A New Life

I slip around the hallway corner into another long corridor. She reaches out her left hand to a doorknob, and in my mind, I freeze every detail about her. I marvel at her beauty. To list her attributes would require endless description. Far simpler to note her flaws, which in essence, only support her elegance.

A small section of her hair tends to fall across her left eye when she becomes agitated or animated about something. She dresses not to compliment. She does not smile nearly enough. She’s my boss.

I chuckle at the ‘long list’ of her flaws. I also look back at what happened over the past year and I realize I never really lived while with Jessica. I constantly put out fires on one hand and attempted to start blazes on the other. Now, for the first time in my adult life, I understand the meaning of desire – its subtleties, its ability to unseat logic, and its nuances that sneak into the heart.

My job switch definitely came at a critical turning point, shortly after Jess and I divorced. I knew the moment my eyes received the gift of her face my destiny lay with Marci.

Marci. I roll the name over my silent tongue a few times as I make my way past her door. I feel stupid. A schoolboy smitten by the class vixen. I feel teenage angst yet I’m thirty two. I dread opening the door to this meeting. I like the sound of the name, ‘Marci’ bounced off my name, Marty. They feel like the perfect match.

Some manner of miracle must occur to keep the wrong words out of my mouth. I desire to dazzle her with brilliant repartee, but I know my tongue will stumble and some garbled blurb will proceed from my throat and the snickers will flit around the table like evil butterflies that taunt their counterparts in my stomach.

In R&D, the unstated rules of the game demand professionalism, sharp observation, and an ability to focus. At least these make up the rules I’ve observed the past eight months. I’m not a scientist by trade, but I do love to tinker with concepts and possibilities. To be honest, I still wonder why Human Resources chose my resume and then chose me for this position.

I feel like a wildcard, a joker among royalty. Outranked at every turn, I know I offer little to these meetings other than ‘out there’ possibilities. HR must covet my knack to question anything, along with my ability to back up assertions with sound logic.

When Marci’s in the room, though, I tend to lose my competitive edge. I’m a bit too laid back for this crowd anyway. Just wait until I spring my theory of out-of-body time travel on them. No, maybe the time is not right just yet. I may have survived eight months, but something so nutcase-sounding as that could pink slip me real quick.

No, I’ll stick to the script of the mundane and throw in my outlandish observations. Who knows, maybe today I’ll get the chance to impress her. Did I mention she owns the company?

Ficticious Fiction and the Quest for More Characters

Good day readers. Marty Pitchford at your writing service once again. At this point in the editing process, the Rogues Gallery Writers (the real-life Rogues) remain tied up with all their re-writes. This leaves we fictitious characters writing this blog. Like we’re not busy ourselves…

One of my duties this week is to nab a pic that relates to the short stories I penned for the upcoming book, Fictitious Fiction. These searches can be time consuming. For some reason, I cannot locate the pic I really want. Believe it or not, I need a provocative pic of a hot babe posing on the hood of a red convertible.

Yeah, somehow I’ve pigeon-holed myself as the fictitious writer most likely to wax on a sex-related subject. It’s just a phase. Nonetheless, my search has fallen into disarray. I found the perfect model to depict one of the characters in one of the stories, but having that red convertible would be icing on hood, so to speak.

Here she is. Quite the attractive lady, eh? In the story, she’s a blond who lives in Texas near the Gulf of Mexico. It’s a scorching hot day. But hey, I don’t want to give away the story line, now do I?

When coming up with the idea for the story line, I thought it would be cool to take a song lyric and make it into a full-fledged story. I used an old Bobby Goldsboro tune. In the end, I think it came out really well.

I’ll keep looking for that convertible though. After all, I have until Ground Hog’s Day to have my final choice. Picking out pics for a book cover is a critical chore. Actually, I don’t look at it so much as a chore, but the search does gobble up the time. The pic must possess some outstanding appeal.

In our society today, for good or ill, attractive models grab attention. This most likely will not change anytime soon. But you can’t just go grab the first shot you see and slap it on the cover of a book. There needs to be a tie-in to what’s written inside.

In Fictitious Fiction, this lady needed to be blond, attractive, near the Gulf (or some body of water) and it would help if she was out on a sweltering hot day clad in a peasant top or halter. Looking over all those pics of attractive women sure was a tough job, but hey, I take my work seriously, right?

