Thanksgiving

     Hi again!
     The biggest news since last time is that Hurricane Sandy came through here, and with all the post-Sandy stuff going on at The Job Which Supports My Writing Habit, I've been pretty busy the last few weeks.
     There wasn't a lot of damage at all at Casa de Lavell from Hurricane Sandy, which is something I'm VERY thankful for this Thanksgiving.  We lost power for three days, and a couple of bits of flashing fell off the roof.  But that's the extent of the damage we took.  Again, VERY grateful.  There are people out there that lost their power for a lot longer than we did, lost their homes, and some even lost loved ones.  Did I mention that I am VERY grateful that our damage wasn't that bad???         I am also thankful that my Mom is still with us, after everything she's been through, and still goes through. Stroke, cancer, blood thinners, and all.  She's a survivor, and I'm lucky to have someone like that in my life.  Then, there's my wife Michele.  Through all of our ups, downs, dramas, etc., she has stayed in my life when a lot of other people I know and thought were friends headed for the exits.  As she put it earlier today, she's my partner in love, in life, and "a little bit of treason." (Quiet Man reference, for those that didn't get it. Don't call out the black helicopters, lol).  Through her, I also met her parents, who are mad, brilliant, and wonderful.
     My Dad has been, and continues to be, a positive influence on my life, whether he realizes it or not.  And I'll always love him, no matter how long it is between the visits.  And there's also my friend Lou, who for about 30 years now has been a brother to me.  (Not LIKE, Goat Cheese.  You're family.)
     I'm thankful as hell for The Job Which Supports My Writing Habit.  I gripe as much (and sometimes MORE than) the next guy about my job.  But somehow, at the end of the month, I sit here with my bills and my checkbook, and everything works out somehow.  I've also made some really good friends at the MMC and at Morrisville Yard who I may not have met otherwise.  So again, I know how lucky I am.
     Now in the aftermath of Sandy, there are some really great efforts going on to help the people who were impacted by the storm.  NJ's First Lady, Mary Pat Christie and others have set up a website to take donations for victims of Hurricane Sandy (www.SandyNJReliefFund.org)
     If you feel more comfortable donating to an established charity (and there are a lot of people who feel this way), there's always the American Red Cross (www.redcross.org, or call 732-493-9100 ext. 1245).  They are taking financial donations, and also running blood drives, as blood supplies are dwindling in a lot of areas in NJ since the storm hit.  Another group taking blood donations is the Community Blood Council of NJ (www.givebloodNJ.org, or call 609-883-9750).
      There are dozens of benefit concerts planned across the state, and there are people all over the internet selling various merchandise with the proceeds going to Sandy Recovery.  I have to admit I bought a couple of tshirts when I found out that they were donating their profits.  The two I bought were on shop.ergoclothing.com, and www.sandyaidrelief.bigcartel.com.  The second one is a group that are based in NJ, and I already got the shirts.  I bought a few as gifts, sort of donating in my friends' names too.  It's a great shirt, and I hope that the money they make on it goes to help someone who really needs it.
     Anyway, there's not much else going on right now, except that after a short storm break I'm back to the book.  I'm still hoping to be done by the end of the year, but I'll keep everyone posted.  In the meantime...

     HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL!!!

     Bill

One of those things you don't talk about in public...

Hi gang,

I'm still hard at work on the new book, so I've been neglecting the blog lately.  I took a while off to goof around online, and Michele was looking a political site online.  Now normally I don't get involved in political discussions, because like religion, my views are personal.  And anyway, it's one of those subjects your parents always tell you not to discuss in polite company if you want your company to remain polite.
But, as sometimes happens, my emotions got the better of me, and I just had to speak up on this one posting that went up on the Libertarian section of the site.  Not because of who the person was voting for, mind you.  But because he said that anybody who didn't vote for either Obama or Romney was throwing their vote away.  That really set me off, and I had to post something about it.  Since I haven't posted in a while, I thought I'd share:

I don't usually talk politics. Normally I keep my opinions to myself. But I built up a little rant reading these posts, and I have to get this off my chest just once.

I didn't vote for Barack Obama the first time he ran because I had never heard of him, and I didn't think he showed me anything while he was running except for a bunch of catchphrases. Forget all the controversies that surrounded him before, during, and after the election, I just didn't think he had what it took to be president. 

He hasn't shown me anything in the last four years as president that's changed my opinion. On the contrary, the fact that he was the first sitting president to appear on Oprah and Letterman while the shape of the country was deteriorating and the fact that I'm paying twice as much for gas as I was when he took office are just more proof (to me at least), that I was right to feel that way.

