When I first decided to write a book on writing (after blogging about the subject for a year and a half), the decision was not a difficult one. I had a vision of exactly what I wanted.

Strunk & White.

Elements of Style.

It’s not that I believed myself capable of equaling their (arguable) classic work on grammar, style, and writing in general but rather I wanted to produce a book that was small in stature, large in OOMPH. A book one might keep next to the computer (or typewriter, for your sadomasochists). In fact, I priced the paperback as low as the distributor would allow (which means I make less on a physical paperback than a digital copy), all because I honestly believe, of all books, this is the one that deserves all the real highlight marks, dogears, and other signs of heavy usage over the years.

You see, over the decades I attended (and led) quite a number of writing workshops, attended courses, and handed out work to be critiqued (with the telltale grimace of someone who doesn’t want to hear what he or she knows they need to hear). But the gems I learned over those years. I had to share them. I needed to share them. I believe fervently that writers need to band together because, unlike other products, ours is continually in demand—far more demand than only a few select of us can provide. In other words:

There are enough readers for all talented writers (and even for some not-so-talented ones).

Books are not like sofas or cars or television sets. People don’t buy just one and hold on to it for 5-20 years. Some speedy readers I know read a book a day. What’s the average? Book a week? The demand for books is there—what we authors need are two things:

1) A hand-holding-hand path out of the jungle, to civilization, where the readers live

and

2) A product well worth their hard-earned money and time when we arrive there to present our work to them.

I work diligently at helping with #1. Now I wanted to share what I’d learned through trials, hard knocks, painful red ink on the page, and some damned fine writers over the years so that a fellow author might sit with my book and use a few simple (call them what you will: rules, techniques, processes, guidelines) and come out the other side with a book at least twice as good as it was entering the makeover.

Thus INK: Eight Rules To A Better Book was born.

Not of greed; not of pride; not of chance. INK was born because I was destined to write it, and I promise you, those writers who’ve taken the time to read it (one self-proclaimed slow reader devoured it in three hours!) will learn a lifetime of lessons. And it’s a book you can read over and over again. Highlighting, coming back to a section you love or need or just wanted to get straight in your head.

Writing is a process, and like every other skilled profession in the world, there are those to whom it comes naturally; there are great writers and good writers and decent writers and, yes, horrible writers. But I didn’t write INK for any one group. My theory is that no matter where you fall on the spectrum of ability or talent, your prose can always improve. None of us—nor non of “them”—is at the one hundred percent, don’t need to fix a thing stage.

None is perfect.

Lastly, the cover is intentionally simplistic, because I believe in the simplicity (and conversely, the POWER) of the eight rules. They aren’t rocket science and every single writer out there in the world can put them to use. I also have an absolute reason for using the hand print in ink for the cover. It has come to represent the unique signature of every writer on the planet. Each of us is different in some way from the next. Like snowflakes.

Like hand prints.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

R.S. (Rob) Guthrie grew up in Iowa and Wyoming. He has been writing fiction, essays, short stories, and lyrics since college.

“Black Beast: A Detective Bobby Mac Thriller” marked Guthrie’s first major release and it heralded the first in a series of Detective Bobby Macaulay (Bobby Mac) books. The second in the series (LOST) hit the Kindle shelves December of 2011. Reckoning closes out the trilogy. For now…

Guthrie’s “Blood Land” is the first in the James Pruett Mystery/Thriller series and represents a project that is close to his heart: it is set in a fictional town in the same county where he spent much of his childhood and still visits. The sequel, Money Land, hit the shelves Christmas Day, 2012. Honor Land, the third in the bestselling series is due out in the Summer of 2013.

Guthrie lives in Colorado with his wife, Amy, three young Australian Shepherds, and a Chihuahua who thinks she is a 40-pound Aussie! Pictured is Elsa, the oldest, the Alpha, crazy adorable and every bit the diva (and she knows it!). And yes, there is a Hero Dog book bursting to get out that Guthrie plans to write concurrently with his third Pruett book.

Readers can catch up with what’s new with R.S. Guthrie at his official site, http://www.rsguthrie.com , or discussions related to writing at his blog, Rob on Writing (http://robonwriting.com).

Other Links:

Amazon Author Page: http://amzn.to/RSGuthrie

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/rsguthriebooks

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/rsguthrie

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/rsguthrie

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/rsguthrie

If you’ve ever left a comment on any blog, store website, fan page, or any other Internet site, you’ve likely screamed in agony at Captcha. It is the program that requires you to enter “the two words” before the website can determine if you are or are not a bot. (For those of you new to the Internet and/or who could not give a pile of horse puckey what is a “bot”, I’ll tell you anyway: it’s any kind of automated script or computer that goes to every site on the Internet looking for Dave.)

(If you weren’t a fan of 2001: A Space Odyssey or just emerged from a cage, I apologize for you missing that last humdinger of a joke.)

(I can’t believe I just used the word “humdinger”.)

(Or a reference to “2001: A Space Odyssey”.)

(I’m old.)

Back to Captcha. It’s ridiculous and should be BANNED from all Internet sites. Not because I mind proving I’m not a robot spamming the system but because there are at least two dozen other programs out there that do the job just as well and don’t force you to read Sanskrit (at least I think that’s what language they use for Captcha).

I’ve even had the pleasure of a site asking me to write out the answer for the equation 2 + 8 = ___.

Yet the ninnies at Captcha absolutely REFUSE to alter their stupid program in the least and make BOTH of the “two words” remotely comprehensible. (I have no idea why, but one word is perfectly readable, leading me to believe the other one can be, too, or the first one is useless—it can’t be both.)

Now I have to admit, I did recently try to add some much-needed functionality to my blog (and provide a little security because trust me, it’s what I did/do for a living—securing corporate and government networks, that is—and you DO NOT want to know how vulnerable you are and to whom if your passwords are not at least 10-12+ characters in length, shun or misspell dictionary words—yes, even when substituting an @ for an “a”—and stand for something unguessable, like the an acronym of a saying “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” = 0$54M1GL4m. (Don’t use that one.)

And no, I’m not kidding.

My password for my websites is nineteen characters long, and that’s after my nine character one with upper, lower, and number in it got hacked.

Me and my 100 hits a day. HACKED.

I’m not Chase, or Amazon, or the FBI.

