My Blog
Since about 2008 I've had a link at the top of my pages called My Blog that linked to a WordPress blog that was on the back-end of my website. I posted there infrequently and it never really amounted to much. And I didn't particularly care for it. It got spammed all the time and worse, clicking on the link took visitors away from my website.
So at the beginning of 2011, I decided it was time to do away with it. This page is replacing that blog.
Below are My Blog Entries:
Went to See Legion This Weekend
Saving Abel, Seether, and Nickelback
My Blog
| Went to See Legion This Weekend |
| January 26, 2010
I was in Dallas this weekend with my wife and daughter. We managed to squeeze in a movie and went to see Legion. We walked into the theater and it was almost empty. It made us wonder if we'd missed some bad reviews about it. But then it started. Wow! It was pretty darn good. There were a few things left unexplained and there weren't as many angels as I would have thought there would be, but the ones that were there were awesome. I don't want to give too much away, but overall, I'd give Legion 4 1/2 stars out of 5. If you haven't seen it, I suggest you consider it. ~Doug |
| The ROT Rally |
| June 14, 2009
ROT stands for Republic of Texas and the ROT Rally is the biggest motorcycle rally in the state. This year ROT came June 11-14. Thursday through Sunday. It usually goes something like this. Thursday, the vendors are all setting up. Everyone who's camping sets up their campsite. They fill their coolers with ice and beer, and the festivities begin. Friday evening, there's a parade on 6th Street in Austin and Friday night is about being downtown on your motorcycle. Saturday during the day is all about getting out on your motorcycle and experiencing the roads around Austin and the Hill Country. Saturday night is about being at the convention center, riding around the campsites and giving away beads, if you know what I mean. And then finally, there's Sunday. Everything is winding down. The vendors are tearing down their booths - if they haven't already - and it's all over by about noon. It's a busy weekend and there's usually a lot going on. As you can see from my bio page, I have a motorcycle, and I live in central Texas, so it puts me in prime position to go to ROT. And I often do, though it's always sporadic and spontaneous. But not this year. This year, my wife and I planned for it. We even took vacation from work, both taking Thursday and Friday off. But for some reason, the stars conspired against us and kept us from making it to ROT. Thursday we got off to a slow start. We knew that there was no reason to go down early because everyone was setting up. We were going to head down Thursday evening, but then a storm blew in from nowhere that was blasting us with almost golf ball sized hail, lots of wind and plenty of rain. If you know me, you know that I'll ride in the rain, but not on purpose. Friday was equally a bust. We were going to go down and check out the vendors. We decided that after the thunderstorms of the previous evening, it would be muddy at the convention center, so we took the bike out and just rode. It was nice because we saw lots of other bikes out doing the same thing. Friday night we were going to go down to 6th Street but a couple of things stopped us. One, another storm was blowing in, almost identical to Thursday's, and two, we had to get up early on Saturday to take our daughter to her swim meet. So we took the bike out but stayed pretty close to home, going out to eat and grabbing a couple of beers. We called it a night early. The one thing I haven't mentioned is that we were also keeping my sister-in-law's dog, CJ. CJ is a black lab. He used to be ours, but we gave him to my wife's sister a couple of years back. He's getting pretty old and she takes good care of him. But she spoils him - BAD! And she works strange hours. Currently, she gets up at 3 or 4 in the morning to go to work. That means CJ gets up at that time too. And he did, for the entire time he was with us. In fact, he got up several times in the night, whining and crying. It got to where my wife and I were taking turns on who got to get up with him on which night - worse than having a baby. Friday night was the worst. He got up constantly and by the time Saturday morning rolled around, we were exhausted. We took our daughter to the swim meet and sat out in the hot sun. By the time we got home, all we wanted to do was take a nap. But not CJ. He'd been sleeping the whole time we were at the meet. Saturday night was out because we had to go to the airport to pick up Maria's sister. Good news, CJ went home. Bad news, ROT is almost over and we still haven't made it down there. So here I am. It's Sunday morning and I'm writing this blog. I could have gotten on the bike and rode down to ROT, but I figure after all of this, why bother? Next year will roll around and we'll try it again. We may make it, we may not. But I'll bet that we at least get out to ride like we did this year. At least we have that. ~Doug |
| ttyl by Lauren Myracle |
| May 20, 2009
I bought this book for a couple of reasons. One, it was pulled from a local middle school and it hit the news. I thought to myself, "if this is being pulled from the schools, then it's probably something I wanted to read. And two, I have a daughter that is in 7th grade and if there's a possibility that she's going to read this, then I should read it first (especially considering point number one above). I stopped reading after page 40. It's definitely written for teen girls based on the style (it uses IM shorthand such as "u r" for "you are") and topics, but then there are gratuitous topics such as shaving pubic hair and female ejaculation that I found totally unnecessary. On a scale of 1 to 5, I would have to rate this book a 2. It wasn't horrible, even though it was hard to read, but it also isn't for teen girls. I think it's for adult girls who want to pretend. ~Doug |
| Saving Abel, Seether, and Nickelback |
| April 12, 2009
I just got back, this second, from the concert listed above. I'm at a hotel where they don't have free Internet so you're not going to see it as instantly as I write it, but you'll still see it. Having said that, I have to say, the concert was awesome. Saving Abel came on first and from what we hear, for only about 10 minutes. We missed them. That's too bad because they have a couple of songs I really like and I would have liked to see them perform them. Seether was awesome. They had a lot of people standing in the aisle, and it was almost impossible to get to our seats. When we did, we got to the wrong seats because someone was sitting in ours and it turned into a whole "you're in our seats"…"well they're in our seats" conversation, but it got worked out, and then they took a break and all the issues were over. For Nickelback, there were no seat issues. There was nothing but music, and a lot of it. To top that off, it was all songs we recognized. Granted, there could have been more songs from their latest album, but we've never seen them in concert so it was fine with us. So, to sum it up, we went to an awesome concert and had an awesome time. That's all I have to say about that. ~Doug |
