COUNTING DOWN THE STORM (Temporarily Unavailable) A Novella by D. Ryan Leask
For two days the storm has taken over the city, and two people's lives. A man convinces himself that his life is worthless when his lover leaves him for another man. Alone and depressed, he allows his life to sink into the bowels of civilization. When a wife and mother discovers that her husband is having an affair she abandons logic and gives in to the perilous abyss of jealousy and revenge.
Re-Launch Tentatively Scheduled for Oct 17th:
¦Goodreads - For All E-Readers ¦Smashwords - For All E-Readers ¦Diesel E-Books Store - E-Pub ¦iTunes - For Your iPad/iPhone/Mac¦ ¦Kobo - For Your Kobo¦Sony - For Your Sony E-Reader¦Barnes & Noble - For Your Nook¦Direct From the Author - Mobi E-Pub or pdf¦
Showing posts with label Answer My Question. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Answer My Question. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

I am going to get a children's story published…

just don't know how yet.
Two years ago just before my daughter was born I wrote a book for my son called:

My Baby Sister is an Alien
My Baby Sister is an Alien


It's a look at pregnancy, birth and early infancy from the perspective of an older brother.

My wife has been bugging me ever since to get it published and perhaps I should.  There are just a few things that I want to find out first.


  1. It's not illustrated (well the version I made used clip-art but that doesn't count), do I need to have it illustrated before I try to submit it or will they hook me up with someone?
  2. Who is a really good children's book publisher that is taking submissions from unknown hacks like me?
I am going to start some research and let you all know how it's going!
So far I have:
Asked twitter
Googled and read a bit on some of them.
Next, make a list of my preferred publishers and look into submission requirements for each.
Wish me luck!

Thanks for Reading



Thursday, September 15, 2011

Blog Tour With B.C. Young


I am pleased to announce that I am the first stop on a great author's Blog Tour!  He has published a volume of short stories entitled Unspoken Stories Volume 1.
B.C. YOUNG
He was kind enough to answer a few questions ---here--- and get in on a scavenger hunt ---here--- to win a free copy of Unspoken Stories!
You can also find a review of Unspoken Stories ---here---
What do you do when a story bounces around inside your head for three or four years? You need to get the story out to people, and the writer needs to tell it. Author B.C. Young had this exact thing happen to him. He was tired of driving back and forth to work everyday, conceiving a story in his head that no one could hear. Before long, he started to work on his stories. He decided on a simple approach that he felt anyone could read. His decision was to tell the stories he writes through shorter stories. The shorter stories end up telling a bigger story, and the bigger stories tell the final story. As a result, each story feeds off the next and the previous.
Currently his work involves the Miscorrection series and other science fiction stories. This is a favorite genre of his because it allows for so many possibilities in storytelling.


A collection of five short stories to entertain and stimulate the mind. These stories were almost never told, but they were saved from being unspoken.  The collection includes the following science fiction stories.  Click the titles to read a 50% excerpt of the story, you'll be glad you did and even happier if you buy it for 3-tacos (that's $2.99).
Copy Bird: Bill is trapped and lonely. He breaks free of his prison and finds something he doesn’t expect.
“Now you sound like a broken record. I get the point. You can’t have a conversation–only copy. You’re a copy bird. Can I call you that? Copy Bird?”
Despite the fact that the bird doesn’t talk, he imagines that it likes the name. He reaches out his hand for the bird to perch on his finger. The bird does as expected and jumps to his finger. He thinks to himself that the bird is as light as a feather, but in reality it’s two hundred.
“Now you sound like a broken record,” the bird repeats, mimicking his voice perfectly.
“Wow. That’s quite a feat. Sounds just like me, Copy Bird. By the way, my name is Bill.”
“My name is Bill,” the bird says.
“You certainly are a copy bird.”



Going Home: Promises are important to keep, and Commander Patrick Murphy never wants to forget that.
When he got to the dining room, he looked out the window. As he knew would be the case, his dad was in the backyard trying to fix the lawn mower. He kept pulling on the cord, the engine would begin to kick in, and then sputter to a dead stop.
“Hey, Dad,” Patrick called out, after opening the window.
“Patboy! What are you doing here?” his dad asked, excitedly. He moved away from the mower and started walking towards the window.
“They gave me short leave time. Why don’t you come inside? It’s getting dark. Even if you get the thing working, you won’t be able to mow.”
His dad turned back to the mower, and had a look of defeat on his face. Patrick knew he never would get it working again.
“I guess you’re right,” his dad said. “I’m sure your mother’s got dinner just about ready anyway. I’ll be right in.”
Patrick closed the window and knew his dad would have to give it one last try. As he went to sit at the dinner table, he heard his dad make a final attempt, but the mower didn't start.