So I get it. The use of authentication. And where I was going with my fairly recent upgrade is that IF it uses Captcha (or any program that uses indecipherable text—i.e. if you cannot read it) please say so in the comments. Or email me (I can create accounts and give you a secure password). I am always signed in and my comments are automatically approved (as should yours be once you’ve made one successfully—tell me if that is not working also).

Now, on to “Made in China”. Is there anything—and I do mean anything, at least if it’s less than $100—that isn’t? I know some of you are heavy into world affairs and being green and rooting out all evil on the planet, and I salute you, but I’m not one of those. Don’t get me wrong, I care—I care deeply—I am simply one of the (too many) masses that only have the time to write a check.

I hope that doesn’t read as bad as it sounds. If I became a millionaire, unlike Oprah, I would be asking myself how many girls’ schools and vaccinations I could provide and rice and clean water could be purchased by selling my OTHER FOUR mansions. Actually I wouldn’t even live in one; like my friend Harry, I’d probably downsize rather than upsize.

The irony is my current house (which is actually perfect since we have four dogs and a need for two offices) I could not sell to downsize because our government (who I’ll get to in a moment) and the Merry Highway Robbers called “Wall Street Shitbags” made their loot, bilked the honest rest of us, and then got a nice fat government (taxpayer) bailout.

[By the way, the above is the closest I'll ever get to politics or religion and if you rant at me or comment on the specificity of those comments, it's unlikely you'll get a response because I am not picking on any one political party or bank. I'm lumping them altogether and saying they can all bite me. Hard to argue with that one, I'd say.]

Anyway, I’ve been a tangential wanderer these days, so back to “Made in China”. Again, I fully admit that I write fiction, I’ve not yet dreamed up the book about ten cents per day child labor dungeons (although I think I just heard my muse start typing; she’s WAY old school, so who knows?) but I don’t know a ton about sweat shops, exported labor, and the like, however I bought a six-pack of cloths for my sunglasses (since I never seem to have one when my shades are tougher to look through than a chain-smoker’s lungs) and each individually-wrapped bag (one per cloth) said, wait for it—”Made in China”.

The way I see it, the Chinese are making every single product small enough to hold in your hand (and probably myriad millions of others) and we’re shooting at each other or leaving pipe bombs in school buildings.

What happened to AMERICA? Home of the brave, land of the free? Yes, I still believe with all my heart this is the best country in the world and that until we destroy ourselves, we will remain so. But that’s the problem. Remember the old sports cliché “It’s ours to lose.”?

I think, more than ever, it’s ours to lose.

I lived in Los Angeles during the riots that ensued after the cops who (wrongfully) beat up Rodney King were acquitted. As I walked outside one of the forty-two buildings that made up our company’s campus and saw smoke billowing not a few miles away, then raced to get my son from day care, I remember thinking “we are one-click away from anarchy. Always.”

Here, in Colorado, if they predict a snowstorm (not even “storm of the century”, just a snowstorm) people descend on the grocery stores and gas stations like chimpanzees on a grove of banana trees. Talk of new gun legislation (isn’t there always talk of new gun legislation?) and you literally cannot find ammunition anywhere in the country. You have to use an “ammo-bot” (see, bot, you didn’t think I could bring this back together, did you?) that is updated real time with hundreds of gun shops across the country where in the time it takes you to click on their “available” product, you come up with a webpage that says “Sorry, we’re sold out again.”

That scares me more than who owns a gun. I’ve grown up around guns and the people that tote them all my life and I never knew one who used his or her weapon to commit a crime. But you hint to an urban sprawl of weaponless people that there might be a shortage of bread for a few days and it’s Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Thirty-year-old men running over octogenarians for the last loaf of marble rye.

You go on thinking that it’s not true. I’ve seen it. The DMV where I tested for my first California driver’s license was burned to the ground. Go read the real stories about what happened in New Orleans in the days and weeks in the aftermath of Katrina. In both of the aforementioned cases you’d have done better to ban pipes, two-by-fours, chunks of concrete, gasoline, and matches.

I look around me every day and you know what I see?

Captcha.

The world, the people in it, the way they act, the things they say, the atrocities they commit, the lives they steal for a few dollars and their next high—it all just looks like a big Captcha puzzle to me. And not the easy words. There’s always one easy word. It’s the tough word—the tough decision—that bothers me.

What then?

Who the hell knows?

It’s the who the hell knows that wakes me up in the middle of the night. That and the laughter, across the atmosphere, past the billion dying stars twinkling in the night, all the way from a foreign land.

From China.

While they watch people from the Red states beat down and kick the life out of the Blue-staters, as if they weren’t our own countrymen and women; Sox fans knife Yankees, or bruise and break them near lifeless; “Prolifers” murder innocents; and those knuckleheads who watch all this talking head bullshit on television, decrying the “other side” and how evil they are, decide to murder innocents at marathons or deliver pipe bombs into children’s schools.

Can you smell it? The confused desperation? Like someone trying to get the words correct in a Captcha puzzle they have no hope of ever even understanding?

It smells like panic.

It smells like the end.

James Douglas Morrison, a man with an IQ of 149 and a father who was a Rear Admiral in the Navy, said:

“I want to have my fun before the whole shithouse goes up in flames.”

Jim Morrison would have given Captcha the finger.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The blank page is dead…long live the blank page.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Author known to use spontaneous satire, sarcasm, and unannounced injections of pith or witticisms which may not be suitable for humorless or otherwise jest-challenged individuals. (Witticisms not guaranteed to be witty, funny, comical, hilarious, clever, scintillating, whimsical, wise, endearing, keen, savvy, sagacious, penetrating, fanciful, or otherwise enjoyable. The Surgeon General has determined through laboratory testing that sarcasm can be dangerous, even in small amounts, and should not be ingested by those who are serious, somber, pensive, weighty, funereal, unsmiling, poker-faced, sober, or pregnant.)

Made In China Image credit: mipan / 123RF Stock Photo

            Thank you for visiting this wonderful blog today so you can know a bit more about Little Nani, her stories, her world, and her author. OK, her author is not as interesting as Little Nani, but what can we do? They go hand in hand, so please bear with her.

