Monthly Archives: February 2017

What it was like to be a writer before the Internet: Markets

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Before the Internet rose to mass use through the 1990’s, just finding a list of places to -maybe- send hard copies of your writing to involved a trip to the library (or the purchase of an expensive directory that listed writing markets), and a lot of time to go through a thick book (or several) and try to find out which publishers to contact. Then, hope they were still in business by the time your material reached them in the mail!

Today, we writers have got it comparatively easy as far as getting our work to readers is concerned. We can self-publish electronically, or submit our writing to publishers for consideration without even having to print out the manuscripts, pay for postage, envelopes, and return postage (and ink for the printer), and then wait a long time for an answer that may not come. Today, things are much faster and easier, and cheaper!

Here’s a video where I talk about it some more and show one of the writing market directories in book form that I used to use:

 

 

Animal Tracks in Snow – Feb. 11, 2016

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It’s been a fairly easy winter here this year in Ontario, and after a few days of no snow we got about 10cm last night (different story on the west coast of Canada, where Vancouver and the rest of BC has gotten the winter we’ve missed!).

This morning I woke up to look out in the yard and saw 2 or 3 tracks of different animals. I thought one of them looked like a cat (small footprints close together with pads and claws, and in a tight line, with some wavering), and we’ve had a cat roaming around here from time to time, so that was a good bet that’s what made one set of tracks.

The other tracks look to be from a squirrel (smaller footprints with pads and claws, and drag marks in fairly straight lines), of which we have several that visit here on a daily basis.

There was also a third set of tracks, I think, more blocky. Could be the cat again, in different snow, but I’m not sure. I looked online for examples of animal prints in snow, but they were not easy to find.

I made a video of the tracks, so you can take a look. If you think I’ve missed the mark on what any of the tracks are, let me know by leaving a comment, I’d appreciate it.

On the Writing Front

I’ve been working on getting the paperback versions of my short story series “MIB Files” out, so those should all be available from Amazon, soon. Here’s a link to the first two that are now online:

MIB Files: Movie Time – Tales of the Men In Black (Volume 4): http://amzn.to/2lv1jdu
MIB Files: Bigfoot Hunter – Tales of the Men In Black (Volume 6): http://amzn.to/2keBez5

Writing Now: D.U.M.B.s (Deep Underground Military Bases) – Book 6 (See the other books in the series: http://amzn.to/2l4FfW0