Wandering Today.

I spent the day wandering around the Mount Mitchell/Linville Gorge today. More later.

Selfie at Setrock Creek Falls at the Black Mountain Campground at the base of Mount Mitchell.

Selfie at Linville Gorge. The last time I was at this area (Pinchin Trail) was in 2009. Away from the cliff face, the forests have recovered quite a lot since the 2007 fires that burned all the way down to the mineral soil.

Scene at Mount Mitchell State Park. There was quite a bit of snow above 6,000 feet there.

The rugged Linville Gorge. Notice the recent landslide on the right side.

Here's an old digital photo I took from way back. November 30, 2008. I shot it with my first digital camera. I think it was 4 megapixel Canon. I recall it had a pretty good installed lens and was built like a tank. It was heavy, made of metal. I dropped that little camera off of boulders half a dozen times. It got some dents but kept taking photos. If you dropped a modern Canon ten feet off of a boulder onto another boulder it would shatter. Not that one. It eventually gave up the ghost, or else I'd still be using it for casual shots.

This one was taken on the Blue Ridge Parkway at Rocky Knob in Virginia. We had gotten onto the Blue Ridge Parkway on the way home from the Peaks of Otter and a sudden ice storm had struck the high ridges. If we hadn't had four-wheel drive we'd have been stuck, but good. As it was I paused to take some photographs and then edged my way down to lower elevations and the heck off of the Parkway to safety.

 

 

Rocky Knob, Blue Ridge Parkway, Virginia.

 

Snow Memories.

When I was a kid in the deep South of the USA, the most wonderful thing that I would see were the infrequent snowfalls we'd get. So beautiful and fun to play in. But the most depressing thing was to watch it taper until the storm was over, melting until it was all just a memory.

Currently it's snowing. Just light snow showers. But we only get to see this kind of thing but rarely. It did snow briefly last week, no accumulation. And it's snowing now but the last I heard we're not supposed to get any accumulation. Winter is fading fast and will be over soon. I'd be surprised if we get any snowstorm that leaves any accumulation this season, but I suppose it could happen.

If I didn't have my part-time job tomorrow I'd head up to the mountains where the high country is supposed to get several inches of snow. One more reason, I think, to get rid of the part-time job. I've cut it back to two days a week. Maybe zero would be best. Life is, after all, quite short.

Blackwater Falls in a snowstorm.

Deer in Cades Cove, February of 2014.

Two deer in the snow at Blackwater Falls State Park, WV.

Me, on the Alum Cave Bluffs Trail near the summit of Mount LeConte in March 0f 2005.

Same trail, no people.

Neglected!

Alas, I've been neglecting the old blog of late. It was not intentional. 

For a few years it was my intention to post here as often as I could as a way to spur me to work on my fiction writing every day. It worked in that way for a few years when I needed it as a crutch for that kind of thing. Then, after I left the Postal Service I got out of the habit of posting on the blog very much and went to other online access points to keep in touch with other people.

For the past couple of years, especially, I tended to steer clear of my blogging activities. When I was working the low-level management job I was often too busy or too stressed to come to the old desktop and create an announcement or essay to post here. Over the past couple of decades I had seen blogs that I once frequented vanish completely as the creators of them went mainly to Facebook to stay in touch with other creators or their fans. Facebook seems to have taken quite a toll on blogging.

At any rate, here I am.

Since November of 2019 I have been busy getting my back-list of novels into print. That has been foremost in my creative efforts. Plus I decided to self-publish my latest novel which has been somewhat of a chore. I have never been---to put it mildly---a fan of self-publishing. In fact, I did everything to steer clear of it since Amazon made it oh-so easy for anyone and everyone to go that route. But...I find myself walking that road.

Getting my next back-list novel out has been foremost in my efforts. That one is WORKING CLASS HERO: The Autobiography of a Super-Hero. I renegotiated the audiobook contract with Beacon Audiobooks, so that has been taken care of. But I haven't landed cover art that satisfies me for getting the novel back into print. Add to this the fact that a traditional publisher has expressed some interest in the project and I find myself in something of a holding pattern. If the situation is right, I may send that book to a new publisher and not do it myself. Handling everything---cover art, editing, layouts, formatting, publishing, advertising, promotions---is frankly a pain in the ass. I'd rather just be a writer. I have never been a salesman and frankly that job does not interest me the way it does some people.

In between working on the books, I have been taking advantage of being retired to go hiking and to take trips with Carole to go camping and sightseeing here and there.

So. Life in retirement is proving to be a lot of fun, but also almost as busy as my life as a working stiff punching clocks five days a week.

