31 March 2012

Don't Miss this Review of AFTER ILIUM.

I have been featured! 
(I mean in a good way, not in a post office wall kinda way.)

Blogger and writing colleague Connie J. Jasperson (author of the epic fantasy The Last Good Knight and its super-intense sequel Tower of Bones) has posted a review of my summer reading list book AFTER ILIUM on her fabulous blog The Dark Side Book Review!

Check it out. There are no spoilers, but you'll get a quick overview of the exciting, heart-wrenching plot without any of that heavy-handed mythology lecture that professors like me love to dream of delivering to auditoriums full of eager literature students. Who doesn't like stories of seduction and betrayal, with plenty of action and adventure thrown in? What really matters to poor Alex Parris is everything that happens After Ilium.

A Big Thanks, Connie, for making my day! 

(Especially after finishing up the tax reports and arranging to work overtime for the rest of the year to pay for those checks I mailed today. Then I shall begin working on next year's several pounds of flesh. Oh--wait! Help a poor author out and buy some books, eh? Good entertainment + literary charity! You'll feel satisfied and I'll be able to write more books. Thanks!)



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(C) Copyright 2010-2011 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

27 March 2012

So what happened...? (and other ruminations)

About that ABNA thing....

Those of you who may have been following along as I recorded the trials and tribulations of being a participant in Amazon's Breakthrough Novel Award competition might have awakened at night wondering what has become of me and my entry THE DREAM LAND (Book I: Long Distance Voyager). Now that I am a few days removed from the harsh reality of Reality, I am prepared to disclose what I can.



To recap: I passed the first round, which involved a 300-word pitch for the novel. I felt gloriously privileged for a few weeks. On to the second round, which involved an excerpt of the first 5000 words of the novel. Well, folks...I, umm, did not clear the bar. (Congratulations to those who did, by the way!) 


Along with that result, both winners and losers received two reviews of the excerpt from Amazon personnel. Mine were rather revealing in somewhat obtuse ways. 


Here are the two reviews, both answering the same general questions:

ABNA Expert Reviewer #1

What is the strongest aspect of this excerpt?

I love the concept you have here, and this is definitely an immediate hook. We're so used to alternate worlds being lovely medieval Narnia-like places, and here you have something garish and cruel. It almost feels like "Heavy Metal", but that's a world largely unexplored in literature, and I would definitely like to read more. This is one of the few excerpts I've read this year where being cut off at the end was a huge source of frustration, so well done.

What aspect needs the most work?

I think the writing here is not as strong as it needs to be, though. At several times, the point of view seemed to wander, or I'd be left unclear if something was a memory or really happening now, or... what. That's particularly worrisome in an opening sample, which needs to be EXTRA clear in order to rope in new readers. 

Please do not start from the POV of the psychiatrist. Readers sink into the first mind they meet, so having it be a decoy to describe the protagonist is very frustrating. We could have the same conversation with more insight and clarity from Sebastion's POV, so I highly recommend that change. 

Similarly, there's kind of a leap from Sebastion into Michael and Tammy. This really isn't necessary and it leaves the reader struggling to keep up because limited third-person usually feels much more natural than omni third-person. 

You need to cut out Tammy being an airhead and Michael wanting to hit her, in my opinion. Anything "Heavy Metal"-esque is going to have a lot of brutality towards women by its very nature. If that brutality is confined to Ghoupallesz, then the reader sees the author as a mere reporter; if the brutality leeches over into the Real World (Tammy stupid; Michael frustrated to violence), then the reader rebels and sees an author who hates women. I'm not saying you do; I'm saying the reader is going to feel that way, and you need to anticipate that and make sure to avoid it. If you must have the Michael/Tammy conversation (and I think it's superfluous) there's no reason they can't be normal, non-airheaded, non-violent people sharing a conversation.

What is your overall opinion of this excerpt?

You have a stellar idea, a gripping world, and a great draft here. I definitely, strongly recommend a good editor or writing team or a beta reader to go through this and circle every passage that is a little labyrinthine or confusing. (Maybe read the book out loud?) I think with just a little polish, this will be a truly unique and original piece of work.



