Part three - A video interview

Buy your book today!

art provided by http://brittmartin.deviantart.com/

Buy it today! http://www.amazon.com/Gates-Garden-Eden-Empire-Beneath/dp/1499133847/

Newest review: 5 of 5 stars!

Newest review of my book! Isn't it time you bought one for yourself and your family this season?

http://www.amazon.com/Gates-Garden-Empire-Bene…/…/1499133847

"I read this book, as I worked alongside the author, and had a great level of respect for him. Going in, I was not sure what to expect. He had mentioned that this book was dark, and it certainly was. However, what I was presented with was an exploration of this world that he created (or stumbled upon by our protagonist Chaucer), that was very dark, yet keeping me turning page after page. Despite the darkness, this was not just some dime novel for cheap scares for the reader. The author was able to work in a lot of his own personal faith, and create a narrative that was both entertaining, yet illustrative of the author himself. The attention to detail and depth of the world that he had created were fantastic, making this story easily believable as one that is/has happened in our own world. The most brilliant part of this whole novel is the fact that the author does indeed make good on his promise to challenge the reader, answering the questions in the narrative, but in doing so, creating so many more. I would definitely recommend this book for anyone who needs a constant page turner, to not only engage their attention, but also to leave them wanting more."

Chapter 52

 "I thought it was just the professors that were ignoring certain facts," Oliver continued the next night. "There were certain unexplained anomalies that would occur again and again, enough to become regular occurrences, and yet, again and again, the lead professor at a dig site would call it an anomaly."

"Uh. I don't think any of us has an idea as to what you are referring to, young man." Harris offered. The rest of us had just gotten seated and Rolf had gotten the heater lamp started.

"Oh! Oh my god, sorry. I must confess, I've been thinking about this all day and am just now verbalizing my results. Let me start again. My professor was part of a team who went to visit the Lines in Paracas, Peru. You know, the geoglyphs that you can see from space? Drawn on the earth thousands of years ago. The monkey, condor, spider, spirals, the hand, the parrot, there are over fifty in all. We thought fifty two exactly, each week of the year marked in perfect time. The ancient Peruvians were masters of the sky."

Harris shifted in his seat. "So the anomalies were with the lines."

Oliver almost winced. "No, not at all. That was only a piece to a larger puzzle. Look. The lines around Palpa and Nazca were just markers for the extra-terrestrials. Sort of a directory of what goes where. One of the lines is actually a runway. But the mystery is larger, so much larger. Alright, they believed..."

"And the 'they' is..."

"Oh the group that went with my professor. A collaboration of sorts. A couple of doctoral candidates, four archaeologists and an architect along with my professor, a paleontologist. My professor was the one with the most doubts mind you, and this had been a big deal for him. They went to the Nazca lines, Machu Pichu, Lake Titicaca and a few other places on a tour. "

"What were they doing?" Doctor Meera asked, turning towards him.

"Corporate field research, and more than that I believe; two of the anthropologists had been working on a paper together in which they postulated that you might be able to find proof of an ancient alien civilization that once lived here on earth."

Maxwell laughed. "Ancient aliens. I knew it. Come on professor Oliver, tell us some more malarkey."

"Oliver, don't mind him," the doctor said. "Go on. What was the summary of their theory?"

"Alright," Oliver shifted in his seat, tucking his leg under the other, "It's like this: If we see civilization springing up suddenly from Sumeria, and we see these two hot spots of Peru and Crete evolve almost at exactly at the same pace, using the same technology, then there had to have been others helping man out, training him on how to raise himself out of the barbaric state that he was in. There must have been direct involvement with another sentient life-form."

Most of us were thinking about this already, I asked: "And they were fifty feet tall?"

"Sad that, really. They didn't find any evidence of giants in Peru. What they did find is a bit more complicated than that. Alright, imagine that the ancients had technology that allowed them to splice genes..."

I laughed along with a couple of others; Doctor Meera smiled.

"Just... Just imagine, alright? Now if I took my genes and say, a healthy aliens, and created a zygote, then I placed it into a healthy egg. The zygote would germinate and there would be life. This would not be an alien, nor would it be a human. It would be a completely new species. A hybrid man-alien. Imagine the repercussions of such a monster. If the giants were the aliens, then the cone-heads found in Peru were their hybrid children."

"Cone-heads," Rhianna smirked. "You mean the people who distorted their heads for religion?"

"Yes and no," Oliver slid off his tucked leg and sat cross-legged. I didn't know if he was nervous or just excited. "Yes, in that they did do that for religion. The religion of alien worship." None of us were buying this. "Look, alright, there are many people all over the world, at about the same time who went knocking about and changed the shape of their head. Why? What was the point? Well the team found some alien heads as well as some human heads. They were both different and unique. They were not the same.

"Ok, we have have three cranial plates. The frontal plate and two pariental plates," He pointed at the different parts of his head. "Some of them had this, and you could see the malformation of the plates... but others only had two plates. A frontal and an occipital plate. They were much thicker and had fibers running through-out them. Their brain capacity was 25% larger, the eyes and nose was larger, but not only that, the most exciting thing was the two holes that served as a secondary connection to the cerebellum or hypothalamus."

Doctor Meera had been grimacing, chewing the inside of her lip as she listened to this last part.

"It's..." she began.

"It's time for bed," Adira said.

And, just so, as we were getting up and preparing to sleep, Vlin Tak and Atta walked by, eyeing us.

BUY the book TODAY

My Amazon Author Page

http://www.amazon.com/Pauly-Hart/e/B00N7RUETK/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

Submitted the book to goodreads.com

Marketing.

A work in progress.

Pumping up the juice on my latest work!

Get out there and buy one!

http://www.amazon.com/Gates-Garden-Empire-Beneath-Volume/dp/1499133847

It will be Christmas soon!

Part two - A video interview

Part one - A video interview

Senior Paulypotomus and his new book(s)

last night and this morning

last night was hilarious fun!

around 18 people came by and checked it out!

awesome!

thank you for coming and listening!

today is awesome!

i got a slip from the post office about my books arriving!

zoomed over there!

tada!