I'm sitting in my office now trying to decide which of my back-list novels to release next. Should I go forward with WORKING CLASS HERO? Get THE CRAG back to the light of day? Will WITHERING make the cut first? Or maybe THE NEW ECOLOGY OF DEATH? Or something else?

It's a conundrum. In the meantime, here are pretty pictures of places I've been and things I've seen in the past few weeks.

Oh, yeah! Before I forget! Buy my new audiobook of FOUR FROM MANGROVE! Narrated by the extremely talented Bruce Berlow! High fantasy as good as it gets!

FOUR FROM MANGROVE.

Amicalola Falls.

The shoe tree outside of Wasali-Yi Inn where Appalachian Trail backpackers toss their worn-out boots.

Yours truly with a huge poplar tree at Amicalola Falls.

Lower portion of Helton Creek Falls.

View from the top of Blood Mountain.

The Blood Mountain Shelter.

Upper Helton Creek Falls.

Carole at our campsite at Vogel State Park.

We two at Helton Creek Falls.

I had the summit all to myself at Blood Mountain! Unheard of!

Lottery contraption. They used these when they stole the Cherokee Nation lands from the indigenous people and gave it all away to white folk.

The real deal. Not a fake.

Gold coins minted at the old Dahlonega Mint (closed at the start of the War Between the States).

Rambling Around in Solitude.

Most of the past week I have spent just doing whatever I felt like doing. Today I went on a hike in Pisgah National Forest. Specifically I went to ramble around various places in or near the Wilson Creek National Wild and Scenic River.

I've enjoyed this place for decades, but if you go in the summer on a weekend you will be surrounded by many hundreds of other people---in the thousands on some days. But today was a Monday, and the weather was a bit cold. I never saw another person all day long on the trails. Not one other human. I wasn't bothered by a voice, and I didn't even hear the rumble of a car or truck engine. Even the skies were clear of that normally annoying scrape of passenger jets rubbing against the skies. The only sounds with me were the winds, some bird songs, and often the roar of creeks and waterfalls bloated with recent heavy rains.

It was nice.

Standing beside Harper Creek.

Harper Creek, the sun creeping into the gorge.

Harper Creek Falls. Mud and slick rock prevented me from climbing down into the gorge to get some better photos of this powerful waterfall.

At the boulder field between the creek and a great campsite.

I've wanted to camp here for decades. I'll do it this year.

I'll bet this stretch of trail is amazing when the rhododendron are in bloom.

On breezy Darkside Cliffs enjoying the view of Grandfather Mountain.

Grandfather Mountain/Tanawha with the Linn Cove Viaduct far below it. When many people see photos of this peak (highest in the Blue Ridge Mountains), they think it is a photo of a western peak.

Looking at (I think) the Harper Creek drainage from Darkside Cliffs.

The Tanawha massif as seen from Darkside Cliffs.

Punching the Clock.

Now that I'm retired, my recent experience with my part-time job has reminded me why I hated punching the clock so very, very, very much. I did it for decades, and now I don't have to do that shit anymore.

I've cranked the part-time job back to one to two days per week. Seriously. Really. And I have many weeks planned in 2020 when I won't be in town and will not work at all.

So, I'm reminded of one of my first experiments in self-publishing. My short story attached to my WORKING CLASS HERO novel, "Turn of Events", which is all about punching the clock. Go to Amazon and buy a copy. Less than a buck. You'll dig it, especially if you're a superhero fan.

"Turn of Events" a Working Class Hero story of Billy B; Charlotte, North Carolina's resident badass superhero.

The Coaltion Zombie Trilogy Back in Print!

Some years back I wrote a zombie trilogy called THE COALITION.  They were three (of course) books covering the adventures of loner/libertarian/survivalist/badass Ron Cutter as he made his world through the apocalyptic monstrosity of a shattered downtown Charlotte, NC.

When I got the rights returned for most of my back-list of novels a few months ago I figured it was time to compile all three books into a package and release them under a single cover. So, here they are. Currently I have the package priced at the low price of only $2.99. Grab the collection now! Lots of zombie fiction for less than a buck! You can't beat that with a bludgeon!

THE COALITION Zombie Trilogy! All under one cover for the first time!

A Very Good Shot

I figured I'd show this photo. Occasionally you luck out with timing when photographing wildlife. Mostly you miss the shot. But every now and again---like maybe once in 10,000---the critters will step up the the plate and give you a hit. Sometimes a home run.

In this case I was photographing a doe and her fawn in Stone Mountain State Park. They were lying down enjoying the sun before it set and they would have to deal with the cold winter night. They were both a bit alarmed at my sudden appearance and the doe was walking back and forth stamping her hoof on the ground to tell me that she was not pleased.