I would say "nicely done" to this review. It gives details and context for the comments given. It shows thoughtful consideration of what the author was trying to achieve, and whether or not that strategy was effective, rather than simply declaring the style to be anathema to the reviewer's own aesthetic (e.g., "I just don't like sci-fi so it was confusing..."). Personal taste is one thing but we can't expect to please everyone, so I applaud this reviewer for letting the story be what it is and judging what worked and what did not.

This reviewer pointed to certain aspects I believed might cause problems, yet I was determined to see it through without changes. As an author, I think I'm right most of the time. I had good reasons for doing what I did and for beginning the novel--indeed, the entire trilogy--in the manner in which I did begin it. In my "defense," the "present" of the story is set in the mid-1980s, a time of big hair and more narrowly defined gender roles, a time when attitudes and behavior were not considered so inappropriate. Writing "bad" characters does not make me bad, too. Everyone gets what they deserve by the end of the novel.



Confusion is what I was going for. After all, I was introducing three storylines within that 5000-word excerpt. The storylines are on different planets and in different time periods (past and present, hinting at future). And yet, they are all linked. 


The best way to show how they are linked was to juxtapose them within a short span of text (a chapter or two). In other words, this is actually a complex story even as it seems to be a simple tale of a confused man dealing with reality. 


Or trying to make sense of his dreams (hence, the uber-clever title THE DREAM LAND). Or are his dreams merely memories of past adventures in a world found on the opposite side of an interdimensional portal?

Reviewer #2 was a bit more succinct:


ABNA Expert Reviewer #2

What is the strongest aspect of this excerpt?

The writing style. The plot here is very disjointed and hard to understand but the writing style carries the reader through.

What aspect needs the most work?

The plot line is very confusing and disjointed.

What is your overall opinion of this excerpt?

Overall this could use a good smoothing out. Take the plot and make it less confusing, make the writing style more in sinc [sic] with the book.



Okay.... While I often welcome straight to the point rhetoric, I feel much is missing in this second review. It seems as though the second reviewer was giving a summary of the first review, not the excerpt of the novel. Perhaps, if this reviewer had given the same degree of thoughtful consideration as the first reviewer, I may have ended up in the next round. One can only speculate. And as an author of speculative fiction, that is what I enjoy doing the most. 


What I can take from these two commentaries are what they have in common:

  • the opening scenes create confusion for readers, although not in a good way;
  • the skillfully-composed dichotomy of low-brow and high-brow prose styles does help overcome the storyline confusion;
  • adjustments to initial character depictions should be made--even though I might claim that they are faithful depictions of the people the characters are modeled after;
  • a little more hand-holding may be necessary at the beginning to get the reader started in understanding what's going on.



As I learned once upon a time in a college literature class and took to heart as a writer of fiction, within the first few pages the author teaches the reader how to read the book. If the reader does not learn that method, then it is easy to understand why the reader puts the book down in frustration. On the other hand, an author should not make it so difficult a lesson to learn. For a novel on the sci-fi shelf, titled THE DREAM LAND, a reader may expect there to be themes comparing dream and reality.


So, thanks to my dear excerpt reviewers. I only wish you, and others like you, had had the opportunity to read more, perhaps even the entire novel, all 128,000 words of THE DREAM LAND (Book I: Long Distance Voyager), for if you, like many of us, relish tales of interdimensional intrigue filled with smatterings of psychological thriller and police procedural stories, well-marbled with alien romance, steampunk decor, and darkly twisted humor, you will no doubt enjoy the sordid adventures of our hero and heroine and an assorted cast of ne'er-do-wells struggling through difficult times in a depressed economy--oh, wait, that's reality, not fiction....


Again, if you are among the curious (or the masochists), you may peruse the opening text in question at this location: Excerpt.



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(C) Copyright 2010-2011 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

25 March 2012

Are You One of the Seven Lucky Authors of Spring?


Spring Break (how sweet the sound...) has blithely passed with scarcely any bit of quality production achieved.

