I've always been curious about stock trading. In the back of my mind over the years I thought it would be cool to start to learn about the stock market. In high school I had an economics class where we did paper trading for a few weeks. Paper trading is where you buy and sell stocks virtually by looking at stock prices and writing down your purchases and sales. So it's like trading in the stock market but with fake money so there's no real risk involved. |
| Catbeard the Pirate! |
 |
| Photo by PJ Hudson http://www.morguefile.com/creative/pjhudson |
There hasn't been much time for - well anything. I'm thrilled that I finished that 7K short story for an anthology, read two posts down for more on that, and now I'm free to finish the novel I've been working on for a long time. I'm going to try and jump back into writing that book and get it done. I can't believe it's already June! It is my goal to do these things this year with my writing:
"The Age of Innocence" is the story of upper-class
mores of New York society beginning in the 1870s and how, with the turn of the
20th century and passing of generations, change affects every aspect
of the traditions they held so dear. This is a world where style and form are
the highest values. Sounds dry as dust, doesn’t it? But, Edith Wharton’s words
and descriptions bring this world to vivid, delicious life. Instead of merely advising the readers that
the matriarch of that New York society, Mrs. Manson Mingott, is fat, Ms.
Wharton wrote: “The immense accretion of flesh which had descended on her in
middle life like a flood of lava on a doomed city had changed her from a plump
active little woman with a neatly-turned foot and ankle into something as vast
and august as a natural phenomenon.” I clearly remember reading this for the
first time in high school and rolling the words “the immense accretion of
flesh” around on my tongue. 
Sue is a typical Gemini – she craves novelty and variety and gets bored easily. These traits have served Sue well, leading her to try her hand at many fields. Over the last 25% years, Sue is and has been an attorney, corporate risk manager, personal caterer and editor. Currently, Sue is exercising her passion for voice acting by narrating the fabulous fiction of author Imogen Rose.http://www.imogenrose.com/index.php?p=1_52_Audio- You can also catch Sue on TV in a national commercial for Dunkin’ Donuts. Sue lives in New Jersey with her husband, son and three very large cats.
I just submitted a 7,500 word short story to an anthology. Even though this is a short story it's longer than most of my short stories and I worked really hard on it. I'm really excited about it. I hope they accept it and it gets published in the anthology. Beyond that I am going to make it into a graphic novel and an audio book. I used what I've learned about story structure to plan out the story in four parts before writing it. I broke it into four parts to match the four parts of the three act structure. If you're not familiar with that you have:
The short story is a fantasy adventure story I wrote to submit to the Portal Under My Sink anthology. It came in around 7,300 words and that's good because their limit is 7,500. I'm pretty proud of it and I've been getting some pretty good feedback on it so far from beta readers. I hope it makes it into the anthology. If it does it will be my second book put out by a publisher. Five Rivers Publishing is going to release this one like they released A Method to the Madness. I'm excited to see what comes of it. Whatever happens I'm also going to make it into an audiobook and put it on Audible, and make it into a graphic novel too. So those are exciting things for the future. I've always wanted to create a comic book and I can't wait to see what all is involved in that process. A very talented friend will be doing the artwork instead of me because he draws comics and is amazing.
As for the audiobook, it's a really fun title by an author I've worked for before. Drac Von Stoller has another awesome creepy story. This one is titled "Ghost Mansion," and is though it's still very short it is quite a bit longer than the other ones I've done for him so far. I will be finishing it this week. 
Still, I preferred reading. Once I moved to live with my father, I still read voraciously. I would check out books from the library three or four at a time and return them all the following week for three or four more. I got an allowance that allowed me to go to the book store and buy books in bulk. I didn’t matter what books I bought, I would read them quickly, usually give them away to friends that wanted to read them, and go buy more.
J.R. Murdock is an avid reader of almost anything he can get his hands on. That being said, he also writes with near reckless abandon in any and every genre. His style is intended for pure entertainment. Over the years he’s written nine novels and over one hundred short stories. Only a few short stories have seen print (in actual print and on the web) so he’s decided to throw his hat into the podcasting arena with his novel V & A Shipping. Since then he has also podcast his novel Billy Barbarian and released his YA novel Astel: Chosen, not to mention the great short stories he's podcast in his Murdockian Tales series. Also V&A Shipping 2 is now available! Find out more at www.jrmurdock.com. When not writing like a mad-man, J.R. Murdock does have a day job as a computer programmer and loves to spend time with his lovely wife and beautiful daughter.