            Why are we here today? Because Little Nani is suffering a series of changes. “The Funny Adventures of Little Nani” was published for the first time last September 2012, both in print and in ebook form, on Amazon and Createspace. However, along the months, I started feeling less enthusiastic about my book, thinking that the cover was dull and boring, and also thinking that the stories could be improved, maybe going through some extra editing and proofing. So that’s what I did, and now I am much happier about the result and I trust that I will start getting many more sales. Why? Because I will make the books available not only on Amazon and Createspace, but also on Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, and Feed-A-Read.

            There will be also many different options to buy the books. Do you want to buy the whole set of stories? You can do it. Do you want to buy just some stories, the ones you think you would like? You can do it too, since I will publish the stories individually on Smashwords. So you see, different options to match different customers, different readers.

            Once all this is settled and the books are republished on all those retailers, I will start to do the same process with the second book in the Little Nani series, which will be available next Fall.

            Follow the whole blog tour since I will be announcing all the news in the different blogs!

Little Nani is a little girl who likes helping people. However, when she helps people the results can be a bit unexpected. Why is that? Little Nani is a witch! Or at least she wants to be a witch. With her magic wand, she will try to cast different spells to help her friends, but she won’t be successful all the time.

            Follow Little Nani in her funny adventures and meet her extraordinary friends. Funny ostriches, horses that love reading, super-fast turtles, grumpy zombies… Little Nani has lots of friends! You can also draw your own characters!

            Little Nani is willing to become a good witch. Will she manage to do it? Who knows? Read the stories and discover what happens next!

Cinta Garcia de la Rosa is a Spanish writer who has loved the written word since he discovered she was able to read books at age 5. Since then, she has become a bookworm and reads around 100 books every year. She also writes, every day, compulsively, even in the middle of the night. You cannot control when inspiration hits you, can you? She writes in English because she is convinced that in a previous life she was British, so writing in English feels more natural to her than writing in her native language. Yes, she is crazy like that. Cinta Garcia is the author of “The Funny Adventures of Little Nani”, a collection of short stories for children, and “A Foreigner in London”, a short story published on Smashwords. She is a member of Independent Authors International (iAi).

 ~ ~ ~

From Rob: One of the first people I met in the Twittersphere was the lovely Cinta Garcia de la Rosa, an outspoken, wonderful, very talented (“aspiring”) writer. The first thing I did was read one of her short stories and told her “not only are you not ‘aspiring’, you are one heck of a talented writer.” And the most amazing thing is that Cinta is born, raised, and still lives in Spain and English is not her first language. Occasionally in her prose the reader is treated to the fact that her English is not perfect, but she is such a talent that the moments actually enhance the experience rather than detract from it.

When she honored me with a request to participate in her blog tour for her EXTRAORDINARY children’s book “The Funny Adventures of Little Nani”, a collection of short stories about the same sweet, recurring young character as she learns about the world around her, I jumped at the opportunity to host a guest post by someone who is sure to be a sparkling star one day!

I decided to ask her to write about the challenges and advantages of writing in a language that is not her native tongue.

Here is the answer from one of my favorite people (and authors) I have met along my journey. (Cinta will remind you, but don’t forget or neglect to leave a comment—commenting automatically enters you in her contest to win a signed copy of “Little Nani”—and each comment on a different blog entitles you to another chance)!

Advantages and Disadvantages of Authoring Books

in English. by Cinta Garcia

Right now I am very happy because I am a published author, and even though my books are not best-sellers (to be honest, they are not selling well but I hope that changes soon), at least I have achieved something big: people respect my writing now. What? What do you mean? Did people consider you were a bad writing before?

Actually yes. Why? Because I am Spanish and I write in English. I know it sounds crazy, but I don’t feel comfortable writing in Spanish. I have tried, and the results were rubbish. Yeah, rubbish in capital letters. However, when I write in English, it seems my words flow more effortlessly and I think I have managed to write some good stories. In fact, people already know me as the Little Nani author. I’m happy with that.

So, what are the advantages and disadvantages of authoring books in English? Well, the main advantage is that I can reach a wider and bigger audience. That would be impossible if I write just in Spanish. Besides, the biggest Indie Writing community in the whole world is English-speaking, so I guess you have to do what the majority does, right? Joining the Indie movement is a huge advantage, since every author is supportive of their fellow authors (with exceptions, but even the best families have their evil members), so you get even a greater exposure.

Disadvantages? Many. The first one is that people had a hard time thinking of me as a real author, since I was writing in a language different to my own one. Lots of people assumed that my writing wouldn’t have enough quality as to be published. And lots of people thought that my books would be a failure, even before they had the chance of reading something written by me. So I had to fight against those assumptions, and it wasn’t easy, because I felt pressed and stressed, I felt that my writing had to be really good so those people could stop mining my self-confidence as a writer.

Eventually, I finished writing my first collection of short stories featuring Little Nani, I published it, and people started liking my stories. So I feel pretty happy. And now I can say that the advantages are far better than the disadvantages. Not so many people think that I’m a bad writer now, and I stopped listening to the ones that still say that.

Thank you, Rob, for hosting me today! You know you played a very important role in my becoming a published author. If you hadn’t told me that my stories were good, I wouldn’t have tried to publish anything. Thanks!

GIVEAWAY!

Don’t forget to leave a comment, so you can enter the giveaway for the opportunity to win a signed copy of “The Funny Adventures of Little Nani”. If you leave comments in several blogs during the tour, you will get an entry for each comment. So don’t hesitate to comment!

LINKS TO THE BOOKS.

Createspace: https://www.createspace.com/3914481

Amazon (US): http://www.amazon.com/Funny-Adventures-Little-Nani-ebook/dp/B009YMBXJW/ref=tag_dpp_lp_edpp_ttl_in

Amazon (UK): http://www.amazon.co.uk/Funny-Adventures-Little-Nani-ebook/dp/B009YMBXJW/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_t

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/Austenite78

MEDIA LINKS:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CintaGarciaRosa

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Cinta-Garc%C3%ADa-de-la-Rosa-Author/333755993341596

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6470058.Cinta_Garc_a_de_la_Rosa

Amazon Author: http://www.amazon.com/Cinta-Garc%C3%ADa-de-la-Rosa/e/B009LHYYSM

Smashwords Author: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/Austenite78

Website: http://www.cintagarciadelarosa.com/

Blogs: http://cintascorner.wordpress.com/ // http://icantstopreadingblog.com/ //

http://authorsyouwanttoread.wordpress.com/

Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/CintaGarciaRosa/

Tumblr: http://www.tumblr.com/blog/cintascorner

About.me: http://about.me/cintagarcia

Authorsdb: http://authorsdb.com/authors-directory/1034-cinta-garcia-de-la-rosa

Askdavid.com: http://askdavid.com/reviews/book/children-book/3237

My magnum opus received a rejection today, not for publication, but rather, that it was not qualified for a review by any “reviewers” on the website “The New Podler Review of Books: Small Press and self-published books worth reading”. Now I don’t remember ever submitting a review request to this site, although it’s possible. I don’t normally ask for reviews except when I am just putting a book out there and need a few ARC reviews posted so that the almighty ad sites will consider my money worth spending (and then I normally impose shamelessly on fellow authors).

