Bastard Husband: A Love Story

If you are following me and are not already following Linda Lou (who?) then you are doing it wrong.
Linda is an amazing woman living in Vegas (in sin?) who sometimes performs Stand Up and the local joints and dives, works a real job, travles more than anyone I have ever known in my life and also writes books.

Her First book is Bastard Husband: A Love Story and it's the type of book that makes you want to get married just to get divorced.  Develop a talent and use it to the best of your abilities so that you too can tell your story and be as cool as Linda.

In all seriousness - The Kindle version of the book is FREE this weekend. 4/13 - 4/14.
Free, did you hear that folks.

FREE

So, click the word free - Head on over to Amazon.com and Pick this bad boy up.

You are doing yourself a disservice if you don't.

Even if you don't have a kindle - Go Grab it for FREE now because you can read it on your computer or tablet or smart phone with the kindle app.  Even those crappy iThings have the kindle app.  You can probably even put the app on the Barnes and Noble Nook imitation POS.

GET THIS BOOK NOW.

Jesus will love you for it.

Thanks.

Splitter's Blog

I just wanted to take a moment to pimp out a friends blog.

Every Tuesday he is doing a segment called "Ask Crayder."

Tom Crayder is a character in his novels The Reluctant and The Willing and whatever this future novel that I'm being told is going to be out later this year, maybe The In Trouble with The Wife.

Either way.  Today's blog involves Man-Speak and gives a lot of information into the male mind that women should really pay attention to and try to understand.

Now, if only there were some woman who would want to share what their convoluted Woman-Speak means, though I'm pretty sure that we, as men, would not have the attention span to read the entire 20 page article dedicated to "You should know what you did wrong" let alone anything more serious.


So, Everyone, please check out Splitter's Blog and I'm sure you'll really enjoy it.
I also highly recommend checking out both of his books. The Reluctant is currently Free, and The Willing is only $2.99.
For those of you who would rather have actual covers and pages and whatnot, BOTH books are going to be released for sale as an actual book on Amazon.com come Valentines Day.


Thank You.

Wednesday's hodge podge - Evening Edition

So, I thought that I'd start adding more eye candy for my mostly male reading audience.
The chick above, Katrina Law, is going to be in the new Spartacus show that is coming out soon.  If you haven't seen the previous seasons it's basically Soft Core Porn with blood and violence added in.

Tonight I am taking the night off from the gym.  I have gone the past two in a row which is good, and after today I will also go on Thursday and Friday.  Four days for my first week back in the sweat factory is a good accomplishment.
I'll still find some sort of exercise to do from home, maybe some fat-boy sit-ups and push-ups will do me good. If I can count to ten I think I'm pretty damned golden right now.

I started reading a book today, Alice in Deadland, which I picked up for my Kindle Fire of course. I'm not 100% where I saw this book advertised or anything, I just remember that it was/is a 99 cent book and from my brief glance at the cover and the name I assumed it would be a bizarre twist on the Alice in Wonderland story.
That part I got right, but I think that was easy to decipher.
The part that I got wrong was I saw the name Deadland and my mind immediately went to Deadlands which is essentially part of the whole D&D universe of tabletop RPG games.  I love the Deadlands universe from what little I have played of it - so with those two thoughts I spend the 99 cents and off I went to the download page.

Now that I have officially got a few pages into it (briefly read a bit during lunch) it is more of an Alice in Wonderland meets Zombies type of book - which I still have no problem with and if I were to have known that (you know, if I would have done research and read reviews or anything) I would have bought it all the same.
I am not far enough into the book to give any good information about it just yet, I am still just starting to get a feel for it myself.  What I can say is that it looks like it's going to be a different take on zombies than the mindless killing machines that they typically are.

The fattie that I am is telling my superego to get a beer and something to snack on, the skinny(er) person that I want to be is telling the fattie to shut his pie-hole and drink a bottle of water instead.