Josie Dorri And The Coffee Ban: What if the government banned coffee? See what happens to Josie Dorri when they do.
She went over to silverware drawer and pulled out her coffee scooper. She had used the scooper for three years, and she wouldn't make coffee without it because any other scooper didn’t make the coffee as she liked it. A scoop for every cup she always said and it made the coffee strong, but not too strong; bitter but not too bitter; perfect and you can never have too perfect.

As she put the scooper into the coffee bag, she stopped when she saw the headline on the kitchen monitor screen. It read, in big bold type:
COFFEE PROHIBITION STARTS TODAY
Consumption Prohibited, Possession Prohibition Pending




The Present: Miles Gray has a good life, but doesn’t realize it. Often, a trip through time is all that is needed to open up a person’s eyes to how good they have it.
As he did every Friday before getting home from work, he stopped at a local bakery call YumYum. They were only five minutes from his home, and a dozen doughnuts every weekend was Miles’s treat to himself for making it through the work week. (He didn’t actually eat all of the doughnuts—his wife and kids would always help out with that.) YumYum’s doughnuts were definitely the best a person can buy and did not compare to any other bakery. The particular doughnut Miles always enjoyed and loved was the Buttermilk Stick. It was the perfect doughnut to warm up on Saturday morning, sit on his front porch, and eat with a hot cup of coffee.
After buying his doughnuts, Miles enjoyed the last five minutes of his drive. The vehicle had the aroma of the doughnuts filling it, and every time, Miles would give in to eating one of the doughnuts as he drove. More often than not, the Sour Cream doughnut accompanied him on the last leg of his journey home. He’d eat it slowly, making sure it lasted the entire five minutes to the point before he was walking through the door of his home. He often thought how he wished life would stick him in that moment with no return. It’d be a wonderful place.


Running To Keep Her: Neil is obsessed with exercise and eating right, but it’s not for his health that he does it. He does it to keep her.
That’s when Neil saw her. The shadows cast by the moonlight made it difficult for him to distinguish her features. She had long hair, and stood slightly shorter than Neil. She bent down and took a drink from the fountain, and a whole minute passed before she came back up for air. He noticed something familiar. Her silhouette looked like something he’d seen before. It had been dark. The street lamp outside the bedroom shone through the window and cast a seductive shadow on his wife’s body as she moved towards the bed. He remembered the night well because he thought about it often. What he saw now, reminded him of that night.

Available at:

US
UK
DE



Interview With B.C. Young Author of Unspoken Stories Volume 1


I am pleased to announce that I am the first stop on a great author's Blog Tour!  He has published a volume of short stories entitled Unspoken Stories Volume 1.
B.C. YOUNG
Read a short snippet of each of his stories ---here--- and get in on a scavenger hunt ---here--- to win a free copy of Unspoken Stories!
You can also find a review of Unspoken Stories ---here---


What do you do when a story bounces around inside your head for three or four years? You need to get the story out to people, and the writer needs to tell it. Author B.C. Young had this exact thing happen to him. He was tired of driving back and forth to work everyday, conceiving a story in his head that no one could hear. Before long, he started to work on his stories. He decided on a simple approach that he felt anyone could read. His decision was to tell the stories he writes through shorter stories. The shorter stories end up telling a bigger story, and the bigger stories tell the final story. As a result, each story feeds off the next and the previous.
Currently his work involves the Miscorrection series and other science fiction stories. This is a favorite genre of his because it allows for so many possibilities in storytelling.


A collection of five short stories to entertain and stimulate the mind. These stories were almost never told, but they were saved from being unspoken.  The collection includes the following science fiction stories.  Click the titles to read a 50% excerpt of the story, you'll be glad you did and even happier if you buy it for 3-tacos (that's $2.99).




THE INTERVIEW
First of all, did you know that using Google docs you can send, share and update in real time?  I watched as Ben answered my questions which I posted as a document there.  That was pretty cool.

Obviously you think while you drive, how do you keep story ideas from flying right out the window?
I find the best way to do this is NOT sticking my head out the window when I drive. This is especially the case when the window is up. I tried it once, and there was a lot of shattered glass and blood. 
Good Call!

