Ignite Your Imagination

Which is more interesting- your writing or your life?  Think carefully before you answer.

Do you write about interesting things in an uninteresting way?

Do you do the same things day after day, month after month, year after year?  Is television more exciting than your life?  How can you hope to write interesting fiction if all of this describes your life?

Writing is no substitute for an interesting life.  Research is no substitute for experience.  This applies to your imaginary life as well as your real life.  What I'm saying is if you can't live large, then dream large.  It will show in your writing.  No one wants to read stories about people who settle written by writers who settle.

Here's a three step recipe to put some passion in your writing so your readers don't fall asleep on you:


1.  Read Charles Gramlich's "Write With Fire."

2.  Quit attending writer's groups and pay attention to life around you.  And maybe quit getting your weather reports from weather.com and pay attention to the sky.  Ignore group input and think for yourself for a change.  You'll be amazed how much more interesting your writing gets.  Vary your life routine a little.  Don't keep doing the same things day after day after day.

3.  Read Charles Gramlich's "Write With Fire" again.  Seriously.  Your writing will immediately improve.

First Issue!

The first issue of our new web magazine is now up at White Cat Publications.  Come on over and take a look.  Let us know what you think.

Every new enterprise should acknowledge those who made it possible.

I would like to dedicate this first collection of stories to William Jones, whose patient mentoring has been such a tremendous help with my own writing and so many other authors. William is a wonderfully gifted writer and editor. For those of you who have not had the pleasure of being acquainted with his stories, I wholeheartedly recommend that you seek them out. He is one of those authors who can write exceptionally in any genre he puts his mind to. Although his most recent novel is Pallid Light, I have always been especially fond of his The Strange Cases of Rudolph Pearson and his science fiction anthology Artifacts.

William has his PhD in Literature, is an engineer, a professor at a prestigious technical university, and undoubtedly the finest writing teacher a writer could ever have the privelege to know. He is one of the few people I know who can successfully correct, instruct and inspire sincere students of the craft.
I would also like to thank the writers who contributed to this first issue. Without out their fine efforts, this would not have been possible. Some names you might be familiar with, some may be new to you, but they are all impressive in their own right.

We'll be publishing new collections at least every three months, post twice weekly and have ongoing reviews and interviews.

Going forward we'll be publishing print anthologies and a selection of new novels and non-fiction. We're open to suggestions and comments to the me at editor@whitecatpublications.com.

Prep Time for the New Magazine

I want to thank everyone for their feedback on podcasts- it helped a lot.  After looking around at other sites and consider what both Charles Gramlich and G said, We're going to offer podcasts on he new magazine site based on story length as a few other sites do- 5 to 10 minute stories, 15 minutes stories, etc.  Never would have thought about it with you guys.

Meantime, we won't be posting anymore as everyone here will be involved in starting the new web magazine right up until July 1st.  The new address is http://www.whitecatpublications.com/ 

The painting above is by a brilliant artist named James Baxter of Georgia whose creative talents seem to know no bounds.  I've used this picture with his permission.  Its spirit seems to embody where it is that this new venture will be taking us all with the new magazine.

Anyway, be back July 1st at the new address!

Another Audio Podcast- "Counter Creatures"



Counter Creatures
by Ferrel D. Moore

This is the third of three podcasts we're doing to learn something about the way this technology works.  It is the longest of the three- the original story is roughly 8,000 words.  That makes it about an hour in length if you're brave enough to help out and see how it plays. 

"Blunt Ed" (screenhandle) at Shocklines gave us the following feedback after checking out the download size of this latest podcast:

"Take a look at Audacity -- http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ -- it's a free prog for recording. By the look of your file sizes, you've probably got too high a bitrate for voice. I went to stream your reading, but it didn't start for me, so I went to right click and save the file to my hard drive and found it was 230 meg or so. If that's at 180 k sampling rate, you could reduce the file size by two thirds by reducing the bit rate to 60 k, which is usually fine for voice recordings. Changing from a .wav file to an .mp3 format will make a huge difference, too."


Great advice.  We'll be re-formatting these and re-presenting them on the new magazine along with other authors reading their stories.  So thanks again for helping the staff learn. 
 
Remember, this is roughly an hour in length.  So make popcorn if you're going to listen.  Let me know how long you think an audio podcast should be.  How long is too long for you as a listener?  5 minutes?  10 minutes?  30 minutes?

To hear the audio presentation of "Counter Creatures," by Ferrel D. Moore, click LISTEN .

A Ghost Story (Audio Podcast)

Haints

To hear the audio presentation of "Haints," by Ferrel D. Moore click LISTEN.

Podcast- Ricci's Last Night

Our First Ever Podcast!

To hear the audio presentation of "Ricci's Last Night," click LISTEN.

Nyx Malache- Sci Fi at Full Throttle with the Most Interesting Female Lead Ever

Nyx Malache is one of the books in the Nyx science fiction series by publisher, editor and wonderfully inventive writer Tyree Campbell.

The main character is Nyx, a cold blooded assassin for an organization known as Blacklight- an organization that does not officially exist.  Her boss, a mysterious and coldly analytical figure, has dispatched her to the tropical planet Malache to kill a courier who is about to transfer classified information.  When her contact identifies the wrong target, Nyx kills the wrong man.  Ordered back for damage control, she finds herself in the middle of an intercorporate and transgalactic conflict where both sides want her dead.  If that were not enough, she learns that an old nemesis, the only person ever to defeat her,

As the backcover further explains, "her only allies are the lemuroid, pacifist, sexually-tilted Malasy, and an anthropologist of questionable loyalties.  To win this one, Nyx has to recover her lost femininity and make the coldest sacrifice of all."