My (angry) customer will be coming into the store tomorrow to take care of his issue.  When I called him today I told him that if he came into the store and spoke to a manager and let them know the situation that I'm sure they'd have no issue throwing 10% his way.  So, of course the first thing he asks is when I work tomorrow to make sure that he comes in when I'm there.
So, I guess I should probably prime the management team in advance of the situation and the solution that I have already offered so that when he arrives it's as quick and painless as possible.
Wham, Bam, Thank You Ma'am!
I love my solutions like I like my women.

The Dark Tower

I don't recall when I started reading the series but I know it was not from the beginning (for I was too young then really).  I have faithfully bought ever book that came out after I started, 1st print and in hard back even though I have put them off for far longer than I should have.

Book 7 was released in 2006 if I am to believe the information on Amazon.com (or that could be that the paperback portion was released then) and here I sit in January of 2012 just finally finishing it, nearly 6 years later.

I had known that I wanted to read the last three books in succession after sai Kings accident and as such I kept picking them up but waiting on reading them.  When they were finally released I started the journey and enjoyed pretty much every page on the way to the final destination.
Wolves of the Calla went by very quickly for me and I had visions of running through the last 3 books within a month.  However, about 200 pages into Songs of Susanna I put the book down and walked away from it for a couple of years.
Once I started it over I made quick work of it and then started book 7, The Dark Tower, and once again I stopped just a couple of hundred pages into it. I did not realize it at the time, but the reason I kept stopping was not because I had lost interest but because I did not want it to end.  If I did not know what was written on the pages ahead then the journey was still continuing.  However, as all things must, I knew that I had to eventually finish the series so that I could see the end of the journey for the ka-tet.

Another reason why I decided to finally finish with the series (as it exists at this moment) was because The Wind Through The Key Hole is coming out this year and I did not want to go into that book without having finished the other books in order.  Now that my journey has ended (until Keyhole comes out) I wish that I would have ended it sooner.  I wish that I would, instead, be looking to begin anew much like Roland and start back over with The Gunslinger so that I can read the new book in it's proper timeline of the series.
Unless a random lightning strike of motivation hits me this will most likely not be happening.  I need to turn my attention to something of a lighter nature and a quicker read for that last book was definitely a heavy hitter on my mind.

I don't know if I'll ever sit down and give this book a good full review because I just don't think that's my style. I'm not one to delve into the inner workings and come up with good words and sentences to do anything justice - I don't believe that I have that kind of talent - at least not enough to make other people say that it was worth their time to read.  However (I rely on using that to start sentences too much) I do know that I have two fine folks waiting to palaver with me on the subject of The Dark Tower, Tricia and Josie.

Also, I did want to say that I had no long internal debate on whether or not I wanted to read the "ending" or stop when sai King warned me to stop.  I had come this far and I was not going to leave the last few pages sitting there, unfound, without me having knowledge of his artificial ending.

Truth be told I got to the point where I almost expected that ending.  It had played in my head over the last couple of weeks in a "wouldn't it be funny if..." kind of way.  So in that sense I was not disappointed by the way those last few pages played out.  I will state that I do feel that the other ending, before we get to see the inner workings of the Dark Tower, is the true ending and I would have been much happier if the book would have just quit right there.  I'm sure it would have pissed many a person off but I feel like that would have been satisfactory.

I loved this book, I loved the series and I will re-read them from start to finish (which is very very rare for me as I almost never re do anything - books, games, whatever).  I'm sure as I go through them a 2nd time that I will pick up on things that I didn't before, the language will be quicker to read and easier to comprehend and I will also take the time to go back over sai Kings vast catalog of books and read the other books that come into play in the Dark Tower story line.  I've got a lot of words ahead of me but I'm up to the challenge.

Ramblings of a fat mad man

There is a lot going on in this tiny little brain of mine and I thought that I should really just sit here at the computer and see what comes out.
You see loves, you are all basically the cheap, underpaid stand-ins for my therapist.
I'm not too proud to seek therapy, I'm too bloody cheap to do it.
Also, I feel that therapy is just you mentally jerking off in someone else's presence and that person leading you to your next position.  Um, where was I going?
Oh yes, senseless babble.