As the annual celebration of fecundity comes and goes, I always have such great plans only to see them thwarted at every turn.
I had planned to finish a conference paper, edit Book II of The Dream Land trilogy, and other important tasks. I did manage to sit in the local DMV for 8 hours across two days, which is an underrated environment for collecting quirky characters for one's writing (that's a blog entry in itself).

So I was all set to 
moan and complain, which can make for a beautifully self-indulgent blog entry. However, before I could turn my attention to my own world-threatening problems, my writer colleague and fellow blogger Connie J Jasperson has stepped in with a strange activity that harbors deeply alien compulsions and may prove enticingly weird.

To whit:

"I have been tagged by Connie J Jasperson in the Lucky Seven Meme. What is a meme? Okay, not everybody knows--I didn't but Teresa Cypher explained that a meme is an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture."

(*For more info on this ancient Greek rhetorical device which has recently fallen into contemporary mainstream usage, I refer you to Richard Brodie's book Virus of the Mind [1996]; it is especially relevant in this social media age where every little irrelevant dingle-poo becomes the latest craze ["goes viral"] and is half-a-second later replaced by a still newer morsel of meme. But I digress....)



The rules, straight from Connie’s blog: 
Once you are tagged:

*go to page 77 of your current WIP 
*go to line 7

First obstacle: what exactly IS my current Work-in-Progress? I am working on Book III of The Dream Land trilogy but have not yet arrived at a finished page 77. In that light, Book II might be considered my WIP, although I am also rewriting my Japanese romance mystery, AIKO.

Next conundrum: Is that page 77 in double-spaced or single-spaced version? I usually work single-spaced until preparing the manuscript for sending out or printing. I shall opt for single-spaced, since that is how a reader will ultimately see the text when it is published. (I'm a bit upset that there is no presumption of 777 pages in my WIP!)


*copy down the next 7 lines/sentences as written and post them on your blog or website 

Another conundrum! I have identified the required selection of text but I know it will not make any sense if I share only those lines. We need context; otherwise, they are just sentences bursting from out of the blue. So I shall offer the lines, then offer the context.

“It’s my job, Chuck. I write reports about all of my cases.” [said Dr. Toni Franck]
She began to move around the sofa back to her desk, keeping the furniture between herself and the detective.
“You’re always talking to him, listening to him. I don’t even get your smile. That bastard is here to be punished, you know. And he sees more of you than I do. You don’t even return my calls anymore. You don’t talk to me. You don’t listen. Why can’t you ever listen to me?”
He intercepted her in front of her desk. She held her ground.
“I was listening to you,” Toni responded.
“No, dammit!” He pressed against her, took her wrists in his two hands. “You did not listen to me. You keep talking about that psycho murderer. You never stop talking about him. What, are you in love with him or something?”
“Chuck, I’ve had enough of this.”

[That's seven, but I'll add 3 more as a bonus. Continuing...]

“You’re always talking about him, but when I ask you any questions—like, it’s my frickin’ job, ya know—then you never answer, and say it’s your goddamn patient-doctor privilege. Well, what other privileges does this damn patient of yours have, huh?”
“I can understand why she’s your ex-.”
She watched in horror as his face burned into a deep crimson.

Here is the Context:

The conversation is between Dr. Toni Franck, the psychiatrist of our hero, Sebastian Talbot (a.k.a. the interdimensional voyager known as Set-d'Elous), and the detective Chuck McElroy, who is part of the team investigating the murders of Talbot's IRS service center co-workers two years earlier. After awakening from a short coma, Talbot has been in an asylum for the criminally insane, yet Franck recognizes he is not the usual kind of patient; in fact, she is charmed by him. One of the missing-presumed-murdered people is Chuck's ex-wife, Tammy Tucker, who Talbot insisted when arrested and interrogated (that's before the coma, which was caused by a gunshot wound, which...long story, you know....) is still alive and well, living on that other world which is accessible through the interdimensional portal. Chuck interviewed Franck and developed a relationship; they went out a couple of times for dinner, presumably so he could get more information from her about the patient (Talbot) but Chuck starts to be attracted to her. This conversation occurs in her office; Chuck has arrived to take her to dinner but everything goes wrong.
I put my own spin on the rules by selecting seven paragraphs, since they are short and mostly one liners anyway. I hope that doesn't get me banned or, worse, that I'll die in 7 hours 7 minutes for breaking the thread.