Now the facts that the aforementioned review site is built on the most hideous of the free backdrops on the free “blogspot.com” and that my rejection came from a (free) Gmail address notwithstanding, their subtitle would suggest that my self-published book is “[not] worth reading”. Now had the site just said “Podler Reviews” I probably wouldn’t have given it a second glance. Okay, that AND if the current book under review didn’t have a cover (and writing) quality equivalent to that of a sixth-grader (no, that’s not true—not true at all. Such a commentary insults the sixth-grader).

I know, we’re supposed to have thick skin. And I usually do. Or pretend I do. But just as each time a reader enjoys my work it makes my day, not matter how many books I ever sell or have reviewed, it also stings when someone takes time out of their day to reject you. Doesn’t it? Or am I alone here, wandering in the literary desert of criticism with eyes gouged out and a bloody wrap around my head? It’s a bummer when people that consider dog poop as literature reject you as unreadable. I know, I know, it actually defies logic, but what can I say?

Oh, and I also realize I’m giving them voice by writing about them. The funny thing is, I don’t have anything personal against them. I like helping people. I gave the last $5 in my wallet to a homeless man sitting on a sleeping bag downtown yesterday. I’d have given it to him if it was a twenty. I wish it HAD been a twenty. I try my damndest to equally promote other Indies along with myself, plus add in inspirational quotes, whether my own or someone much more famous, and last week @JustinJWilliams tweeted to me:

Of course I checked him out and this chowderhead uses Twitter as a chat program so we all get to experience how witty he is (I’ll admit, a pile of “original” content, though every time some wandering beast takes a dump we wind up with the same thing, “value” being in the anus of the beholder, I suppose). Whatever. It was far from an arrow to The Great Smaug’s underbelly of armor (no, I’m not implying my writing anything that terrorizes the earth, and since some of you may not have read The Hobbit, I suppose this is all one big egotistic analogy AND plot spoiler—in my defense, yesterday I was having my own pile of a TGIF).

Oh, and a book advertising site declined INK: Eight Rules To A Better Book, at first based on its length being only 104 pages (I was trying to advertise in the “How-To” section; they wanted 50,000 words or more—can you imagine a 50K tome on “How to Change Your Oil”?. When I showed them several examples of books much shorter than mine, one on sniffing wine corks, they responded that they “make exceptions” but the “editorial staff” did not find my book “worthy of exception”. They also mentioned that they don’t always have the time to read every submission, so they take many factors into consideration upon review, including Amazon’s (broken) review/rating system.

1) INK has 11 5-star and 2 4-star reviews (each of which is from a writer or, one, from a writing teacher who said he will now be recommending the book to all his students AND his editors).

2) It was meant as a short, concise, eight things you can easily use right away to give your book a better quality.

3) This was me trying to PAY MONEY to advertise.

4) They admitted all my ads in the past had done very, very well in numbers of sales (I’ve reached the Top 50 on Amazon nearly every time I’ve used them for a promotion).

You want to know how invaluable the Amazon reviewing/rating system is(n’t)? I happened to notice there’d been a new review posted on Black Beast. 3-stars, and here is what the reviewer said:

“I would have given it 4 stars if I believed in demon possesion [sp] or ghosts. But it is a very good story. Bobby Mac is a refreshing character. Not your typical detective.“

Who buys a FICTION book with stated paranormal elements and then subtracts a star for their own lack of belief in possession of ghosts? I don’t believe in possession either; I simply thought it was an interesting twist to the boilerplate Detective novel.

I’ll try to draw this all back together. Inconsistency, illogic, lack of integrity, and dearth of intelligence are really on the top of my list of pet peeves (the latter, less so—it’s really not under anyone’s control; we are who we are). But the world just seems to be going crazy and the answer so many times is “grow a thicker skin”. I’m guessing that thicker skin would not have made a difference had the brave teacher in Boulder not removed the suspicious package (pipe bomb) from the school and had it gone off.

I realize it’s apples and enchiladas but it just seems like the crazies, chowderheads, malcontents, agitators, and hooligans (not futbol hooligans; they’re kind of radically cool—check out Green Street Hooligans, a British Indie) are inheriting the earth one bad book, blog, review, and pipe bomb at a time.

And another thing: thick skin is ugly and requires a lot of moisturizer.

A LOT.

Peace.

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The blank page is dead…long live the blank page.

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Author known to use spontaneous satire, sarcasm, and unannounced injections of pith or witticisms which may not be suitable for humorless or otherwise jest-challenged individuals. (Witticisms not guaranteed to be witty, funny, comical, hilarious, clever, scintillating, whimsical, wise, endearing, keen, savvy, sagacious, penetrating, fanciful, or otherwise enjoyable. The Surgeon General has determined through laboratory testing that sarcasm can be dangerous, even in small amounts, and should not be ingested by those who are serious, somber, pensive, weighty, funereal, unsmiling, poker-faced, sober, or pregnant.)

My previous post was a bit heavy (as they will at times be) so I thought I would follow-up with something carrying “Summer” in the title. I’m unusually happy that Winter is behind us (by the way, I know that seasons aren’t technically capitalized, but I can’t help but find myself thinking that is wrong—am I alone in that, as a writer, I mean?). Regardless, we (Colorado) didn’t have an extraordinarily snowy Winter; I don’t mind those, particularly since this was the first Winter in twenty-three years I was not commuting to and from a day job and really would have enjoy snow in the feet (apologies to my wife). Instead we had a cold, dreary winter (by CO standards).

So here we are, technically a capitalized Spring, but the weather (80s today) is hinting at Summer and we writers know what that means, eh?

Summer reading = Summer sales, no?