I recommend this book to any reader.  It is an electric congruence of action, style and brain bending explorations of everything we hold in sacred awe or that causes our prehensile DNA to cringe.  It is wildly but tastefully populated with sexual divergences, cold blooding killings and a female lead character unlike any you have ever met.  These days female assassins are a dime a dozen, but none of them holds a candle to Nyx.  She's what you'd expect if the little girl in the movie "The Professional" grew up and went to work for a power hungry intergalactic corporation as their assassin in chief.

Although the books is only just under 200 pages in length, you're going to be amazed at the levels of character and plot complexities that booby-trap this story.  Definitely worth buying along with the others in this series.  You can find it at Sam's Dot Publishing or your favorite online bookstore.

After you read this book, you'll realize that although Tyree Campbell may look like a nice enough guy, underneath his gentle exterior lurks a dangerous mind.

Boyer's Stoker Scam

Boyer a Stoker Nominee?

Have you been nominated for a Stoker Award lately?  It's the supreme award for Dark Fiction issued yearly by the HWA.  You probably think it's a lot of work to get nominated for a Stoker.  First you have to be recommended (lots are recommended), then you have to make the cut to be nominated. 

But wait, there's an easier way- The Boyer Way!  All you have to do, according to David Boyer, the Vincennes, Indiana plagiarist, is write in the bio of one of your books that you were nominated.  Just put it there, and that means you really were nominated for a Stoker award by the HWA.  You don't really have to be nominated.  Since you've claimed your imaginary nomination in black in white, it must be true.  Name it and claim it.

People claiming they received awards or nominations for awards they either weren't nominated for or didn't get are the bane of our industry.  And David Boyer, the Vincennes, IN plagiarist, is the most notorious of these.  He claims he was nominated for a Stoker (for the story he stole from me), but he wasn't (it was only recommended).  He just slaps the imaginary nomination in his bio and figures readers are too lazy to check it out.  After all, someone would have stopped him if he was lying, wouldn't they?

Not really.  Readers are loathe to think writers are that dishonest.  But they're wrong.  Writers like Boyer are that dishonest.

It's the oldest trick in a con man's book- claim you were nominated for something.  No one checks unless you claim you won.  There are lots of writers out there without scruples who claim in their bio that they were nominated.  They figure we're too dumb to catch them at it.

Why would a writer risk their integrity when things like this are so easy to check?  In Boyer's case, he has no integrity.  He's a plagiarist.

What have we come to as writers when the award claims are more important than the quality of our stories?

$50 Cash Prize for the Best Title for My Shocking New Book

Looking for Boyer's Brain



For the last few months, I've been researching and documenting the sleazy career of the Vincennes, Indiana plagiarist named David Boyer.  Once I realized that he was arguably the worst plagiarist and con man in the history of writing, I just had to get the story out there.  That's why I'm writing the book about him.  Because there is so much you don't know and more to come.  He has repeated over and again that there is nothing anyone can do to stop him.  But I think the truth will stop him and others who violate our copyrights.

B Thoughtful has yet another Boyer plagiary smackdown involving Dean Koontz soon.  Wait until you read it.  Boyer's utter contempt for writers will astound you. 

B is focused on the evidence against Boyer.  Because he plagiaized my story "Electrocuting the Clowns" I'm investigating not only what he did, but also how and why he did it.  What drives a man to steal stories and interviews and claim they are his?  I'll give you the answer in his own words. When the full scope of his plagiarized interviews and stories becomes available, Boyer's creepiness will amaze you.  The underlying techniques he used to get stories and interview to steal will show you why he's known as the "Predator Editor."

He refuses to confess and negotiate restitution to his growing list of victims some of whom are obscure and others who are famous.  I almost wrote him once to ask why he just didn't confess and offer to work out a payment plan with everyone based on legitamite book sales, but I didn't because he's too arrogant to make a complete, real confession and too controlling to negotiate restitution with his victims.

I'm just past the mid-point of the book with a projected completion date of June 1st, but I'm stuck for a title.  I was thinking about "Looking for Boyer's Brain," but it just didn't sound right for a serious work.  "The Man Who Would be King" is a little over-used, but oddly appropriate.  I won't use it unless I can successfully prove that he plagiarized Stephen King, which quite a few people are researching right now.  Rumor is that he plagiarized Clive Barker, but that remains to be seen.

So I'm offering a cash prize of $50.00 to whoever I judge has come up with the best suggested title.  My publisher hates the idea, but you readers were the ones that helped me get the ball rolling to wrap up this con man.  That's why I want to cut you in.  But I'm the sole judge and my opinions are final and I really want something sharp.  Contest ends June 1st, when we start the new web magazine currently under construction at White Cat Publications.

So help me out, will you?  $50 is $50.

David Boyer Caught Plagiarizing Dean Koontz!!

It's official!

David Boyer- the Vincennes, Indiana plagiarist- has made the jackass move of all time.  He actually plagiarized Dean Koontz. 

Want to see the proof?  Go to http://b-thoughtful.blogspot.com/

And you wonder why I'm writing a book about Boyer?

Please Send Photos of Your Muse for the New Web Magazine

Mr. Little At Work

We're still working on the new website at http://www.whitecatpublications.com/, and one of the features we'd like to add is a gallery of our reader's writing muse.  If you are willing to help with this project, please send along a photo of your muse (people are acceptable, according to Mr. Little) to editor@thewriterandthewhitecat.com and we'll post it up for you.

Mr. Little fills in with the Mary Shelley coffee cup when the White Cat isn't available.

And, we added a post on the contests section for the new website where we're looking for Flash Fiction.  Feel free to offer any design or structural suggestions.  Right now the goal is to have the first three podcast short stories up by the end of next week.  So drop by while it's being constructed.  Company is always appreciated.