*tag 7 other authors
*let them know they've been tagged

The seven Connie tagged were:

1. Joan Hazel at Momma Joan Explains It All

2. Stephen Swartz Deconstruction of the Sekuatean Empire (Yeah, me!)

3. Kathleen Barker at Dashboard Confessions of an Undisciplined Mind

4. Brooklyn Hudson at Wishbone & More

5. Carlie Cullen at Carlie M A Cullen

6. Lisa Zhang Wharton at Eccentric Asians and Man Eating Pandas

7. Johanna Garth at Losing Sanity 


The difficult aspect for me is selecting the seven lucky bloggers to whom I shall pass on my meme/virus. You see, the seven listed above are the seven I would have sent this to. They do not wish to be attacked again by the same meme, I think. Thus, I shall delve into my list of fellow bloggers and wave my magic wand to determine who the lucky seven shall be. (This list has nothing to do with how dear to my heart they are or any semblance of a hierarchy.)


Rachel Tsoubakos at Rachel Tsoubakos

Danielle Raver at Philosophies of a Young Heart

Gary Hoover at The Author's Studio/Land of Nod trilogy

Dean Lappi at Dean Lappi


Alison DeLuca at Alison DeLuca


Ceri Clark at CeriClark.com

Roxanne Barbour at Roxanne S. Barbour, Author

These are my Lucky Seven. We shall be in touch. If I have inadvertently put you on the list even though you have been tagged by someone else, please smile and consider yourself extra lucky. What you do with that luck is your decision alone, so choose wisely. And be kind.






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(C) Copyright 2010-2011 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

16 March 2012

The P-Word

The latest rage, according to mass media is the idea--indeed, the very notion!--that women who are, shall we say (for demographic purposes), married with children secretly desire to read about being tied up and sexually manipulated. The flagship book of this genre is Fifty Shades of Gray, a self-published make-work of bondage and torture, purportedly not a true tale. (I've been wondering if a hundred shades would be even more erotic, or around twenty would be more acceptable to society.) More surprising to all, it seems, may be that those women actually enjoy reading about such scenarios. This newest "mainstream" literature has been dubbed "mommy porn" by several people reporting on this newest trend. When I saw this morning that my literary colleague Johanna Garth was blogging on the P-word, I knew I had to respond.

As a young man, sure we snickered and sneaked peeks at the girly mags. As an adult I had greater access to such materials. But the stigma persisted. While I never outright read anything more spurious than a few "letters to the editor" of certain magazines, I did appreciate depictions of amorous activity within the pages of otherwise mainstream literary works. It was titillating, as intended, but moreover depicted realistic, believable behavior among consenting adults. In my own writing (A Beautiful Chill, After Ilium, Aiko, and The Dream Land trilogy--yep, alien sex in that last one), I have tried to continue that philosophical concept: sex, even in more extreme forms, is realistic and believable behavior between normal adults.

Enough said on my perspective. I cannot comment on the female perspective for obvious reasons...except as reported by females who have spoken on the topic while I was listening, invited or otherwise. The titillation it brings (and in literary terms that also means plot, description, characterization, motivation, theme) is certainly the result of the material being taboo. The ebook revolution has made it possible for readers to read in public surreptitiously. No more hiding behind a newspaper or covering the raunchy cover art from judgmental eyes. Nothing new about that.

However, what does this trend really mean? From a psychological perspective, people have dreams that show what they fear and what they desire, both of which cannot be presented during waking life or acknowledged in public. Yet, if we allow our fears and desires full reign during our daily lives, we might be:

1) embarrassed, 
2) distracted from what we must do (job, etc.), 
3) tempted to change our routine, duties, tasks, or 
4) disappoint, even betray, the values of various political forces aligned against us.