Mine have picked up some, I will admit, and school’s not quite out, so there’s still time to see a Christmas-like deluge (oh what I wouldn’t give for a Christmas-like deluge).

A kidney?

To hell with it, I’ve got TWO, and with current amniotic fluid stem cell research, assuming the government doesn’t mess this one up (big assumption, I know), they’re going to be growing organs in a few years.

Sales. Such a powerful word. Life or death. I wish taxes were a certainty because it would mean SALES were a certainty. But they aren’t, are they? I know, we exude confidence—everyone’s a bestseller. But we know that’s not true, not always anyway.

We’re in a tough business. And it should be tough. I just wish quality writing played a larger role in determining an author’s relative success than Taro cards. But in this “needle in a pile of needles” publishing world in which we find ourselves (hopefully) treading water, it is what it is.

And may I take this opportunity to say God (or whatever you consider in charge of your fate, if anything) bless fellow writers who work tirelessly to promote other writers. I have to say for the record that Caleb Pirtle and Stephen Woodfin qualify in quadruple spades. Have you checked out Venture Galleries yet? You find me a better gathering of talented, potential-fueled writers anywhere else on the net. These two gentlemen (talented enough to be devoting their valuable time to themselves and their own work) put in countless hours building foundations for other writers.

My son introduced me to a motivational speech/video the other day. I’m sharing it with you here in the hopes that it will cheer you, motivate you, and get you ready to grasp success by the throat when it happens to step into the room with you. I dedicate it to Caleb and Stephen, two men who clearly know what it means to give up sleep. I thank you, sirs. You are an inspiration to us all.

Clearly humans must sleep, but hopefully you get the point. I preach all the Ps: perseverance, persistence, prevalence, proliferation, and potential. Without dedicating everything you’ve got, all are worthless. Especially potential. I know a LOT of writers with big time potential that don’t seem to want to proliferate, and I respect them for writing because of how it makes them feel. Personally, I want to reach as many readers as possible and sell a million books. Not to become rich, but for that feeling I get every time a single reader takes the time to say a book I wrote moved them, touched them, entertained them, fixed them, or otherwise made a difference in their lives.

You have to begin with the WHY. Why do you write? I write to share, from the heart and soul. I also write to reach out and make a difference. I’ve always believed in Reading as the most important of all the Rs. In fact, it transcends the other two, even wRiting. Because writing is simply a collection of printed characters on a page until someone reads it.

For me, reading fuels my muse.

Unfortunately, it seems the last thing for which I make time. Okay, exercise is the last thing, but I used to read a LOT and I love it. I write exponentially better and it keeps my mind focused on the craft.

Sorry for the tangential ride. We got away from Summer and the sales that will (hopefully) come with it.

How have the rest of you been doing? Big increase, little increase, none?

Whatever the case, I think we are all ready for some warmth. If you’re in Arizona, Texas, Florida, or any of the other Winter destinations, I hope you are a snowbird and are already heading for milder temps.

Speaking of fuel, sales will help put some gas in that tank.

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The blank page is dead…long live the blank page.

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Author known to use spontaneous satire, sarcasm, and unannounced injections of pith or witticisms which may not be suitable for humorless or otherwise jest-challenged individuals. (Witticisms not guaranteed to be witty, funny, comical, hilarious, clever, scintillating, whimsical, wise, endearing, keen, savvy, sagacious, penetrating, fanciful, or otherwise enjoyable. The Surgeon General has determined through laboratory testing that sarcasm can be dangerous, even in small amounts, and should not be ingested by those who are serious, somber, pensive, weighty, funereal, unsmiling, poker-faced, sober, or pregnant.)

It’s a tough day for us, from any angle. Both my wife and I have already lost our mothers (and fathers, and all our grandparents). I was very close with my mother. When I had cancer in 2002 she would come by my house every day and just sit with me. We could talk four hours and hours, she and I. I remember the comfort she brought to me then being palpable, even ten years later, like the way the first taste of honey dripping from the spoon tickles your taste buds.

It’s a good memory and I think of it often, particularly since it means I am over ten years cancer-free, but I miss her terribly. She died in 2004. Officially, it was a blood clot to the brain, but she had rheumatoid arthritis which really isn’t “arthritis” at all (at least not in the way most people think of it—it is an auto-immune disease, which cripples you while it makes it more difficult to fight off infections). She went into the hospital at a (relatively) healthy sixty years young, a common cold having turned to pneumonia. She nearly died three weeks into her coma (the renal dipstick, I mean, specialist, told us there was no hope—she was about 12-years-old and in Birkenstocks. I’ll never forget that, either; probably went to a really cool school and pulled awesome grades), and then “miraculously” our fighting mother’s kidneys popped back online just as we had told Birkenstocks they would.

She was going to make it. Then she got a staph infection (from being in the hospital) and a clot in her heart broke free, traveled all the way to her brain, and killed her.

That’s not true. We killed her. When we removed her from life support on Easter Sunday. She wouldn’t have wanted to live the way she would have had to live. She wouldn’t have been herself. She would have needed someone to do everything for her, and that would be if she survived first the hospital (already 45 days in bed) and then 6-8 months of intense physical therapy just to counteract all the atrophy, so she could lie in a bed the rest of her days. Or, if she was lucky, a wheelchair once in a while to marvel at spring the way she always did (though we knew she’d be incapable of marveling ever again).

None of it made the decision any easier or the guilt over the years any less demonic.

We killed her. We sat with her while she died, beside her bed, my brother, my sister, and me.

I felt her soul as it passed through me, just after whispering in her ear “it’s okay, we’re okay, you can go now.”

Our father—her soulmate for twenty-seven years—had been gone since a heart attack took him in ninety-three. She missed him every day, and that was one of the things that made me proudest of her: the fact that she still stayed happy, never once even considered meeting someone else. She already had a husband, and he was meeting her at another time, just down the road.

Doctors are not gods. They are not even necessarily good drivers. They’re just people who studied about the human body.

My advice? Shop around. I had a friend who was told by two respected hospitals’ oncologists to take his colon cancer home with him and prepare the things we prepare when we and our colon cancer aren’t going to be around anymore. Twenty percent, they said, his chance of survival.

Twenty percent? My friend figured he’d never finished lower than the eightieth percentile in anything in his life and called the Mayo Clinic.

He’s still around, almost twenty years later. His colon cancer took a powder.

