Life and other stuff...

Do you ever look at the calendar or clock and wonder, with a shock, where the heck the time has gone?

It's been a busy couple of weeks... but that's not new, now is it? Good busy, though.

Dear Lara (my wife) and I built a form and poured quite a bit of concrete, for the base of the pumphouse on our property. Lara is not a big lady, but I guess she's wiry—she helped me in the pouring process by hefting thirty-two 80-lb bags of concrete mix from the trailer over to near where I was working. (That's over 2500 pounds.) While she was bringing them, I was mixing them with a couple of gallons of water each, and pouring the resulting mixture into the form we had built. Add the weight of the water (8 pounds per gallon) and an extra 60-lb bag we added to finish things off, and it comes up to over 3,100 pounds of concrete we poured that day, by hand!

But enough about manual labor for the moment, although it got a little bit exciting yesterday when our Jeep was almost pushed into a ravine by a one-ton load of manure. (Don't ask...)

Anyway, the By the Chimney With Care anthology is doing well, but hey, why haven't YOU ordered your copy? This is for Toys for Tots, remember??

We have sold over 150 copies, but remember we have to pay for the printing and shipping, so that really isn't so much for the kids! We need to sell more, to make those Christmas mornings brighter for the kids. Come on, order a copy, either from me at Wolfmont Publishing or through your local bookstore or Amazon (ISBN 0-9778402-3-9). The shipping is included in the price from the publisher ($12.75 total), but the suggested retail is $10.95 without shipping.




Also, last week four of my authors (Sunny Frazier, John M. Floyd, Deborah Elliott-Upton and Frank Zafiro) and I were all participants in the Muse It Up First Annual Online Writers' Conference. Over 1,000 writers and publishers participated in this truly momentous , week-long, online event, and I believe Lea Schizas is planning on holding another one next year. If she does, and if you are a writer, want to be a writer, or want to improve your writing, you shouldn't miss it!


This past Thursday night I was the guest of the Long Ridge Writers' Group at their Thursday Night Professionals gathering, and we had a great time talking about the pleasures and pitfalls of small-press publishing, subsidy publishing, and publishing in general. The host, Mary Rosenblum, was quite gracious and everyone at the conference was eager to learn and ask questions.

Sunny Frazier and I are making definite headway on getting her debut novel, Fools Rush In, to market this winter. The ARCs have been ordered and should be here any time (crossing my fingers!)


Here's hoping you are having a wonderful October, and that All Hallows' Eve doesn't get too ghoulish for you.

Tony