For the first, embarrassment is a form of relief. Let it go. It passes. What doesn't embarrass you makes you weaker. For the second, it is simply a matter of practicality. Who hasn't slipped away to the company restroom for some R&R? Or dabbled on certain websites while using an office computer? The third result is what worries members of society who have activated their junior policy police decoder rings: What would society be like if these women were to turn to such a pornographic lifestyle as depicted in erotic books? Utter chaos! Husbands would be abandoned, children left starving in the streets, and the world a messy mess! No, we cannot risk letting anyone catch a glimpse of what other options exist outside of normal, narrow, nitpicked, non-naughty social roles and public behavior.

It is the fourth result that has us alarmed--alarmed enough to announce media-wide that the latest sensation is not to be allowed. Indeed, the warning exists solely for the purpose of arming hordes and legions of do-gooders (those with their membership dues up to date) that a new target has sprung forth from the loins of imagination! Attack! Twart the evil ideas! Stomp down and rub out the undesirable desire! It also happens to fit nicely with the latest so-called "war on women"--a strategic misnomer whereby each side can accuse the other of hating women and wanting to control them. Personally, I think there are quite a few men who need to be controlled lest they upset the natural order. I call them politicians. And I might include everyone who seems to want to influence them in one direction or the other. Vote for "Other" this fall, folks! Vote with your genitals. Everyone should be the sole boss of his/her own body.

In the end (whoa, what an unfortunate choice of prepositional phrase, but it fits the theme of this blog post), people will--and certainly should--be allowed to make their own choices. Even if the lowest common denominator is porn. The rest of usyou must wait patiently to detect the first sign of the Apocalypse. Unless this trend is that first sign. Then it will be much too late. But wait! There's more!

There is the PayPal-Smashwords conundrum. A business has a right to decide what it sells or does not sell. That's capitalism. McDonald's makes demands of food suppliers and they comply or do without the business of the largest restaurant entity on the planet, possibly the universe. With books, it seems fair (at least on paper) that the same idea should be true. If I do not want to sell your dirty book, I should not have to. Yet consider the reverse: If you do not offer my dirty book for sale, you won't get some of the profit. And dirty books tend to sell; everyone likes a dirty book (or "graphic literature") once in a while. Those who do not are dead, or as another trend would suggest, or are zombies.

I do not write erotica for the sake of arousing the reader in certain biological ways. I include scenes and behavior and activities to further the development of plot or characterization, to complicate the plot, to serve as illustration of world views and behavior tendencies. It's what people do. It is integral to the plot. Having declared such, I also have written pure erotica (yes, an oxymoron, I know). It's a way of visualizing possibilities, of trying out strategems or role playing options in life. Don't we all?


We don't have to publish it. But some of us do. And others seem to like that. It is a match made in the bedroom, or the bathroom, or a beautiful meadow full of soft moist grass, or a city park with a hard wooden bench under the starlight, or on a kitchen counter with the dishwasher running rough, shaking us to orgasmconclusion--or any long, firm, powerful, symbol of wild abandon without the abandonment. Like the Washington Monument. Such is our language. Such is our heart and mind. Dirty is in the eye of the gardener.


In the interest of not offending the visually challenged, some examples of erotica have been censored.



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(C) Copyright 2010-2011 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

12 March 2012

Falling Ahead & Judging the Results

I do not know what the Mayans had in mind for March as they geared up for the forthcoming disaster scheduled for December, but for this year, I can see the light at the end of the lamp. Considering that there was no winter to speak of here in my midwestern desert, spring has indeed arrived early. Trees have blossomed and, over a mere weekend, have shed them in favor of green leaves. There have also been tornado threats. The less said of that, the better....

There has also come the season of high school competitions. I spent the weekend pretending to be a judge and I believe I comported myself well. As someone from the field of wordsmithing, I was deemed a reliable judge of linguistic performance and analytical competence. And so, there I was: at a forensics competition at a local high school, which involved students from several area schools--about 1% of those schools' student populations, I would guess, making for a different kind of 1% distinction.