This day is also hard because my wife and I lost our son to SIDS in 2008 when he was two months old. We didn’t actually lose him. He died, too. His name was Brody—Brody John Guthrie, middle name from his maternal grandfather, who was the only of our parents to meet him and who died himself a few months later. Brody was the miracle pregnancy and he was born on Christmas Day, a C-section already scheduled for the 26th.

Christmas, Easter, Mother’s Day. Holidays are tough on my family.

2008 was a tough. We lost a dog and a job that year, too.

But my wife is still a mother, just as my mom was always still a wife.

Her son’s waiting just down the road a bit.

Not far, yet never close enough.

I don’t usually do the “blog chains”, mostly because by the time they get to me everyone who’s willing to do one has done it already and/or they want the blogger to find like seven or eight other bloggers (impossible for me; I’m too impatient), but when friend and fellow author, Robin Nolet, asked me, I liked the flavor, if you will, of this Next Big Thing blog campaign. The campaign began in Australia, I’m told, and went international, showcasing new authors and/or new books. Always a good thing. Each author answers the same set of questions about a recently published book and/or those that are slated to be released. Then that author “tags” (in my case) two other authors who do the same thing. This also times out well for me because not only did I release a new book last Friday but it completed the trilogy so I also put together a digital “boxed set” for those who haven’t read any of the books and want to so they can save a buck a book on some already low-priced predecessors:

What is the working title of your next book?

Well my next book is Honor Land, the third in the James Pruett Mystery Series, but I literally just published Reckoning, the third in the Detective Bobby Mac Thriller trilogy with Black Beast being the first and LOST being the second book in that set.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

I’ve always known I wanted to write series because, like great television programs or well-made sequels to popular movies, I love to get involved with characters, know their loves, dislikes, weaknesses, strengths, and then follow them from story to story. This particular series is set in Denver, as am I, so it made sense for me. I put a little of the city’s history in the series, too.

What genre does your book fall under?

The genre I write in is Mystery/Thriller/Police/Detective but in the Bobby Mac detective series there is an underlying ages-old Good versus Evil that is really hard to categorize. I hate using the “preset” genres like Paranormal or Occult or Horror because that conjures images of Vampires, Zombies, Ghosts, etc. and this twist is really about something most of the world believes in one form or another. I choose to use more of the God and Devil angle to describe it, but it’s not the bulk of the book, only something that a man finds out about his lineage that, frankly, he has a hard time accepting. He’s a cop, and a good one, and suddenly he finds himself thrust into a strange, unacceptable (to him) reality that his family has been “cops” for a thousand years.

It’s core is really about the questions most of us have and what would we do if presented with evidence of what I call preternatural? My main character is still having his doubts in the third books, as would most of us, I think. But he’s called upon to do what he’s sworn to do, and that is serve and protect—his constituency has simply grown to the nth degree.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

It’s funny, for a blog story over a year ago, we actually needed to give an artist some picture of a person who exemplified who we saw in our minds for our main character. After searching the web for a photo of a “man”, I realized I already saw him as actor Alex O’Loughlin, an Australian (ironically enough) actor (currently Steve McGarrett, in the new version of Hawaii Five-0). I also did a Photoshop rendering of him in an action shot, so for better or worse, in my mind it will forever be Alex that I see as Detective Bobby Mac. (Apologies to Mr. O’Loughlin, but the women readers really do seem to love Bobby Mac—just saying.)

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

When a down-to-earth detective who has spent the past ten years of his distinguished career dealing with the unbelievable is forced to face a reckoning that could mean the beginning or end of all he knows and loves, will he finally believe?

Who is publishing your book?

Reckoning and the entire series is self-published but I am currently waiting to hear about a possible offer to join a publisher for my paperbacks.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

I always thought writing a book would be the hardest part. I’m luck in that regard because my first draft usually ends up being 90% unchanged after my editor takes his talented eyes to it. The time consumption is in doing the other 5-6 positions of a business (Marketer, Publicist, Scheduler, Proofreader, Editor, etc.).

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

If you enjoy James Lee Burke, Dennis Lehane, with a little Stephen King and Dan Brown once in a while, you’ll love this series. I can’t compare it to a specific book although a few reviewers did mention The Da Vinci Code.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Well, the honest answer to this one is “the series”. I’ve had the trilogy planned in my mind, and Reckoning is the best of the three books for me. It was always intended to be the book that brought home questions unanswered, characters twists and returns that boggle, and an overall closure with just a drop of “maybe he’ll be back”.

What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

I try to write with brevity, which is to say that the series has been called, many times, a page-turner (which I take as one of the highest compliments a writer can receive. I believe in books being about the meat and potatoes, not eighty pages on tilling the ground for the carrot planting (if that makes any sense at all). My books tend to move and this series was always intended to be my “beach/vacation read”. I love it for that, as do most readers who have commented.

You can find Reckoning, the first two books in the Detective Bobby Mac Thriller series, as well as my other books here on Amazon and here on Smashwords.

And if perchance you haven’t read any of the Bobby Mac series, click on this banner and you can have all three Kindle copies for a buck off a book!

(It’s also available on Smashwords!)

Next up on The Next Big Thing, I’ve tagged these two fabulous authors:

On May 16th, go to http://www.ChickletsLit.com to read writer Gail Gentry’s fantastic blog about her Next Big Thing and on May 23rd go to http://authorryanschneider.blogspot.com/ to read about The Next Big Thing author Ryan Schneider has cooking!

Ryan Schneider’s new book!

As most of you know from previous posts, comments I’ve made, and for the mind-readers out there, that I believe the faithful old writer’s term “word count” is about as useful to the quality of a book as is the words “pigeon shit”. Now pardon my New York Central Park language, but what in the great, green grass Universe has word count got to do with what’s between the covers? The answer is NOTHING.

Now, let’s set some ground rules first:

There are lines, fuzzy as they may get, between calling a piece a short story, a short-short, a novella, a novel—but in the end, if you’re anywhere near the count (and I’m not talking about people running contests where either the point is to write in so many words—normally a smaller number—or having a maximum count so that their readers aren’t judging “short stories” that are 100,000 words long) all I, or anyone else, care about is how well your book reads. In other words, pay attention to the Eight Commandments of writing a better book (shameless self-plug), NOT word count.

