Barbara's Meanderings

Tuesday, March 19, 2019

So it's March and I haven't posted for six months. Sorry, but life got in the way. I got involved with another poetry group, Motivational Strips and this has taken a big chunk of my time. Also had a lot of events going on so I neglected this blog.

I originally started a blog because I didn't think anyone was listening to me and so I decided to write out what I was thinking. Now with Facebook it seems like everyone writes everything anyone is thinking and sometimes a little too much. I usually try to post the happy things and stay away from anything that might be too sad. I don't post cute puppies and kittens but there are enough of those around to make me happy. I do post happy photos of me and my family and achievements that I have had. Sometimes, rarely, I still post poetry and announcements of things.

This is a post to let you know that I got another 5 star review for If I Could Be Like Jennifer Taylor!! it's very exciting to get a review for a book that was published six years ago!! I am putting it here, though I had it on Facebook and Twitter and Google Groups+. But there are still some people who don't read any of that and just do blogs. If you have seen this before I apologize for repetition but for me I can't show you this review enough!! LOL

Reviewed by Lisa McCombs for Readers' Favorite

The grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence. How many times do we hear this in a lifetime? Jennifer Taylor seems to have it all...More

My guest author today is Joshua Grant or Joshua the Gamer from his outstanding and innovative website: diabolicalshrimp.com. I met Josh because I got an email from him, went to the website and immediately wanted to know more about this person who was an author and who gave back to charity from his website. So I invited him to be on my radio show, Red River Radio Tales from the Pages. He was my guest for October and he also is my guest today here on the blog. Let's meet him:

• Where were you born and where do you live now?

I was born in the District of Columbia after my family got stationed there. I've lived most of my life in lovely sunny Colorado where I still reside (because it's lovely, and sunny, and mountains).

• Besides writing what is your occupation?

I used to act and teach. Nowadays I substitute teach just to be involved, work with kiddos at church, and run Diabolic Shrimp.

• What do you do besides writing? Do you have any hobbies?

I do a LOT of writing! :) But on the rare occasions that I come up for air, I love to play video games and watch movies with friends. I think food is a hobby maybe? I love to just get together with people, joke and laugh and share a meal together.

• Who or what influenced you to begin writing?

My middle school teacher Mrs. Munos definitely made me believe I could write something decent. From there, it was largely a smattering of good movies, books, and video games that drove my creativity.

• In what kind of genre is your writing? Do you want to explore other genres?

I mostly write Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy, with the occasional Horror/Thriller novel. Not sure I can branch out much more than that! :)

• Please tell our audience what a typical day of writing would be for you.

I either write first thing when I get up or last thing just before going to sleep. I usually just spend an hour or two a day writing and that's it.

• How many books do you have published? Please let us know the path to publication for your first book.

Currently I have three books published: Pandora (Horror/Thriller), Jericho (Horror/Thriller), and The Fifth Ascendant (Young Adult Fantasy). For Pandora, my first book, I originally went the path of trying to woo traditional publishers. Eventually, I began to look at self publishing and found that to be a wonderful path as long as you're willing to work very hard. I ended up publishing physical and ebooks through Amazon.

• Would you please tell our listeners about each of the books you have published?

Pandora is a horror/thriller book set aboard a cruise ship. After the Emerald Rose disappeared and returned a week later, business tycoon Patrick Carver sends out a special forces team to investigate. Pandora is filled with clever twists, creepy monsters, and hapless heroes.

Jericho is the second book in my horror/thriller series The Organization. A father takes is son to live in the mountain town of Shadow Pines with his exwife for the summer. A police officer searches for her missing brother in the same town. They will all quickly discover that Shadow Pines isn't as empty as it appears.

The Fifth Ascendant is my fun and actiony Young Adult Fantasy novel. Kal is an Ascendant, a warrior with ultimate powers. But is he fighting for the right side?

• How did you get the idea to make a website called Diabolic Shrimp?

When I was a brand new author, I quickly discovered how hard it was to find a place that was truly supportive and didn't have a million rules or cost money. Thus, I set out to make one. I created a place that's free and no hassle to authors and readers where I buy and review books and give books away to readers. The 'Diabolic' is for my diabolic plan to get every author on there one day and take over the world. The 'Shrimp' is because authors are just the little guys, but together we're pretty impressive. Plus, it's just a fun quirky title that brings a smile to peoples' faces and I love that.