I’m wondering how Dorian, Georgie Mae, and David are doing in their quest for character pics. I can only hope they glean as much enjoyment out of the process as I. The Fictitious Rogues work hard, probably harder than the Real Rogues. We should all be able to enjoy these small but important aspects of putting a book together.

Time to run! I’m off for another half hour of scouring the internet for a tantalizing woman on the hood of a red convertible. It’s a rough life…

Couples Kissing in the Rain

Hello. Marty Pitchford, fictional character, at your service! Yes, it appears I now shoulder the load writing this blog for all the Rogues as well as their fictional characters. Usually I get some help from Dorian, Georgie Mae, and David. (singing…) No body knows….

My writer lost it a few weeks ago. What did he lose?

His mind. The poor sap melted down and fled blogging like an elephant in the sewers of an Indiana Jones movie. Yep, tons of damage to the inner sanctum of my writer’s psyche. I could not fathom what made him snap, so I took a trek along the synapse’s of his mind. Here’s what I found.

Loads of projects, all way behind, pounding at his creative core like Orcs in the Lord of the Rings movies. He overloaded himself to the point that writing a simple blog became the powder keg that would blow Helm’s Deep to smithereens. So instead of self-destructing, he opted to do nothing. I suppose that is akin to Aragorn shushing everyone and saying, “If we’re really quiet, maybe they’ll go away.”

I also strolled through my writer’s more analytical side. There, a few quality tidbits peeked out from the rubble of destruction. One such tidbit came from hits we’ve received on this blog searching for “kissing couple” and “couples kissing in the rain.” The cool thing about these searches? They are not text searches, but ‘image’ searches. Back on November 17, 2011, I ran a post titled Rainy Days and Thursdays which contained the pic you see above.

Being the curious fictional character I am, I decided to bring that pick forward again along with the text and blog title to see if I can jump our hits. Yes, this may be a bit underhanded and calculating, but hey, I’m a fictional character and can do anything I please. My writer is not all that engaged with his brain these days, so it’s up to me to do the thinking, as it were.

So if you’re wondering where this post is going, it just went. Maybe, if the hit total is significant enough, I’ll let you know how my experiment turned out. By the way, I’m also using those search terms in my tags. Hey, might as well go for broke, right?

As for my writer, Michael Ray King, you can find him on Hub Pages. It seems he does not have any problem posting to that site, but won’t lift a finger here on this blog. Of course, with me standing in for him, he may be far too intimidated to ever return. After all, he’ll never be able to match my wit and brilliance.

Oops, that last statement may have caught his attention. I better run before he goes back and edits this post…

Sssshhhhhh!

(Whisper): While you’re here, consider purchasing one of the Rogues’ books – Writing is Easy…

Thanksgiving, You Kidding Me?

Ok. I know writers have it tough. Hell, I play a writer in the new novel The Method Writers. But isn’t it carrying things a bit far by making me, Marty Pitchford, a character in a book, write this blog?

I should have known. Michael Ray King, my MASTER, my CREATOR, decided to spend time with his family and left me to do the writing again. Like I’ve said before, I suppose I shouldn’t complain.

I’m getting more exposure than he is these days. I even wrote a kick-ass short story for our new book. Yeah, the one all the characters from The Method Writers are writing. I’m enjoying loads of fun on this one.

Mr. King wrote an award winning short story titled Why Me? last year. Click on that link to buy the book the story appears in. Hey,  come on! The book’s only $2.99. I know you can afford that!It is in Kindle format. Remember, you can get a free Kindle App out there!

Anyway, what I did was take that story, which was written from the guy’s perspective, and I turned it around from the woman’s perspective. What a great exercise in writing skills! I loved the story too, as it was pretty hot and steamy.

My fellow characters are pretty close to being done with their stories. Our plan is to get our book out before the Rogues Gallery Writers can get The Method Writers novel out. We figure, if we show people what we can do, maybe we’ll make a name for ourselves before the Rogues.

Of course, there is the problem that we call ourselves the Rogues Gallery Writers too. What’s up with that? I think our creators didn’t entirely trust us. I mean, why else would they do that?

