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In all fairness, I don't seem to either. Care to go exploring? |
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Hello and welcome. My name is Jack, and for around a decade, my "muse," whatever you conceive that to be, has been lying in a coma, rising occasionally to spout a line or two of gibberish, then falling back into oblivion. While I wait for her return, I offer reviews and this blog. Feel free to partake, but don't get too excited; the wake is still in progress. But thanks for your support, by the way. You guys are the best! Jack...  ![Merit Badge in WdC Community Hero
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| I suppose the title should really be "Who WAS I as a Writer," given the conversations I've been dispensing here, but I'm still trying, and I'm not going to give up that easily. I'm in for the long haul. But when I write, I have a certain style ~ we all do ~ and mine has always had a certain feel about it. This is a quick dissertation about where that style came from... If you're interested. I was a child of the '50s, which means that I just caught the tail end of the old Victorian manners and attitudes as they were being swept out to make room for the modern era of snatchin' and grabbin', of "Me first, and eff you!" I miss those times. More to the point, as a lifelong avid reader, I did my formative reading in the genre of adventure books for boys. This was a time when villains were cads, ladies were elegant, and the hero had perfect teeth... and since it was fairly obvious that no one else was going to write them anymore, I made it my business to write them myself. And here's the funny thing: Unless a few dozen total strangers who don't know each other are lying through their teeth for no other reason than to boost my ego, virtually everyone who reads these stories and takes the time to leave a comment or write a review, LOVES them! I have always felt humbled, honored, and blown away by turns. I had no idea that something so obsolete could strike such a chord with so many diverse people. And if that answers any questions you may have had, I'm pleased to do it; this is where I talk to you. If you'd like to discuss this, the comment section awaits. If you'd like to discuss anything else, ask a question, recommend a read, the place for that is "Scribblers' Den"  ; that's where you can "blog" to me, so to speak. I'm open for business all day every day except Thursday. Anything on your mind?Stay inspired! Jack ![Merit Badge in Good Deeds
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| Good morning, wonderful person, and I hope it finds you well! I'm here today for a couple of reasons. First is that according to my stat page, many, many people visit this blog every day; my forum, "Scribblers' Den" , not so much. The thing that immediately suggests to me is that I need to service this blog much more often. So be it. In my travels yesterday, I ran across this meme: WRITER'S BLOCK: When your imaginary friends stop talking to you. That is honestly the best description I've ever heard. I have a head full of imaginary friends, and I haven't heard a peep from them since... Let me see. I self-published The Stone Seekers in 2016, and I shopped that around for over a year after I finished it, so I'd have to say it's been at least a decade. Wherever do they go? Is there an unemployment office for characters who won't get up and perform anymore? Do they draw some kind of imaginary welfare? They must be making a living somehow, 'cause they sure ain't working for me! I talked recently about working on one story at a time, steeping myself in it, and avoiding all other distractions. I can't tell if it's going to work yet, but here's the lowdown: I have this old story, a novel really, that I was working on when something else came up, some trendy story that I have no memory of now, but it served to derail "The Orphan Princess" permanently... until now. It's a slow process, and that's deliberate. Every week I post a scene that I've previously written. It's polished in the sense that things that were plot distractions are filtered out, and each time I post a scene, I try to outline another chapter down at the bottom end. So far it's working. Will it continue? Stick around and find out!And that's what I've been up to lately. From this point on, I'll keep an eye out for things that might make interesting blog posts and try to get things up here before all that interest I spoke of dies out. So, what have you been up to lately? Stay inspired! J |