"i" now (briefly) own more books than "rest of the world".

that's going to change soon!

Tonights read

Tonight is the big night of the broadcast. I will be online at http://paulyhartlive.tk from about 11:30 PM to 1 AM Eastern Standard Time reading from the novel starting around chapter 24 or so.

I will be giving away an autographed book tonight sometime during the show. 

So stay tuned.

For those of you who have been over to the Amazon site (thank you a million times over by the way) - you will be getting your book in the mail and it will be arriving to you all hot off the presses and that's awesome. I have never had the experience of a close friend of mine writing a book to where you can go and order it and then yell at him when the ending doesn't turn out the way you expected it.

For those of you who have not yet put your order in., there is still a zillion years to do it over at Amazon. You will also find my first published poetry book "Stupid Mind Tricks" there as well. http://www.amazon.com/Pauly-Hart/e/B00N7RUETK/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

It might be a neat treat for you however if you do it before a zillion years has elapsed. Probably in a zillion years, we will have a quite different form of book distribution.

ANYWAY.

If you want to record it, that's fine. Just tag it with me and the book title and upload it anywhere you want. I could use the free publicity.

Also. Once you read the book, head back over to the Amazon site and give it a review! That would be awesome!

See you in an hour!

-Pauly

Chapter 1

Buy the book today at
https://www.createspace.com/4758991
or
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1499133847/



By the Gates of the Garden of Eden

by Pauly Hart

Chapter 1

          I will say this about canned pork and beans: I do not like them, nor do I understand anyone who does. Craig Atherton, my roommate enjoyed them immensely, which proved to be one of the reasons that I decided on the course of events that would change my life forever. The month of May was almost over and I needed something to do with myself for the next few months, and although it was a tempting choice for the summer, I really did not look forward to sitting around in my dorm room watching Craig become fatter than he was already becoming. I was laying in bed, reading some random book I had picked up from the flea-market about fifth century Roman coinage, and not remembering a word of it. My Converse shoes lay by my feet where I had kicked them off next to my flannel shirt. I still wore flannels, even in the spring. It was habit, something I had picked up in high-school. Without them, I resembled something of a scare-crow, no matter what T-shirt I was wearing. Most of my clothes I had bought from the Salvation Army discount store. Not that I was poor, I would just rather spend my money on books. It was amazing what you could get there for a dollar or less.

          The dorm that I lived in was for graduates, but I moved in last year during the summer, and they somehow had overlooked the fact that I was still in my fourth year and had not obtained any bachelors degree yet. This was fine with me, but that did lend itself to the one issue that was now my largest concern. Creepy Craig. Not that he was really terrible in any way. It was just the one hundred little things that overwhelmed the average roommate.

          I was roommate number sixteen for Craig. As he had only been here two years in his graduate studies, that was a terrible track record. It was things in the bathroom like his woman's hair-brush that he used to "Do the Doo." It was the never-clean desk that would one day become miraculously clean "when I just got the time, you know?" It was the ratty brown slippers that were "worn in just right." It was the afternoon Stetson cologne mist-bath that "kept him fresh." It was the alarm clock that screamed: "Up and at em, eggs and bacon!" It was his mother that dropped by every week to check on "darling boy." It was the toothbrush splatter on the mirror. It was the large pile of clothes that had developed its own ecosystem. It was the used styrofoam ramen noodle cups laying everywhere. It was the way that he referred to all women as "dolls." It was his gerbil Murphy who made odd screeching noises at four in the morning. It was the screen saver on his computer that was had pictures of his childhood with Honorable Mention awards. It was the Soap-on-a-rope that hung from the shower-head. It was everything Craig. It was just Craig in general.

          So, as his roommate for longer than six months, I had set the all-time record for tolerance, even if it strained the limits on my own sanity. There was a level of respect, especially at our seminary, for a man with a larger than normal gift of patience, or, as the King James Version calls it: "Long-suffering." Maybe this was why I was never asked to leave the Grad dorm. They had grown tired of roommate flipping and decided to expand their tendrils to a larger audience, for somewhere in the bylaws of the founding sponsor of the dorm, it was written that no one would ever have a room to themselves: for fear of the temptations that so easily beset young men. Craig was enough to drive me bonkers, but as I am fond of saying: "I'm still not crazy, so everything must be fine."

          Craig had been away on Christmas vacation when I was assigned to the room. When I showed up, I chose to spend Christmas catching up on schoolwork, ready to finally graduate this year and move on to larger things. When I had arrived at the beginning of January, the room was pungent with the grit of an old kitchen towel and smelt the way I had imagined Oscar the Grouch would have, growing up watching Sesame Street on television. Craig had left presumably mid-meal and there was what looked like a crustacean alive on his desk that at one time had been the number four meal at Kentucky Fried Chicken. It had taken a full roll of trash-bags, a gallon of bleach, a stack of hand-towels and seven hours of hard labor to clean the bathroom and the half that was to become my half of the "inner sanctum," as Craig called it.

          On my second day after cleaning, I went to the supermarket, purchased a label maker and some duct-tape and neatly labeled all of the shelves in the bedroom that I was confiscating and placed the tape down the center of the room for an equatable portion. The "This is my half, that is your half," solution. The Craiganator had arrived the very next day, blinked twice at the changes, set down his backpack on my bed (right next to me thank you very much) and practically fell into the restroom for an apparently much needed and long overdue bowel movement. Without hesitation, I took his backpack, opened the window to the frozen air, and threw it out into the snow. Upon finishing his due course of events, Craig quickly came to respect my space after that, for we lived on the third floor, and unbeknownst to me, I had "damaged some goods." That dirty clothes (including his Dragon Ball Z pajamas) could be damaged by falling thirty feet onto the fluffy white pillow of a snow drift was new to me. I had some "learnin" to do, as Craig put it.