In fact, I will go as far as to say this: I’ve heard writers talking about word count like men talk about the length of their johnsons. As in, if one novel is 50,000 words, and another is 100,000, there is some implication that longer is better. On the contrary. I would bet anyone whose last name is not Dickens, Tolstoy, or Joyce that a 100,000 word book has a few extra sentences.

More like a hundred.

In all seriousness, if your book is its very best at 100,000 words, you should be writing 100,000 words. If mine is best at 50,000, then so be it. We aren’t talking about changing the oil in an engine here, where there’s a predetermined (and necessary) level of fluid, or a cake recipe, where baking soda confused with baking powder or eggs, flour, etc. in the wrong amounts will cause havoc—we’re talking about a work of art.

How can anyone say what word count a book should be before it’s written? Oh, sure, for ballpark estimates and such. If your best work in Genre A is 100,000 words and now you’re going to crank out some no-fluff, all-action, pulp fiction at 60,000 a pop, talk all day long about your cock size—I mean BOOK SIZE (and I was talking about his CHICKEN, you dirty-minded souls).

Which segues into another reality: that size, to a point, could have a little to do with price, genre, and some other factors (notoriety, for one—for the foreseeable future, James Lee Burke, Dennis Lehane, Michael Connelly, and Patricia Cornwell are all going to be able to charge 7-8 times what I can for, in some cases, arguably comparable quality).

Back in the day, when I was paying my hard-earned $25.99 as a teenager for the latest hardback Stephen King novel, would I have noticed 50,000 words versus 100,000? Probably. (Not that anyone will ever have to worry about King writing too few words, but you get the point.) If we were talking about $10-20 per unit here (still talking books, folks), I can see—to a point—where size might come into it. You may personally feel you didn’t get what you paid for if you dropped $16 on a book and read it in one sitting.

Realistically, could I add length to a book and still maintain the quality? Well think about it. I have 6-7 books out there. I just made one into a digital trilogy “boxed set”. All that document is amounts to combining the other three books, which makes for?

A longer word count / bigger book. Granted it would be written much differently because we’re talking three different plot arcs, etc., but if more words were absolutely necessary look at it like this: over a writer’s lifetime, how many words will she or he write? Assuming they are all good, that’s an enormous number of words. All I am saying is write the story. Write it from the core—the heart, the soul. And tell as much little as possible, showing with the absence of need for letters on the page.

Alas, these days when some people won’t really start considering an Unknown’s book until they get at least a taste at 99 cents? Well, don’t get me started on 99 cents for a new book, or for that matter, even $3.99. But if the prices of books are going to stay at less than a Starbucks coffee, I’m not going to write the entire adventures of my main character in one 150,000 word novel and sell it for chump change. Not when King’s latest piece of doo-doo short story that he completely phoned in (Mile 81, which is more than the page count) is selling for the same price as most Unknowns fresh novels and his “novel-length” work is still going for $8.99 (stuff from the 70s) to $15.99 for the recent releases (and yes, I’m talking Kindle prices, not Hardback). I think 50,000 quality words for $3.99 is more than fair.

And the last thing the market needs is a gaggle of mediocre writers trying to ADD more words to make their books longer. Has anyone out there ever been in a writing workshop or class where you were working hard at giving honest critiques and ever found yourself telling another writer to add a lot more verbiage to make a section better?

Elie Wiesel, one of my favorite writers, said this (also my favorite writer’s quote):

“Writing is not like painting where you add. It is not what you put on the canvas that the reader sees. Writing is more like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain.”

So don’t let them beat you up over word count. I’ll go so far as to say “try making your work shorter.” I used to hate the editing process when I was younger, not because it was hard (I loved making the piece stronger, as is suggested by Wiesel), but rather because I NEVER ended up with MORE words (and back then, all anyone clamored about was “one hundred thousand words makes a good novel”—even though, by most definitions, 50,000 is the minimum for “calling” it a novel versus novella).

Better quality, fewer words.

Try it.

More with less, writers.

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The blank page is dead…long live the blank page.

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Author known to use spontaneous satire, sarcasm, and unannounced injections of pith or witticisms which may not be suitable for humorless or otherwise jest-challenged individuals. (Witticisms not guaranteed to be witty, funny, comical, hilarious, clever, scintillating, whimsical, wise, endearing, keen, savvy, sagacious, penetrating, fanciful, or otherwise enjoyable. The Surgeon General has determined through laboratory testing that sarcasm can be dangerous, even in small amounts, and should not be ingested by those who are serious, somber, pensive, weighty, funereal, unsmiling, poker-faced, sober, or pregnant.)

Nah, there’s really only one, but if you’re a writer, it’s a big one (and a reason that wakes many in a cold sweat): you don’t want to look as if you don’t know your own profession. Quick pop quiz:

Which of the sentences below is correct?

There are a myriad of reasons to be wondering what the heck this blog is regarding.

There are myriad reasons to be wondering what the heck this blog is regarding.

I’ll give you a hint: “myriad” is an adjective.

And a noun.

They’re both correct.

Don’t you love the English language (rhetorical question you Spanish, French, German, etc. speaking readers)?

When I was a fledgling writer, oh so many years ago, a mentor (and not only excellent writer but mind in general) complimented me on being one of the few writers he knew who used the word correctly (I used it as an adjective, e.g. “I saw myriad paths to be taken.”). My head blew up like a hot air balloon. And that wasn’t the only time I was patted on the back (or cringed when I read an official news release by a President or an article by a highly-paid writing professional like “They found a myriad of protesters gathered at the White House lawn.”).

Just the other day I told a writer friend who trusts me that the correct usage was in the form of an adjective (e.g. “innumerable”) and you shouldn’t say “a myriad of stars in the sky.” Then my own self-criticism got the better of me and I really started researching (I’d never actually told anyone how to use it, I just always chuckled to myself that I knew where the bear dumped his load in the buckwheat).

Wikipedia put me in my place first. The word’s origin is from the Greek “(myrios, plural myriades), ‘numberless, countless, infinite’, [and] is a classical Greek word for the number 10,000.” The irony is that the noun form of the word predates its use as an adjective. Wikipedia uses two literature examples (from Webster.com):

“The noun myriad has appeared in the works of such writers as Milton (plural myriads) and Thoreau (a myriad of), and it continues to occur frequently in reputable English.”