| Good morning, all, and I hope it finds you well. It finds me thrilled... overall. I was supposed to write a review today but I couldn't get my head around it, and rather than give some unsuspecting newbie a half-assed review, I decided I'd blog instead. So here I am. Now, what to blog about? Hmmm... Oh, I know! I said I was thrilled, and that's quite true. My little "let's chew the fat" forum, "Scribblers' Den" , was just nominated for a Quill Award for Best New Forum, as was I in the category of Best Reviewer. Best reviewer, me! Can you imagine? And the icing on that cake is that two of my reviews have been nominated for Best Review, so I'm chuffed, as my Australian friends say.But that isn't what I came here for. As everyone knows by now, I have been a prolific writer over a period of decades, but all that has gone away. I miss it terribly, and signed on here and began reviewing in the hope that rubbing up against the talented writers on the site and dissecting their work would snap my "muse" out of her coma. It hasn't, but apparently I'm a fair hand at reviewing, and the site has been kind enough to recognize it. Perhaps next year... but this is now, and I'm thrilled to recognized for something to do with writing, even if it isn't what I'd hoped. Of course, I can't be too put out by these developments. I mean, I knew what I was doing when I came here. My first handle was The Phantom Reviewer and "Jack's Diamonds" began life as Phantom's Gold, so I can't play ignorant now. Nor do I want to. I am quite pleased with how things have developed, and owe great thanks to you for accepting me in my role here. That doesn't mean that I'm not still trying to write, and if success should finally attend my efforts, you'll bed hearing about it here, in my forum, in the newsfeed, and anyplace else I can find to crow about it. But I'm not going to jump around like a hyperactive chihuahua shoving my half-finished projects in people's faces anymore. I've disappointed quite enough friends doing that to last a lifetime!Finally, a word about my username: I stormed out of here under a cloud a couple of years ago, and after waiting a while, wanted to tip-toe back in and turn over a new leaf. My handle in the old days was Blimprider, and some of you who had your toes trod upon by that A-hole may remember him. I couldn't very well use that again, so, the story behind holttaylor: Holt is my middle name; Taylor is what everyone I deal with invariably calls me two seconds after I say "It's Tyler, T-Y-L-E-R." And there you have it, a snapshot of me today, December 8th, 2025... For what it's worth. I hope you know me a little better now, and find me even more interesting. Have a great day, and I'll see you around the stacks. Stay inspired, Jack ![Merit Badge in Reviewing
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| Good morning, my friends, and I hope it finds you well. It still finds me struggling. Anyone who has paid more than casual attention to my scribblings here knows that for decades I was a writer until one day about a decade ago the muse left for parts unknown. That's the external story, the one that everybody sees who takes more than a casual glance. Today, I'm going to share the internal story, the one I feel and wrestle with every waking moment. This is how I view the Craft of writing: Whether your goal is to become educated or be entertained, whether your chosen medium is books, movies, TV shows, plays, comedy skits, or eulogies, all have one thing in common: None of them exist without writers. I have been a part of that community, and it's something I've lost. I feel that loss deeply, and I want with all my heart and soul to get it back. I've started story after story only to see them die in utero. My family know how bad I want this. On Father's Day I was gifted the Lore Masters Deck and on my birthday, the Story Engine Deck plus its horror supplement, Written in Ash and Bone. These are inspired prompt generators, and I'll provide a link below. But that isn't my point. I had some of these cards out playing around with them, and I realized that I don't need a prompt. I have nearly a dozen stories right here in my port that I've abandoned in frustration. They all grew from good ideas that I formed without any prompts other than my own imagination. If I can't bring those home to satisfying conclusions, what am I going to find in those boxes? Maybe if I can get my love affair with the Craft rekindled, then the cards might spark some future projects, but right now, it's all on me to fish or cut bait. These are unfinished stories that began in a blaze of glory then fell by the wayside as interest waned and boredom set in:
(If prompted for a passkey, it is ATTIC) These are completed stories that were intended to be the genesis of series, but for one reason or another, I never followed up on them:
Eight stories waiting for life, and here I am looking for prompts. Do you have any opinions on these stories all waiting to start? Do any of them intrigue you in a way that would make you want to see where they might go? I'm not saying that I'll ever finish any of them, but I don't want to sit on the sidelines watching the sand in my hourglass run out, and maybe a word of encouragement or an expression of curiosity over one or another of them would get me pointed in a direction that's more likely to lead somewhere then not. I deem it worth a look, hence this particular post on this particular morning. Any thoughts? J PS: here's that link: The Story Engine |