And as I took this shot, she moved between me and the fawn and I happened to snap the photo at what is--organically speaking--exactly the right moment. Yes, I admit that the photo was a tad out of focus due to the doe moving about, but it's still an excellent capture.

After this I turned my back on them and exited their presence so that they could go back to enjoying the fading sunlight.

"You shall not pass."

Big Predator and Tiny Prey

When I was taking the following photos I didn't actually realize that I was witnessing a predator catching and killing a tiny prey animal. Once I downloaded the photos and took a close look at the action, I realized that I had recorded a very young fish being captured and eaten by a Great egret. When I looked at the photos close-up, I felt sorry for the little fish. He was doing his best to keep from being eaten, but failed.

Still...it's a part of the cycle of life that Mother Nature has dictated. The following sad drama took place on the south beach of Fort DeSoto Park in Pinellas County, Florida, on the Gulf Coast.

I had been photographing the egret. It was at this point where I realized he'd brought something out of the water that he had captured in his beak.

It was only when I got a chance to sit in the shade and expand the image on the camera screen that I saw the bird had nabbed a little baby puffer fish. A puffer fish defends itself by ingesting air and puffing up like a balloon in an attempt to make a predator let go of it, thinking the fish would be too big to swallow.

The poor little puffer fish was puffed up as big as he could make himself. He was trying like heck to make the giant bird think he was too big to eat.

But he was just too tiny for the ploy to work. The egret swallowed him right down. "Gung!"

And then after eating that tiny, itsy-bitsy morsel, the egret turned and continued on his way, searching for more fish to catch and eat. Poor little puffer fish!

Putting the Books in Print

Well, I've spent the better part of the last few weeks putting several projects into print. One of the first things I've wanted to do was get my back-list into the light of day again. These are the novels that were once under the roof of different publishers and which rights have now reverted to me. So for the next few weeks I'll be concentrating on that project, maybe dropping another new title into the mix along with my latest, THE EMISSARY.

In this modern situation of book publishing, promotions has pretty much been on the shoulders of the author. Even with a major traditional publisher the home office expects the author to spend a hefty portion of their advance on advertising and promotions for the book they just sold. Fuck that. I would often arrange book signings on my own, but I'd be damned if I was going to spend my advance on expensive advertising (beyond sending out some review copies).

At any rate, in getting my older books back onto the market under the Last Hemlock Press imprint, I have to do my own advertising. So I went to a number of my writer/publisher friends to ask them how to go about it and what were the best venues for doing it. There was some interesting stuff to discover, but most of it seemed on the level and logical.

However, in doing my own investigations into the nature of this business of acting as the creator, the publisher, and the advertiser I quickly found out that a vast industry of ripoff artists has emerged and developed like a skein of pond scum. For instance:

Every book needs a cover. And you need a good cover. Fortunately, the big thing currently is that the most popular covers are created via photo manipulation which only requires some talent with a photoshop-type computer program, and access to various photographic images that can be purchased inexpensively for manipulation and alteration into a work of art that can become a book cover. It's a fairly cheap process that can be accomplished in quick order.

Except that there are uncounted numbers of outfits charging crazy prices to create covers. In casting about for decent artists to create my covers I talked with folk charging anywhere from $300 to $700 just to make a photo-manipulated cover. Keeping in mind that most books never earn out to the tune of a thousand bucks, paying that kind of cash for a cover is unreasonable. Fortunately, I found talented Photoshop artists willing to create covers for me for a fraction of what I was being quoted by the more vile of the lot.

My advice (which has worked well for me, so far) is to look for photo-manipulation artists who create good work for a tiny portion of what the more well-known are creating. They're just mucking about with arranging images. It ain't rocket science.

With advertising and reviews I would bump into requirements from both advertisers and reviewers who refused to look at the manuscripts unless I could prove that they had been professionally edited by one firm or another, needing to produce documentation that this had been done. Since I still had my files from when each of my books had been published previously (with my own revisions, additions, and corrections) this was something that had already been accomplished. But I'm not willing to jump through that kind of hoop, so I pretty much avoided any reviewer or advertiser who made such a stipulation. They remind me of those Komodo dragons who bite prey animals, knowing that most of those creatures will get away, but which will sicken and die from the lizard's toxic bite and provide meals for the greater Komodo dragon community. I chose to just avoid these drooling creeps.

After weeks at this new game I have educated myself and found some things that work, and some things that do not. I quickly found out that I should avoid the promotions opportunities that are very, very inexpensive. They might seem like a good deal, but they're really just a mild little scam that some guys have concocted to grab a few bucks from the millions of self-publishers trying to find fame and fortune.