          And so it was, that with the advent of summer, I had decided to have a Craig-free time in my life. If I planned to finished up my degree and pursue either a career or another more advanced degree, I would make plans to do so with a clear head. No Craig. No worries. Just myself on the open road, going down the old historic Route 66, through the heart of the Midwest and into California. Thus, I went over to the Zip-N-Go two streets over, bought a Map of The United States of America (Old Route 66 Edition) and charted my course to travel to the West Coast.

          Starting in my city of origin, Boston, hopping up to Chicago (where the Route started), going through the great Midwest and landing in Santa Monica. I do not know why I decided on this course of action, but it was natural to me to make it this way... Santa Monica that is. It just seemed right. It felt like something that should be done, at least once, by every person who calls themselves an American and who is out searching for themselves. At least It was something that I could do. And as I did have an entire three months at my disposal, I did not feel the need to hurry... I would enjoy this trip for the trip itself.

          There was only one small problem: I did not have the resources or panache to own a car at this point in my life. The priorities weren't there. I would rather own a little and read a lot and work just hard enough to get by. Even as a teenager, most afternoons would find me sitting out in the back yard reading Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, or even Huck Finn instead of working. I had never needed a car in my youth, or rather, had always made excuses to go read. Even here at college, it had been easy for me to get around by walking hither and yon... To and from the bookstore, work and the dorm. Walking coupled with laziness was natural, and therefore I felt this was how I was to begin my journey. By walking.

          Most of the way at least.


Like what you've read? Want to read more? Buy the book today at https://www.createspace.com/4758991 or  http://www.amazon.com/dp/1499133847/

If you can't wait to buy my book on Friday...

You can buy it TODAY!

At Create Space

or Amazon Paperback

or Amazon
for your Kindle

Because you are Awesome!

It's the final countdown!

Here is how I feel today.

THIS FRIDAY HALLOWEEN NIGHT 11:59PM

submitted my final copy to my publisher

so... my wrist hurts from typing but i am so happy and glad and fatigued that i am finally done with the product. i was jumping up and down and then realized that i still had to do the kindle version. that was actually pretty easy, still a couple of things to do on that, but we shall see.

so yeah. this is huge. now i wait while they check it out.

friday can't come soon enough for me.

this is gonna be awesome.

oh, and here is the back cover on my book

,.?!

why is it that the

,
.
and
?

are all near each other

but the

!

is waaaaaaaay over by the 1?

open office headaches

oh no................


i went thru and did a find replace on all the ". 's and replaced with a ." instead and open office just gave me the " ONLY.


dude. i did so much work on that copy that i don't want to revert. now i have to comb for periods.


omg.


lol.


oh well.


last time i use open office for anything. ever.

back to MSword with me.

Stephen King’s 20 Tips for Becoming Awesome At Writing

Have you ever wished you could peer inside the mind of one of the greatest writers in the world and find out exactly what makes them tick?

Well… here’s your chance.

Stephen King has published 49 novels, all of them bestsellers. He has sold more than 350 million copies of his works. According to Forbes, he earns approximately $40 million per year, making him one of the richest writers in the world.

And now he’s going to tell you exactly how to become a frighteningly good writer.

Sort of.

In 2002, King temporarily abandoned writing horror novels, instead publishing On Writing, a little book chronicling his rise to fame and discussing exactly what he believes it takes to become a good writer. Since then, it’s become the most popular book about writing ever written, pulling in over 1000 reviews on Amazon and selling God only knows how many copies.

Here’s why:

The book is… magic.

I’ve read On Writing from cover to cover at least five times, and each time, I saw a noticeable improvement in my prose. For one, it teaches the fundamentals of the craft, which is something no writer should ignore, but it also sort of rubs off on you.

As you read through King’s life story, you can’t help but see that, to him, writing isn’t a chore. It’s an adventure through undiscovered worlds where no one knows what’ll happen next (not even him).

And it’s contagious.

You can’t read On Writing and not come away with a smile on your face. Where other writing books are focused on the mechanics of the written word, King shows you how to capture the joy of the craft. You’ll find yourself wanting to write, not because of fame or fortune, but because it’s fun, and there’s nothing else you would rather do.

Personally, it’s inspired me more than any other book I’ve ever read, and if I could recommend only one book to bloggers, On Writing would be it. But don’t take my word for it. Below, I’ve collected a monster list of my favorite quotes from the book, and I also wrote down some of my own thoughts on exactly how they apply to bloggers.

If you enjoy them, grab yourself a copy of On Writing. You won’t regret it.

Here are the quotes:
“I’ve written because it fulfilled me. Maybe it paid off the mortgage on the house and got the kids through college, but those things were on the side–I did it for the buzz. I did it for the pure joy of the thing. And if you can do it for joy, you can do it forever.”

In the back of their mind, every popular blogger harbors the same secret:

Given no other choices, we would happily do what we do for free.

Yes, the money and adulation and prestige that stems from a popular blog is nice, but it’s not what drives us to the keyboard. It’s not what wakes us up in the morning, excited and ready to write. It’s not what keeps us glued to a computer screen for 80% of our day.

No, it’s about the buzz. It’s about the joy. It’s about watching an idea take shape on the page and knowing your audience will love it.

All the other benefits are just a happy bonus.
“Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well.”

You know Zig Zigler’s old saying, “You can have everything you want in life, if you help enough other people get what they want?”

Well, it’s pretty much the secret to blogging.

If you want more traffic, ask yourself, “What can I give my readers today that would blow their minds? How can I turn their life upside down? What can I say that they couldn’t help but share?”

Answer those questions, and you won’t have to worry about traffic. You’ll get all you can handle.
“You can’t please all of the readers all of the time; you can’t please even some of the readers all of the time, but you really ought to try to please at least some of the readers some of the time.”

You want the formula for writing popular blog posts?

Here it is:
Jot down a list of blog topics you could write about
Circle the ones at least 80% of your readers would find irresistible
Write about those topics and nothing else

Simple, but it takes discipline. The better you become at cultivating that discipline, the more popular your writing will become.
“You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair–the sense that you can never completely put on the page what’s in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page.”

Oh, but so many of us do.

