John D Reinhart

All Right, Something Else…

Hey, here’s another idea. Something New, Totally New, and it won’t cost a dime and it’ll make big bucks and, hey, where’re you going?

If you’ve been following the Saga of Me, you know I’m still waiiiiiiting for my beloved editor wife to read my lovely novel. It’s been three months. Come on. I wrote it in less time… just kidding. She’s been arduously studying for, and actually passed, some big human resources qualification dealio, and I am in fact super impressed and super proud of her. I’d be even more so if she read my book…

Whilst waiting, I’ve come up with a number of ideas, most dumb, some good, of how to further my writing career whilst waiting. Because waiting is what I do. A lot of. Wait. Like a Disney movie: wait, what?

So, this is it: California Air Museums. Wait, what?

I have a keen interest in aviation, don’t you know. So, who wouldn’t be interested in a website wherein the author (mois), visits and reviews the aircraft in the aviation museums here in the Golden State?

But wait, there’s more. Howzabout said author writes a touristy sort of review for the local tourist magazine, like The 805 Eats, or something, in the town of which is where the museum is. In. And makes a nickel for the review, thank you very much.

Wait, what? Makes a nickel?

Howzabout this: said author also writes a review with a more aviationary feel for the aviation-minded magazines, like Me and My Airplane, or something. And makes another nickel for that piece.

That’s two nickels plus a website post from just one visit. And California has 65 museums! Wait, what? That’s, like, maybe fifteen bucks in nickels!

All of this reviewing, etc., however, is aimed at what said author is really working on, which is a coffee-table book called… wait for it… wait a little longer… pause for effect… California Air Museums! Huh? Right? Ya with me?

My camera takes pretty good pics, so I’ve got that part covered.

And I’m building a database of the kinds of airplanes one might find in said museums, so it’s kind of like the website will be a resource. Yeah? High-five! Down low…

Wait, what?

This is not a project – it’s a career! All of this, all, to sell my book. Well, actually to get my name out there into the larger world at large so that, when my book finally gets approved by my lovely editor wife, publishers will be clamoring to get the rights.

Wake up, you’re dreaming again! Wait, what?

Best Not to Visualize

Whilst waiting and waiting for my notes to arrive on the new book, I took to 3D modeling the cast of characters. Big mistake.

You’re a writer – you know how it goes. You work so hard at creating a mental image of your characters, you always wonder what it would be like to actually see them.

I’ve got this goofy software that lets you create 3D models. Actually, it creates the model, starting with a base figure, and lets you customize the physical attributes.

Whilst a’waitin’ for mah notes, I thought I might just sorta mock up a book cover that has the whole cast in it. Ehhhh. Bad choice.

In the mind’s eye, the big guy is a giant – he’s huge, like a bear. When you go to cast a person like that, however… that’s a different story. He’s the guy on the right.

One of my characters is perpetually drunk – it’s not his fault. He is having a rough night in the tavern. Having drunk too much ale and run out of money, he gambles away a grimoire, a book of magic spells. Throughout the rest of the story, whenever anyone opens the book, it calls this poor fellow straight from his table at the tavern to wherever the book is in space and time. Worse, when the book’s done with him, he get put back, right there in the tavern, until the it’s opened again.

The other characters have this big adventure with the grimoire, but for him, it’s just one long, inebriated night. He’s the guy on the left. He looks like a little kid!

The old wizard, Shelburne, looks like a Martian in this image.

And let us not discuss the pants on Penrose, my main character, there in the center. I chose them because they’re knickers, and seem vaguely Elizabethan. But they’re meant to fit a huntress, and simply look… go ahead and say it… stupid with two o’s.

The kid and the girl came out all right, and the fellow in front of the giant is supposed to be a 10th Century prince – he looks okay. The girl is from that same time, but looks more like you’d meet her at the mall.

Emminy-way… you know who loses the argument, right? The first one to say “anyway…”

Anyway, I rendered these super quickly – so quickly that you can see the green-screen around the prince and princess. eh.

When the book is published, oh, this shall be a lovely cover, for certain.

For now? Best not to visualize…

Nothin’ Doin’

You ever have one of those days when you don’t wanna do nothin’?

I had to go to the doctor’s this morning. He’s a good guy, but after hearing my tale of woes, he kinda split. “Uh, the receptionist will take care of you…”

After I finally dragged my draggin’ carcass into work, I found out that nobody… noooooo body… was happy with the 3D renders I’d made. Nobody. Show of hands, happy with the renders? Crickets.

Had to fool with danged renders all stinkin’ afternoon. I hate them, and I believe the feeling is mutual.