Now, if we get our book out, people might think we’re the real Rogues. I mean, we are the real Rogues, but I mean the real, real Rogues. Ok, the Rogues that exist in your world. We’re damn good writers in our own right (and world), so we need some love too, you know.

We have a trick up our sleeve, though. When we release our book on ebook, guess what we’re going to do. Ninety-nine cents. Yep. We’re going to undercut our creators. We’re going for volume, baby! We have some great stuff in this book too.

I think I’m just going to reconcile myself to writing this blog every week. Like the babe I slipped into the blog? Hey, like I said, I just wrote a steamy short story based on Mr. King‘s award winning story. I needed some inspiration, you know?

Until next week…

Just Past All Hallows Eve

Writers take their gigs where they can get them. The author who created me doesn’t appear to have the time to write his own blog, so

Annabelle's Treasure

what the heck, I’ll cover his posterior. Yep, Marty Pitchford here. I don’t know how I get myself into these positions. I try to do what is right and good and I end up in trouble somewhere. By the time this post if over, Mr. King will probably come and wipe my words away, replace them with his own, then scold me for stepping out of character. (Heh, heh, like that? Stepping out of character? … Oh well, blame it on him, it’s his blog, right?)

My thoughts still wander around the streets of this town, wending their way alongside my lovely daughter Annabelle. Halloween night, we went from house to house, monster to monster, jack-o-lantern to jack-o-lantern, searching out

the sweet riches that would pour forth from within each dwelling. I stood back at the road and watched as my precious little wizard rung doorbells, trick-or-treated in that soft voice, then engaged most with more than a simple thank you. One lady received a, “I love your decorations. Happy Halloween. Thank you.”

I smiled at her incredible innocence. That same innocence threatened by the callous, careless actions of my wife Jessica. Look her up here on this blog. Don’t let her looks fool you. She’s as frightening as anything you will find at night on Halloween. In fact, simply writing about her causes trepidation to ricochet throughout my nervous system. If you want to see for yourself, pre-order a copy of The Method Writers. That’s the book I reside in as Marty Pitchford.

Annabelle and I had to walk for miles and miles. We started at 6:30pm before the sun went down and returned home at 9:30pm. My feet hurt, I was hungry, I had to carry Anna for a few blocks because she was exhausted, but when she dumped her spoils on the table, all was well in the Pitchford family.

My next task was (and is) to keep my little girl from doubling over with candy-induced stomach cramps. I wouldn’t trade the grueling three hours we spent tromping the streets of Palm Coast for all the chocolate in Hershey, PA. I realized many times that night how absolutely rich I am to have such a tender and kind young daughter. I will protect her with my life.

And I will cherish our time together as pure gold.

Before I go, make sure you click on the book cover in the upper right hand corner of this blog. The Rogues Gallery Writers are giving away a free copy of their book, More Writing is Easy. It’s a simple PDF download, and hey, it’s free! Go grab a copy today. Also, click on this link and pledge a few bucks to our project The Method Writers on Kickstarter.com. We want badly to be able to fund a proper release for the book. Oh, by the way. If you see that scoundrel Michael Ray King, tell him to get back here and write his own blogs! I’m sick of covering his ass!

Halloween, Pirates and Rogues

Hello, everyone!! Hope you all had a great week. Mine flew by and before I realized it, wham, it’s the weekend again. But not any weekend – the weekend before Halloween!

The nice thing about Daytona is that you can get to almost everywhere from here. The hayrides and harvest festivals in Elkton which is near St. Augustine, attract thousands of people during mid-October. Bikers from all over the country descend on the region in good-natured revelry to celebrate Biketoberfest. And, in St. Augustine this weekend, they hosted the Pirate Festival and that was terrific fun. Pirates young and old paraded along San Marco Blvd, then ate, drank and made merry during the daylight hours, and pub-crawled (adults only) after dark.

I’ve turned in my articles on fall festivals, taken a thousand photos and travelled many miles this month. And as I was relaxing this afternoon on the balcony of my apartment, I thought of some similarities between the pirates I’d met this weekend, and the Rogues.

The Rogues are law-abiding, well-intentioned, talented writers who test the rules because sometimes rules need to be tested. Because sometimes it is better to challenge the status quo than to blindly follow it. What they lack in judgement on occasion, they make up for in courage, that bunch. Hats off to the Rogues Gallery Writers as they gallop toward the finish line with their novel, THE METHOD WRITERS!