We think of our blogs as online journals, places to jot down our thoughts, our own little corners of the world where we can say what we think without fear of anyone cutting us off. It’s easy, harmless, fun, so we do it without thinking, without caring, without giving it the respect it really deserves.

Big mistake.

If you want the world to take you seriously, first you have to take yourself seriously. You have to look at your blog as not just a blog but an opportunity to change the world.

And then you have to write as if the whole world is listening.
“I remember an immense feeling of possibility at the idea, as if I had been ushered into a vast building with closed doors and had been given leave to open any I liked. There were more doors than one person could ever open in a lifetime, I thought (and still think).”

After a few months or years of writing about the same topic, you might be tempted to feel like there’s nothing else to say. You wonder how you’re going to write a post for the nextday, much less the next three or four years.

I’ve been there, and you know what?

It’s nonsense.

Writers don’t run out of ideas. They just become lazy explorers.

The world is full of breathtaking things to write about. Our job as bloggers is to find them and bring them back to our audience, letting them “Ooh” and “Aah” at our exotic discoveries.

So, get off your ass, and go exploring.

Watch a documentary. Go on a trip. Read a damn book.

Do anything but sit there in front of the computer and wonder what to write next. That’s just pathetic.
“If you’re just starting out as a writer, you could do worse than strip your television’s electric plug wire, wrap a spike around it, and then stick it back into the wall. See what blows, and how far.”

A couple years ago, I decided to do a test. I cut my TV time to one show per day and then read for two hours instead.

The result?

My creativity exploded. I went from writing 1,000 words per day to pumping out over 2,000 words per day in the same amount of time.

So, now I’m a believer. Television may be popular, but it’s poisonous to creativity, and all truly dedicated writers need to limit their exposure to it.
“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”

Of course, most bloggers do neither. We start a blog, squeeze in the occasional post between going to the gym and picking up take-out, and then expect it to somehow lead to fame and fortune.

Sorry, but that’s not how it works. Every popular blogger I know reads at least one book every week and writes at least 1,000 words every day.

Yes, it’s a lot, but success comes at a price, folks. Are you willing to pay it?
“Put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way around.”

In our case, it’s not the desk we have to fear, but the smart phone, the tablet, and the laptop, all jangling for our attention, all sucking us in, all immersing us into the world of social media.

And it’s dangerous.

One day you wake up to realize your life is nothing more than a series of digital communications. You wonder, is all that blogging and twittering and facebooking really serving you, or are you serving them? Who is the master, and who is the slave?

If you ever find the answer is the latter, disconnect for a while. Social media is supposed to be an echo of your real life, not the other way around. Never forget that.
“All the arts depend upon telepathy to some degree, but I believe that writing is the purest distillation.”

In school, we are taught writing has three and only three purposes: to inform, to entertain, and to persuade. It’s true, I think, but it’s also missing a subtle requirement:

Transference.

To inform, first you have to be informed. To entertain, first you have to be entertained. To persuade, first you have to be persuaded.

Then and only then are you ready to write.

And when you do, your job isn’t so much jotting down words on the page as beaming the ideas inside your head into the heads of other people. Words are just the medium through which the transfer happens.
“Paragraphs are almost always as important for how they look as for what they say; they are maps of intent.”

Ever stopped to look at the way popular blogs are formatted?

Probably not, unless you’re a total nerd (like me), but give it a try sometime. You’ll notice a surprising pattern:

They all use short paragraphs.

Most of the paragraphs are two or three sentences. Occasionally, they’ll use a one sentence paragraph to emphasize an important point.

Here’s why:

The shorter your paragraphs are, the less dense and threatening the post looks. It’s a simple thing, but it has a huge impact on how many people stick around and read what you have to say.
“Writing is refined thinking.”

A lot of writing books tell you to “write like you talk,” and while I suppose that’s fine for a beginner, it’s death if you ever want to be a respected authority. Yes, your writing should be conversational, but it should be the conversation you would have if you had time to think everything through and say exactly the right things.

The truth is, any great piece of writing is preceded by hours and hours of thinking. Have more respect for the power of words than to spit them out without any real forethought.
“Write with the door closed, and rewrite with the door open.”

If you’re ever writing a post, and you get stuck, try this:

Write as if no one in the world will ever read it.

Say exactly what you feel. Don’t think. Just get your thoughts out there in all their disheveled, chaotic glory.

This is what Stephen calls writing with the” door closed.” It’s just you and your work, nobody else, and it’s the first stage of writing.

The second stage is opening the door to the rest of the world — a metaphor for pondering how the average Joe might respond to your new creation and making the changes necessary to help it survive.

And yes, there will be changes. Lots and lots of them.
“We need to experience the mediocre and the outright rotten; such experience helps us to recognize those things when they begin to creep into our own work, and to steer clear of them.”

It’s happened to all of us.

You click a link, and you stumble onto somebody’s blog. Not just any blog, mind you, but an extraordinarily crappy one, devoid of any comments, wit, or charm, and yet somehow managing to survive.

When confronted with such a pathetic creature, most people make a bolt for the “Back” arrow, and that’s fine, if you’re just a reader. If you’re a writer, on the other, you’re far better served by sticking around and analyzing exactly what makes the blog so pathetic.
Why are their headlines so incomprehensible?
What, exactly, makes the blog look amateurish?
How does their grammar, vocabulary, and sentence structure make them sound uneducated?

Sure, studying the best is a good way to learn, but so is studying the worst, not because you want to emulate them, but because you begin to “recognize those things as they creep into your own work.”
“This isn’t the the Ouija board or the spirit-world we’re talking about here, but just another job like laying pipe or driving long-haul trucks.”

To many aspiring writers, a great piece of writing is something mystical, filled with an almost frightening power, and they look at the writers who create such magic with reverence, maybe even worship, longing for the day when they can discover their closely-guarded “secrets.”

It’s silly.

Yes, there is some magic to it, but the same magic exists in every type of art, and it’s accessible to everyone. Here’s how:

Write. Every day. For years.

Is it hard work?

Yes.

