Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Floaters

It was the summer of 1979 (and since I was born in the summer of 1980)  I don't what happened in the summer of 1979. Was Reagan running for president then?

I often think about nuclear weapons and how I am lucky I wasn't born during a time of drills and nuclear threat. All that plutonium and uranium somewhere in the earth like it was waiting for us to discover its power.

Why do even need nuclear weapons any how? Are there really aliens and we have to stop them to preserve our way of life? Like pickles and hot peppers.

Does anyone know what a billion dollars look like? Imagine all the good a billion dollars can do. Imagine what 54 billion dollars can do. I read somewhere Bill Gates is on his way to a trillion dollars. I guess one dollar for every star we can see.

Lately, there are floaters in my head. Random phrases and words But when I get to a blank page, they hide under the covers or in the sand with a scallop shell place holder until the tide takes it away. Sometimes, I lie in bed and the floaters come and swirl around like pixies.

Are pixies part of Carl Jung's universal symbol theory? I would have to look into that.  I want to write and work on stories and the blank page stares at me. I know I am missing something but I don't know what.

Everyone talks around me and today I watched Al Roker on TV and he talked with Lisa Kudrow and for some reason she seems just like Phoebe. She sat down at the table, which was just a prop for the segment, buttered her roll and nibbled on it. I wonder what they did with the food.   Jennifer Beals was on there too, and I was thinking about Flashdance. And for once, I could watch TV  without DT . Amazing, and yet I still think about those nukes.

You can buy plutonium containers from Russia. In the story that I am working on or more like staring at the next blank page, I researched nuclear weapons. I learned as long as Buffalo does not have a direct hit, I should be okay. I wonder if Canada would let me in, if bombs started dropping. Then my mind plays those scenes of what I would bring to my flight to Canada.

There was a book called Flight to Canada and I can't remember who wrote it right now. I remember it was strange and trippy and I loved it. I read it an African-American literature class at Penn State. The professor was in the majority, which I thought was odd at the time.

I wonder why it rains diamonds on some other planet and gold found in only certain places, just like coal. I like the trees and the mountains where I live and the creek runs rusty. I guess in another ten years it will go from rust to black. It's a good thing I have dark siding on the house now but we have cream-colored siding in the basement. I keep looking for pressure washers because there is nothing I would rather do then pump funky water to clean cream-colored siding while  looking for the sun.

And maybe everything is in my head. Sometimes, I just see (not like a psychic mind you) something foggy in the future. Something has changed. I know I said that before. The universe has changed. And I like what Tesla says about how we are energy or something like. I know the word frequency was in there in that quote I like.

Since I have no clue on what else to write. I'm just going it end it, sort of abruptly, and with the thought of floaters in plutonium.


Sunday, February 26, 2017

Subtext Theft


***
Hey all, this is a poem I wrote for my last poetry class. I'll admit, I love doing poetry collages. This one is digital like the ones that appear in Trick or Poem. I'm happy to be working on the poetry project for Pintrest because I love poems and I always feel writerly when I am working on poetry. 

Enjoy.

Till next time...

Thursday, February 23, 2017

And Here I am

Today, where I live it reached a high temperature of 66 with partly cloudy skies. I left this morning a little after eight to take my kid to the dentist and went out without a jacket, it was already in the upper 40's. Hundreds of miles away off I-80, Wyoming was experiencing a blizzard. Pandora is playing songs I like, but I've got some 90's music running through my head.

Scientists discovered seven planets rotating around a star in the Goldilocks zone. I closed on my house today. And sometime in the next week, we will have the deed. Sometimes it feels surreal. Here am I, 36 almost 37 and we finally own our home free and clear. But we are also very lucky because we knew the right people to get us to where we are today.

Last week I was working on March's budget and it is kind of empty because I don't know how much the sewer will cost or the fire insurance or the property taxes. Those are small problems though. One of the greatest things is that since we own the house, when I start paying on student loans, I will have more money to put toward the loans. Unless, I win 100K. That is enough to pay off all my student loans and go to grad school at SNHU.

I am still considering grad school, if I do, it will have to be paid for with cash because I already have a lot of student loan debt and I don't want to add to it either.

How's the writing going?  For once, I can say good. Remember the last post and I said I was stuck. Well I deleted 2000 words of garbage and restarted like I said and I am happy with the progress.  I will start working on the poetry calendar this week. And next week when I am on break I will write five more chapters of Suburban Vampires so I have a bunch done for my weekly posting on Wattpad.

So that's about all for today.

Till next time...

Saturday, February 18, 2017

Restless

In the one class I am taking this term, I had to use two social media channels. You can find a bunch on the sidebar, if you are interested. One of them is Pintrest. Oh, I love Pintrest. Why didn't I try it sooner? There is always so much stuff to look at. So many infographics.  When it comes to digital stuff, I am a hoarder. I won't clean out my picture folders even though I won't use bits of pictures and other text designs ever again. I love free books and free music. I will download free pictures because I can. And with Pintrest I can pin stuff I like for not particular reason other than I must have it on board.

Anyway, I digress and all that other junk is unimportant and just shows I am a bit whacky. On Pintrest, I have a board called "One Book- 300 Poems." I am creating a found poem using the blackout/whiteout method for each page from the book Waiting: The True Confessions of a Waitress by Debra Ginsberg . This is a project for Pintrest and I bought the book specifically for this purpose (bonus it cost fifty cents at Goodwill). Right now, I am scanning each page and making the poem digitally. I don't have the heart to draw on the pages, yet.

The following is one of the pages I created.


If you like what you see check out the others poems in the series here and while you're at, please follow me.

Till next time... 

Thursday, February 16, 2017

Trick or Poem by JM Scott FREE until February 19 2017

Hey all, I just wanted to let you know Trick or Poem is FREE on all markets until February 19, 2017.

In this small collection there are 31 Halloween and/or horror themed poems. Demons, witches and even a windego makes an appearance.  There are also a variety of poetry styles in the book such as haiku, free verse, digital poetry collage, found poems and pictograph/emoji poems.

By the way, the book cover is none other than Egg Hill Church.I did some photo editing and made it look creepy. I think it is one of my better book covers.

I hope you grab a free copy of the book and I would love to know what you think of it.

Here is a free sample:


Till next time....

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Novel for Drunkenness

He lived in the shadows watching those who live. Once a week, he would get a note in the mail telling him who his next soul was. And every week for the last hundred years it was always some disgusting vagabond, drunk and crazy. He was sick of their pickled, nasty souls. He wanted something better. He deserved something better.

He got his directive for the week and tossed it in the garbage of his shitty one room apartment in north east Philly.  Jules Austere, the best-selling author was staying only a short distance away at the Hilton. Now that is a life, he could get himself into. Writing stories, making a shit ton of money selling the movie rights.

It was easy for him to slip past the front desk clerk and the lone security guard. People don’t want to see if they can’t explain it.  Jules Austere was staying in the penthouse which was no big surprise there.

Taking the card key he made while the perky desk clerk flirted with the middle aged security guard, Seamus put his ear to the door and heard the tv on as well as the bathroom fan. He slipped the key in, hoping the dead bolt wasn’t latched. It wasn’t.

Seamus crept into the hotel room. Crumpled clothes lay on the floor. Room service trays and McDonald’s bags were scattered over the table. The room stank like stale weed and vomit.

The bathroom door was slightly ajar and Austere was sitting on the shitter looking at his phone. Seamus glided into the corner that faced the tv and beside the king-sized bed. The toilet flushed ; Seamus noticed the runes burnt into his back. The glyphs of various shapes were to ward off supernatural attacks.

Fuck and double fuck.

Jules Austere saw Seamus in the corner.

“What bloody hell?” He yelled and came at Seamus with a dagger. Seamus grabbed his pudgy arms before the writer could sink the blade into his shimmery flesh.

“Who the bloody hell are you?” Jules yelled.

“Soul-Sucker.”

“They're real? bloody hell. Hey so what kind of souls do you take?”

Seamus stopped fighting and got off of him. He lit a cigarette, “Mostly drunks and druggies.”

“Right, well I am not any of those. So why me?”.

“Your stories, I want your stories- the unwritten ones.”

“Right, listen. Give me some of those drunk souls, I want that feeling again. I can’t because of my liver. And I will give you dozens of stories and novels, I never published.”

“Just like that?”

“I would give anything for a bloody drink and be drunk. And I mean anything. I will even put in a good word for you with my publisher.”

Seamus looked at the fat writer who wanted to be drunk but couldn’t. It was his life after all so he should be able to do what he wanted. He probably had to stay alive for as long as possible otherwise how would his publishers and producers make money?

“Are they any good?” Seamus asked.

“Yeah they are good, I wrote them."  The writer plodded off to the computer and brought up a file. Seamus skimmed it.

Seamus presented his arm to the writer, “Bite and drink, but first one of those novels.”

The writer plopped the whole folder on flash drive and sunk his teeth into Seamus’ arm.

***
And here you ago, another flash fiction story. This one is a around 540 words. I planned on writing a blog post, but I had nothing to say. I do have some ideas brewing though. What do you think I should write about? Let me know.

Till next time...

Sunday, February 12, 2017

Jackpot

driving on the not so open
road, fresh ivory dashes
against asphalt from drudgery
twelve hours locked
in place- looking at glass

the trip meter reads 777.
If I were in Atlantic City
under a sapphire sphere those
sevens would be my jackpot,
thousands of quarters ping
pinging like sleet on windows.
Enough not to go to bed hungry
tonight or for the next many nights.
Yes to prime rib and bury
enough in the backyard.

Tonight, the only jackpot that befalls
me are liquid half dollars splattering
against the windshield

That blue sphere shatters and I’m
on the same road where Lady Luck
masturbates on the shoulder
while cars keep going nowhere.

***
Hey all, I wrote this poem a couple of years ago while I worked at a glass factory. I was driving home and I just happened to notice the trip meter reading 777 just as it started to rain- those big, fat raindrops. Would love to know to know what you think

Till next time...

Friday, February 10, 2017

The Afterlife of Tanya Madera by JM Scott FREE Until February 14, 2017

Hey all, The Afterlife of Tanya Madera is FREE  in  all markets until February 14, 2017.

I wrote this story four or five years ago and it is still one of my favorites. I have had this idea for awhile, what if someone wanted to die a violent death because they wanted to come back as a ghost to inflict harm on others. But that's all it as

Then one day I was walking in the woods with my husband. It was this gorgeous spring day. Then I saw it, the pink flannel that you see in the book cover. And all of sudden, that little idea exploded.  I saw the characters and found the story.

If you will, here is an excerpt from the book....

Bill met Danny O’Brien at the hospital. He had the same spiky hair he had on TV but he wore black plastic glasses. His crew consisted of two other guys. One chunky guy with his pants falling around his ass and a super skinny one.

“Bill,” Danny said and shook his hand. “I’d like to see your wife first and then if you want, you can come along with us and talk to the girl’s mother and friends. I’m sure the mother will talk to you since you found her.”
.
Upstairs, Stacy slept on a chair beside Jackie. Stacy opened her eyes when Bill and Danny came in.

“Oh my god your Danny O’Brien from Spook Nation!” Stacy exclaimed. “Bill you didn’t tell me you believe in ghosts.”

“I don’t but I don’t believe Jackie went crazy either. Maybe this guy can help. He said Jackie is in trouble.”

Danny went over and touched Jackie’s skin. “She is very cold as if she were dead. That means I am positive Tanya is with Jackie right now. Make sure the nurse brings a lot of blankets.”

Stacy nodded and went to find the nurse to get more blankets. Danny opened Jackie’s eye lids and took some notes.

“What color are Jackie’s eyes?” Danny asked.

“They are brown with flecks of green,” Bill replied.

“Come here and take a look.”

Bill looked into his wife’s eyes, they were no longer brown with flecks of green but an ashy blue that looked vacant, lost- dead. Stacy came back with more blankets.

Danny looked at her, “she isn’t going to wake up right at this moment. Tanya has her right now. Before we can fix this, we have to figure who Tanya is and why she is holding onto Jackie. Bill, you want to come along?”

“Bill, I want to stay. I feel like this is my fault. I took Jackie back to the house,” Stacy said.
Bill nodded and told Stacy, “I’ll give you a call later.”

Rachael Madera lived in a small townhouse just outside of the Meridian Borough. The townhouses were all white. There were cars parked in front of each unit. Danny pulled into an open space. His camera crew got out and turned on their cameras. Danny knocked on the door with Bill behind him.

“Miss Madera, I’m Danny O’Brien, I talked to you last night.”

“From Spook Nation. Tanya loved that show. Come in.” Her eyes were red and sunken into her skull. The living room just had a couch and a tv with a coffee table. She scooped up some pills and put them back in the bottle and tried to hide the bottle in the sofa.

“You think Tanya is a ghost? Why isn’t she visiting with me?” Rachael asked.

“I don’t know. Do you know this man?” Danny asked about Bill.

Bill didn’t know her but recognized her as a waitress at the truck stop where he and Jackie went to dinner several times.

“No, not really. I’ve seen him and his wife at the restaurant I work at.”

Danny gave her a picture of Jackie, “how about Jackie did you know her. Or did your daughter know her?”

“I’ve seen her around. I don’t know if Tanya knew her or not. Her only friends were that girl Lucy and that guy Mike. I don’t know she would be hanging out with someone older than her but you never know teenagers. Maybe Tanya was into drugs.”

Bill went for Rachael and grabbed her shirt, “my wife doesn’t sell drugs. We are the ones who found her. And now your ghost daughter has my wife trapped in a coma. I don’t want to lose my wife.”
Danny pulled Bill away. Rachael looked at him with her wide, red eyes, “sorry I was just offering a suggestion. But you guys found her, so maybe it was your wife all along. Come on, you guys just happen to find her, doesn’t it make you guys look suspicious?”

Bill lunged for her but the camera men held him back.

“Bill, keep cool. We will find the truth. Miss Madera, focus on anything you might remember from when she disappeared. Anything at all.”

Then Rachael broke down in tears. “I’m a horrible mother because I don’t know what she was doing before she disappeared. When she was at home, she was either alone or with Mike. She spent all her time in her room. I thought she was just going through a phase. How would I know? I treated my mom the same way. I don’t know. Tanya and I were never very close. I worked a lot, I drank a lot and the damn doctor put me on pills that make me sleepy. Tanya was the one to take care of me when she was around. It should’ve been the other away around.” Danny went over to her and gave her a tissue. He put his skinny arm around her and hugged her against his skinny chest. After several minutes, Rachael calmed down.

“Can we see her room?” Danny asked.

Rachael sniffed her snot and nodded, “top of the stairs, last door on the left.”

Tanya’s room was bare. She had a twin bed under the window. There were two book cases filled with books with a cd player on top of the one book case. There was a computer on her desk. Her clothes lay in piles on the floor. The camera men videoed everything. Danny opened her drawers and pulled out a worn journal. He flipped through the pages.

“I think we have something to finally work with. Its Tanya’s journal,” Danny said aloud and rolled the journal up and put it in his coat. Bill flipped through the Meridian High School yearbook. She put a heart around a guy named Brett Adams.

“Looks like she had a crush on Brett Adams. I heard of him. He was fast tracked to the NFL then on the day of his try out, he went to kick the ball and it seemed like he pulled a muscle but he went down hard. According to the doctors, he dislocated his hip. He never played football again,” Bill said.

“Anything else in there?” Danny asked.

Bill flipped through the pages and then pointed out pictures of Danielle and Cameron with horns coming out of their heads. Bill flipped more and showed Danny pictures of her two best friends Lucy and Mike.

“Who should we start with?” Danny asked.

“Mike Hawkins,” Bill said, “he talked about her disappearance but then he didn’t say anything at the candle light vigil in her honor. To me it seems weird. How can someone say he cared about her so much and then didn’t say anything at the vigil?”

“I agree, I think he might know something,” Danny replied.

“I wonder if the police are doing anything?” Bill asked.

“I hope so. But I know they will make it look good and try to do something but they don’t have the resources to find out what happened. Unless someone comes forward and admits it.”

***

Grab your free copy to read more and if you feel so inclined let me know what you think.

Till next time...

Wednesday, February 8, 2017

DayQuil, Dreams and Me

Without DayQuil (really the Family Dollar knock-off because it is so much cheaper) I would not be able to write this blog post. Though I am feeling much better today. Monday was the worst between fevers and chills, a migraine and constant napping. I felt like I had a head cold last week but it was going away. Then Bam- my kid gets sick and has to come home from school. Two days later, I have it.

One of the worst things about being sick are the dreams. Normally, my dreams are already bizarre and vivid. When I am sick they are magnified a 100 times which means I wake up more because my dreams are even more disturbing. I get many ideas from dreams. One of my notebooks in One Note is labeled "Story Ideas" and when I remember an exceptional nugget I write it in that notebook. I also have another notebook labeled "dreams" and this is where I place dreams or fragments then look up symbolism on the web- as if I am trying to either figure out if I am psychic or learn more about myself.

Over the years various bits of dreams made it into a story. The giant bronze sun sculpture in Seaspring Briar that turns into a deadly saw blade was in a nightmare years ago. In that dream, the sun sculpture chopped off my brother's head.  Parts of Havana, WV, my novel in progress, were taken from dreams such as the town of witches, the mischievous dark- haired witch,  and the people who live in dumpters.  And in Gone Before Dawn, well there is a story to that one... where the entire novel was based off a dream in a way.


Do you that moment in between wakefulness and REM Sleep is called hypnagogia. According to Wikipedia (I know not the most scholarly, but it is sufficient for this purpose), Hypnagogia is a transitional state which features lucid thought, lucid dreaming, hallucination and sleep paralysis.  One thing that is weird about my sleep patterns is that I can go into REM quickly. There are times when I doze off, have a  fucked up dream, wake up because the dream was fucked up and only a half hour or 45 minutes passed. Anyway that time between wakefulness and dreaming is a fascinating place to hang out. There are some really great things that can be found in hynpagogia. Anyway back to Gone Before Dawn...

I was 17 or 18 and I was in bed almost in REM sleep, probably in the hypnagogic state when all of a sudden someone's voice, a young woman, screamed "someone please help me." She was in distress. And it felt so real, so real in fact I sat straight up in bed. And it unnerved me. I could never forgot it. Nothing like that happened before then and nothing like happened after that. It was like we shared brain waves for that fleeting moment. I still think about it and I can still hear her voice in my head. For years afterward I kept thinking about that moment in my life and eventually Gone Before Dawn was born. In it, Delta screams for help and there is someone that gets the message, Moira Ponds, who can hear voices- voices of those who go missing. Sometimes I wonder if what I heard what was real or not.

One last thing, in Gone Before Dawn, The Puritans are a right-wing,  ultra religious  group of leaders that are in power all over the world three hundred years from our present. I wrote this novel in 2014 as part of Nanowrimo. And during a nap on March 2, 2015 I had this strange dream, "was arrested in Lake Harmony (in Pennsylvania) by Donald Trump who happened to be a cop for bad driving and smacking into a couple of cars."

I think I'm onto something or maybe it is just the DayQuil talking.

Till next time...



Saturday, February 4, 2017

I Love Santa Clarita Diet

Last night, I binge-watched Santa Clarita Diet  and I loved it.  And I am really hoping for a season two. What is not to love?

Zombies- check
Drew Barrymore- check
Drew Barrymore munching on dead people- check
Dark humor-check.

But then it got me thinking, sure I love zombies, who doesn't?  There was something more. Something about Sheila and Joel's characters, how they curse all the damn time, and how they act. How the  music is stuff I heard when I was younger. And then it dawned on me- I related to the characters.

And then I realized, damn I middle-aged. When the fuck did that happen? Weird thing is even though Joel and Sheila are middle-aged, they didn't act middle aged (aside from the killing and hiding dead people). You know like middle-aged like how our parents were long time ago. It's like there was whole secret world that gets opened up when your middle-aged. Seriously, you want to drink beer and watch Spongebob, no one  gives a shit. All while your kid is just trying to hide. It's like you spend your twenties raising small children and then boom by the time you are in your mid-thirties your kids are older and things are different.

Sure, there are a lot of people who hate getting older. This July I will turn 37 and I am looking forward to it. I will be only 42 when my kid is 18. That is still middle aged with plenty  more to go.

How do you feel about getting older?
Till next time...