| Six Words |
| March 27, 2009
So, there's this unconfirmed legend that Ernest Hemingway once wrote six words that he considered his best work: "For Sale: Baby shoes - never used." The searching I did on the Internet couldn't confirm that Hemingway ever wrote that, but it did get me interested in what I could write in six words. I even found a website that posts six words, http://www.smithmag.net/sixwords/. Basically, it's whatever you want in six words. Anyone can do it; it's easy. So, I've decided that for the next 30 days or so, I'm going to write and submit six words. You can track my progress by viewing my page at: http://www.smithmag.net/community/people.php/dmac9000. I've only submitted a couple so far, but the list is going to grow. If you'd like, comment to this blog and give me the link for your six words. I'll follow yours too. So, until tomorrow when I post my next six words, ~Doug |
| Time Off to Write |
| December 29, 2008
It happened over the Thanksgiving break, and it happened over the Christmas break. I had all this free time that I was going to use to write. But it didn't work out that way. It never does. Good intentions, sure, but there are a million little things that get in the way. Shopping for presents, juggling cars for maintenance while my son is home with a second vehicle, calling the plumber, cleaning the house, well, you get the idea. But the one thing I seem to have difficulty finding time for is writing. I had all these great plans for writing over the holidays. And here it is, Thanksgiving is gone, Christmas break is half over, and still no, well, not much, writing. So I'm going to make a pact with myself. I am going to write at least 2 hours every day from now until I go back to work. That is, unless I need to get more work done on the car, or the house, or the…oh, never mind. ~Doug |
| Marketing Your Writing |
| July 28, 2008
Recently I have heard a lot about "marketing" your writing. It's basically getting your name out there and being seen. That includes social networking, like FaceBook and MySpace, as well as blogs, like this one and the one I started on Vox.com (Vox is now closed). I have to say that it is, on average, twice as hard as actually writing. It's so difficult, in fact, that it's easy to get distracted from the business of writing. For example, I recently found another author on FaceBook, Jennifer Rardin. She has ~750 friends. At least 2/3 of them are other authors. So I started sending out friend requests to these other authors. It's been really good, because about 200 have accpeted, but it's also been very time consuming. What that all boils down to is that I haven't really written anything new in 3 or 4 weeks. That's the real bummer, but marketing is a necessary evil and part of the "new" way of the author. I guess my advice to new authors about all of this is to start earlier rather than later. It's a lot of work that can be distributed over a long time so that the infrastructure is in place when you need it. ~Doug |
| Scumbags and Warlords |
| July 23, 2008
Today at work, during lunch, four of us got together and played the card game, Scumbags and Warlords. It was a blast! I just recently learned how to play, and I feel like I've missed out for all these years. I won't go into the rules of the game here, but after the first round, the first person out of cards is the Warlord and the last person out is the Scumbag. You have to get up and change chairs. The Warlord gets the best chair, the Scumbag usually sits on a box. It's awesome! If you've never tried it, I highly suggest you do! ~Doug |
| Six Sentences |
| July 22, 2008
I was out looking for markets for my short stories one day and I ran across the Six Sentences website. The idea behind the website is that you get to write six sentences about anything you want. The beauty, from a writer's perspective, is that you have to actually go through a submission process and face an acceptance or rejection, based on the quality of your work. So I came up with six sentences and submitted it. I figured it would be fun, with a lot less stress than submitting my short stories. It makes sense to me. I don't have as much invested in writing six sentences as I do writing 6,000 words. Well, it was a lot of fun, but now that I'm coming up on the time to see whether my work is going to accepted or rejected, I find that I'm kind of nervous about it. I should know in a couple of days. I figure that if I'm not accepted, I will post my six sentences here. But in the meantime, check out the website. It's kind of fun. ~Doug |
| Chuck Norris Jokes |
| July 21, 2008
So our 19-year-old son discovered the world of Chuck Norris jokes last year, and clued us in to it. I feel so old. Come to find out they've been around for about a decade now and I knew nothing about them. Last Friday night, my wife and I, and others, sat around a bar coming up with new ones. The original ones I remember are:
~Doug |
| The Dark Knight |
| July 20, 2008
So we went to see The Dark Knight, the new Batman movie, today. I have to say that I thought it was pretty darn good! It did a lot to explore the human condition, and came to the conclusion that humans are basically good. Yeah, I know, I write horror and depend on humans being basically bad, but I still enjoyed the movie! ~Doug |
| Reading My Own Book |
| July 19, 2008
Today, I just finished reading The Life of Larry. It was the first novel I wrote, back in November 2006 for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I wasn't editing it, I was reading it…and it was fun! It has a few problems that I will need to edit out, but my plan is to clean it up and market it as a Young Adult novel. Stay tuned for more on this. ~Doug |
| Welcome to my Blog! |
| July 19, 2008
In an effort to keep this website exciting and new, I've decided that it's time to start blogging on it! I hope to make it entertaining, as well as informative. Of course it will be a work in progress for some time to come as I change templates and design to get it to something I like. Check back and see how it is. ~Doug |