All posts filed under: Update

A broad archive that mostly covers news and current events on my creative endeavors.

Now That NaNoWriMo is Over . . .

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Now that NaNoWriMo 2018 is over I can pretty much relax in the month of December. Some things I put on hold I can now dive back into again, first of which is a lot of reading. I bought all kinds of books in October, checked out a few at the library in November and I have a huge stack of backlogged comics and graphic novels to get back to. I’m also in the works of building several music playlists on Spotify to share with the world as I get back to being the little kid DJ I wanted to be at age 8 (before I discovered MTV and wanted to be a musician myself). I think the gift of music is one of the greatest things in the world and sharing music gives me a ton of joy. Speaking of music, I did find myself adopting an acoustic state of mind and grabbing my acoustic guitars for a few spells during November. I’m tempted to resume songwriting for yet another solo acoustic project, but …

In Full Swing in Spring (it seems)

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~ Lifebook #17 ~ Spring always brings turbulent weather and this year’s season of renewal has been no exception. A monsoon season in both April and May? C’mon, now, that’s going a bit overboard. May is usually my favorite month of the year because of a few reasons, such as it being a period of time (usually) beyond extreme weather, a time of moderate temperatures (usually), the flowers are in full bloom and the NBA Playoffs are happening. It’s arguable that May, along with October, is the most beautiful month of the year. I do like beautiful things. This Spring brings things that seem to represent my getting back into the swing of things. To wit: Started a new job recently, effectively returning me to the mortgage business. The new position comes with my highest salary yet. That’s kind of the idea as you progress through your working life, whether transitioning to a new industry or remaining in the same one. It’s rare that your cost of living decreases over time in this society, so continued growth …

Ruckin’ With You | 10.16.16 | I Am Returned

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Family vacation is over. A good time was had. But it’s over and today I deal with the looming return to work on a gloomy overcast day with some rain after a week of blue skies and sunshine. Woe is me, right? At any rate, overall we enjoyed our time in the mid-North states of Pennsylvania, New York and Ohio. On My Mind I arrived home with a great deal on my mind in terms of stories and writing. It seems my intense focus on the launch of my Library of Works website, RUCKERPEDIA, has got me so immersed in my past work that it’s served to inspire me on to current and future work. This past year the concept of a writer’s body of work, particularly MY body of work, has been very intriguing to me. Heck, it’s a huge reason why I built the RUCKERPEDIA website – inherently as an archive it serves as a virtual monument to my more than two decades as a writer. Essentially, were I to meet an untimely demise, …

Lifebook 1 | Belated New Year’s Brief

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Hello! And, um, Happy New Year!?!? Yeah, I know, I’m really late. I guess it’s been a long minute since I’ve posted a proper update. A New Year has come and gotten well underway since the last time I discussed my life activities, or confessed in stark detail my ongoing creative struggles – or what I like to call the Writer’s Plight. The latter I will get into more this coming week, and the former I will touch on in this quick rundown of notable events this year so far: January 3rd – New Guitar Started the new year off with a instrumental acquisition: a 2015 Epiphone Les Paul Custom Pro electric guitar with silverburst finish, special humbucker pickups with coil-tapping feature, a thin neck and decent string action on a rosewood fingerboard with medium-jumbo frets. This beauty — I named her Silvestra — made her debut in the next event . . . January 16th – NTA’s Debut My band Neglect the Alarm made its live debut on the Punk Rock Night stage at the historic Melody Inn in …

Daybook 3 | Autumn Descends

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So I spent the latter part of the summer away from actively writing anything creative, instead spending a great deal of time inside my own head, and of course being a bookworm, getting caught up on lapsed reading and acquiring even more to read for both entertainment and research. During these past six weeks or so I dealt with a serious bout of lacking conviction in my path as a writer. To be clear, it’s not that I don’t believe in my ability as a writer (well, with the exception of my prospects of being a novelist in the foreseeable future), but I had serious doubts in my likelihood in drawing an audience in the vast sea of yet-to-breakthrough authors. I just need to mentally, if not publicly, remove the title/occupation/identity of “writer” from myself so as to remove the pressure to live up to that identity, as well as lessen the guilt some. By happenstance, I named an old composition of mine “Autumn Descends”. Have a listen.