• About how many books do you buy from visitors to your website a year? What benefit do you find from buying and reviewing your visitors’ books?

I currently am up to buying a book a day from authors! It's really grown in the couple of years Diabolic Shrimp has been around! There are many benefits to this. First off, I get to support other authors which is why I set out to create Diabolic Shrimp in the first place. But the cool part is, people really respond when you show them kindness. I gain money through advertising on the site which makes it sustainable, and I get to put some of that money towards meaningful causes like ocean exploration or breaking the world's poverty cycle.

• What gave you the idea of sending a shrimp into outer space? Do you think this will ever happen?

Haha! That mission was just my way of sprucing up the site! Diabolic Shrimp used to be a lot more rigid back in the day. I wanted to make it a little more fun (and I totally love space exploration and would be over the moon if I got to send shrimp to the moon). It hasn't happened, yet, but as they say, if the sky's the limit, why are there footprints on the moon?

• Do you have any in person or online events scheduled for your books in the near future? Please tell our listeners where they can find these.

I'm really focused right now on bringing two new projects to market, Nexus my young adult sci fi thriller and Silly Tales from Albanon my quirky short fantasy. That's taking most of my time outside of Diabolic Shrimp, so I don't really have much else planned on the horizon at the moment.

• Where can our listeners find your books?

Readers can find my books on Amazon or Diabolic Shrimp. If you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited, you can read any of them for free. Links are below if you want to check them out!

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Joshua-Grant/e/B01M62JM1J/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1540524658&sr=8-1

Diabolic Shrimp: www.diabolicshrimp.com

• Finally, one last question I always ask my guests. Are you a plotter or a pantser? That is do you need to outline or do you just write?

I think both? Haha! Maybe like a Plotantser or something. I have each chapter generally plotted out in my head and then I just start writing from there.

Thank you so much for being my guest today, Josh, and I hope that readers will go and listen to the excellent radio show where you talk more about everything. It took a few months but you got here. I also hope that my readers will check out your website. It has the two f's: free and fun!!!

Until the next time, I apologize for the delay and in that time you may notice that there is no longer a side panel here. Many of the features have been discontinued on this so I will be moving to another place very soon. Watch this space as Rachel Madow always says.

Also, my radio show, Red River Radio Tales from the Pages will be on this Thursday, March 21, 2019 at 4pm EDT. Check my Author page or my Facebook page for the link.

Happy almost Spring!!!

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Meet Guest Author A. M. Wilson

Thursday, August 23, 2018

Is it really August 23 already? It seems that summer has sped by and true to my word I am trying to post at least once a month. So much has happened in the short time between my last post and now.

Okay, I just realized that in my haste to post the new video for After I posted instead my documentary "Remembering Hal". Anyone who was confused I apologize. I am going to put that video on here now.

Also will edit that post to include this video now. There will be a new version of "Remembering Hal" with better sound balance on my channel on YouTube soon.

Okay, so hope you all have been having a great summer. I will discuss the things I've been doing after I introduce you to my Guest Author, A. M Wilson. He is also going to be a guest on my show on Thursday, August 23, 2018 at 4pm EDT on Red River Radio Tales from the Pages.

If you miss the interview I am posting it here for you. Any listeners who remember the technical difficulties we had when A. M. was first on the show will also know that he was rescheduled to come back in August alsong with my other delightful guest author and poet, Cynthia Sharp. I will have Cynthia on the blog at a later time. Until then, please enjoy my guest today, A. M. Wilson:

Hi A. M. so happy you are on my blog. I am very glad you have come back on the show.

Would it be okay to ask why you are called A M? What is your first name?
A M came from a practical desire to have a name that was unique and stood out -- especially in today's search field. Alex Wilson is a Detroit Tigers pitcher, an LA-based weather person, and a 19th-Century Scottish Ornithologist. My college freshman year roommate suggested A M as a way to separate myself from the pack -- drawing F. Scott Fitzgerald and David Foster Wallace as other noms de plume from notable authors.

So your name is Alex Wilson. I actually like initials for authors.