But so is any job worth doing.
“We’ve all heard someone say, ‘Man, it was so great (or so horrible/strange/funny) … I just can’t describe it!’ If you want to be a successful writer, you must be able to describe it, and in a way that will cause your reader to prickle with recognition.”

If you pay attention to only one quote in this article, pay attention to this one.

Our job as bloggers isn’t so much saying what we think as putting what our readers think into words, describing it with such clarity and intimacy they suspect us of reading their minds. Do that, and you won’t have to beg your readers for their attention. They’ll follow you to the ends of the earth.
“Not a week goes by that I don’t receive at least one pissed-off letter (most weeks there are more) accusing me of being foulmouthed, bigoted, homophobic, murderous, frivolous, or downright psychopathic.”

Great writing polarizes people.

Some people will love it, and some people hate it. It’s the way you know you’re on the right track.

It’s also the way you know you’re off-track.

If you’re not getting any hate mail, it’s not because you’re the world’s most lovable writer. It’s because you lack the conviction to say anything of substance.

The penalty isn’t death. It’s worse:

Invisibility.
“There are lots of would-be censors out there, and although they may have different agendas, they all want basically the same thing: for you to see the world they see… or to at least shut up about what you do see that’s different. They are the agents of the status quo.”

Many a talented blogger has been shocked and even silenced when confronted with the seething, almost bestial hatred of critics. You think, “Well, I’ll just ignore it,” but it eats at you, and even if you succeed at not responding (no easy feat), you often find yourself thinking about what the critics will say when you write.

And there are two ways to respond.

You can either shut up, taking what was your unique and wonderful about your work and shuttering it away in a mental closet. Or, you can fight back, not by criticizing the critic, but by realizing you’re in a war against the status quo, and the only way to fight back is to be delightfully, unapologetically weird.
“Try any goddam thing you like, no matter how boringly normal or outrageous. If it works, fine. If it doesn’t, toss it.”

How do you know when you’re going too far?

You don’t. At least, not at first.

One day, write something so new and different it’s either a work of genius or the stupidest thing conceived in the mind of man. The next, examine your creation to find out which is true.

If it’s stupid, delete it. If it’s genius, publish it.

The mistake most bloggers make, of course, is never trying anything new at all. They do whatever their English teachers told them is “right.”

And that’s just sad.
“You undoubtedly have your own thoughts, interests, and concerns, and they have arisen, as mine have, from your experiences and adventures as a human being. . . . You should use them in your work.”

Notice he said “use them in your work,” not “let them become your work.”

Including stories about your life in your blog post is fine and dandy, especially if those stories are interesting, but most bloggers suffer not from a lack of stories but from an extravagance of them, writing about little nothings that happened to them and somehow expecting these boring trivialities to make them famous. Sorry, but it doesn’t work that way.

Stories are like condiments. They add flavor, sure enough, but eating them all by themselves is just gross.
“While it is impossible to make a competent writer out of a bad writer, and while it is equally impossible to make a great writer out of a good one, it is possible, with lots of hard work, dedication, and timely help, to make a good writer out of a merely competent one.”

And finally, we come to the ray of hope.

You want thousands of loyal readers who love your work and happily tell all their friends to check you out?

You don’t have to be a great writer. In the beginning, you don’t even have to be good.

You just have to be competent.

What, exactly, is “competence?” Here’s my take:

You can write down your thoughts, and people think, “Hmm, that makes sense.”

Maybe you don’t come across as a genius. Maybe your vocabulary is simple. Maybe your grammar isn’t even good enough to get a pass from your high school English teacher.

But you have good ideas.

You can communicate those ideas.

People like what you’re saying.

If you can do those three things, you can work on the rest. No, you’ll probably never win a Pulitzer, but newsflash, I don’t know a single popular blogger who has one of those sitting on their bookshelf.

Most are just merely competent writers who, over the years, got better. They wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote, and one day, they woke up to discover the world liked what they had to say.

The secret, though?

Writing and writing and writing and writing.

The reason most bloggers fail isn’t a lack of talent or smarts or technical know-how. It’s a refusal to take what they do seriously. They don’t believe their blog can be anything, so they never put in the work to make it anything.

But you’re going to be different, right?

You’re going to commit yourself to learning the craft?

You’re going to sit down and actually write, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, until you really and truly get good at this?

You better bet your ass.

If not, I’ll come down there and knock the hell out of ya.

this story was pulled from here

Frodo had PTSD

What is PTSD (Posttraumatic Stress Disorder)?

from here

PTSD, or Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, is a psychiatric disorder that can occur following the experience or witnessing of a life-threatening events such as military combat, natural disasters, terrorist incidents, serious accidents, or physical or sexual assault in adult or childhood. Most survivors of trauma return to normal given a little time. However, some people will have stress reactions that do not go away on their own, or may even get worse over time. These individuals may develop PTSD. People who suffer from PTSD often relive the experience through nightmares and flashbacks, have difficulty sleeping, and feel detached or estranged, and these symptoms can be severe enough and last long enough to significantly impair the person’s daily life.

Frodo as the wounded hero

from here

If you consider the One Ring as some kind of weird psychic amplifier that boosts your willpower and turns it to its own, then Frodo does extraordinarily well in reaching the Crack of Doom — one can only imagine what the Ring would have done in the hands of more strong-willed characters such as Galadriel, Aragorn, Gandalf, or Boromir.

What's more, the ordeal of the Ring haunts Frodo long after he returns to the Shire. And there, instead of being received as a hero, he's actually shunned in favor of his more boisterous companions Merry and Pippin, who are welcomed back as natural leaders. Although he is instrumental in saving the Shire from Sauron's domination, Frodo is never really able to be comfortable there again.

In this way, Frodo is a lot like war heroes who never become fully reintegrated on returning home and are ever after haunted by their war service. Tolkien certainly knew something about this, given that he was in the trenches of France during the First World War. He also undoubtedly encountered many such heroes after the Second World War, years during which he worked diligently on the writing of The Lord of the Rings.