This excellent 2009 blog on the subject by a fellow grammarian (and originally, too, a believer in the adjectival form of the word) Brian White had the following to share:

“Garner’s Modern English Usage says that while ‘myriad is more concise as an adjective … the mere fact that the adjective is handier than the noun doesn’t mean the latter is substandard. The noun (ca. 1555) has been with us more than 200 years longer than the adjective (ca. 1791), and the choice is a question of style, not correctness.’”

So I am putting this one to bed, jettisoning my braggadocio on the subject, and apologizing to my friend, whom I steered incorrectly. However, I will continue to use the word in its (to me) efficient form.

(And secretly believe, self-gratuitously of course, that I am still right.)

I know.

I’m incorrigible.

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The blank page is dead…long live the blank page.

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Author known to use spontaneous satire, sarcasm, and unannounced injections of pith or witticisms which may not be suitable for humorless or otherwise jest-challenged individuals. (Witticisms not guaranteed to be witty, funny, comical, hilarious, clever, scintillating, whimsical, wise, endearing, keen, savvy, sagacious, penetrating, fanciful, or otherwise enjoyable. The Surgeon General has determined through laboratory testing that sarcasm can be dangerous, even in small amounts, and should not be ingested by those who are serious, somber, pensive, weighty, funereal, unsmiling, poker-faced, sober, or pregnant.)

I have always been a little addicted to television (which is like saying you’re a little pregnant, I know). The irony is that I grew up with crappy television and in my young adulthood, as much as the box still lured me into its glowing beam, I did formulate an opinion that watching the boob tube really did destroy brain cells (or at the very least, did nothing at all to constructively assist the quality of those that already existed).

The other big problem with television growing up was that to watch it, you had (by definition) to also be a couch potato. Bright and sunny out? Didn’t matter, Gilligan’s Island was on. Activity Day at the park? Hmm. That or Charlie’s Angels. I’ll get back to you on that one, but feel free to start without me.

Now, with DVR technology, I am in control of my television’s timing and not the other way around.

But is it still just crappy, mindless, even mind-dumbing activity? You’ll be happy to know I’ve come to an answer. Actually, I’ve come to two.

Yes.

And no.

Cable television, which was always arguably better than “network” programming (we didn’t have cable—in fact, in Wyoming, we didn’t have stations, as in plural). But I have to say, as a writer, I am über-sensitive to poor writing (and nothing begets poor acting like poor writing). The truth is, not to be biased, but I honestly believe the truthful actors when they thank their writers for the awards they win, for it is writers who put the words in their mouths. Yes, there is most definitely an art and talent to acting, but at the very least, if the most talented actor in the known world was given a script written by the worst writer, it’s over. A great script can save a mediocre actor, even make him or her great in one film or another.

Thing is, the writing on television has actually become better than that of (perish the thought) Hollywood. Say it ain’t so.

Sorry Harvey (Weinstein), your movies suck. Most of them anyway. And when one (shitty) movie costs me half a month’s cable bill after being gouged for a few ounces of flat soda mixed with a ton of ice and bent over the proverbial barrel, sans lube, for a bucket of greasy, day-old popcorn, I’m more than ready for the comfort of my own lounger/bed/sofa and that 50+ inch plasma beauty.

But it’s not just the cost. Shows like Justified, Dexter, Sons of Anarchy, Nurse Jackie, Game of Thrones—and lest one forget the retired genius behind shows like The Sopranos, Deadwood, and (I want to cry) Entourage.

I could go on. But then I catch an episode of Criminal Minds or CSI: Miami (better named CSI:One-Liners from Turdville) and I am crushed. A fat, rosy-cheeked geekstress using a keyboard (no mouse) to hack into bank accounts, real estate records, migration databases, personal computers, all popping up on her screens within SECONDS (that’s right, the writers don’t even have enough respect for their viewers to have such Orwellian and completely nonsensical rubbish take a day or two and come up in garbled text instead of professional GUI presentation that looks better than the software I pay hundreds for).

Oh, and did I mention this goddess of hackerdom is doing all of this for her stingy, by-the-rules, don’t even tell a fib to get to some important information (entirely legal) FBI BOSS??

JFC.

And the writers behind David Caruso are so bad on CSI:Miami that I decided to go web-hunting for a montage of one-liners that will turn your stomach, curl your toes, boggle your brain, and make you wish YOU could make the kind of scratch these freaking chowderheads are making writing pure pig droppings for what is ostensibly a serious show about very serious (viscous, disgusting, sociopathic, nightmarish, even perpetrated-upon-children) crimes and the CSI techniques that are used to catch the completely deranged bad people.

I figured the minions on YouTube couldn’t possibly let me down, having done all the hard work for me:

That montage was only the beginning of each show; these one-liners appear again and again throughout every episode, usually while standing over the victim of a horrendous, violating crime. It makes me long for medieval times when, if a jester was disrespectfully horrible, he found himself drawn and quartered.

Do these dipshits not know that there are real victims of real crimes and it’s not time for Henny Youngman when one has just occurred, fictional or not? I guess that makes the writing not only unfunny and awful but insensitive, too. Nice combination for the resumé.

So this is my final evaluation: network television, while it’s still getting better (Modern Family and The Following come to my mind, but I am sure there are others you may be watching), cable television has really distanced itself from the competition and pay channels may not only be giving Hollywood a run for its money but may soon pass (and then lap) its competitor, the Silver Screen.

In closing I wanted to make a comment about why I enjoy (well-written) television so much. Just as when I was spending my day doing IT-related tasks, I didn’t relish the idea of coming home and working on my own home network; or as the chef occasionally wishes to dine out; as a writer, I do enjoy spending a couple hours in the evening letting someone else do the legwork for MY enjoyment while my muse takes a well-earned snooze.

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The blank page is dead…long live the blank page.

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Author known to use spontaneous satire, sarcasm, and unannounced injections of pith or witticisms which may not be suitable for humorless or otherwise jest-challenged individuals. (Witticisms not guaranteed to be witty, funny, comical, hilarious, clever, scintillating, whimsical, wise, endearing, keen, savvy, sagacious, penetrating, fanciful, or otherwise enjoyable. The Surgeon General has determined through laboratory testing that sarcasm can be dangerous, even in small amounts, and should not be ingested by those who are serious, somber, pensive, weighty, funereal, unsmiling, poker-faced, sober, or pregnant.)