StanleyWheeler

"The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or perchance a palace or temple on the earth, and at length the middle-aged man concludes to build a wood-shed with them." --Thoreau I'm still dreaming of passageways to the moon and neglecting the wood-shed--and other things. I blame my parents, or my wife, or my kids; someone or something somewhere has had a bad influence on me. I would hate to think that I'm responsible for my own lack of success. Most people rant about wanting what they deserve. That's the last thing I want; I'd rather have something good. *** Fishing this week--not with the musketeer, but with a couple of the musketeers. The fishing wasn't great--I only caught one good-sized bass--but it beat a day at the office. *** On the other hand (as if that fishing thing only took one hand), the fishing and other matters, including but not limited to the weekly tour of duty on the Craftsman warmachine, a day sp...

Nature changed her mind. She had written a wonderful spring week with abundant sunshine filling days with the warm supple feel of a baby's smooth cheek. She had brought not only green but striking yellow hues about which bees and assorted other insects turned to and fro in their ecstatic aerial dances. She had a change of heart on Friday. She ferociously rewrote, adding plot complications that included gray skies which brooded in a dark funk above the landscape before lashing out with furious winds and unleashing airborne oceans to remind us that April is a capricious child prone to sudden (and sodden) tantrums. Nature is all about character development. She writes in epic colors with the voice of thunder and tempest without ever forgetting the details that bring her characters to life--and yet she is not nearly so eloquent as the empty tomb. In other words, it was too wet to mow and too wet, windy and rainy to spray the weeds. I did manage to repair a cabinet door and launch in...

"I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness." --Thoreau I cast a book into the chasm this week. I never heard it hit the bottom. Although that may sound like a reference to the way I publish my own books, it's actually about a book that I was reading which I cast off; I'm not going to finish it. The story ceased to interest me. I didn't like the characters and I discovered that I didn't really care where the story was going. It was a book that I picked up for free and thought it would be a quick read, a break from Brandon Sanderson's Oathbringer .  I saw that I still had 22 hours of Oathbringer left and I needed a break. Even a tasty main dish benefits from an interesting side dish. I chose the free book as the side dish. At about 40% or so through that book, I saw that I still had approximately 11 hours of reading left. I considered the characters...

"The more thrilling, wonderful, divine objects I behold in a day, the more expanded and immortal I become." -Thoreau Speaking of thrilling and wonderful objects, take a look at this: Which you can get here (hatchet and knife not included).  Immortality is looking me in the rude eye and I intend to expand. As far as the expansion goes, I fell short of my goal for the week on the sequel, but I did more than double what I had last week. I'm just over 8,500 words in -- so it's ten percent finished; I'm in chapter three. As you can see from the picture, my paperback copy came this week, honestly I set the paper size larger than I intended so the book is a little thinner than I had planned. Rather than change it, I'll make each book in the series that size--and I'm looking for reviews. The ebook is only $0.99. *** On another thrilling front, I dismembered three corpses this week. These three individuals had been hanging around my house for some...