Even as the other hobbits in the Fellowship find their places in the reconstructed Shire, Frodo remains alienated and often plagued by illnesses — which recur on the anniversaries of his encounter with the Ringwraith on Weathertop and his failure to destroy the Ring. Finally, upon completing his memoirs — the supposed source of The Lord of the Rings — he departs Middle-earth forever upon an Elven white ship, headed for the Blessed Realm.

100th post

good morning, good evening, wherever you may be, whatever time it is!

i just wanted to write a quick hello and thank you for all of you who are old fans of this blog.

my first post was in january of 2013 when i was still banging out interesting plot ideas and now here it is, six days before it is released to the public and i am just as nervous and concerned now as i was then with how it will come off.

this is the largest piece of art that i have ever done. most of the time, it takes me hours or DAYS at maximum to work on, edit and finish a painting or music... even a play takes quicker than a novel!

ugh.

so understand me when i say that not only am i relieved that it is coming to an end, but also happy.

i want to move on to make some games for a while.

i might do a little here and there with BTGOTGOE, you know, like maybe release a short story or whatever... but i don't want to type for a while. it has gotten tedious and honestly i am concerned for my marriage because of the book.

eh. the quicker the better.

love you guys: readers, fans and critics alike.

hope you enjoy the book.

Rules of writing frustration point: the ? outside of quotations

Did he say, "We should all go read Pauly's book"?

Is a correctly punctuated sentence.

And it angers me.

So is this:

"Have you read 'By the Gates of the Garden of Eden'?" he asked her.

But it doesn't anger me as much and I don't know why.

quotation marks

curly quotes vs. smart quotes.

i wanted curly quotes

but smart quotes won.

if only open office didn't have so many bugs.

then i would use the curly's.

i think they're quicker to read.

Questions about my book

People keep on asking me interesting things about the book. 
Here are some things you should know.


Q: What day is the book for sale?

A: Halloween Day 10/31/14


Q: Where will I be able to buy it?

A: You will be able to buy it online at Amazon.com


Q: Can I buy it for my Kindle?

A: Yes. HERE.


Q: What genre is it?

A: It is a Supernatural Thriller. Think Stephen King or Dean Koontz. It is filed under the BISAC code "FIC024000" which is Fiction / Occult & Supernatural


Q: Is it kid-friendly?

A: No. This book is not intended for children.


Q: Is this a "Christian" book?

A: No, however, the book contains what I call "Speculative Theology."


Q: What is it about?

A: It is about a man who is kidnapped by Bigfoot. Crazy stuff happens.


Q: Who wrote it?

A: I did.


Q: Who are you?

A: My name is Pauly Hart.


Q: Why did you write it?

A: It's been a burning desire of mine since 1993.


Q: Is this your first book?

A: This is my first finished novel. I have written over 1,500 poems and songs and a couple of kids books.


Q: Weren't you working on another novel?

A: Yes. All my notes were stolen from me. I gave up on that project and turned to other things.


Q: Will I like it?

A: What kind of question is that?


Q: Is that a question?

A: Yes.


Q: Yes. I love reading!

A: Then if you like anything on THIS LIST, then you will like my book


Q: What does your wife think about your writing?

A: She actually helped me edit it. She thinks it's really interesting.


Q: Are you doing a book reading of the book?

A: Yes, have done two so far on PaulyHartLive.TK. Keep tuned to this blog to find out when the next one is.

Cover Art Mockup

By The Gates of the Garden of Eden

Cover Design by Mike Lang

#devilsabound

a couple of new tidbits

my artist got back with me yesterday!

yay!

the cover looks amazing.

so i will post it here soon.

also i thought of a marketing ploy involving a hashtag.

#devilsabound is a hashtag that i think i will use for this book.

so it's going to be hard for me to hashtag everything, and it might be kinda annoying, but it's not in use yet and so i'm going to grab it.

plus it makes sense.

i told my friend eric lee yesterday: "yeah the book is about a guy who is kidnapped by demons" and proceeded to tell him a little bit more of the plot

and he said:

"so an autobiography."

and i busted my gut laughing.

so.

have a great day.

Going thru it ONE MORE TIME

just going thru the text again and again and even one more time tonight...

finding little things that i didn't like here or there... fixing stuff.

it's ready to go...

just waiting on my cover artist to get back with me.

who knows. i might just go thru it even another time, just to be sure.

couldn't hurt, could it?

Renumbering and reorganizing

338 pages!

Woooooow!

Gonna be a nice read!

Oh yeah!

I am so happy.

Now I need to get changed and go out on a date!

Woooo Hoooo!

doug, the techno-prophet

i had a small billing issue with my registrar of one of my websites that had nothing to do with the book and got it resolved.

usually they give you a confirmation number and the like, so i jot those down on a document on the pc and send it to myself in an email.

so then i was thinking, hmmm, i should merge all these accounts and get one big account with all my dot coms (really it's just two of them on ipage now).

and so doug, the techno-prophet waves his magic wand and everything is hunky dory and he gives me the confirmation number.

A CONFIRMATION NUMBER THAT WILL NEVER BE GIVEN AGAIN.

hackers, since a long time ago have talked in "hacker-speak" and refer to themselves, often, as "elite" or "leet" and sometimes they spell it: "1337".

so the first part of my confirmation 1337 was "the chosen ones" or "the knowledgeable few".

the second part of the confirmation was "2", meaning "into"

the THIRD part of my confirmation number was "666".

I AM NOT SHITTING YOU.

13372666

my confirmation number was "sending the elite into the darkest evil".

thanks doug.

don't know whether to burn the book now or use it as a spear against the demonic hordes of vampires now lurking under my desk.

New ad art by me

Thanks to my beta readers

Well. I've closed my beta reading group today.

They were helpful and wonderful and have all been included into the work.

Next book, I hope to have more... Like 40 more.

And I want you to be part of that group.

10/12/14

ALRIGHT!

122,000 words and looking good.

Still need to do a lot of finishing edits but the end product is probably okay.

Seriously, it ships soon.

I am so ready.

So ready for the ship.

working on my birthday

da dum da dum it's my birthday.

gonna turn off the interwebs -

and do some typing.

editing a little

and trying NOT to work

on a new idea for a book

nope not gonna

nope not gonna

gotta finish the first one first.