Talking to a friend today and for what I believe to be the 2nd time she told me that I need to read The Hunger Games.  I asked for a brief explanation of the book and after hearing her version of it I said that I'd look into it to which she replied "No, just read it."
Have any of my 3 readers taken the time to read this book (or series?).  I'm currently researching opinions on the book to see if it might be to my liking.  It's a bit over $4 on amazon kindle right now and I should probably just buy it because I'll never miss $5 anyways and that would force me to at least attempt reading it.
But I want opinions from real people first.

Work was brutal today - but not for actual work related reasons but more for personal reasons.
I'm not going to go into any of it because I don't want to bore all of you and send you running for the hills.
However, I do recognize one of my biggest character flaws and that is that I'm just too fucking nice of a person.  I let people get away with murder and use me for way longer than is reasonable.
It's something that I've known for many years, but something I'm forced to deal with currently and it's really depressing the fuck out of me.
My life lately has seriously boiled down to working, maybe having a conversation or two on/through Facebook, browsing a few of my (Very) favorite (Josie) blogs and then having a night of on again off again sleep.

Sleep - Oh why do you tease me? Why doth though not want to just wrap me in your warmth and allow me uninterrupted bliss for the duration instead of rousing me 5 or more times before the dreaded alarm?
I haven't slept good in about two weeks now.  I wake up too many times for no apparent reason other than to annoy the shit out of myself.
I'm tired all the time and once my head hits the pillow I'd really love if I could follow through and just rest for multiple hours at a time.  that would be lovely.

my Billy Bumbler has to go outside again.  He is spooked by the passing of people by my window and he would love the opportunity to tell them in person.  With this we part ways for now.

Ka

Did you ever notice that when you are engaging in an activity for a long period of time you start to think and act differently.
It's human nature to adjust to your surroundings but sometimes things just kind of catch you off guard.

Take tonight for instance, I'm chugging along reading more and more of The Dark Tower (book 7) when monster, my Billy Bumbler, decides to let me know he would like to be escorted to the outside world for a few moments so he can dampen the grass.

I get up and put on my pants a shirt and a sweater.  I pause to make sure I have socks on before putting my shoes on.  The past 40 pages have been talking about how bloody cold it is that I made sure to be very warm going outside, unnecessarily of course - but whatever.

I'd like to stick around and palavar more, however the Tower is calling me back for another chapter.

Along the Beam

For those of you planning on reading the Dark Tower series but haven't i'm just going to come out and suggest you skip this blog posting entirely.
There might be some spoilers ahead that you don't want to see.


Now, after that has been said.
I am starting to pick up pace in book 7 again and am now in Part 3, right after SK decided to kill off Eddie and send everything into a depressing spin.
What I did not expect is that just a few short pages later Jake was going to be violently leaving the story again.
Man oh man.  I thought I felt bad the first time that he killed off Jake - but this one kinda took me by surprise.  I thought that all the alluding to a member of the ka-tet dying was going to end up being Oy as it made more sense at the time to kill off the Bumbler.

I still 100% expect that to happen too, but I'm surely not looking forward to it.

I'm close to 65% of the way done with the book and Stephen King has been saved and that was the hi-lite of the last few depressing chapters.  The inside of the Tet Corporation was pretty cool especially with the sign that changes its language based on the reader.  I need me one of those bad boys.

I have read lots of reviews and chatter about the DT series and a  lot of people really seem to hate the series when King picked it back up after his accident.  Maybe these are more long time readers and more hardcore readers than myself but I am really enjoying book 7 currently.  I remember loving Wolves of the Calla and while not my favorite I didn't have any issues with Song of Susanna either.
Like I said, maybe i'm just more casual.

I'm really looking forward to the next book coming out and my internal debate is whether or not to re-read the books leading up to the newest release and then re-read the rest of the series from there or if I should just pick it up and read it as a standalone.

I'm definitely going to end up going back and picking up some of the other King books that have people and places and fit into the dark tower story line.  Insomnia might be next.

I know that all of the above was just rambling, so sorry you had to suffer through it :)