Workbook 5 | Quick Musical Update

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There is much to update from the past two months or so, but I’ll just touch on the musical aspect because that requires less words to summon before I head out for the day. So my rock band of 10 months, Neglect the Alarm, has been putting the finishing, polishing touches on the five songs that will form our first release of new music into the wilds. We have slated our as-yet-untitled (though likely will be self-titled) 5-song EP to be recorded at the earliest part of November at Azmyth Recording studio in Indianapolis, IN, not far from the practice space we use every other week. The mini-album will be financed, produced, mixed and mastered by us D-i-Y style, and likely released digitally for free. (not final graphic) Group photo by Jason Fredriksz

Daybook 2 | Update Untitled

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I Got Nothing Firstly, I have no Workbook update to share this past week (or the past week before that) because, honestly, there wasn’t any of that kind of work done the past couple of weeks. Re-calibrating Like Garrus * Making some reconfigurations and changes here and abroad, and so things will be a little different here after that reconfiguration. Going to resurrect my old blog and reassign all my nonfiction writing over there and make Ruckerpedia the venue for my fiction writing and music. Or something like that. Gimme a week to tend to these . . . calibrations . . . and we’ll see what’s what. * Bonus geek points to those who get the Garrus Vakarian reference. Back In Briefs With my novel writing prospects in flux for the immediate future, I see no reason to avert my writing attention from short fiction. The novel stuff will likely have to wait at least until the darker, colder months arrive which is when I go into hibernation mode like a grizzly bear in the American wilds. If then, because it’s …

Workbook 4 | July 26-August 1, 2015

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Current Project: Me (my confidence, my outlook, my purpose) The week that was . . . Started the week off in a bit of a funk. Lacking confidence in my ambitions and lacking conviction in the possibility of actual achievement in my goals. Began to wonder if I should simply forgo writing fiction, which over the last few years has truly become hard work, and just take the easy way out and opt for nonfiction since that has been so much easier to do the last few years. Exorcised some of those negative demons in a Journal Juice entry and felt a little better after the expulsion of negative emotions. Agreed that even though I have serious doubts about my ability to pen a complete novel at this current juncture, I should still continue to work on my fiction, long or short, at any opportunity that I can, but should remove some of the self-applied pressure from myself so that I can still at least enjoy life while I continue to struggle. Current Project: Operation Remember Me? …

Daybook 1 | New Locale. New Music. New Shirt.

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No XL, No Problem So this weekend I grabbed three new t-shirts. This particular one is my favorite of the trio. However, given this half of a basketball I call an abdomen, I needed to get it in size XL just so there’s room for comfort, especially given the likely shrinkage tendency upon washing that would make it too snug for comfort. Well, the store didn’t have this particular design in XL, only had it in L. Well, I couldn’t pass it up.  I mean, look at it. Finally I have a shirt to sport on St. Patrick’s Day. Just have to remember to wash cold and hope for the best. #ChubbyDudeProblems  On Vacay So we took a mini-vacation as a family up in Wisconsin Dells, WI.  Really nice resort area, full of plenty of things to do and have a great time doing it, which is exactly what we discovered last summer down in Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, TN.  Like those two places, I don’t have any complaints about the Dells area or its people.  I’ve …

Workbook 3 | July 19-25, 2015 – Late Vacation Edition

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All current creative projects The week that was . . . Created redundant file backups in the cloud for a more flexible and seamless workflow (or so that’s the idea). Reworked a couple of guitar riffs for a n/t/a song written back in March. Tried to fit new lyrics to it but the cadence isn’t quite right. Made zero progress on novel work. Had a serious bout of doubt about the prospects of novel writing given current conditions and lifestyle (but received counselling to the contrary from a writer friend to be named later in a separate post). Contemplated ditching long fiction in favor of writing long nonfiction. Went on a family vacation for an extended weekend on which naturally I did not write nor read. The week to come . . . Who the hell knows? Kids are still out of school for another week.  Much prep work to do. Have neglect/the/alarm band practice scheduled for this Wednesday and maybe next Sunday as well, during which I will completely lose myself to my unbridled love of music.