I've got this low grade headache going on that's keeping me from accomplishing anything. The doc gave me a shot of cortizone a few days ago (and did a full blood draw at the same time -- had needles putting in and taking out), and although my symptoms are mostly better now, my head raged for a day and has still been hurting ever since. I realize I should take some time off, but by gummit -- I've got books to write.
Maybe I should try the whiskey, like my stepdad used to give me for colds; it's worked for other writers.
Chasing Storms for Christmas ... and a bonus
Apparently this is a big day for ordering off the internet, so this would be a good day to get Storm Chaser in time for holiday giving season. Don’t we need some light, cheerful storytelling right now? Storm Chaser has all that fun stuff: storms, fires, crashes, accident-prone stalkers … what could be more upbeat?
Naturally, you can still order it on my website, at www.markrhunter.com, or from the publisher at www.whiskeycreekpress.com. It’s also available at Barnes & Noble:
Or on Amazon.com, http://www.amazon.com/Storm-Chaser-ebook/dp/B0056U41F4/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2,
Or even Amazon.com’s United Kingdom site, http://www.amazon.co.uk/Storm-Chaser-ebook/dp/B0056U41F4/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1324059653&sr=8-2, where it can be had for only five … um … squiggly line things.
They also have it up on fictionwise.com. On a more local level, Storm Chaser is available in two book stores: Summer’s Stories in Kendallville: http://www.summersstoriesbookstore.com/product/storm-chaser-mark-r-hunter, and at The Bookmark in Fort Wayne, although they don’t appear to have it up on their website:
Finally, you can get a signed copy at the antique shop, “Just Off the Square” in Albion, or if you prefer your copies unsigned (or want to hit me up for a signature later), they can be found at the Albion New Era and Churubusco News in those communities, or at Freedom Acres near Cromwell.
Don’t forget also that the Storm Chaser cover by Gemini Judson is featured on the 2012 Whiskey Creek Press calendar: http://www.cafepress.com/whiskey_creek.593557651
Did I miss anyone?
And now – just to see who made it this far – the soft launch has begun for My Funny Valentine, a humor compilation (centered around guess which holiday?) that includes one of my columns as well as funny stuff from forty of the best humor writers around. I’ll have print copies myself later (great Valentine’s Day gifts, if you’re willing to think that far ahead) but if anyone wants to check it out ahead of time it can be found on e-book at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/My-Funny-Valentine-Hilarious-Complications/dp/1936955040/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323064081&sr=8-1
and smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/112278
The website for My Funny Valentine is here: http://myfunnybooks.biz/; but of course, if you buy a print copy from me you’ll get a signed copy (keep in mind that only I’ll be able to sign it, not all the rest of those great writers!) I’ll have copies at my January 30th book signing at the Noble County Public Library in Albion, and later there’ll be order information on my website, or you can just e-mail me if you want one. Hope you like it!
Sinus Season Starts; Sickness Ensues
Sorry I've been scarce; I've started on three new medications for various problems within the last two weeks, and they've pretty much kicked my butt through a wall. If I don't feel better by Christmas I'm having my body amputated.
SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK
I’ve been fighting the mother of all sinus infections this week … which is not a comment about my mother, mind you.
Why are really big things called “The Mother Of”, anyway? Seems a bit insulting to mothers. You know what? I’ve been fighting the cousin of all sinus infections. Think that cousin from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, who shows up with his brood, parks his RV on your lawn, and can’t be kicked off the property without a nuclear exchange.
I haven’t talked about it much because I get sick all winter, every winter, and I can only get at best three columns out of that before I get boring even by my standards. Illnesses around the holidays are a tradition in my household, like fruitcake, and just as welcome. The only real difference this year is that I’ve been battling some extra-intense back pain at the same time; but if I had a dime for every time my back hurt I could pay for a spine transplant.
If John F. Kennedy could have chronic back pain, be President, and still romance Marilyn Monroe, I guess I’m okay as long as I stay out of the Bay of Pigs.
