Parker

Talo, those are wonderfully artistic opening lines. The first line of a story is always important and it's hard sometimes to know when to enter a story. I imagine the story is like a stream that has been flowing and I have to find the right spot to jump in. I thought about rule 7 and I didn't want it to be true, because I sometimes like to reflect the speech of my community and that is Appalachian patois. They say tater and termater, an Irish potato is an arsh tater, they warsh their clothes and arn (iron) them. And people always say 'I seen it' rather than 'I saw it'. I think I will ignore those rules and just do it my way. Thanks.

Talo, I looked at the source again and ironically it's called the Breaking Rules publishing company. They are an online publisher that puts out a quarterly collection of stories. I like to make my own rules when writing. To me it is more interesting to say "Aha," he laughed, than "Aha," he said (rule 3), but then I didn't major in English in college so I'm no expert. Thanks for confirming my suspicions that these are not necessarily legit. I too have been reading the Castle Roland library. It's a good time to catch up on those stories that I missed before. My favorite current story is Living With Johnny, by Nigel Gordon, but I have been going to the stories by genre category and exploring. It helps pass the day. Thanks for your valuable input.

I came across this list of ten rules for writers that a publishing company posted on Facebook and I don't agree with all of them. I wondered if anyone else here had an opinion about them. I especially take exception to numbers 3 and 4. Any thoughts? 1. Never open a book with weather. 2. Avoid prologues. 3. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue. 4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said”… he admonished gravely. 5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. 6. Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.” 7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly. 8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters. 9. Don’t go into great detail describing places and things. 10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

Thanks for the tip. I am reading it now and I like it.

Speaking purely for myself, anyone who emails me to say that they read one of my stories will get a gracious reply. especially if they liked it. Not many message me though.

I'm happy to say that everyone in St. Pete is being cooperative and wearing masks in the stores. I haven't heard of anyone resisting the covid guidelines in quite a while. My neighbors in the apartment complex still socialize, but we do it outside and maintain at least a ten foot distance, although we are generally low risk anyway. One good thing that has come from the quarantine is that my grocery store allows me to shop online and they gather my orders and bring them out to me and load them in my trunk. I get to avoid the other shoppers and the cash register lines. My friends and I get together often and they have turned their back yard into a tropical paradise, with a paved seating area, fire pit, and tons of lush tropical plants. The weather is now becoming cooler and we can sit out there comfortably for meals and cocktails. We still go to the beach regularly and even there the crowds are rather sparse and everyone maintains their distance. I am coping well enough because I have a nice collection of books and I am rereading my favorites. Thank goodness for the internet and Castle Roland stories.

There is something I have wondered about for a long time and I don't know where to go to find an answer, so I thought I might as well check with the good people on this site since so many of Castle Roland's members seem to be from the UK. Terry Pratchett wrote, in his Discworld novels, about Hogswatch night and the Hogfather who delivers gifts to the kiddies. Harry Potter takes the Hogwarts Express to school at Hogwarts. In Scotland, they celebrate Hogmanay at the end of the year. The common thread is Hog, and I would love to know if there is a relationship with these things. Why Hog? Does anyone know? Are there other Hog things that I don't know about? It's a strange thing to be curious about, but there it is. Anyone?

This is just sort of interesting to me that the word quarantine means 40 days of isolation. It's from old Venetian. 40 days was the time needed to be safe from the Black plague. There was also the word Trentine, a 30 day period of isolation, which apparently was not as effective. I heard somewhere about a word for 50 days of isolation, but I can't remember what it was. I have been using this time to re-read the Wheel of Time, but I think I can put it down to write something.

Thank you for letting me know about your email. It never got delivered. I always respond to anyone who takes the trouble to write to me because I know how easy it is to not bother. My email is parker.sheaffer@gmail.com . I've sometimes wondered if the Castle Roland link works. Anyway, was inspired by Cormac McCarthy's book, "The Road", which was a dark journey toward an uncertain future. The book left me unsettled and I almost wish I had not read it. When it came time for the contest I thought that there would be a lot of entries and that they would all end with a message of hope for a better world. I was feeling mischievous and thought it would be fun to write a horrifying and depressing story, one that might upset people a bit. It was really meant to be sort of tongue in cheek. Thanks again, Talo, for contacting me. I feel better now knowing that someone read the story. Parker

While there has been a great deal of interest in zombies these past few years I don't think it's likely that we will run out of new ideas anytime soon. I have one that I hope will draw some controversy. I had hoped that my previous story contest entry about the end of the world would have garnered a comment or two, but I was disappointed when I heard nothing but crickets. I thought I was being outrageous, but either no one read the story or everyone has become so jaded that they were not bothered by the content. I did get one delightful comment that came second hand that expressed outrage and said that I needed counselling. That made me happy. I am halfway through this new one.

In the summer of ’69 I was between my junior and senior year in high school and working in a tourist town. Young, dumb, and full of … hormones, I had better things to do than watch the news (except the moon landing), so if the riots were reported at all in my conservative area, I missed it. I can tell you about what it was like living there at that time as a gay boy. It was a time of great fear for me. I was always gay and had crushes on other boys from the time I was six. At the same time, I learned what the word Queer meant. I was never a brave boy and when other boys tossed out that taunt at each other I knew that I had better keep my head down. My older brother used to tell me about going to the nearby city with his football teammates to roll queers. They lurked in the parking lot of the only little gay bar and waited to catch a man walking alone. Then they would beat and rob him. There was never any consequence for them. Homosexuality wasn’t talked about except with scorn and hatred. Mostly the local news never reported anything about us, except for when someone was arrested for sex. Then the papers would print their names and addresses for everyone to see. I stayed in the closet all through college and suffered all of the angst and discomfort of having to date girls in order to keep up the pretense of being straight. I hated it. Finally, I picked up an Advocate newspaper and saw that I wasn’t one of hundreds of gays. I was part of millions of other boys like me, so I moved to Atlanta and got into all sorts of wonderful trouble. I spent the following decades trying to continue the work that the Stonewall folk started. I am so grateful for their bravery that opened the door for me. I think I would have committed suicide if I had been forced to live like that for much longer. The thing is, I never got over that childhood of intense fear and loneliness. Parts of that little boy still hides in me today.

in my defense, the only thing I have that is labeled 'in progress' is my Noah Osgood series. This is a collection of 9stories, each complete in itself, that may be increased by one or two more episodes. There is probably a better label for them than 'In Progress'.

I have worried about having an unfinished story sitting out there gathering dust. I just got lost with it and took a break, but then there were distractions. I have meant to ask that it be labelled 'on hold', or something similar. Mountains of Memories could be removed from the library if that is preferable to the staff.

No more than 40,000 words? Is there a minimum number?

keep it coming