| Good morning. I'm here to scarf down a big helping of crow. Anybody know any good recipes? It was five days ago. Let me underline that. Five. Days. Ago. A work week back, I was on here crowing about breaking the shackles that held me at the keyboard even though I haven't been able to produce anything original for a decade, and here I am. I'm frankly embarrassed, but let me try to present this in order. Last night I had finished up a gaming session. Borderlands, a mindless shooter where you're trying to find an alien vault that may or may not exist, and in the course of your travels, you blast anything that moves. The watchword is, "If it's growin', it's goin'!" So, I completed the errand I was on, and as there wasn't time to complete another one, I decided to watch a couple of YouTube videos before I turned in. YouTube, as they always do, offered a page of suggestions for me to look at, and this one caught my eye: It will be readily apparent what "caught my eye" if you actually follow the link, but never mind that. This is a song, a modernized sea shanty, and the girl has a voice that marches down your spine and leaves a lust for adventure in your soul. Years ago, I began a seagoing fantasy that died at the midpoint (it was early in the Comatose Muse period), and I moved on to other things, things that likewise failed to come to completion. But, driven by that song and the voice that sings it, I have dusted it off and intend to see whether it will sail, so to speak. I'll gradually put up what I have as I return to the way I used to do things, building a road map in the form of a detailed outline, and we'll see what happens. Here's the prologue; wish me luck!
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| Good morning, all, and I hope it finds you well! It finds me... settled. I started the morning by asking Google for a word describing the condition when your subconscious mind makes a decision without conscious input and informs you of the result. I was expecting something like "epiphany," but what it gave me was intuition. Allow me to explain. My old friend Gail Carriger posted a meme the other day which said, "You don't have to write every day to be a writer, you just have to feel guilty every day that you don't." So, yesterday about 2:00 PM, as I was snuggled into the Big Comfy Couch guiding my avatar through some wild adventures in Borderlands, it occurred to me that I wasn't writing, I wasn't outlining something to write, and ~ here's the most important part ~ I didn't feel guilty! As it worked out yesterday, I had very little to do beyond the previous night's dinner dishes and seeing to Dearly Beloved's needs throughout the day. I could have spent the whole day writing, but I never gave it a thought. I think the dilemma you've watched me wrestling with the whole time I've been here is resolved. I'm not a writer, and I'm okay with that. I am still very much a reader, and my membership here will focus on that going forward. I will continue to read and review, and give my silly little "Jack's Diamonds" Award, and I'm not going to say categorically that I will never write again; if something draws me back, it could happen. But my focus going forward will be on the fantastic stories by the literary explorers here who, unfettered by the demands of a publisher desperate to recapture the Last Big Thing, are out beyond the edges of the map charting the unexplored territory that those same publishers will be crowing about discovering ten years from now. And occasionally, when something gets in and captures my attention, I may even blog about it.I will leave all my decade-old stories up for you to enjoy, and to demonstrate that, yes, Virginia, I once was a writer, but they're old, some are published, and none are likely to be edited in the future. I hope that, if the site survives beyond me, they'll be here for my grandchildren to enjoy. And while I'd love to hear someone say they were enthralled by a story or enchanted by this or that character, it probably isn't worth your while to write detailed reviews. Down the road, when I'm comfortable with this new look, I'll probably set them on "E-mail Comments Only." And that's the new me, Tuesday, November 18th, 2025. Look for me to be active around the site, primarily in the Pacific Time Zone morning, and absent on Thursdays to avoid that meaningless Merit Badge for turning on the computer seven days in a row; that doesn't seem to me to be worth special recognition. I only review things I like, so if you find me in your mailbox, that's a good thing, and if I criticize something you wrote, my only goal is to make you better. I hope that's good enough... I wish you all happy, productive, and successful writing lives, whatever you consider that success to mean. And I hope you find your own "sweet spot;" it's a beautiful thing! Stay inspired, Jack |
