*Insert Witty Title Here*

So. This past year has been spent reflecting on what I want to do next in my life. Last December I took a break from all forums, facebook, and twitter. It took a month or so for my creativity to start coming back, but it did. Now my mind is racing with new ideas for stories, for drawings, for paintings, for crafty things, for new adventures. YeeHaw! What impossible dream do I want to pursue next?

As I stood here poised for my next big adventure in life, I realized that I needed to tie up a few loose ends.

With Emerald Tales and Crystal Codices, I achieved what I set out to achieve. I published stories and poetry that I thought should be published, and I gave a boost to a few writers who had never been published before. Making money was never my goal for those publications.

Then Amazon launched its Kindle Direct Publishing which is a much better way to publish those longer short stories than I was doing. If you can't find a market for your short stories then I highly recommend that you consider Kindle Direct Publishing.

Being a publisher is not something that I always had a burning ambition to do. It was an idea that I had about five years ago, and I made that idea a reality. Mission accomplished, but do I want to continue? The answer to that question was no. There are aspects of publishing that I really don't enjoy. And I suck at marketing.

So with the contracts almost all expired, I've decided to permanently close to all submissions. I'm not closing the company, yet. I still have Mette Pesonen's The Annals of Hypnosia in print until next April. And maybe I'll take it off in a different direction down the road.

As for this blog, I'll still post random musings about writing and funny videos when I find them.


I was going to post a youtube video of two dogs dining, but I got an error message. I'm wondering if the drunk monkeys in the previous video are involved as I got the following error message:

500 Internal Server Error

Sorry, something went wrong.

A team of highly trained monkeys has been dispatched to deal with this situation.

If you see them, show them this information:
lyanjFHp7u7cznRGW3_ZMrfPSrndv_dq7k5AtggT89Gv_gxXcOQ1H9trwV8F
... a thousand more letters redacted

Post-it Note Wars

I saw this on CNN dot com: Post-it Note Wars Rage in Paris

At the beginning of August, employees of Ubisoft, a French computer gaming company, put up an image from Space Invaders in their office window. The next day, BNP the largest bank in France and across the street from Ubisoft put up a Pacman in their window. And now across Paris, office windows are decorated with images created with Post-It notes.

They have a website of photos taken of the windows. You can find it at www.postitwar.com Some of the images are amazing.

My personal favorite is this one. It's in Amsterdam not Paris. The juxtaposition of classic European architecture with post-it images in the windows just tickles my funny bone.

Because caring is sharing

If you were wondering why I sometimes post things that are way off the topic of writing and publishing like elephant polo and led sheep, it's because a story idea popped into my head when I saw it. Since caring is sharing, I share them here with you. If it gets the creative juices flowing, then my work is done. If all you do is smile, then my work is also done. :)

Landfall in Norway?

This is a screenshot that I pulled from the National Hurricane Center. It shows the potential track of Hurricane Katia.



If the storm does as it is predicted to, then it will bypass the US, brush Scotland and make landfall in Norway. And while it will be called a posttropical cyclone, the strength of the wind will be the same as for a category one hurricane.

With all the extreme weather that we've had this year, I thought that we would have something extreme in the hurricane season. Hurricane Irene causing so much destruction in Vermont was strange enough, but this possible landfall in Norway (Norway ?!? WTF?!?) takes the cake.

Extreme Sheep Art

Mix a flock of sheep, LED lights, some shepherds, and a camera, and you get this: