Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Close Call

It was a close call. Almost made it to my first ever writers conference.

As usual, my plans were wiped out by job-related stuff that pretty much shot my weekend to you know where. So I missed out on the experience & the opportunity to see what kind of shenanigans take place at these writerly shindigs. Oh well. Networking? Self-promotion? Speakin' up in a workshop??? YIKES!!!

Can you tell I'm stallin'?

Well, I got some good news, but it'll sound kinda braggy. How 'bout a picture of my granddaughter Isabel holdin' up some loser's book instead? She's only smilin' 'cause she can't read the dang thing.


Yeah, she's cute. Gets 'er looks from Deb. Has me wrapped around her finger. Also like Deb. (Still stallin'.)

Anyway - The Florida Writers Association (FWA) held their conference without me. The good news (almost done stalling), BAD LATITUDE A Jack Rackham Adventure managed to make the cut as a finalist for the Royal Palm Literary Award for Published Young Adult fiction. The winning entry, SWIMMING WITH THE SHARKS was submitted by Debbie Reed Fischer (also won book of the year - Sheesh!) It looks like a pretty cool YA read. (Congratulations Debbie, but I'll be workin'  harder than ever on this writin' thing so I can catch up.) 

Well, it wasn't a total loss. I received an email with stuff about the entries and categories & saw the brief little blurb about my book included. It looked like this:

Bad Lattitude—A Jack Rackham Adventure by David Ebright.
Fifteen-year-old surfers discover an ancient and dangerous secret,
one that will force them to choose between fortune and friendship
and change their lives forever.


By the way - BAD LATITUDE took the 2nd place award.







Monday, October 4, 2010

The New Hideout

Haven't had much to say lately but since I haven't posted in a month thought I'd better write something before y'all thought I died. At my age - well, don't want people to be askin' - "Did JaxPop up n' die?" So here's what I've been up to .... & there's even some writing related nonsense included:

I did something really weird Saturday night - a ton of writing. Okay, I usually write on Saturdays but this time, I did it in long-hand. Other than adding my signature to whatever paper is shoved under my nose, I rarely use a pen. Well, I didn't exactly use a pen either - I used black, red, blue & green Flairs - & almost filled a composition notebook. (The old fashioned black & white things that you can't remove pages from without destroying the entire book.) The best part? I wasn't working on RECKLESS - it's a new screwball adventure & I'm really likin' it. Of course, since I rarely write with a pen, I can't read anything that I've written, but there's got to be a forensics expert out there that can decipher it all. I hope. RECKLESS is being edited, & I rewrote the ending. Now I'm gonna try to be cool & work on polishing it while sitting in a Starbucks going into caffeine overload while Deb gets her hair done at the obscenely high priced hair salon & try to avoid run-on sentences like this one (breathe) - so I bought an iPad, with a separate keyboard, which is really great but can't figure out how to work it beyond FaceBook & Google. And maps. Which I don't need because I have GPS. But I was thinkin' I'll look like a scholarly geek for once & after I'm famous they'll have the chair bronzed in my honor.

During my drive to work, which currently takes between 4 & 5 hours one way (twice a week), depending on the number of stops made at Starbucks along the way, I was thinkin' about why my brain went postal the other night with all those words n' crisp witty dialogue & generally crazy plotlines. I'm easily entertained - it probably really sucks. And it finally hit me. Mickey is finally happy. The MUSE (that's Mickey) is loose because we found a new place to hang out where I can pretend to be Hemingway (see post about Hemingway's house in Key West last November) & he (Mickey) can pretend to be good at what he does.

We're bouncing between home (St Auggie) & the land of Oz - otherwise known as Miami, stuck in a nice, spacious condo in a really b-o-r-i-n-g suburb (that has a Starbucks but fewer drive-by shootings). Fortunately, we did a 7 month lease on the condo in the boring town, at great company expense (thanks guys), & (trumpets in background) our sentence, I mean our lease is fullfilled in a coupla weeks. So I did what any malcontent would do - found another place to write, er, I mean live. Part time. A tiny, 2BR cottage in Ft Lauderdale, near things to do, like THE BEACH. So now Mickey's happy & has promised to jump into this writing gig with some sorely needed enthusiasm &, better yet, Deb's happy 'cause she'll be out of jail. I'm gonna go buy a bunch of dead animal heads to put on the wall (like Ernie did), grow my beard out& dye it white, hide the shotgun (don't want to take the Hemingway thing too far) & write.

Here are a few pics of the new temporary place (with the funky ceilings). It ain't home, but it'll work & the bananas are free.








And a PS - Deb created her very own blog where she's gonna post her pictures of flowers, nature, seascapes & animals with big teeth. She thinks she'll get more followers than me. We'll see, her page can be found at http://belznan.blogspot.com/ 
 St Augustine Fauxtography, so check it out but don't follow.