Book cover Short Story

I want to showcase the book-cover for the short-story I will release today/tomorrow on amazon. The price will be set at $0.99

Opinions about the cover are welcome. I must say it's not the best book-cover I made, but it looks a fitting weird in its imperfection.

Update: "Don't Believe What They Say is now available on Amazon.

The tragedy of 9-11

On 9-11-2001 a tragedy occurred which left close to 3000 dead and many more in its wake. A sad day for the family and friends left behind. A sad day for a city, a country, and the world. On that day, it was one of the few moments in my life that I cried.

I don't remember that day fully, only the event. I was at home thinking about writing, and actually I wrote a first sentence to a story that I never finished. For some reason I can't remember, I walked away from my writing and turned on the television.(I don't watch often) It was tuned in on CNN, it was my main source of news at that time, and besides discovery channel the only channels I watched.

The image of the plane smashing in the tower choked my breath away. I stood paralyzed analyzing what happened. I thought a horrendous accident had happened. CNN kept repeating this image, ingraining it in my mind, it also left a bad taste about their reporting. Any notion of it being an accident went away hearing about the hijackings, and it vanished completely with seeing a second plane hit the other tower.

It struck me the way it was being reported, like it was the media's intention to twist the dagger in the wound etched in the viewers heart. It was very sensationalized the way the did it, in a very working the emotions of the viewers kind-of-way. After a while I felt nauseated by the reporting. By then I couldn't understand why they did it this way.

Then the first tower collapsed in a very controlled demolition kind-of-way, and there was actually reporting of hearing explosives go off. I dismissed this, because it was obvious to me that it must have been the plane that crashed in the building that caused it to fall. The odd way the building crumbled to a pile of dust and debris could have been a chance freak occurrence. It's a fact that strange things that we can't explain do happen.

The second tower crumbled down in the exact same way as the first. It made me think and doubt. It's highly unlikely that two buildings would collapse in the same way on the same day, unless it was controlled. I didn't want to believe that, to believe that meant to believe that there was more to it than just Muslim extremist hijacking planes to crash them in the twin towers. In life there are chance occurrences. I concluded that there is a chance that the same thing can happen twice, but not three times. With this I set my mind at peace, and continued watching CNN, and be horrified by their journalists, or talking heads as they are so endearingly called.

My shock was great hearing that a third tower (WTC7) had collapsed in the same way. I couldn't keep myself in denial anymore. There was something odd about it. Using logic I can say that those towers didn't collapse the way they officially claim it to have happened. There is more to it than they want us to believe, and it saddens me that this will not be brought out to light.

My eyes opened to the reality of our world, our life, and society, that is awful. My illusion how things were crumbled on that day. Since then I've grown more aware of the manipulations to hide the truth by the media, the educational system, and the politicians themselves. Studying history, and from more than one source, I got a better grasp in what really happened during some world events. I now see the discrepancies with reality and what is being thought to our children in history classes. We are fed sugarcoated information, with some(many) incriminating details missing. We never get the full story unless we ourselves seek it out.

I don't watch CNN anymore or any other mass media outlets. It's become obvious they don't report but instead sensationalize, and pick and chose what they will tell their viewers. It is their own opinions of facts they want to impress on us. A good example is in how well they did to get people in a frenzy for a war in Afghanistan and Iraq. How there was no critical note towards the official 9-11 investigation report. How every other view that goes against their notion of the truth, is categorically ridiculed, or put aside. A more current event is the reporting against Libya, and the ever lasting trying to goad people in a war against Iran. What is the goal of the media in instigating us with half truths and often lies?

With the years after 9-11, I've become more critical about everything that happens around us. I've been thinking more and deeper. My perception is now enhanced. With this comes the trouble to cope with it all. The realization of how it all is in reality, and the acceptance of this, is a big burden that can propel you into a depression. It's the fear that you face, fear of the truth of things. It's accepting that what is, and stop being led by fear that will keep you sane and able to face the truths of our world. And it's liberating once you cast the fear away and finally see.

What has this post of mine to do with writing? With making a novel? Nothing much to writing in general, but 9-11 changed me into who I am, and with it my writing and desire to write. Having my eyes opened I got the urge, dedication, and will to write and continue writing. Had it never happened I would still live a fearful life and never dared to write.

Editing, my way! #2

Yesterday after posting my first "Edit, my way!" post I went on kindleboards and read a post about editing that made me remember a thing I wanted to try out for a long time now.

I downloaded readplease, installed it. It looks like an early windows program. And with early I don't mean Windows Xp, but more like windows 3.0. I'm tempted to say it looks like a DOS program, but it got a GUI. Don't mind me, the nerd in me came out. Can't help it happening, it's the curse working in IT for such a long time.

