{"id":11648,"date":"2012-10-15T02:32:47","date_gmt":"2012-10-15T09:32:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/ClaireWolfe\/?p=11648"},"modified":"2012-10-15T02:32:47","modified_gmt":"2012-10-15T09:32:47","slug":"monday-musings-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2012\/10\/15\/monday-musings-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday musings"},"content":{"rendered":"

New short-story collection; really strange<\/del> good<\/b><\/p>\n

Did you like David Young’s Shiver on the Sky<\/i><\/a>? Well then, you’ll be glad to know that prolific S.O.B<\/del>* … erm, author is already back with a short-story collection, What Happens in September…<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n

Just $.99 on Amazon.<\/p>\n

I read all seven of September’s<\/i> tales in manuscript last week. Once again, David (now billed as David Haywood Young because every writer with a standard-sounding moniker needs<\/i> a middle name) has produced something that’s both genre-bending (crime-fantasy-humor-SF fiction) and filled with life — even when its subject is bloody murder.<\/p>\n

If you buy (and better yet, buy and review) this collection, you’ll be supporting a reader of this blog. But forget altruism; if you like weirdly creative stories quite well-written, you’ll be doing yourself a favor, too.<\/p>\n

My favorite: “Hard Roads.” Those trucks gotta roll …<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

The man who fell to earth<\/b><\/p>\n

I didn’t think I gave a damn about Felix Baumgartner’s freefall-from-the-stratosphere stunt because to what extent I thought of it at all, I thought of it as just a stunt<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Then yesterday morning I stumbled upon the live feed about halfway through the balloon’s long ascent. Two hours later I hadn’t even gotten out of my jammies, let alone walked the poor dogs.<\/p>\n

What an amazing thing. What astonishing creatures we humans can be. It had all the nail-biting suspense of the best real-life adventures in space — and all the dull, but magnificent methodical bits, too. And all this was done by private enterprise … this amazing project pulled together by free people and an energy-drink company. All this no-doubt valuable experimentation<\/a> and exploration and data gathering all done in the name of daredeviltry and sport and promoting a product. That’s just a wonderment.<\/p>\n

I was so wrought up in the last half hour before the fall from the capsule that I wanted to shove Baumgartner out the hatch to get the nerves over with.<\/p>\n

Did the actual dive seem anti-climactic to any of you who watched the live feed? It did to me. Especially when Baumgartner plunged through the sound barrier. Remembering that Chuck Yeager’s plane nearly rattled itself to bits before breaking through, I thought there would be … something. But not until the shadow of the man and his parachute were gliding across the New Mexico ground did the fall seem real. Loved him landing on his feet!<\/p>\n

It also seemed touching that he achieved this amazing thing on the 65th anniversary of Yeager’s flight, and that he was assisted by the man who has held the freefall record for 52 years<\/i>. And it seemed right somehow that, while Baumgartner shattered — obliterated! — two of the three records he set out to break, that 84-year-old man beside him at the press conference afterward still holds the record for duration of freefall.<\/p>\n

It’s even a sort of nice touch that Baumgartner is as handsome and articulate as a movie star and could probably be billed as the All-American Boy, except for that small matter of being Austrian.<\/p>\n

Yeah, humans. We can be a pain in the butt. But “what a piece of work is man.”<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

Snitch book — getting there!<\/b><\/p>\n

The anti-snitch book came back from volunteer proofreader Smitty this weekend. Thank you, Smitty. And thank you ALL.<\/p>\n

I just need to input these last corrections and it’s off to Anonymous Layout Guy for layout and magical Kindle formatting.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

Dogs and cats<\/b><\/p>\n

Nothing terribly dramatic, but a nice little story<\/a> about how a couple got their lost Australian cattle dog back<\/a> after four months with the help of good people, Craigslist, and just the right whistle at just the right moment.<\/p>\n

And here’s one for you cat people<\/a>, courtesy of C^2. To close out with a touch of weirdness it’s about … cat cafes.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

* Nothing personal toward David Young. It’s just that we writers who agonize over every word and produce about one book a century just hate<\/del> despise<\/del> want to kill<\/del> deeply admire and envy those rare writers who can just turn on the creativity spigots and enjoy the flow. David is clearly one of those.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New short-story collection; really strange good Did you like David Young’s Shiver on the Sky? Well then, you’ll be glad to know that prolific S.O.B* … erm, author is already back with a short-story collection, What Happens in September… Just $.99 on Amazon. I read all seven of September’s tales in manuscript last week. Once again, David (now billed as David Haywood Young because every writer with a standard-sounding moniker needs a middle name) has produced something that’s both genre-bending (crime-fantasy-humor-SF fiction) and filled with life — even when its subject is bloody murder. If you buy (and better yet,…<\/p>\n

Continue readingMonday musings<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8,18,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-and-movies","category-dogs-and-cats","category-mind-and-spirit","category-miscellaneous","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11648\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}