Finally made it through the door – the promised notes from my reader still haven’t come – and my wonderful wife is sequestered away, taking an online test.

Not the test for which she’s been studying all this time and, once completed, she’ll have all the time in the world to read my book, give it her blessing so that I can send it off and find a literary agent and a publisher and become rich and famous and be known as the author John D Reinhart, such that people in restaurants whisper “did you see him? That was the author John D Reinhart!”

Nope. Some other test.

But.

But one little ray of sunshine crept through it all. One bright little beam that said “hey, wanna play?”

And then she licked my nose, and somehow it turned out to be a pretty good day for the author John D Reinhart.

Crazy Talk Lives!

You know me – caterwauling about every. little. thing.

But, hey – great news!

Great!

Crazy Talk 8, the fun and insane lipsync software from Reallusion, isn’t as dead as I thought! It just doesn’t work in Windows 11. Ten, yo! Eleven, not so!

What does that mean?

That means you can do silly stuff like this: Who Ate THE FISH?

Yeah, it’s clunky, and kinda stooopid, but I gotta do something while waiting and waiting and waiting for my book to get read, don’t I?

Oh – I have news on that score, I think. I’ll let you know!

Thanks for following along!

Writing the Hard Stuff

I’m terrible at transitions, you know, moving characters from scene to scene. My wife the editor tells me so all the time. Maybe I’m bad at them because I just plain hate writing them.

You’re a writer, you know how it is. There’s always something your just not good at writing, and typing it out is always a painful chore.

For me, it’s the laborious task of getting characters from here to there so that they can meet up with each other. It takes so long and is so hard to not write a transition scene that is empty-headed and shallow because really it’s not a scene at all. It’s just movement.

I read a piece of e-fiction this week that has a great story. You could tell the author was having a blast.

But to get to the actual story, you had to wade through pages of uninteresting setup, with throw-away characters and dull, half-hearted descriptions. You could so easily tell that the author didn’t enjoy writing that part, but felt it had to be in the book. You can hear him whispering “don’t worry, the good parts are really good!”

You and I are writing in a time much like that of William Shakespeare. In his day, there were no mega-publishers. Just small-time patrons to help you sell your work.

Most of the publishing and the selling was done by you.

And won’t you now take a look at the online marketplace for books? Are you not writing posts on your blog to sell your book?

Is it not the same, Iago?

I mention that because of this e-fiction I read.

This author published his book, hoping you’d see past the heartless parts and enjoy what he really wanted you to read.

Like dancing with a wooden leg, I ask you to watch my arms and my torso and my good leg and enjoy the show. Wooden leg? Oh, just ignore that.

I suck so completely at writing transition scenes that my wife the editor told me to stop trying.

“You’re no good at them, and they ruin the flow of the story.”

So, I quit writing transition scenes, and my story is muuuuuuch better. The new novel, which is waiting to be read by a certain my-wife-the-editor, has none. Zero.

He braved the dark and frightening alleyway, his heart in his throat, finally breathing a sigh of deep relief as he entered the warm, cheerful pub. See? No long description. Just get him in there!

Better yet, ignore the transition altogether and start the scene with the character in the pub. He can explain the transition in dialog: “Oh, I came down the alleyway – a dark and frightening bit of roadwork was that!”

No transition. No hard, stupid scene. Bye bye.

If it’s painful for you to write, you can believe that it’s painful for your reader, too.

I enjoyed the e-fiction, and so entirely hope this author writes another.

And, although I haven’t said it before, I truly do thank you from the very bottom of my heart for following me!

Writing in Pieces

Okay, so The Sequel is gelling right now – pieces are flowing into place while I sit and do other stuff.

You’re a writer – does that happen to you? You have a scene playing out in your head. Eventually, after you’ve played with it for a while, you get around to writing it down.

While that’s going on, the structure of the new story slowly drifts into place, and, son of a biscuit, color-me-surprised if it doesn’t somehow make use of those dopey little scenes you’ve been jotting down.

The mind is a fabulous thing, isn’t it?

In between scenes, I sometimes get a little nervous that I’m going dull. You know, same-o-same-o, so-so writing, using the same, lame words.

To challenge myself, I’ll play dumb word games, like Word Cookies. The words aren’t hard, but there are a lot of them, and it reminds me that, duh, I know a lot of words.

My personal challenge is to give this game three words it doesn’t know in each round. To this game’s credit, it has a huuuuge dictionary, so it recognizes most of my words, even though it doesn’t play them in the game.

And that’s how it goes in the hamster wheel of my mind whilst I wait and wait for my book to be read.

