided to write, I thought I'd try to complete one short story a week. That hasn't quite happened, but one short story every two weeks isn't bad for a start.

But, 1000 words a day, that is not really a lot at all. My last post was around 750 words. I can do that, already know when I could get that many words written. We have three kids, 6, 8 and 16 so the house is a hectic, chaotic, noisy place until the two younger ones go to bed. The 16 year old is a hermit and stays in her room most of the time.

So, after 9pm or so I'd have plenty of time to write. All it would take was disconnecting my eyes from the TV and typing away for an hour or so.

That definitely sounds like a good plan.

I want to write...

Hello, welcome to my blog about writing.

I've written for years and have the blogs to prove it. I've read a lot of books over the years and often thought I could write a better story than this... And for many, that's not anything new. We all have read something that makes us think that we could do better.

But the thing is, most of us never try. Wait, don't think I'm being smug or condescending. I haven't been published and before a few weeks ago, I had never written a story.

A few months ago, my wife had brain surgery. She's fine and Shands Hospital in Gainesville was awesome. The day we were admitted, we drove around Gainesville for a bit to find something to eat. A little past the Jason's Deli where we ate was a Books A Million, so we stopped. I was going to be in the Hospital with my wife for three days so I wanted to get something to read.

I've always been a fan of sci-fi, fantasy and horror novels. I have been on a Zombie kick lately, with The Walking Dead on TV and finding World War Z. I had bought a couple of Zombie books and they were ok. Decent but that little voice in the back of my head went off with the idea I could write something as good or better.

I couldn't make up my mind which book to get and asked one of the employees. He pointed out what he claimed was a really good book. It was that same book.

My wife walked up and said she brought her Nook and I could download books off it. I agreed and we left. That night I poked around on the Nook, which I had not done since she got it for Christmas. What do you know, there are a ton of free ebooks you can download.

I looked through them and found a free 600 page Zombie story. Done!

It was a book titled 'Zombie Fallout' by Mark Tufo . So, the next morning, waiting for my wife to come out of surgery, I plugged in the MP3 player (listening to it now, makes writing a lot easier for me) turned on the Nook and sat in the waiting room at Shands and read, listened and prayed my Wife would be ok.

My wife had a brain tumor, and the Neurosurgeon said she'd be out of the Hospital in three days. He was positive she'd be fine and it would be a quick three hour surgery.

I left the prep room when they wheeled her in around 9am. By 12:30 I was a little worried. By 1:30 I couldn't concentrate on either the music or the book, which was pretty darn good, especially since it was free.

I asked the person at the desk if there was any update and she called up. My wife had just been sent to recovery and it would be a couple of hours before she'd be in a room but everything was good and surgery went well.

I passed the news to the various family members that were there with me and went back to reading. I realized I was very relieved at the news but was pretty strung out from a bad case of nerves.

About four hours later, we were allowed up to see her and we rotated in and out, to keep too many people from being in the room.

She was up and walking the same day of the surgery and that just completely amazes me.

I finished Tufo's book Zombie Fallout about an hour before we left Shand's on Monday morning. Good book, good story and some interesting new ideas on the zombie field.

And after a bit of research, I found he had written several other books in the series. The first one was free and the next were pretty inexpensive in the electronic version.

And my brain started thinking. What if you used facebook/nook/epublishing to publish a book? What could you expect? Could you actually sell 1000 books?

It took a couple of months and a few more ideas but the end result is I got to writing. Nothing too much, yet but I decided I'd start a blog and post my thoughts and ideas and maybe even some of my stories and see what may happen.

Thanks for reading.