The Quality/quantity debate really isn’t a debate at all is it?  I have often had the same misconception that you had, how has your writing changed after realizing that writing a great story like Copy Bird in six hours is possible?
It’s freed me from the slow, over-thinking process of writing. Now, when I sit down to write fiction, I let the creativity flow, and don’t get hung up on word use, grammar, and spelling. It’s made my writing quicker, and I feel, better because I’ve allowed my creative voice to speak in my writing, rather than my technical one.
It’s a lot easier to edit after you write and I find it doesn’t interrupt the flow.

Josie Dorri and the Coffee Ban reminds me a lot of some of the more off the wall short stories that Stephen King writes (that is a compliment and not part of the question :D)  Are you a coffee fiend, or what is that the story behind it?
Yes, I do drink coffee, but I wouldn’t consider myself a fiend. The story idea came from my brother-in-law. He thought it would be a funny to have a story about a person who doesn’t have their coffee for the day, and a bunch of bad things happen as a result. As you can tell in the story, I morphed this idea a bit by adding in a coffee prohibition by the government and giving a reason for the bad day. I had a ton of fun writing that story.
And I loved it!  I can relate to her, without that morning cup of coffee I may as well be a square tire!

What made you decide to sell “All My Fiction”?  What if someday you become a world renowned writer with a large publishing house?
I took it from a reader’s perspective. What if for a flat rate I could get everything a writer published? I’d love it. So I figured other people would, too. It’s definitely less of a risk for the reader. How often have you read a book only to not like it and feel like you wasted your money? I have. But of course, my stuff isn’t bad like that. I think you’ll like it. Still, for the pessimistic reader, All My Fiction is just the ticket!
If I become world renowned, All My Fiction will still be around, as long as distributors like Amazon, Smashwords, and others allow it. Anything written under the B.C. Young name will be in there. The only catch is you want to get in early, because the price goes up every time a new story is added to the eBook. Translation: Buy it now before it costs $1,000,000!
I know I have read a book by an author who I liked a story of only to be really disappointed and never bothered with him again.  Your idea is brilliant!  Maybe not all of your stories will appeal to a reader but they won’t stop reading you (and recommending you as well) We should get in now I think!

Who inspires you? 
Many things inspire me. When it comes to writing, friends and family give me ideas. Past writers like Isaac Asimov, and current ones, too. Sometimes, the guy standing in front of me in line at the grocery store inspires me. A box of doughnuts on the table in a scene of a movie I watched inspired me to write my short story, The Present. Characters and stories are everywhere, it’s just a matter of looking for them.

Do you see your self as a short fiction writer or do you think someday you will find yourself immersed in a novel?
Let me put it this way: I see myself as a fiction writer. Currently, my works are short stories, novelettes, or novellas. We tend to differentiate the length of a story to give people some perspective as to what they suggest. But at the end of the story they are all stories. It just so happens that some are longer than others.
I can also say that I am currently working on a novel length work. I’m doing this under a pen name, Desmond Shepherd. It’s entitled Fram Gage and The I.A. (The “I” and “A” in the title are still secret, but will be revealed in the coming weeks on my site).
Cool!  I can't wait to read it!


Did you know I can watch you type?
I didn’t until I saw you type. Then, I wondered if there was a ghost in Google Docs. Once I stopped freaking out that my computer was talking to me, I accepted it and decided you might actually be stalking me. Are you?
Not me, I pay people to do that!
Thanks for taking the time to do ask me a few questions and reading Unspoken Stories - Volume 1. I really appreciate it!
And thank you for allowing me and my readers an opportunity to get to know you a little bit better!  I would have to say that short story collections are my favorite!  I love all of the stories in Unspoken Words Volume 1.

Available at:

US
UK
DE



Tuesday, April 26, 2011

RIP Typewriters - What's your dream writing tool? What do you use now?

A trending topic on Twitter today is RIP Typewriters (See top story here).  Apparently the last manufacturer outside of China to make Typewriters has closed it's doors.  I am 35 years old so I came in on the cusp of the takeover of typewriters by word processors.  I went to high school in a very small town so we only had a handful of computers (Apple IIe, remember those?) and most of our typing classes still took place on a typewriter.  I actually owned a typewriter at one time, a hybrid kind of thing where it stored one line of text before it printed it so you could correct your errors.  It also had a correction ribbon so you could go back and fix mistakes.  Of course this thing went the way of the Dodo once I got my first computer.