The Way Out is Through

I was thinking about winning the lottery and wondering why, short of my not buying a ticket, I hadn’t done so. That seems a trifle unfair, doesn’t it?

If you’re following the Saga of Me, I apologize for this brief recap: my new book is on the hands of my editor wife, who is studying for a test before she touches it. The test is in mid-June. And so I must wait…

While waiting for a certain someone – at this point, a certain ANYONE, to read my book – I’ve been thinking about things. You know, quests and what-am-I-doing-with-my-life kind of stuff.

This is what I do before I decide to chuck it all and go become a cowboy in Montana (although now that I no longer agree with Montana politics, I begin to wonder to where a liberal runs when they want to get away from it all and choose to be a cowboy. In truth, at my age, riding a horse doesn’t seem all that pleasant, either. Rats. This isn’t going well.)

Anyway, you’re a writer, right? You know how it goes. Whatever you do in your day job, writing about stuff is always right there, living large in your thoughts. You’re a writer. You have a purpose and a mission. A quest.

Maybe that’s why you don’t play the lotteries, or bet on horses, or wager on sports. You’ve already got your plan.

Someday, you’re going to get your stuff published, sink that day-job of yours like a two-foot putt, and live the life you always dreamed of. Except that we don’t end our sentences in prepositions, so you will live the life of which you’ve always dreamed.

That’s your lotto, your triple crown. Every piece you put out there could be the golden ticket that wins your version of the lottery.

What that means for us, we writers and artists and dreamers, is that the only way out of the dreary black forest of daily toil is to go through it.

No, we keep paying our dues, doing the dirty, as they say, because we can’t run away from our humdrum existence with some get-rich-quick scheme.

That Win the Lottery shortcut? Not for you, mate.

In truth, I DID run away to go be a cowboy. It was a very easy, very stupid decision to make, and even though my soul knew it to be the wrongest thing I could do, I ran away from my art, and made it all the way to Northen California before the money ran out.

It took decades to get back here. Long, disastrous, anguished decades to undo the betrayal I’d done to myself.

Now I’m almost whole again. And waiting, waiting, waiting.

But like you, instead of betting on horses, I’m buying lottery tickets with my words.

And waiting, waiting, waiting.

Getting Dumber

According to this game, if you don’t beat the level you have an IQ of zero. Zero. I tried it, and, well, uh-oh…

If you’ve followed along in the Saga of Me, you’ll recall that Darling Wife, who is my editor, has sat upon my needs-to-be-read-by-her novel for 2.5 months (10 weeks, but who’s counting), waiting for other, more urgent projects to be accomplished. And they truly are important tasks, so, no pressure.

But, you’re a writer – you know how it goes. You don’t write something to put on the floor of the closet. You write something to be read. This new novel has been read by my brother, who thought it was great, and by my lifelong best friend, who also thought it the grooviest of groovies.

My nephew the doctor has it, but has already advised me that the read is likely months away.

Sigh.

But in swoops Sister of Darling Wife. Sure, I’ll read it. Not only that, but I’ll give you feedback! AND, perhaps most importantly, my judgement can stand in for that of Darling Wife! Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

Tick-tick-tick-tick. There goes a fly.

So, whilst a’waitin’, I’ve been entertaining myself, as you know. Making dumb videos, working on a sequel, writing about pirates.

And playing solitaire. Toooo much solitaire. I wake up in the morning muttering “black six on red seven.”

And worst of all, according to this game where you pull digital pins to make digital stuff fall down a digital hole, how hard could that be?, according to this game, which I’m certain was developed by brain surgeons and clinical researchers, yes, according to this game, in which a couple of the words are misspelled because we all know it’s easier to program a digital pin than it is to follow spelling rules, according to this game, my IQ is GOING DOWN!!!

The stunner for me is that, even with an IQ of zero, I can still feed the dogs and tie my shoes.

Oh, hey – black ten on the red jack…

I Love it when…

You’re probably too young to remember the A Team show on TV. I’ve only seen it reruns, so I’m not THAT old…

The A Team was a bunch of rough-and-tumble-misfit Vietnam veterans who banded together to help out those folks that had nowhere else to turn – usually the fathers of cute girls.

Now, this was the late 80’s, and TV producers were under pressure to reduce the amount of gun violence in their shows.