Work Music

many people are aggravated that I do not like "their music"

mostly people that i work with.

they ask me: "what type of music DO you like?"

so i answer: "bhangra, goa trance, chillstep or world music"

but when i am not listening to that, i also like beethoven and brahms.

here is some of my more socially approved music that i listen to

especially when i am typing furiously.

10/6/14

the decision to move to a 10 point font from an 11 point font was a tough one.

but since the word count is now up to 123,000 from my originally intended 100,000 i thought it nicer to save the shipping cost of a few extra pages.

just kidding.

i want to sell you a brick.

a brick with a 10 point font.

Attention All Readers! Please Rate My Book!

Hello Readers,

Soon I will be publishing my book.

I want to improve as a writer.

After you read By the Gates of the Garden of Eden, you may come here, copy and paste the text below and email it back to me.

Please take a few minutes and truthfully answer the thirty (or so) brief questions and write me a response.

I really appreciate your time.

You rock.

My email address is empiresandgenerals@gmail.com

-pauly


=============


This book was _______________________________________!



Did the story hold your interest from the very beginning? If not, why not?



Should the book be structured differently? Are there parts that I should leave out of the next edition?



Did you get oriented fairly quickly at the beginning as to whose story it is, and where and when it’s taking place? If not, why not?



Could you relate to the characters? Did you feel their pain, excitement, emotions?



Did the setting interest you, and did the descriptions seem vivid and real?



Was there a point at which you felt the story started to lag or you became less than excited about finding out what was going to happen next? Where, exactly?



Were there any parts that confused you? Or even frustrated or annoyed you? Which parts, and why?



Did you notice any discrepancies or inconsistencies in time sequences, places, character details, or other details?



Were the characters believable? Are there any characters you think could be made more interesting or more likeable?



Did you get confused about who’s who in the characters? Were there too many characters to keep track of? Too few? Are any of the names or characters too similar?



Did the dialogue keep your interest and sound natural to you? If not, whose dialogue did you think sounded artificial or not like that person would speak?



Did you feel there was too much description or exposition? Not enough? Maybe too much dialogue in parts? Too little dialogue?



Was there enough conflict, tension, and intrigue to keep your interest?



Was the ending satisfying? Believable?



Did you notice any obvious, repeating grammatical, spelling, punctuation or capitalization errors? Examples?



Do you think the writing style suits the genre? If not, why not?



Which scenes/paragraphs/lines did you really like?



Which parts did you dislike or not like as much, and why?



Are there parts where you wanted to skip ahead or put the book down?



Which parts resonated with you and/or moved you emotionally?



Which parts should be condensed or even deleted?



Which parts should be elaborated on or brought more to life?



Are there any confusing parts? What confused you?



Which characters did you really connect to?



Which characters need more development or focus?



Were there parts that offended you? What were they and why should I change them?



Do you believe that readers of Stephen King or Dean Koontz and other Supernatural Thriller works would also read this book?



If you could describe this book in one sentence to someone who has never heard of it, what would that one sentence be?



Do you have any objections to this book in general?



What type of person would you give this book to?



Anything else you want to share?



Below are typos and errors that I found and the page number they are on.

9/30/14

Final edits being made by myself, my wife and my brother.

I am pushing the limit on time.

Next book, I won't give myself such a short deadline.

Feeling squished!

WORKWORKWORKWORKWORK

{cracks whip}

Ouch!

MacGuffin: The plot device

Objects that serve the plot function of MacGuffins have had long use in storytelling. Such objects in stories continue through to the name-sake of the 1941 film, The Maltese Falcon and beyond. The name "MacGuffin" appears to originate in 20th-century filmmaking, and was popularized by Alfred Hitchcock in the 1930s; but the concept pre-dates the term. The World War I–era actress Pearl White used weenie to identify whatever object (a roll of film, a rare coin, expensive diamonds, etc.) impelled the heroes and villains to pursue each other through the convoluted plots of The Perils of Pauline and the other silent film serials in which she starred.

The director and producer Alfred Hitchcock popularized both the term "MacGuffin" and the technique, with his 1935 film The 39 Steps, an early example of the concept. Hitchcock explained the term "MacGuffin" in a 1939 lecture at Columbia University: He used the two men in the train story which follows.

Interviewed in 1966 by François Truffaut, Alfred Hitchcock illustrated the term "MacGuffin" with this story:

It might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about two men on a train. One man says, "What's that package up there in the baggage rack?" And the other answers, "Oh, that's a MacGuffin". The first one asks, "What's a MacGuffin?" "Well," the other man says, "it's an apparatus for trappinglions in the Scottish Highlands." The first man says, "But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands," and the other one answers, "Well then, that's no MacGuffin!" So you see that a MacGuffin is actually nothing at all.

Word Smithing Poem

Sometimes it's easy.

Sometimes it's hard.

Changing crappy sentences into gold.

Turning:

"Even though it had only been minutes this time, most were already drifting off back to sleep again."

Into:

"Though it had been only minutes, most were drifting back to sleep."

But that's what I'm doing.

The next twenty days.

The Proof

A painting of mine and a quick "hurry-up" job to the printer and I had a cover.

NOTHING as cool as the cover will be when it comes in from my designer.

Coming up with a nice readable 11 point font was tough.

But now, it looks great and FEELS like a good book too.

Oh I am so happy.

I know you're going to enjoy it.

cave snippet

From my book, chapter 17:

"I saw that we were not in a single room, but a larger cavern. We were in a cage built into the rock with native stone and bars rising to the top of the ceiling. It was dank. like an old armpit on a heavy man. Musky and rotten."

gotta wait for more!

-p

making the text look nice

is a chore, but worth it to have a nice finished product that everyone will love and adore.

also

i've noticed that while, i don't use cliche's, i do however say

"seems" and "indeed"

WAY too often.

i have the power of the delete key at my disposal.

and i am NOT SHY.

Curled up in a chair...

...reading my book.

Oh. Glory be. I can read my book as a book. It's back from the publisher and I am quite happy.