I made myself available for all rounds but acted as judge (but not jury) for only 6 of the 8 sessions. First, I judged political debates and debates on moral issues--always a fun time. Then I judged "poetry interpretation" and "prose interpretation" whereby the competitor both read/recited and kinda acted out the work, often with voice changes among the characters. It made for an odd collection of entertainments. Finally, I was on a panel of three judges for the six "dramatic interpretation" finalists. Their presentations were heart-wrenching stories half-told, half-acted, and were extraordinarily done, half of them successfully choking me up.

The event was inspiring to me, usually a cynical sort of person, and gave me a little faith that students I had taught over recent years would not be the sum total of the next generation. Indeed, the 1% of students I observed this weekend made me feel proud to be an educator. Although none of them were my students, I was very pleased to see the dedication, the giving a darn, the careful consideration of complex issues, and just taking a Saturday away from some kind of non-academic entertainment to show what they can do in the world of words.

Bravo to all of them! It was a weekend well-spent for me, as well.


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(C) Copyright 2010-2011 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

01 March 2012

Did you Leap over Leap Day?

Because Leap Day graces our calendars only every four years, it serves as a special time to summarize the events of the past four years and to reflect on achievements done and crises averted. The extra day also postpones paychecks by 24 hours. You win some, you lose some. Here are the more interesting facts going back to February 29, 2008, a period of 1460 days.

In the past four years, I have:
  • lived in 3 different states (Pennsylvania, New York, Oklahoma)
  • taught at 4 universities (well, 3 universities and 1 mere college)
  • taught 36 classes to a whole lot of students (12% of whom slept most of the time)
  • earned 1 degree (Ph.D., long story there)
  • completed a dissertation project (March 2008) - (yep, wrote a book about how to teach writing)
  • published a novel (December 2011) - that would be the nearly invisible AFTER ILIUM
  • driven more than 100,000 miles
  • flown more than 20,000 miles
  • visited no countries outside the US (I did go to China just before I started counting in February 2008)
  • slept in 48 different beds (residences, visiting relatives, hotel, hospital)
  • bought about 150 books (about 15 were ebooks) - I'm surprised how low the number is!
  • read 56 books (about a third were fiction)
  • attended 6 professional conferences and presented a paper at 3 of them
  • finished writing a novel (The Dream Land, Book II)
  • had my heart ripped out at the valves in the first round of the 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award competition (stitched back, thankfully)
  • had a novel accepted for publication (A Beautiful Chill)
  • driven only one particular vehicle (not counting four rentals while traveling)
  • attended 4 hockey games, 3 football games, 2 basketball games, and 0 games of other sports
  • seen [only] 14 movies in theaters (but watched about 20 more via Blockbuster rental or Netflix by mail)
  • seen 1 play in a theater
  • attended 1 concert
  • attended 3 lectures or speeches (outside of professional conferences)
  • bought 5 computers (3 were for other people as gifts)
  • downloaded 13,467 pictures from the internet, none of which would be classified as porn
  • 25 haircuts (1 unintentional)
  • bought 34 pizzas from pizza restaurants (another 60 or so bought frozen from groceries)
  • visited a Mexican food restaurant (mostly "fast food") about 226 times ("Yo quiero burrito!")
  • had Chinese take-out 6 times (all in the US)
  • smiled about 2098 times
  • frowned about 1450 times
  • remained stoic and solemn 79 times (in 5 of those it was appropriate)
  • gave exactly 662 hugs
  • received about 470 hugs
  • used up 131 reams of printer paper
  • used up 246 pens
  • drank about 500 lattes
  • caught about 10,000 hours of sleep
  • had 225 dreams (counting only those that could be remembered the next morning)
  • re-entered the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award competition in 2012 and passed the first round with The Dream Land, Book I.


So...how was your Leap Day 4-Year Assessment? Did you measure up to your own expectations?




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(C) Copyright 2010-2011 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.