An awesome audiobook I had the pleasure to narrate and produce just went live. This was a really cool story and my favorite I've been able to do so far from the author Drac Von Stoller. Not only are there cool sound effects and music in the background, as always, but I got to really have fun coming up with different voices for each character in this story. Also think old western shoot em' up story mixed with a ghost story and you've got Grave Robbers! Now available at Audible.com, Amazon.com, and in iTunes! Go have a listen. I know you're going to love it. Why not pick up a copy and support an indie author and narrator. Thanks for stopping by!
Reading has been a huge part of both of our lives and we wanted to pass this love of reading on to our children. So naturally in addition to being sung to constantly they were also read to a lot even before they were born. The best and most vivid book memory that I will always treasure, is that some time during the third trimester with each child Laith read the "Heffalumps and woozles" story from Winnie the Pooh. This makes me smile for two reasons. The first it shows you just how dedicated a Dad and husband he is, but secondly... if you haven't seen your exhausted, dedicated and devoted spouse attempt to say "a wizzle woozle wizzle woozle was..." at 9 pm in the evening you are letting one of the best things in life pass you by...
Lastly if you'll permit, I'll bend the rules a little and talk about my favorite author memory. My favorite author memory is when Laith writes. Have you ever listened to someone type? There's a rhythm to it, a tempo. The beat changes with the level of excitement, when a new idea comes along, when inspiration strikes. For several years now, Laith has been writing. Blogs, posts, short stories. It's his creative outlet, his expression. He's participated in several writing challenges, but my favorite is when he participates in NaNoWriMo. Because he enjoys it, of course, but also... over in our home office I get to hear that symphony in several movements. The tempo of the clickety clack, the rise and fall of the orchestration as the ideas take shape and when the writing is complete the new work of art that conveys an idea. And after 18 years listening to this author type, create and express I can't wait to hear the song again.
Laura Nicole has been making silly voices since a child. At the encouragement of her father, she started voice acting since 2004 starting with shows on BrokenSea.com and Circus13Productions.com. Her roles include strong artistic leading women, colorful villains, and a lot of computer voices. Currently she is narrating her novel Absolution and other projects to be named.
A brief synopsis:
The earliest memory of audio fiction I have are the GI Joe Adventure Team book and record sets. With it, you got a comic book and a 45 RPM record. The vinyl disk and book are, in my memory, a gateway to the worlds of action and adventure that I'd revisit a hundred thousand times over during the course of my life. The story was brief, since it had to fit on the record, but it was fun and suspenseful. I must have played it fifty times if I'd played it once, sprawled out on my bedroom floor. That taught me the valuable lesson that even the campiest stories can be enjoyed more than once. 
Scott Roche craves only caffeine and the clacking of keys. He pays his bills doing the grunt work no one else wants to take, bringing dead electronics back to life and working arcane wonders with software. His true passion is hammering out words that become anything from tales that terrify to futuristic worlds of wonder. All that and turning three children into a private mercenary army make for a life filled with adventure.
So I curled up and dug in. My life was never the same again. All that kept running through my head was, “So this is what reading can be like. Needless to say, when I finished it, I dug into Lord of the Rings. Then I was bugging my mom to take me to the library as I worked through all the Narnia books. It wasn’t too long before I ran out, which is what transformed me from a reader to a writer.
So for those who have read my stories you can either thank (or blame) my brother Patrick (his first name is John, although everyone calls him Pat) FRor waking me up in the middle of the night so share his enthusiasm for Tolkien. It was the spark that ignited the fire, and without that my life would have turned out much different. I hope that everyone has someone in their life that nudges them on the way to reading…and, I’d be even happier if some of those got the writing bug as well.
Michael J. Sullivan is author of The Riyria Revelations, The Riyria Chronicles, and his soon to be released science fiction thriller, Hollow World. He has written twenty-three novels, published nine, and has been translated into fifteen foreign languages. His works have appeared on more than eighty-five “best of” or “most anticipated” lists including those compiled by Library Journal, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, and Audible.com. He spends part of his time trying to help aspiring authors learn the intricacies of publishing through a regular column on Amazing Stories, and he’ll soon be featuring author interviews on Adventures in Science Fiction Publishing.