I am also realistic and know that I live in a state that, while we have a Republican governor right now ("which has worked out SO well," he said sarcastically), traditionally votes democratic. So Romney's got about as much chance of getting the electoral votes here as I do. Obama won here 4 years ago, and I've seen so many of his signs on people's houses that it looks to me like he'll win here again. That's pretty sad that we pretty much know who our state is going to swing towards already, but it's the way the system is.

That having been said, that's how the system is. It's just like going in some convenience stores. Coke and Pepsi. That's all you get. And it's that way because more people DON'T vote their conscience. If you really think that Gary Johnson is the best candidate on the ballot, then dammit, you should VOTE for him! Everybody complains (and rightly so) about the two-party system, and how it's broken, and how somebody somewhere should do something to FIX it. Well guess what? SOMEBODY is US! Everybody made fun of Clint Eastwood's performance at the RNC convention, but he said one thing that was dead on. We The People DO own this country. At least that's how it's supposed to be. It's ours, and our children's, and if we don't like what our elected officials are doing with our trust, then we need to let them know about it. And the only way to make a real change, and ensure that we have a real choice, is to make sure that we don't just vote for one guy or the other because "that other guy doesn't belong to a major party and he's not going to win." The only way to MAKE the Libertarians a major party is with votes. Give them enough votes to keep them on the ballot if you believe in what they have to say, and let the guys in the suits make them enough money to do the rest. IMHO, if you vote for Romney or Obama just because you think think the other guys can't win, which a lot of people are going to do, THAT will be throwing away your vote.

Don't just settle for Coke and Pepsi because because they're the Big 2.

Sometimes I like a little RC too.

Review of Donnie Baseball: The Definitive Biography of Don Mattingly by Mike Shalin

     I just finished reading Donnie Baseball: The Definitive Biography of Don Mattingly by Mike Shalin on my Nook.
    Now let me start by saying that Don Mattingly is my favorite baseball player of all time. I was lucky enough to see him play, and he's the best player that I have ever watched. In my opinion, he played the game the way it should be played; he wasn't flashy, he never put himself above his team or the game, and he never cheated to win or extend his career.    Having said that, I was very disappointed in this book.
     This book sounded like an audition tape for Mattingly's hiring as the Dodgers' manager last year (his hiring was announced while the author was writing the book). It was basically 137 pages (that's what the counter on my Nook said, anyway. It seemed a little longer) of managers, former players, and broadcasters telling us what a great guy he was. Not that I disagree, but I was expecting a few more anecdotes than there were. There was a very short story about Stump Merrill threatening to bench him back in '87 if he didn't cut his hair, and another really short story about Dallas Green playing peacemaker when George Steinbrenner ripped Mattingly in the press in the offseason in '89. There were a few mentions of Mattingly's first wife, Kim dashed throughout, but no mention of the divorce and what led to it. And somewhere towards the end of the book, it was mentioned in passing that Mattingly remarried last year (one brief sentence). Mike Shalin is a good writer, and he tried to cover a lot in the book, but it didn't seem like the people he interviewed for the book gave him much to work with. I realize that Don Mattingly wasn't a hellraiser like Billy Martin or Mickey Mantle, and that there probably aren't a lot of wild and crazy stories to tell. But I'm sure there must be more stories than there were in this book. And after the fourth or fifth time you read that someone said "he was a great guy, he really knows the game and he taught me a lot", it does get a little repetitive. I do have to admit, there was one part of the book where Shalin talks about the fact that Mattingly played the game before steroid use was rampant. He asked him point blank if he would have used steroids if he could have, and brought up Mike Schmidt's quote on the subject. Mattingly's answer was honest, and a little bit surprising.
     I think the best part of the book was the photo section that was included at the end, but even that section left me wanting. Maybe I'm biased and had some unrealistic expectations about this book because Don Mattingly was one of my heroes growing up, but I was really hoping to enjoy this book because I was hoping to learn a few things about him that I didn't know. But I was left disappointed, because it seemed more like a testimonial than a biography. With the material he had, I'll bet he could have written a great article.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation - Part One

Hi Everybody,

It's been a while since I've checked in here. There were some personal things going on in my life over the last few months which I'm going to keep personal, but things are looking up of late. Needless to say that with all the turmoil going on, I kind of left my writing by the wayside a little bit. I recently turned back to it, and cleaned up what I've got a bit, but I can't seem to get any new words on the page.

Now, I'm still working at The Job Which Supports My Writing Habit. But my inner writer decided that since he wasn't producing anyway, he'd officially take the rest of the summer off, with the understanding that as soon as September starts, I'm going to hit the pad again. Hard.