Notes to self:


TO BE FIXED


Clunky sentences.
Editing
Soon TBF

Weird Paragraphs
Moving
Soon

Part Intros
Move down
Soon

Introduction rewrite
ok
Soon

IS FIXED

Fix Freaking Darn Page Numbers.
https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=19144
Done

Font Fixes
Minion Pro, Dauphin, Century725 Cn BT
Done

Fix Intros
Moved, Arranged
Done

Proof is back from the publishers

So I hold in my hand (hold on)... Yes. I hold in my hand (typing one handed) the proof copy to my book.

(Alright)

Formerly, when I announced to you that I was holding my book in my hand, I was typing. It's actually still touching my elbow now. I don't want my book to NOT touch me, so I will just let it rest here, next to my elbow, fresh from the publishers, from whence it came, on angels wings, riding a glittering rainbow.

I am going to go out and buy a new red pen tomorrow and mark it all up, taking away silly parts and goofy parts. Chop chop chop will go the steady beat of the writers Chuffa Blade.

Yeahhhh. It's gonna be a clean version and a good version when I release it.

ALSO...

I have a meeting this week with my book jacket designer. He has two ideas that he wants to pitch to me. I'll bet they both are awesome.

ALSO...

I love lamp.

proof ordered

my first proof is in the mail from my publisher.

now we are so happy we do the dance of joy!

Library of Congress approved

Got my registered copyright back from the Library of Congress today!

woo hoo!

Word Count

122,927 words. That's a lot.

My goal was less, but that's ok.

I can still cut a chunk for the abridged edition.

:)

9/10/14

doing quite a bit of editing today thanks to my wonderful beta-readers!

9/9/14

taking most of the day to go thru and edit text. rearranging sentences and such takes a little time, but the reader is worth it.

i just hope things make sense and the book is not boring.

gosh no.

not boring at all actually.

9/4/14 - Beta Readers are Great

I have my beta readers hard at work, and they are doing a fine job of bringing things to my attention that need to be fixed. Things like typos, grammar, etc...

Here is an example of encouragement from one of them. This actually wins some kind of  award in my mind for awesomeness.

"...instead of telling us how tired and hungry (Character) is, describe the dead pain in his feet and muscles cramping with each movement; and knots in the pits of his stomach, the sweat running down his back, the stench of body odor burning his nose, etc."

Hope to use this trick when I write. I need to do a better job of showing and not telling.

Great Advice!

Go Team!

like a kid in a candy store, every dog has his day.

the funny thing about editing is that you don't really know how much of a slob you are when you write until you edit what you've written.

take, for instance, my cliche usage. i don't actually write that poorly to have written in many cliches but i have been running my book thru a program called "clichecleaner" and i have found several phrases that i perchance use too much.

the four main culprits are:

"i have no idea"
"i had no idea"
"at the end of the day"
and...
"it dawned on me"

not surprisingly, i actually use these cliches in every day life as well as the word "indeed".

what is surprising is that "angel of death" appeared in the list of common phrases or cliches to remove.

and that's funny. normally, when people use the term: "angel of death", they mean something else... like a person who kills people, or less often, as a disease or pestilence. i have the honor of having the ACTUAL ANGEL OF DEATH appear in my book. so when i use the term, it isn't a cliche.

i just thought that was a funny thing to point out.

no spoiler alert needed. he is in the prologue.

-pauly

terrible analogies

The release is coming soon

Working steadily on the book every day. I say this tongue-in-cheek, for I just took three days off from editing to do other tasks.

The book is progressing very well and I am hopeful that you have taken the time to link this blog, or the pictures from it to a friend.

If you appreciate Stephen King, or find Dean Koontz tolerable, then you will probably like this little project of mine.

I looked for quite some time to find the proper genre' for this book, and finally settled on: Supernatural Thriller.

Here is a huge list of Supernatural Thrillers that you might find interesting if you like to read them.

I have had a wonderful time writing and editing this book and hope to entertain you, but one of my focuses is to create money.

I believe that this will be the first novel of many.

I know I have at least ten more book ideas ready to go at this moment, but I must first publish this one.

It would be my great honor if you would link this page or share any of the following pictures at the end of this blog post to your friends with either email or social computing.

I appreciate you all and look forward to getting a copy of the book into your hands!

-Pauly Hart

gen con writers workshops

gencon 2014 is over for me.

i am like a zombie after attending 10 hours of writers workshops today and 12 hours of gaming on wednesday. a whole day of awesome.

met a lot of great writers and asked a lot of great questions.

the good news is that i have found a lot of things that i do wrong as a writer and now i know how to fix it.

there is no bad news except trying to leave the place...

i was so ready to take a nap in the car on the way home with jennifer at the helm in her "attack on titan" cosplay uniform, but her friend lost her wallet...

and after waiting an hour and a half i had to drive myself home.

thank you God, mountain dew, cold air, and determination.

so now?

slllllllllleeeeeeeeeeeepp.

oh yeah, thanks to the three beer tent amigos for the lively conversation at the end of the day (you know who you are)

8/10/14

huh! hadn't checked in a while, but it's up to 116,000 words. i guess that the prologue that i added did a little something.

3 editors and a lot of techno music

alright, so i now have three book editors who specialize in different things.

the trick is to keep them happy and feed them nice treats so they work for me harder.

my wife jenn, is my comma commando.

my brother tim is my constructive analyst.

my best friend j.b. is my depth gauge.

it's good to have three word warriors working with me on this, and if they read these words, i want them to be aware that they are loved and appreciated.

none of them like techno music.

that's for me, when i go back thru their notes and bang away at the keyboard.

no more WASD for a while, it's gonna be all gerunds, participles, and infinitives up in here for a while.

-p

7/30/14

writing while listening to the crystal method: vegas and am remembering a time back in 2004 when i was listening to it and working on painting.

for whatever reason, the album really keeps me going.

editing is tough though. i enjoy writing more than re-writing.

half-way done with the first re-write.

New Youtube banner

https://www.youtube.com/user/paulyhart