Authors Electric

An adventure in real time... September 5, 2016: 7:30 a.m. Welcome! Welcome to the MacRath Institute's Lab for a stunning new experiment on writing a post with no subject in mind. I submit a post here on the 12th of each month while also maintaining my own blog. This week the two deadlines conflicted. Though I'd finished the AE blog early, I hadn't even started my weekend entry for my own blog. So I had to do something quickly or I was sure to lose face. Solution: I posted the AE blog onto my own, putting myself in a new pickle. Still, I had a week to write a well-crafted piece for AE. My mind turned to the subjects that interest me most: transitions and segues in writing...plain and fancier styles...time and the writer...deadlines...book titles and covers...promotional flair...expensive vs. cheap cigars...pizza dough and Chicken Parmesan...razzmatazz and personality...moondancing...Groucho Marx and Marlon Brando...tiny-waisted women...and, above all, epigr...

I was never forgiven by one former friend for a quip that I put in one book: You learn who your friends are at Christmas. They leave the price tags on their gifts. Oh, of course, he objected to other quips of mine...like these: There are no atheists in hot pants. Half the women wearing them are praying to God we don't notice their legs. The other half are praying we don't look further up. Imitation is the most flattering form of insincerity. Petty acts are emotional food stamps for the spiritually unemployed. I must say you look fetching. Here, have a nice bone while I find you a stick. But the Christmas quip, as it turned out, was the final straw in the martini of his hate. Though the line was spoken by a epigram-loving young woman who yearns to be Oscara Wilde--and she does try to be more Sincere at the end--no matter to my holy friend. I must have believed the words in some corner of my soul or I could not have written them. And this branded me as a hypocrit...

            The trouble with most academics is that they're all subtext in bed:  they'd rather read between the lines than ride between the sheets.  But we in EbookLandia are lucky to have nobler woes on our minds: 1)      The word as art is dying fast.  All books will be written by experts one day, published by experts at making them read as if they'd been expertly written. 2)      Nothing brings out the ax murderer in an agent's heart more quickly than an original talent.             We come here for the freedom to practice our art without having to bow to the Combine.  But survival here too can be bloody as hell.  And those most likely to succeed are those who somehow learn to mine Transatlantic Gold.  The gold is so rich that a handful of nuggets can help gild our odds on both sides of The Pond....