About a month ago I went to my family doctor, who approved my sinus infection (Thanks, Doc!). I took the antibiotics, but apparently have those super-germs that eat medicine for lunch and still have enough energy to sledgehammer the inside of my skull. In short, it didn’t go away. Being a guy, I did nothing; most men are convinced that almost any problem will go away if you ignore it long enough, which explains a lot when you consider the ratio of males to females in Congress.
Then, the first day of the Thanksgiving break (in other words, all the Doctors were golfing in Florida), my ear started bleeding.
The typical guy excuses followed: It must have been a pimple; I cut myself shaving; it’s from an old childhood injury when we used to act out Three Stooges routines.
In the end I went to a clinic that’s sponsored by my workplace; not because I don’t like my regular doctor, but because there’s this whole work thing where they encourage us to go to the clinic because it saves money, somehow. I know it saves me money; how it saves them money, I don’t know.
Anyway, I had the good fortune of being examined by the oldest Doctor I’ve ever met in my life. How old? He told me about how his grandfather graduated from medical school just after the turn of the century … the turn of the last century.
He poked and prodded. A lot. This made me feel good, because I like my medical people to be thorough, although it also made me feel bad because of the intense pain. The sinuses above my eyes were so swollen it looked like I was in makeup to play a Klingon in the next Star Trek movie. I knew this because my fiancée greeted me that morning with, “Captain, Klingons off the starboard bow!” Ha. Ha.
The real surprise was when the doc poked a spot below my eyes, prompting me to scream a traditional Cherokee phrase that roughly translates to: “Ouch!”
My sinuses, the doctor proceeded to explain, were like the Japanese army on Iwo Jima during World War 2; we could bomb them all day with over the counter meds, but eventually we’d have to send Marine antibiotics in to dig them out.
That seemed a bit too politically incorrect, as would asking him if he was actually at Iwo Jima. He substituted that with another example: “We’re going to have to use antibiotics that are like General Grant during the Civil War: He said, ‘We’ll hold the line all summer if we have to’.”
Which I hope doesn’t mean taking antibiotics all winter. Still, if I’m to understand that my sinus infection is General Robert E. Lee, maybe I’d better start drinking the whiskey Grant used. It might not heal me any faster, but after awhile I won’t care.
This doc obviously has a grasp not only on medicine, but on history. He gave me antibiotics so powerful that they’ve been banned as part of the U.N. nuclear test agreement. These antibiotics, he told me, were the Chuck Norris of medicine; in fact, they’re the only ones that work on Chuck Norris. They’re not called controlled substances, because they can’t be controlled; they’re the drugs Albert Einstein warned President Roosevelt never to use. They’re so powerful that if you take two pills from the bottle at the same time, they might collapse reality into a bizarro world where politicians make sense and reality TV is real.
I confess to being concerned.
Still, later I learned of a new method to clean the sinuses that basically involves sticking a fire hose up your nose and giving yourself a sinus-enema.
After that, drugs didn’t seem so bad.
Speak of the Devil: Secrets, Friends, And An Inept Killer: Box of Rock...
Speak of the Devil: Secrets, Friends, And An Inept Killer: Box of Rock...: Today I'm doing a book review for Karla Telega's novel Box of Rocks. You can find her blog at Telega Tales, where she regularly dispenses ...
I've been nominated for the Versatile Blogger Award!
My friend Rosanne Dingli has nominated me for the Versatile Blogger award, a kind of pay it forward way to bring some attention to fellow bloggers:
Thanks, Rosanne! It’s been kind of a rough autumn for me – the boost is much appreciated.
This comes with a responsibility to say seven things about myself, and to nominate five more deserving bloggers. I don’t have all that much interesting to say that I haven’t already said, so you probably know these things:
1. Last year I got my 30 year pin as a volunteer firefighter (I joined on my 18th birthday), and this year a certificate for 20 years as an emergency dispatcher.
2. I have Seasonal Affected Disorder: Winter quite literally drives me crazy.
3. My fianc̩e is half my age Рand twice my maturity.
4. I can’t stand America’s two great drinks: coffee and beer.
5. It took me over three decades from the moment I first ventured into fiction writing as a child to getting my first novel published.