Where were you born and where do you live now?

I was born in Flint, Michigan, which has seen some hard times. Any fan of Michael Moore knows well the economic contraction that Flint has gone through. We moved when I was an early teen to a small farming community where my mom grew up -- Carson City, Michigan. The journey since then has taken me all over the U.S. from Owensboro, Kentucky, to Buenos Aires, Argentina, to St. Louis, to Silicon Valley, California where I live now. A lot of that went into Populace, which I think is about not only the main character's coming of age, but also what it means to be an American.

Besides writing, what is your occupation? Do you have any hobbies and/or interests?
I have a lot of hobbies -- I love to hike and cook. I play guitar and try to solve complex math problems. My ambitions often outstrip my capacity, though, which is most often tied up with my year old son.

Who or what influenced you to begin writing?
I began writing as a reaction to my parents' divorce. I was five or six and having a rough time. My mother, an English professor, offered me a big spiral notepad and told me to write, anything and everything that came to mind, about the experience. I was so young I think a lot of the early stuff were badly drawn pictures but over time I fell in love with telling stories, by using allegory and with trying to affect the world around me. I was hooked, and I've been trying to create stories ever since.

When did you begin to write seriously and what did you write? Have you published anything before Populace?

Populace is my first novel. I began to write seriously in college. I had a great friend and roommate who encouraged my work. His dad was the head of the English department, coincidentally, and while my grammar was sometimes lacking, he could tell there was a deep passion in what I created. I had my first fan, which spurred me to push myself to get better. He also offered up a lot of new literature that was so different from what I had read from my parents, that it blew my mind. I began to understand writing as a continuum, with James Joyce, and later Thomas Pynchon on one end, and Ernest Hemmingway and later Cormac McCarthy on the other. I had the privilege to fall anywhere on the spectrum I wanted.

What is your writing process? Please tell our listeners about a typical day of writing for you.
In a word: chaotic. I don't really experience writer's block, but I do experience a lot of non-sequiturs and pieces that try to connect. Sometimes it works well. A lot of time there's at least twice as much on the cutting room floor as what makes it in the final. The only way I've figured out where I can keep the good (lots of ideas, creative and interesting!) is to embrace the bad, which is having to read then re-read then read again the work for continuity and clarity.

What inspired you to write Populace?
When I lived in St. Louis, I would have to drive through Northern St. Louis. It had broken roofs, collapsed buildings and no people on the streets. It reminded me of the images I'd seen of a war zone. I had grown up with this experience in Flint, and seen it in so many places -- from Owensboro to Chicago, but not in the same way in foreign countries. To have such poverty alongside such wealth was one thing, but to be so aggressively ignorant of it was another. This was a uniquely American ailment. And I've always wanted to write a uniquely American book.

What went into the writing of this book? Did you have to do a lot of research and what was it?
I did a fair amount of research, but I really relied on stuff that I had around me. My dad has a sailboat, and there's a long passage in the piece on a sailboat. I've lived in many of the cities listed (Owensboro, for example). I spent a lot of time looking at the distances and had a friend engineer check the math. I spent a lot of time, kind of oddly, looking at maps. It was important to me that the journey was as seamless as possible. I didn't want it to raise any eyebrows for the reader, and the best way to do that is to make sure that everything makes total sense. I've driven out west a couple of times from middle America. Those trips also influenced the book.

Would you please describe the path to publication for Populace?
Starts and stops. I drafted it, sent to agents, and had one interested. She requested that I "clean it up" a bit and resubmit, which was the month before my son was born. I ended up taking six months to clean it up, and then the agent asked for me to go back through the whole process. I said "this is good enough to publish," so I did. Create Space and Kindle Direct Publishing have awesome tools. I had a friend design the cover. It all came together really quickly after I made up my mind to do it.

Please tell our listeners a little bit about your book, Populace.
It's a novel set after America has torn itself apart. All that remains of the New United States is Omaha, which is run by one company. The main character, Thomas Ignatius Stout, survived a terrorist attack and then was sent to find and destroy the man who committed the crime.

Would you call it a dystopian novel? Why or why not?