Don’t forget to support them – and get yourself a piece of Rogue History!! Visit KICKSTARTER.COM and make your pledge today – you won’t be sorry! And if you really want a three-cornered hat with a feather, they just might get you one!

Have a great week!
Dorian

Characters Have Lives Too!

Hi folks! Marty here. Marty Pitchford. What? You haven’t heard of me?
Crap. Life always gets hung up in editing. You know, in this book I went through a helluva lot of grief. I can’t go into detail, of course. That ‘spoiler alert’ deal doesn’t fly when a book’s IN EDIT!
What the heck. You know, I have a life. I have a beautiful daughter and some great writer friends. Georgie Mae, Dorian and David. Without them and Annabelle, my daughter, this wait for the book to come out would be too much for me to handle.
There are times when I don’t handle situations well. Does this ever happen to you? Yeah, you know, we’re all human and we all make mistakes. We all have our crisis moments and we all screw them up from time to time. I just want to ask one favor of you. Ok, maybe two favors, but that’s it.
First, when you read the book, root for me. A fella needs all the support he can get these days, right? I run into some real stinky situations.
What?
You don’t believe me?
Oh, you don’t believe I’m real?
C’mon! Characters have lives too! Ask any author. We’re always trying to steal scenes and sometimes the entire book. We want everything to be about us and we want to be the hero every time out. Sounds like everyday life, doesn’t it?
I can’t believe after all I’ve been through in this book to entertain you, I would get more respect. Oh, yeah, but the book’s still IN EDIT! Isn’t it? That really sucks.
If the book weren’t IN EDIT, you would know. Life as a character can be hell. You always feel manipulated. You always feel used. Then sometimes, if you’re really lucky, you get the girl or the money or the mansion or even better, your life’s dream.
What?
Oh, the second thing. I thought you’d never ask. We, Georgie Mae, Dorian, David, and myself, want to give this book the best send-off a book can get. Would you consider clicking on the bookcover above and to the right and pledging some money to our book launch project? Oh, come on! We’re only asking for a buck or two. Heck, you’ll own a piece of the project if we make our goal. If we don’t, you don’t spend a dime.
Why is it so hard for people to pledge even one dollar? This is for a good cause. A book launch. By poor writers. No, not poor writers in that we cannot write, but poor writers financially. We don’t have the funds to get this book off the ground properly.
But if we reach our goal on http://www.kickstarter.com, we will be able to market our book at least in the state of Florida. We will also be able to purchase necessary things like tables at major book fairs, hotel rooms, recoup some of our editing expenses and a host of other cash requirements that we go over on the website.
Yes, characters have lives too, and we need your support. Please. Click on the picture up high and on the right, and pledge somemoney to our cause. We’re not there to tap out your wallet. We just need your commitment to help us out financially.
Thank you for stopping by. I look forward to seeing you again!

WHAT A SUPER WEEK!

Wow, we’ve had a very newsworthy week!! We did indeed, click-as-one on Thursday night and launch our baby on http://www.kickstarter.com. The Method Writers novel is only weeks from being a wonderful reality after months of work and planning. We love it! And we know you will too, so be sure to get on board RIGHT NOW and become a supporter – and get a great reward as well as great book! We only have a few weeks to make our goal, so get your pledge in today at kickstarter.com! And then come brag to the Rogues!!

Also, our multi-talented Rogue,Bridget Callahan, had an impressive art debut on Friday, Oct 7 at Simple Gestures in St. Augustine, Florida. Her fabric art is unique and emotional and I have no doubt will be worth a great deal more in the future. I was totally and completely blown away by the power her art conveyed. Way to go, Ms. B!

So, hope you had a great week too and if you’d like to tell us about it, just drop us a comment! We’d love to hear from you. Be well.

Dorian

Project Launch! Watch Our Smoke!

  The day has arrived – October 5, 2011. The Rogues Gallery Writers will sit down at 7:00pm, eat some    Chinese, discuss final tweaks to the plan, then gather around the mouse. Yes, the wireless mouse of a laptop. The four of us will place our forefingers on the left-click button and press as one.