So, the A Team fired 50 caliber machine guns and recoilless rifles and threw hand grenades and set off land mines and fired off all sorts of weapons, but never hit anybody. Never. Oh, they blew up cars and trucks and buildings and shot the heck out of everything. Everything but people. Oh, if only the real world was like that…

Hannibal, the brains of the outfit, was played by George Peppard. If you’re of a certain age, you’ll recognize him from Breakfast at Tiffany’s and The Blue Max, among others. His catch phrase on the A Team was “I love it when a plan comes together…”

Okay, how about this: The Return of the Jedi, Darth Vader is laser-swording it out with Luke Skywalker, and suddenly says “Sistuh…” in that weird almost-but not-quite-British Mid-Atlantic dialect used by actors of a certain genre, like Katherine Hepburn, you ooollld poooop or Mr. Howell, heavens, a Yale man! You and I would say “sister,” but Darth Vader was more like “SIStuhhhhh” with a long, drawn out “uh” at the end.

What are you rambling about now, you ask? Howzabout this:

My wonderful wife has a wonderful sister who is herself a writer, a published author. Said sister has graciously agreed to read my book.

Whaaat? Say it ain’t true!

Oh, but it is! Think about this: said sister reads the book in lieu of my darling wife, and totally digs it. She tells said wife it’s great, the heavens open up and I ship the thing off to find a literary agent with the darling wife’s approval!

Oh, I love it when a plan comes together.

That is, of course, if said sister likes the book. I just read it through once more to see if there was anything missing. At just 50,000 words, it doesn’t take very long.

Nope, nothing missing. In fact, I like it better than the last time I read it. It’s as snug as a, well, tight as a, well, dark as a well-digger’s… no, none of those work. No stupid aphorisms. It’s good and done, and I think she’ll like it.

Can you imagine my excitement? Well? Can you? I know I can!

All the wonderful sistuh has to do is like it…

When to Write

I just saw a post on LinkedIn that said, “a writer writes every day – what have you written today?” Whatta buncha malarkey!

The only person who should be telling you when to write is your boss, if you’re a professional, your editor if you’re published, or you, if you’re like the rest of us.

Or your wife, if you’re like me.

We live in sunny Southern California, but in the northern part, which is separated from Central California by just a mountain range. If I drew you a map you’d get the picture.

It’s really nice here. Lots of beaches and mountains, and not nearly as crowded as LA, which is just on the other side of the Santa Monica Mountains. Yep, Los Angeles is just an hour to the east, the snowy mountains an hour to the north, and Central California just an hour to the west.

Central California is the home to the Santa Barbara County wine region, and the bazillion or so wineries with tasting rooms that cater to those with the means and the free time to go a’wine-tastin’. It’s a big deal up there. And not really all that expensive. And kinda fun…

Actually, wine tasting is kinda fun. You visit these beautiful wine estates, are seated at a nice table that overlooks the vines or the fermenting vats or the parking lot, and a wine server pours you a stingy little glass of wine, and explains that this wine comes from the owner’s private reserve stock featuring grapes that were pollinated by bees that have PhDs in oenology and tastes of honey and oak with a hint of marmalade and a nice finish of cheese, figs, and asparagus.

And you sip it and say oh, that is good. It takes about two sips to finish off the stingy little glass, and then the server comes back with a different bottle and a different story, and so it goes for five different wines. You don’t really want to go to more than two wineries on your trip because you lose your palate – a wine-tasting term meaning your ability to taste the wine – and you’ll also get sorta crocked.

And at $35 per person for a flight – a wine-taster’s term for the group of five wines – you want to taste that wine!

Out of the blue my wife says get off your can and go write about these tasting rooms. Somebody’s sure to publish that.

Two days later she says get off your can and let’s rent e-bikes so that you can write about our adventures doing that. Somebody’s sure to publish that, too.

Suddenly, my author’s to-do list is very full! Pirates over here, wineries over there! E-bikes? Where does she come up with this stuff? And why can’t I sit on my can?

Because, she reminds me, the chances of getting my book published are muuuuch greater if I myself have been published.

Her point is well made.

Plus it gives me something more to do whilst waiting and waiting and waiting for her to read my manuscript to get the final official nod to go forward with seeking an agent and keeping peace here in the valley on account of she would get so mad if I said “skip it I’m gonna submit this book anyway” and she would be like “what? You couldn’t wait five minutes for me to read it?” and then she’d be all upset and I’d be all upset and she would hate the book and even if I did score an agent she would be like OMG I hate that book.

So, I guess I’ll get off my can and go to a winery.

In truth, I’m much harder on my lovely, elegant, and infinetly supportive wife than she deserves. She is a truly wonderful person and partner who actually knows a lot about the publishing industry. And she has the patience of a saint. And she knows a ton about wine, too.

That being said, no one should ever tell you when to write. You write when you’re ready to write. And don’t let anyone push you around, got it?

Got it?

Now leave me alone while get off my can and do l as I’m told…