So I fired up my Nook (I LOVE my Nook) and I've spent the last couple of months reading. I've read more books in the couple of months I've had this thing than I've read in a looooong time. And I'm reading... you guessed it... CRIME BOOKS! (Because man cannot live by sci-fi alone, my friends)

I actually started off with a sci-fi book called Blood Oath, which was a Babylon 5 novel. It was written by Michael Straczynski, who created B5, so it flows just like an episode of the series. If you've ever watched the show, you can almost picture Jerry Doyle as Garibaldi and Claudia Christian as Ivanova having the conversations that he writes in the book, so he did a good job of staying true to his characters. It was an enjoyable read, and a good start for my little reading adventure. Then like I said, I moved on to murder books.

James Patterson writes a character names Alex Cross, who is a Washington DC homicide cop who is also a psychologist. He's bought in on all sorts of specialized murder and kidnapping cases where there is a strong psychological element to the crimes. He's written 18 of these books to date, and I read them all, so I won't break them all down. But I'll say this much: I like Morgan Freeman, and he did a great job with the scripts they gave him to work with in Along Came a Spider and Kiss the Girls, but the movies didn't do the books justice. They changed the whole dynamic of the character, left out some great supporting characters (He had a partner in the books, but not in the movies. They also gave him a wife, who was dead in the books, and left out his kids and his grandmother). I think the movies would have been a lot better if they'd done their stories the way Patterson wrote the books. But that's just me.

Another book I checked out was David Baldacci's True Blue. I liked his main character, Mace Perry. She's a Washington DC cop (a great source of crime stories, apparently) who was sent to prison for a crime she was coerced into committing (she was kidnapped, drugged and forced to help in a robbery) and is just getting out of prison. She wants to solve one big case so that she can redeem herself in the eyes of her peers and get back on the force. The best ally she has (and also her fiercest opponent) is her sister Beth, who just happens to be the Chief of Police. Mace spends just as much time fighting with her over-protective sibling as she does trying to solve the case. The ending is one where no one gets quite what they were expecting, and it takes a long time to get there (over 400 pages of gangs, feds, and mayhem). But it's a great starter story if the author wanted to turn it into a series.

That's just a sampling of the books I've read so far, and there's still a little bit of summer left. So next time, I'll have a few more off-the-cuff reviews for you.

Read on!

- B -

My Goodreads Review of "Killing the Blues", by Michael Brandman

Robert B. Parker's Killing The Blues by Michael Brandman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I thought this was a great addition to the Jesse Stone series. I agree that Michael Brandman captured the late Robert Parker's style very well, and he does his portrayal of the character justice. Jesse Stone is a flawed character with enough virtues to balance out his flaws a little, unlike the character in the tv movies. I think he's written a bit too much on the miserable side for tv, but that's just my opinion. The story was solid from beginning to end, with just enough of the relationships between Jesse, Molly, and Suitcase featured to flesh out the characters. It was nice to see some of the other recurring characters as well (Gino Fish and councilman Hasty, for example) written with most of their nuances intact. I did miss Sunny Randall, as it seems that Mr. Brandman is choosing a different direction than Mr. Parker was going with Jesse's personal life. But if the future stories are as good as this one was, I think I'll get over it.

View all my reviews

I'm ba-a-a-ck...

Hi all,

I just came back from 3 days in the Poconos with my sweetie for our anniversary.   The cabin we stayed at was beautiful, and the scenery was too nice for words.   I'm attaching a few pictures.   I hope this works.   They really don't do the place justice, though.

Saturday morning view from the cabin

Our cabin the other side of the brook

The other news of note is that the book contest over at Dream (http://dreamonus.com) is finished, and I got the names of the winners this morning.  They are:
Antane Armstrong of Bloomington,IN
Sabrena Pattat of Anderson,IN
Gary Green of Satellite Beach, FL
and Holly Markoski of Shillington,PA

Congratulations to the winners, and a big thanks to everyone else who entered!  There were over a hundred entries, which honestly was a lot more than I thought I'd get.  I hope people stay this interested in it!

Until next time...

Greetings from.....

Sorry for being away for so long (is it really almost a month?)  An unhealthy level of insanity at the job which supports my writing habit and a lack of interesting things to say have kept me on the blogging sidelines.  A few notes this week, though.
As of this morning I had 81 people entered in the drawing to win one of 4 copies of Treos Dilemma on dream.com.  That surprised the hell out of me, because that's 81 more people than I expected!  I'm so happy about the turnout that I've decided to make them autographed copies.  The drawing goes off on April 15, so if you haven't entered yet, please do!
I've been selling copies of the other two books by hand through very limited word of mouth lately, and I've gotten some pretty nice feedback on them.  I've been told more than once that "I don't usually read science fiction, but I liked your book."  And to me, that's a pretty nice compliment.
And finally, I'm still having trouble getting my head around this myself, but I just got finished doing my first interview as an author!  It was with a blogger named Patti Roberts, and as soon as she sends me the exact link, I'll be sure to get it posted.  I tried to be funny, without coming off like too much of an ass.  I hope I succeeded.
Until next time....