The occasion happens to be the launch of our Kickstarter.com project. This project is the culmination of months of work and preparation. We’ve written a novel, blogged loads of blogs, Facebooked as many posts as is respectable, and we’ve made short films. Videos of silliness and seriousness about our baby, our novel – The Method Writers.

The Rogues recently gathered at the Florida Heritage Book Festival in St. Augustine, Florida. We had a great time, sold a few books, and generally got our name out to John Q. Public a bit more. This notoriety we’re building is not by accident.

What we need most at the moment is precisely that – a moment of your time. Drawing attention to your book project these days is a labor, albeit one of love. Kickstarter.com is a place where benevolent people go and pledge monetary support to creative projects. We own one such project – The Method Writers.

We are looking for funding to produce a 5000 print run of the book as well as funds to cover the editing and some marketing of the book. Acquiring the assistance of anyone and everyone we know as well as those they know as well as people THEY know is critical to getting funding of this nature. Please take a moment to click on the above links to our project, or heck, use this one (www.kickstarter.com), and watch our video, read over our project and pledge some money to help us launch this book properly.

With all the books being published these days, the ones that make enough noise get noticed. We cannot make noise without your help. Each individual person who pledges funds to our project, lifts us up. One of the great aspects of Kickstarter.com is the fact that you, the Pledge, receive something in return. You receive a piece of the project in the form of Rewards. We have set up 23 Rewards for our Pledges based on their level of giving. We believe there is a satisfactory Reward for each level of pledge.

Yes, you get a piece of the project as well as the pleasure of contributing to the launch of an ambitious new novel. We believe what we created in The Method Writers is viable, entertaining and well-worth launching into the world. Won’t you please click on over to Kickstarter.com now and pledge to the project right now? If we do not reach our target money in 45 days, we will get nothing and no pledges will be collected. That would be a travesty.

We look forward to thanking each and every one of our Pledges once we hit our target! The Rogues Gallery Writers ask also that you contact everyone you know and send them to our project at Kickstarter.com. We obviously require the help of many. We humbly thank you for your participation in our project and we sincerely hope you will be rewarded by your assistance!

Character Dysfunction

Life is not easy for a character in a book. Take me, for example. Marty Pitchford. My ‘creator’ wants me to be some kind of magnificent character readers will fall in love with. Mr. Big-Time-Author decided to make me a wuss in the beginning of the book just so I could grow some, you know? How do you think that makes me feel?

Yeah, I bet you wouldn’t like it any more than I did. Characters have to grow. I get it. They have to move through their allotted storylines and show some progress, some change, that significantly changes their lives. I’m tellin’ ya, this is pure hell. I’ve been stuck in wuss mode in this book for a while, then I go to borderline perv, and then I go through an number of other changes.

I suppose I have it better in this one than other characters. Take Franco. Poor sap  gets nabbed and roughed up, AND, he’s afraid of dogs. Nonetheless, Franco takes the fall as a mean character because his creator decided this was his fate. Sometimes I think we should sue for some kind of self-creating rights.

Ok, ok, so my creator allowed me to ‘go with the flow’ in my growth. I suppose as authors go, he is kind to his characters and allows us to make our own mistakes and take the story places he would never go. Like all the sex stuff in my life. My author would not necessarily go there normally, but he let me do the walkin’, talkin’ and, well, you know what.

My big beef, though, is that he takes credit for it. Asshole! Who does he think he is? He lets me run amuck and give him a decent character who gets into all kinds of shit, then he goes and claims he “wrote it”. Isn’t that something I can sue for? Shouldn’t I claim some sort of character plagiarism or something? What right does he have to take all the credit for me living my life out on the page? That’s what really sucks. I get myself into all those messes, allow people to call me a wuss in the beginning, deal with a wife that is nothing short of a slut, come out of it a changed man and HE gets all the credit.

I’m going to form the Character’s Writing Guild and we’re gonna sue the pants of all you yahoo’s who think their the cat’s bark when it comes to writing. Everyone knows character driven stories are the best. We do all the heavy lifting. We should be able to demand higher compensation. Hell, we don’t get any compensation. How’s that for one big, fat ripoff?

Well, I’m gonna change all that. Wait and see. In the meantime, check out my performance in The Method Writers, due out in November 2011. You won’t be disappointed. I promise.