The main thing is, it works. You paste the text and some computer voice reads it. It does help with editing, especially with the placement of comma's. Hearing someone read it, you get a better feel if it's placed right. Not being a spelling and grammar genius I need all the help I can get editing my work, and hearing your own story read to you helps a lot with this.

It's a great tool for your editing. The only downsize of readplease is the robot person voice. It sounds creepy and soulless, but beats finding someone who wants to read your text aloud. (Could not get my wife to do that yet)

Editing, my way!

Well yes! Editing the thing I suck at most. And why? Because I dislike it. And the why I dislike editing is; I tend to make many spelling & grammatical errors, and because of this I've do do a lot of corrections. The drawback of having to correct so much and not having the money to pay someone to do the brunt of correcting, is that it slows me down in finishing my books.

I love the creative process of coming up with a story and writing it down. I write a story down fast, but my editing always lags behind. When you do something with passion you will always do it better and the time will fly by like it was done yesterday. Without the passion things will drag and seem to last an eternity.

I'm trailing off. I didn't want to rant about my dislike of editing but I wanted to write about how I edit. This is what I do. I quickly go over the text, sentence by sentence, correcting the simple spelling errors. When I finish doing that I'll go over the text again, and correct the sentence structure. I also do this on the sentence level. I'll repeat doing this till I'm satisfied with the text. I'm no spelling God, when I'm satisfied there probably are many errors still left in.

It takes me as long to edit a novel as it takes me to write one. I'm slow like that. I can't do much about it. Well I could become better and more diligent in my spelling & grammar, that might do the trick, but that takes time and experience. I can live with the slowness for now, but I discovered something else that's wrong with my editing. By doing my correcting per sentence the flow of the whole get distorted at times and my text will read clumsily because of it. (More than it should)

Driving home (I do a lot of thinking driving) I thought about my editing woes, and I came up with that maybe I should correct my work taking into account the whole paragraph. That way I can make sure the whole reads okay, and that not each sentence stands on its own unrelated to those surrounding it. I'll try this new way out and hope that it will improve the readability of my writing.

In fact I'll start with this blog-post.

I wrote a short story.

Well yes, I wrote a short story. I did it while not planning to do so, but I still did it. I wrote a short story.

While walking the dog Friday, I got an idea for a story. I tend not to start a new story if I'm writing another one, so I put the idea behind me. My current work in progress is waiting in line to be written while I'm editing a finished novel. I wanted to start with correcting my work, but my motivation was far away on a vacation it neglected to tell me about. I just couldn't push myself in doing anything.

Siting in my chair being my lazy self, it hit me. I took my writing block, blue pen, and I went downstairs to sit at my dining table. I wrote for like five to six hours only stopping to drink or stretch my back. I finished the story at almost five thousand words. It's the most work I've done in months. I'm now editing the story, hoping to finish in time to self-publish it this Sunday.

It surprised me what I could accomplish if I set my mind to it. I thought I was spent for that day and I still managed to write a short story. This experience showed me the greatness of inspiration. I now understood how it is possible that some writers can write a novel in a matter of a week or two.

The ART of DRAMATIC WRITING

You've seen it right, the title is in CAPITAL LETTERS, this book deserves the added exclamation. If you want to know more about how to improve your writing craft, be it playwright, writing a short story, a novelette, a novel, a screenplay, even your grocery-list, buy this book.

Lajos Egri explains the need of having a premise, characters, and conflict to shape the story. He shows that without this the story will not reach its full potential. He proves his points with explanations, and examples of existing plays (from the era he wrote the book), and a session of question that he answers in great detail.

This book helped me understand why some of what I wrote previously worked and some not so much. It gave me understanding where previously I was guessing and going by feeling. It's not that you can't write a great book based on going just with pure imagination, but it's rare. Knowing why things work gives you that much more confidence in your writing, and the right tools to knowingly write (or attempt to) a great book.

I'm glad I read this book. It's a shame I forgot who recommended The Art of Dramatic Writing to me, I would kiss him or her a thousands times. It's a great book and an asset to every writers bookcase.

Made myself a website

Yes I did it. I finally, finally, after years trying and wanting, finished making a website, and in my biased opinion it looks great, terrific, just pure awesomeness. Check it out for yourself if you don't believe me. Tell me how great it look. www.alexrosaria.com

But please don't shatter my delusions, illusions, or whatever the high is I feel about making a website. Nah just comment the truth if you so desire. I'll scream, cry, pull my hair if other despise my website, but in my eyes it will stay awesome.

A website is an ongoing process, I'll have to keep polishing the content, and keep adding more to it, and increase its functionality. What is new to me is to make a website search engine friendly, but I'm learning how to do that. Finding out how to make a website took most of the time making it, and It was great process, despite the now and then frustration encountering a bug or not knowing how to do something.

I might make more websites, I only have to think about what. Any idea's?