Yes. Likely more dystopic than what I meant. Brave New World was a major influence on the book. I read it, and I remember thinking how incredible the logic of the whole thing was. It was inescapable. And to create a world like that was amazing. But, I think the heart of your question is do I consider the world dystopian, and in a way I most definitely do, but more specifically I just chronicled the world I saw around me. So I feel that if we say the book is dystopic, then we're saying that the world is dystopic. I think that it is in some ways, but that's the burden of a writer. We're tasked with the duty to lift men's hearts, as William Faulkner said. I think that it's like AA says about alcoholism, the first step is admitting you have a problem. People occasionally don't like my book -- they view books as a way to escape from their modern lives. But we in modern culture have so much escapism, I wanted to create a story that could entertain, sure, but also acted as a mirror -- as a cry in the woods for a better tomorrow.

Where can we find your book and you?
Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Populace-M-Wilson/dp/1985066750/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1530315126&sr=8-1&keywords=populace or https://www.amwideawake.com

Are you doing any in person or online events? If so what are they and where can we find them?
Nothing scheduled.

Well, that isn't true, because you are now on my blog and on Red River Radio Tales from the Pages. LOL

Finally this is the last question I always ask every guest. Are you a plotter or a pantser? In other words, do you write an outline or do you just sit down and write?
Ha, I like the term "pantser." I definitely just sat down and wrote when I started. I think now, I still do sometimes. It yields some really incredible perspectives and insights. Every once and a while I'll plan out things, but even when I get to the details themselves, I'll sit down and just come up with something. Then I have to make it all coherent, which is painstaking, but I think yields a much a stronger story, a much more emotional story, in the end.

A. M. Wilson Bio:

A M Wilson has loved telling stories since he couldn't see over a kitchen counter. His first breakthrough novel Populace, an Orwellian thriller, is set for release in spring 2018. In his own words, Wilson has always loved humor, "humor that challenges our worldview, humor that gets us through hard times, humor that makes us realize our own humanity." As a novelist, has the burden to believe in everything as possible.

A M is from Flint, Mich., and has moved around a lot, entering a lot of brave new worlds -- to Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, California, Spain and Argentina. A M has been a farmer, a groundskeeper, a librarian, a fast-food worker, a bagboy, a political organizer and a shill.

A M Wilson lives in the Bay Area with his wife and son. You can reach him at www.amwideawake.com

Synopsis of POPULACE

America 2151. New York. Washington. Chicago. Los Angeles. All wiped out from nuclear blasts. The New United States of America is centered in Omaha, where the Leviathan Corporation provides a muted, controlled existence for its populace. Synthetic drugs keep them sane. The people are safe — for now — from the threats on the outside.

Summoned to the president’s office, unlikely hero Thomas Ignatius Stout receives an extraordinary mission: Hunt down and return, dead or alive, the vicious killer responsible for destroying the lives of millions and millions of Americans, Joe Ikowski, who remains a thorn in the government's side. Tom accepts his burden and leads an expedition past Omaha's protective barrier and into the great unknown. That’s when Tom’s journey really begins.

Taking him from Kentucky to Arizona to Mexicali and the Rocky Mountains, Tom finds far more than he is searching for — and starts to learn the deeply complicated, disturbing truths of his own identity and a world in which he had only before scratched the surface. In this poignant page-turner, a novel that blends elements of science fiction, political thrillers and an Orwellian-style future, rising novelist AM Wilson takes readers on a wild ride inside what could become the future of the United States, if we ruin ourselves from the inside. It’s a novel that will make you think, no matter what you think of America.

Seriously, if you like dystopian or urban dystopian books check this one out and hope you get to hear the interview on Red River Radio Tales from the Pages.

Now for my summer. We went to the Taylor Swift concert and it was held even in the rain. It drizzled all the time but there were times when you needed an umbrella. We had ponchos but we got soaking wet. It was warm so it wasn't too bad and the music and special effects were outstanding. Then the following weekend we went to see "Mean Girls" on Broadway. That was so good we had to go home and see the movie. But you know what, the show is better than the movie so if you get a chance go see it.

Hope you enjoy the rest of the summer and tune in to the show today. If you can't get there don't worry. You can hear it in archives. Just click on the link either on Facebook or Twitter.

Until the next time, I might surprise you and post another time in August. Stay cool and dry.

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