Oh, well. This is a long learning process and I'm basically still a freshman in this. So I'll cast about as logically as I can until I either find a bit of success, or come to the conclusion that there are just far too many people doing this and that it's almost impossible to fight through the crowds. People keep telling me that about 6,000 self-published books appear every few days. I'm not sure if that's true, but for some reason it sounds right and is about as sobering and depressing a number and situation as I have ever encountered.

Keep on keepin' on, as my dad used to say.

DEADLOCKED, available in both ebook and paperback.

THE EMISSARY, ebook, paperback, and audio coming soon.

THE COALITION Zombie Trilogy collected under one cover. Now out in ebook and paperback.

Coming soon will be the reintroduction of WORKING CLASS HERO. It's still available in audio. But the ebook/paperback versions will be out soon, along with the sequel that I want to see in print. With a third book waiting in the wings.

Christmas Tree Bust, Book Score.

Carole and I used to drive up to the mountains every year to buy a Christmas tree at a choose and cut tree farm. But we fell out of the tradition a few years ago and don't go every year anymore. We decided to make it two in a row and drove into the high country yesterday to hit some tree farms and find the perfect tree. Alas, all but one of the farms were closed. So we went to that one and discovered to our horror that a five-foot tree would run $60. That's insane and we drove away with no tree.

Instead we hit a couple of thrift stores on the way out of the mountains and stopped at a state park to do a little hiking. The first thrift store we stopped at was a good thing, because I scored a copy of the old poetry magazine The Outsider. Specifically, the double issue limited edition hardback version of 4 & 5, featuring a tribute to Patchen, and work by Bukowski, Rexroth, Ginsberg, and too many others to list. After I've read it I'll likely sell it. It's missing the paper wrapper that originally came with it, plus the pressed flower that was inserted. But other than that it's a decent copy. Not sure how many remain of the original 500 copies, and I sit here and wonder how the hell a copy ended up in a tiny thrift store high in the mountains of North Carolina in a place no one ever heard of.

You take what you can get in life.

The Outsider 4-5. With work by my favorite, Charles Bukowski. Score!

A doe and fawn see us and try to figure out if they should run away.

Yes, run! Wait...no. Yes. No. Maybe...

Little Glade Pond all frozen and frosty on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

A sliding rock cascade on a creek in Stone Mountain State Park.

Work Ethic

I've always had a strong work ethic. I'm not sure exactly why. It could have been that my parents instilled it in me, or maybe I picked it up along the way toward adulthood from various sources, or perhaps it's just something some people hold dear no matter what they saw or learned in youth. The fact is that I work hard and always have, unless I was being abused by a manager or employer, at which point I would tend to become unruly or outright violent (which is something I never learned, but which is from my intellectual makeup).

At any rate, I took a part-time job not long after I retired. The purpose of the job was to save enough money so that when Carole and I travel we will have enough cash to travel in style, instead of just going where we want without any gilding of the lilly. For example, when we go to Italy I want us to be able to see and do things we wouldn't have the means to do if not for the extra money I save by working part-time. Yeah, we can still go to Europe without the job, but we'll have to be budget-conscious most of the time if not for the padding in the bank account the job affords.

However, I am beginning to think the job was a mistake. And for this reason:

Because I have a strong work ethic, I tend to labor more intensely than most workers. And, as a letter carrier I once knew would say: "Managers will ride the good horse."

And so it is. When I hired on, it was with the clear understanding from my employer (a large corporation) that I am indeed retired and that this job is only part-time. We settled on three-day workweeks and generally seven hours per day. However, because they soon realized that I am beyond competent, they began to abuse the situation. Sometimes they would ask if I could work more hours, but sometimes they would just schedule me more than three days without checking with me. Four days, they would say, because of a tough labor situation. And then it was five-day workweeks because they'd unexpectedly lost some employees. And I complained, but still showed up for work on time and put in the hours.

Yeah, I fucked up. I should have refused the extra days and I should have been more forceful in my attitudes toward the unwanted work.

Finally, I got it across to management that I wasn't going to work the load they were piling on my 62-year-old shoulders. They finally agreed to stop it, but not before scheduling me to work a five-day week, followed by a four-day week. As I look at the future schedule for the rest of the month I am back to either two or three-day workweeks.

That's better...but I'm starting to think I made a mistake in even working part-time, at all. Maybe it's time to find another way to earn some extra traveling cash besides punching a clock two or three days a week. Or just say "fuck it" and live with my regular pensions and savings which are sufficient for living and traveling. I mean...why'd I retire anyway if I'm just going to be in another abusive labor-management situation?