6. My humor column, Slightly Off the Mark, was named after a line in a newspaper story about a bowling league.
7. I was known throughout my school years for being painfully shy.
Now, on to nominations that, I admit, I picked somewhat at random because I couldn’t decide among all the excellent bloggers:
Kelly Hashway: http://kellyhashway.blogspot.com/
Linda Nagata (Who holds a special place in my heart because she taught me a short story writing correspondence course I took – by snail mail! – many years ago): http://hahvi.net/
Fire guts Albion home
I used to live in this place -- in fact, I wrote many of my early stories here, including some about firefighting. It was the second home I had after graduating from high school: The first was an apartment that was also destroyed by fire, on New Year's day several years ago.
Fire Monday night destroyed an Albion home, although the occupants escaped safely.
The two story wood frame home at 112 E. Highland Street was engulfed in flames within minutes of the first 911 call being received at 9:47 p.m., according to the Noble County Sheriff's Department. The cause of the blaze, at a home reportedly occupied by the Heileman family, was undetermined and remains under investigation.
Firefighters were hampered by exploding medical oxygen tanks that accelerated the fire, and by a burned through electric line, which fell into the back yard and endangered emergency crews. The fire burned so hot that they weren't able to get in, and had to spray water on the flames from outside. An aerial ladder truck from the Kendallville Fire Department was brought in provide an elevated water stream that helped knock down the flames, while a pall of smoke drifted over most of town.
The fire was declared under control just before midnight, but the building was too heavily damaged to be saved and had to be knocked down with heavy equipment to avoid endangering people with a collapse. American Red Cross personnel were helping the displaced family with their needs.
Several fire trucks responded to assist from the Kendallville and Orange Township Fire Departments, while the Noble Township Fire Department stood by on Albion's station in case of another call. Three fire engines and a rescue truck responded from Albion, manned by twenty-six Albion firefighters. Also assisting at the scene were members of the Albion Police Department, Noble County EMS, American Electric Power, and Owen's Excavating.
Fire Monday night destroyed an Albion home, although the occupants escaped safely.
The two story wood frame home at 112 E. Highland Street was engulfed in flames within minutes of the first 911 call being received at 9:47 p.m., according to the Noble County Sheriff's Department. The cause of the blaze, at a home reportedly occupied by the Heileman family, was undetermined and remains under investigation.
Firefighters were hampered by exploding medical oxygen tanks that accelerated the fire, and by a burned through electric line, which fell into the back yard and endangered emergency crews. The fire burned so hot that they weren't able to get in, and had to spray water on the flames from outside. An aerial ladder truck from the Kendallville Fire Department was brought in provide an elevated water stream that helped knock down the flames, while a pall of smoke drifted over most of town.
The fire was declared under control just before midnight, but the building was too heavily damaged to be saved and had to be knocked down with heavy equipment to avoid endangering people with a collapse. American Red Cross personnel were helping the displaced family with their needs.
Several fire trucks responded to assist from the Kendallville and Orange Township Fire Departments, while the Noble Township Fire Department stood by on Albion's station in case of another call. Three fire engines and a rescue truck responded from Albion, manned by twenty-six Albion firefighters. Also assisting at the scene were members of the Albion Police Department, Noble County EMS, American Electric Power, and Owen's Excavating.
I'll shoot my writing eye out!
Working on my annual Christmas column. It's not easy, finding something that's not too cliche'd but that I haven't covered before. Actually, I'm not sure it's possible to write a Christmas piece that isn't cliche'd; has there been any new Christmas writing that's not overly sentimental since "The Charlie Brown Christmas Special"? Maybe "A Christmas Story", but that's based on a story that dates back to the 60's.
On the other hand, for Christmas I think we can be excused a little sentimentality.
On the other hand, for Christmas I think we can be excused a little sentimentality.
Only Four More Months 'Till Spring
SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK
Well, that was fun. There’s nothing like getting the first snowstorm of winter ... a month before winter.
The first major event of the season is what they call a teachable moment. I call it a few other things, but “event” can go in the paper. Mostly what it teaches you is that people have short memories.