All a-Twitter

Hi again!

There have been a few developments since I wrote in last.  I had jury duty last week, so I didn't even get a chance to write anything towards Book 4, which I'm happy to say I was well into before I had to go to court.  Jury Duty was an experience, let me tell you.  I actually got picked for a jury in a criminal case, and I think it's better for everyone if I leave the description right there.  I may use some of the details in a book someday, or maybe not.  But suffice it to say that it was an interesting week.  After a week in court, I'm actually glad to be back at the railyard.
As far as things around here, you may be happy to see that I've redecorated the blog a bit.  I found a template online that looked interesting, and tweaked it a little to suit.  Knowing just enough code to be dangerous, of course, I was able to finagle a link to my website on the blog too.  This way you can check out the website as well.  I intend to work that up a bit as well.
I entered the Amazon Breakthrough novel contest right before one of my last postings.  That didn't go very well.  The Treos Dilemma didn't even survive the first round, I'm sorry to say.  But if there's any good news that came out of it, it's that I most likely got thrown out because I messed up on the entry.  You apparently weren't supposed to put the author's name on any of the files that made up the entry, and I forgot to take my name off of the book file that I uploaded.  I have to remember next year to get some SLEEP before I try to enter the contest.  In the meantime, there are plenty more contests to enter!
Which brings me to another point.  For once, I have a contest for YOU.  There's a website called Dream (www.dreamonus.com).  It's a reader website that is just starting out, and to get new authors' work out there, they run book giveaways every couple of weeks.  The owner of the site reached out to yours truly, and starting this week, you can enter to win one of 4 copies of Treos Dilemma, which is a featured book.  The link is http://www.dreamonus.com/books/84-The-Treos-Dilemma.  The contest has only been open for two days, and there are already a dozen people entered.  The contest ends on April 15, so take a chance!  You might win a great book to read while you're waiting for your tax refund.
And finally, I let Michele talk me into starting a Twitter account.  I didn't really see the need for it, but Dream.com likes their members to use Twitter so they can talk about the books they get through the site with the people who "follow" them.  If anyone is interested, my handle is @AuthorWmLavell https://twitter.com/#!/AuthorWmLavell.  I've started following a few celebrities that I check on when I have the time, and it's interesting what some of them have to say.  And unlike Facebook, I actually post on there once in a while.
Okay... I feel like I'm starting to yammer, so I'll close.
Until next time

Bill

Cover story

There's not much going on this week, as I'm trying to work out the formatting issues with the new book.  It should be ready for launch by March 2 at the latest.  Until then, here's a shot of the cover art for "The Treos Dilemma."

Happy Happy....

So... It's been a long time since i posted here.  A lot longer than i realized, in fact.  Did you miss me?
New year's has come and gone, a birthday whizzed by, and a few developments on the writing front, too. 
The Augustine Agenda took an honorable mention home from the London Book Festival a couple of weeks ago.  I'm still an unknown, but I'm an INTERNATIONAL unknown now!  How great is that? ;-)
I worked a lot of extra hours at my day job, which supports my writing habit, so I've been very scarce as of late.  The best (?) one came when I tried to go on vacation this past week.  I ended up working Christmas AND New Year's this year, so I said to hell with it, and took my first vacation week the week of my birthday.  I thought I'd get some rest, because the third book was almost done.  I only had one or two more scenes to write.  I even had the intention of entering it in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel contest this year (I missed last year with Escape From Argus). All was looking fine in Writingville.
Then, the contest opened!  Yay! I thought.  I'll just put this in, easy peasy, and get down to the vacay.  But just to make sure that I had all of my ducks in a row, I read the contest rules one more time...
That's when the panic at the disco started.  The minimum word count for a novel in the Amazon contest is 50,000 words.
I had 41,000.
That's when panic set in.  I spent the next 5 days pounding in what wound up being about 1500 words a day into what I thought was a finished manuscript.  Until finally, at about 4 in the morning yesterday, I had my word count, and admittedly a better book than I'd had 5 days before.  I have to give some serious props to those people who do NaNoWriMo every year.  50,000 words in 30 days every November.  I had trouble keeping that pace for a week.  To keep it up for a whole month?  That's some serious writing.
Anyway, I entered the contest, needless to say.  I also put my copyright in, got all of my files off to CreateSpace, and ordered a proof copy of my newest book that night.  So watch out for The Treos Dilemma.  It's coming soon!
I got some sleep on Thursday, but it wasn't nearly enough.  So here I am, back at the railyard, waiting for the inspiration to hit me for Book 4.