| Good morning, friends, and I hope it finds you well. Strange title, eh? I'll cut the chatter and get right to it. I have written, in round figures, from the age of ten to the age of seventy. I'm 77 now, and haven't written anything beside blog posts for near onto a decade, but I share my old stories here, and there are some members of remarkably low standards who think I'm pretty good at it. I've talked with one recently who tells me they're going to read my work to learn how to write. I don't recommend it, and that's sort of what leads me to this post. Let's start with the first confession: I don't edit... Pretty much ever. This is only one of many reasons that I've never found a publisher, but it's the one we're concentrating on today. A look at any of my stories will show you that I write in scenes. I will generally have three to five viewpoint characters, heroes, villains, and peripherals, and generally I will switch viewpoints with each scene. This isn't true for my first-person stuff, but the vast majority is third-person omniscient, and that's how I work. I'll outline some scenes: 1. Joe is visiting his grandfather's sheep ranch by the sea. Out exploring, he finds a decaying box in a sea cave under the nearby cliffs. In it is a key and a note, only part of which is legible. 2. Susan, a local, encounters Joe walking home and introduces herself. She is friendly, but when she asks what Joe has been doing at the cliffs, he becomes defensive... Etc, etc. Outline in hand, I begin writing. I write one scene per session. In the sample above, I would write the scene with Joe finding the box, but the next scene introducing Susan wouldn't be attempted until the next day. Suddenly shifting gears like that throws me into chaos, and I learned early not to attempt it. But the subject is the editing of that one scene. As I begin writing, I have the action in my head. Well, I guess we all have that. I choose my starting point and begin assembling the scene. "Joe does this, Joe does that, he finds the key and pockets it along with the note." Dozens, scores of successful authors have always told me (through books and articles) to avoid editing as you write. Just get everything down on paper and fix it later. Can't. Don't. That's my second confession, and another big reason that I'm not a big-time author. As I write, I'm constantly looking back a paragraph or two. Can't help it. I look back and see where a word I used in this paragraph makes one I used two paragraphs back feel awkward. Which one do I change? Decision made, I change it and continue on. Would a semicolon work better here than a period? Let's try it. Again, issue fixed as I write. By the time I finish the scene, I feel like it's as done as it can be. I have tried to do "professional" edits, whatever I conceive that to be, and what I find is that I "edit" the passages back to what they were before, and need to edit them again, until at about Round Three, I'm "editing" it back to the way it was before I started editing. The upshot of all this is that nearly all of what you're reading in my port (and anywhere else you may encounter it) is essentially first draft. It made me happy this way, and I'm out of ways to change it. What you see is just the way I wrote it the first time through. Oh, I did all that "as you write" editing that all the pros have admonished me against for decades ~ I can't help it ~ but essentially, every scene is the way it was when I stopped writing and moved on to the next one. Oh, I might change an individual word on re-reading, but that's it. I don't think it's braggadocio to say that I've turned a clever phrase or two in my day, but emulating the way I write is a great idea if you want to avoid the circus involved with becoming a famous author! Now, you've been warned. If you enjoy my stories, I'm grateful. If you tell me you enjoy my stories, I'm thrilled and humbled, but if you tell me you're going to learn how to write by emulating me, you need to rethink that. I've routinely broken every rule in the book, and I've never been invited to the dance. I don't think that's a coincidence. Be smart and stay inspired, ~ Jack |
| Good evening, all, and greetings from the west coast of the former bastion of democracy. You probably wonder why I'm posting in the middle of the night. Well, have you ever heard that saying that goes, "No matter what you want to do, you have to do something else first?" Describes my day to a T. I had planned to write a review this morning, but didn't even get to do that. But I'm here now with a couple of reading recommendations that I encountered in my travels this past week. One is a serious drama about a young student who needs an advocate, and the other is a story about a crashing boor told from a point of view we don't often get... That of the crashing boor! Both were interesting in very different ways, and I was honored to give both high marks in my reviews. It's Wednesday evening here, and getting close to my "Thursday hibernation," so I'd better get these up and sign off. You guys have a great day tomorrow, and I'll see you on Friday; I may even make up the review I missed today, but I've learned not to make idle promises where real life is concerned!