One of those people must be me, or I wouldn’t still be here.
This storm was particularly fun – I know sarcasm doesn’t translate well to the written word – because we had unusually warm temperatures and a couple of inches of rain before the snow hit. That meant we weren’t mentally, physically or emotionally prepared for the dip in temperature, leading to a grouchier than usual population.
The exception would be those few sanity-challenged people who like snow. Don’t get too close to them. They bite.
Of course, all that rain leads to standing water, which produced a layer of slush and ice under the snow and made things even greasier than usual. Fun fact: After going for more than a month without snow, the average driver completely loses all memory of how they should drive on it. This makes things especially dangerous when storms strike early, during that same time when suicidal deer who can’t take the idea of going through another Midwest winter deliberately walk in front of drivers who are already going too fast for the conditions.
Explains a lot, doesn’t it?
After the rain came not just snow, but the heavy, wet variety that falls when the air is right on the edge of freezing, much as I am all winter long. It seems strange to refer to snow as “wet” – after all, isn’t snow made of water? Well, although it usually happens in New York, there are times when snow comes from Donald Trump’s dandruff. But water content (of snow, not The Donald) varies, and by the end of January the air is so cold that the snow and my sense of humor become equally dry.
In this case the snow was very wet, more like Indiana air in July. Except different. Okay, the whole comparison is breaking down, just as I do when the days get shorter than my grandkids’ attention span. The point is, it’s so wet and heavy that it starts weighing stuff down. Everything starts drooping, like a voter by October. They’re called similes, people, stay with me. (Metaphors are like similes, only without the like.)
So in addition to drivers and pedestrians slipping and sliding, the snow started weighing down stuff like trees, utility poles, power lines, and Donald Trump’s hair, which caused an avalanche of dandruff that buried the entire cast of two reality shows. At least that one good thing happened.
I knew we were in trouble when I glanced outside at the evergreen bush at the corner of my house. I’ve been meaning to trim that bush for awhile. That is to say, I’ve been meaning to trim it for two decades. That’s no longer a problem, because the bush had split right down the middle, like a peeled banana, laying down in (ironically) a snowflake pattern. My lilac bush was lying. We thought the Christmas lights in the bushes out front fell down, but when we checked it turned out the entire bush had fallen down.
I confess to being a little surprise that my roof, which leaked all day during the rain and is scheduled to be replaced in a month, didn’t end up becoming my floor under the weight of all that snow. This might have led to winter finally killing me, just as I’ve always suspected it would.
But I got lucky: Everywhere else, snow so heavy that it formed its own gravitation field caused blocked roads and power outages. You think lighting your home with candles is romantic? See how much you like it when the water in the toilet starts freezing over.
I had to work that night. It took me half an hour to push the snow off my car … not brush it, but push it. Then I had to ram the drift that always forms in my driveway, back up, and ram it again before I could get out. Then I slid sideways halfway down South Street – and isn’t that name ironic – to get to work, where I skated across the parking lot.
On a related note, how does snow that heavy drift? There’s some kind of wind tunnel thing going on in my driveway: Every snow, there’s always a drift between my car and the street, which is fine as long as you’re not planning to go anywhere. But if you’re not planning to go anywhere, why own a car?
Anyway, at work we took over seven million 911 calls in eight hours. 70% of them were accidents and slide-offs; 25% were people wanting to know if there was a snow emergency; 32% asked about road conditions; 14% wanted to know when the power would come back on, and were stunned at the idea that they might need to contact their power company.
I know that adds up to more than 100%, but keep in mind that a full 40% of the callers were drivers who slid off because no snow emergency meant they had to go to work, where there was no power.
92% of the stuck drivers have driven too fast for the road conditions every winter for at least the last ten years, and still don’t understand why their insurance premiums keep rising. What this means for me is that I can write this exact same column every fall until I either retire or get carted away to a rubber room, which I can only hope will be painted in tropical patterns.
Just think … just four more months until spring.
book signing tomorrow, more news later
Info on the signing is still here:
https://www.facebook.com/events/201735176572762/
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