There is something to be said for typewriters though.  The back lit screen of a computer monitor gives me a headache after a while and editing on a hard copy is so much easier than on screen (and never mind the mess that white out makes on your monitor ☺).  It doesn't matter how many times I read something digitally I tend to find myself skimming through it.  When I print it out I am able to focus on what I'm reading.  The problem is I never have ink for my printer so I never get to print and a part of me thinks it's such a waste of paper.  The other issue is that edits done on hard copy still have to be changed to digital.

So will I miss typewriters HELL NO but there has to be something better out there for writing than a computer for word processing, if there is please tell me what it is!

Some of my loyal followers know that I am not a gadget tech guy, I use what works and is cheap and effective.  I do not own a single Apple product, I text tweet from my DumbPhone™, my Internet computer is a small Netbook that was free with coupons my wife got, my other computer, which I affectionately call my Dinosaur, is twelve years old and will no longer function on-line.  I have a Kobo E-Reader which I love but is also the least techie of all of them.  While I'm at it, I only own a Wii, my biggest TV is a 32" LCD I have no HD Channels on my cable, our other TV is an old fashioned CRT type.  We don't have a blue-ray player or a PVR.  I can't think of any other techie things that other people "can't live without" that we don't have.  We just don't need them.  So what do I like?  I like things that are simple and do the job and not a whole lot more.

So where am I going with this?  I would like to describe my perfect word processor:

No Back lit Screen -The best reading screen I have seen is the Kobo
Full ergonomic Keyboard including number pad -Love that number pad
Ability to Use the Screen like a tablet -with a stylis to make hand written corrections and notes
Wireless connectivity to a Network, but only for transferring documents or printing, no Internet to distract you.
Best Friggin' Dictionary, Thesaurus available to man!

Does this thing exist?  If so let me know and I will buy one!

I WOULD ALSO LIKE SOME FEEDBACK ON WORD PROCESSING PROGRAMS

What do you use and why?
What platform do you use and why?
What would your perfect platform/program look like?

You can answer these questions in the comments and if you wish or take the poll.

Thanks for Reading

D. Ryan Leask

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Do My Twitter Multiple Personalities Cause my Followers to Ignore me?




This blog was supposed to be about the next chapter of To Dumb To Dance but I forgot to save it on my USB stick and it's on my Dinosaur at home.  So new topic.

Our Twitter Personalities.
I tweet alot, I think and I sometimes wonder if my lack of followers responses/retweets etc. as well as not being able to get many followers to this blog (where if you follow it you will recieve my novella Counting Down the Storm signed and free!) is due to my lack of focusing my tweets.

Do I tweet about too many things?
The main things that I tweet about are:

My Family
  • especially my son, I want to share my 2-½ year olds exploits as he discovers life
  • Example Tweet:
    • My 2 1/2 year old feeds the dogs all by himself #proudpapa
    • Would it be wrong of me to let my 2-1/2 y/o wash the floor with his special cloth? He wants to and it is covered in dirty dog prints

Threadless T-Shirts
  • I've made lots of friends here and like connecting and following them as well as promoting and retweeting their artwork
  • Example Tweet:
    • WIP - Loves Characters - T-shark by @RicoWarehouse Subbed! http://t.co/4SCJU8E via @threadless pre-voing hype. Too cool in every way!
  • Some have some very comical things to say which I often can't help replying to:
  • Example Tweet:
    • By @dschwen Apparently my credit card numbers went on a vacation without me to Florida.
    • My Reply: Did they at least buy you something nice?
  • I also take part in Sloganeering, a Threadless community of people who come up with smart, witty or thought provoking sayings using 62 characters or less.  I send my own submissions to twitter and often retweet those of my friends and also ones that "Make Me Chortle Audibly" (thanks bygrinstow)
Random Thoughts
  • These are sort of related to my Threadless slogans but not always.  I run a seperate blog here entitled ...and you can quote me (aka my brainfarts stink).  I have a number of witty (at least to me) short thoughts about everything from food:  Enjoy Rare Meat, Endangered Just Tastes Wrong to Monsters: I have my finger on the pulse of the Zombie Nation and lots in between.  I toss one out everyday and usually a "classic" that was part of the blog before I started posting.
  • Example Tweet:
    • "It was a dark and stormy night but still no cliches happened." -D. Ryan Leask
      more of my unfamous #quote s @ http://t.co/tCpVDRv #slogan
    • ...and you can quote me: I'm Not a Geek I'm a Nerd, Geeks Bite Heads off Live Chickens... http://t.co/cQmHRZZ #quote
  • Sometimes I toss out lines like this tweet:
    •  I'd want more followers but I'm paranoid people are following me ---Not Jesus
Writing
  • Although I started out tweeting as a means of promoting my Threadless slogans I was immediately swept up in the world of writing which is really my first (other than people) love.  Most of my followers are of this variety as are most of the people I follow.
  • This is where I post things like links to this blog, word counts, my fledgling #6amWriters group (of which there are two) and tweets like this:

    • "Don't Tell anyone about my 'little' problem." He said. "It'll ruin my #sheetcred." |

      "Sheetcred?" | 1/2 #amwriting #ruleswhenhavinsex
    • "Yeah, I have a rep to maintain." | "Come again?" She replied. |"Ha ha." | #amwriting #ruleswhenhavinsex (dialogue with no story... yet)
  • I also retweet interesting posts about writing etc. etc.
Randomness

  • I sometimes think I'm funny and tweet something using popular #hashtags and watch it retweet over and over again, it's like #BreedingDodos
  • Anything that is #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement about Jon Kyl is in fact #AFactualStatementAboutJonKyl
The question I ask myself is am I putting off people that follow me because of one of my above "personalities" due to the others?  I want to be a real person, to share my thoughts: idiotic, random, eccentric and quirky, with the world, or at least a tiny corner of it.

If you think my approach is all wrong maybe let me know how to go about changing it.  I would love some feedback!.

Thanks for Reading
D. Ryan Leask

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Writing in Loops & Short Stories vs Novels

The Endless Loop
  1. In order to write a book you must first have time
  2. In order to have time you must avoid having a "real" job
  3. To avoid having a "real" job you must have passive income
  4. To have passive income you must have either:
    1. A Spouse
    2. In order to have a spouse you must have time to spend with/finding said spouse and any offspring that comes with this union
    3. Plan Abort
  5. or
    1. Royalties
    2. In order to have royalties you must be:
      1. Published
      2. To be published you should have an agent
      3. To have an agent you need to have a book
      4. Plan Abort
    3. or
      1. Self Published
      2. To self publish you need money to publish your book and time to promote it as well as an excellent editor
      3. Plan Abort
To avoid this endless loop there are two options
  1. Plug away for years writing five minutes at a time in a dark corner somewhere when your wife/boss/child/prison guard isn't looking and hope that you complete your epic journey before you die then hope that someone discovers your work post mortem and they like it.
  2. Go to university majoring in English or something and plan a career being a writer and having a job that caters to your dreams
    1. Having missed opportunity #2 building a time machine and travelling back to 1994 and altering your course(s) then figuring out how to have all the people in your life you have now.
I think I am just going to suck it up and go with option #1.

Short Stories vs Novels
As I have alluded to a few times I have difficulty focusing my thoughts on just one story but I really need to so I ask you my constant reader(s) to assist me on the best course of action.

Complete a short story for submission to magazines/compolations etc.
Complete a novel to send to agencies etc.

Let's us just assume for a second that both the novel and short story are of equal quality.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Writing and Giving It Away For Free

Earlier I had posted about Kindles and a thought I had had of giving all the rights to Counting Down the Storm to them for free. Still thinking about that. Today I saw a twitter post that read:

Would we have had Shakespear, if he'd had to write for free? (part of a link to this article which is not what I am discussing here really)



Tis true but it would be exceptionally difficult for a man in his era to have access to media that would showcase his work without having someone who paid him. Today is not the case. I have to admit that at this stage in my writing *cough career *cough that exposure and having people actually read what I write, like you kind folks for instance, is far more important than any kind of financial reward. I am willing to give things away for free. Even if later on down the road I have to fight to get what is rightfully mine it is still worth it, that fight could very well be the publicity I needed anyways.

Here's the thing. Whatever I do write and post online is more or less in the public domain and very unlikely to be touched by any reputible publisher. That's okay with me. Maybe one of them will see something and wonder what else I have written.

In the end does it really matter? I have a day job and I highly doubt that I will ever be lucky enough to not need one. I want to be read and not because I have some ground breaking philosopies to share or because I think I'm important, I want to be read because I want to entertain people, and I want to entertain people to give me purpose for my writing. Lets face it no one (without major psychological defects) would write fiction if they never believed anyone would read it.

So this post is probably all over the place because I keep getting interupted but what I really want to say is that I am going to just toss out my story "Karma is a Bitch"

Start Reading it Here