Stay inspired, J |
| Good morning, friends and followers, and I hope it finds you well. It finds me, having spent the wee hours reorganizing my port, thinking that a guide to the new digs might be in order, so here we go... I now have two interactive items, this blog and "Scribblers' Den" . Here on the blog, I will talk at you, that is to say I will post things like this, monologues that require no discussion, though I wouldn't object if you were to provide some. Scribblers' Den is more about conversations, and is mainly for you to post things that you'd like to talk about. There's a small but thriving community there that is likely to chime in on any point you raise, and a good time will be had by all... I hope!As to the rest, most of it is unchanged, but I added this new item:
This is a folder of completed stories that were intended to become series, but for various reasons, development either stopped, or just never got going. The three-story collection of "The Akuma Files" is there, as are "The Breakdown" and "Safe Haven" , which have moved over from My Old Shorts because they were always expected to be series; so far that dream hasn't come about, bit my focus right now is on a sequel to The Breakdown. I'll let you know how that goes. You may be surprised to find the Beyond the Rails trilogy ("Steampunk" ) there, but that was always intended to be a series I would work on until the day I died... Until the day it died. Notwithstanding, every story in this folder is complete. They were just intended to be parts of something bigger, and that hasn't happened yet."My Old Shorts" is an anthology with an oh-so-clever name signifying that all the stories therein are old, written a decade or more ago when the muse was still feeding me plots almost faster then I could write them down. Some day, if I'm ever able to write a new short story, it will join the old ones there, and I'll have to come up with a new name for that anthology, but I don't see that happening soon. The folder for novels is gone, and "Broken English" stands alone as the only single, non-series novel on my port at the time. The rest of it is unchanged, and you're welcome ~ very welcome ~ to pay me a visit, talk on the forum, or just poke around to see what's there. I'm always in the market for a new friend, follower, or reader, or maybe all three, so take a look. You never know what you might find...Stay inspired, Jack |
| I have tried, and tried, and tried again to return to writing, and it just isn't happening. I know I've been down this road with you once or twice before, but I just have to face it, writing isn't moving me. Since I came here a year ago, I've started several stories in the full flush of confidence only to see them stall like a worn out car on an isolated road. I'm just waiting for Hook Man to find me. I'll never stop trying. What I'm going to endeavor to do is stop bothering you guys with my repeated failures. I'm going to round up everything that died mid-narrative on me and lock it away in a private folder. It will be there, and should the muse awaken from her coma and give me something to progress one of them, I'll do so, but I plan to make no more announcements about this wonderful project that's going to turn my life around and return me to writing. If I ever actually finish something, I'll share it with a grand announcement. And, my friends, you have an important role to play in this: If I ever again post anything that says, "I've had this great new idea, and it's going to be the best story ever... and here are the first three scenes," your job is to call me out, call me down, call me a damned fool in public, because I know better, and I've promised right here not to do so. If I finish anything, I'll share it. Period. * * * In other news, I'm going to move my promotions of items I've reviewed to Wednesdays to avoid clutter. I'll still be sharing The Good Stuff, just once a week from now on. And that's all I've got for now. I love you guys, and would love to share some new work with you, but the sad fact is that new work isn't coming, and I'm tired and embarrassed from saying it is, then having to disappoint you again and again. I'll be around reviewing, and rewarding, and blogging, and participating in your activities, but I don't plan to irritate you with stillborn comebacks any more. You guys have a great week, and I'll see you around the stacks! Stay inspired, Jack |
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