PH pic

Pocket Holes is still out there. On Amazon to be exact, right here.

You can also check out the book that started it all, Pocket Hole, on Wattpad. I'm releasing it in a series.

Pocket Holes just came out

Yes, Pocket Holes.

It took me months to come up with that name.

It's on Amazon here.

You can also check out the book that started it all, Pocket Hole, on Wattpad. I am going to release it in a series.

That sounds fun, doesn't it? You know, a serial like the Flash Gordon movies back in the 30s. Buster Crabbe was the bomb, and who can't love a bad guy named Ming the Merciless? All of his evil was just a cry for help, in my opinion.

Actually, here is a page from the graphic novel that really started it all. Artwork by Alex Bell.

Alone With You Somehow image

I've always liked this picture by AJ Bell

Bestselling book cover

I was doing a little reading on the Internet a few days ago and came across an interesting blog post or magazine article. Can't remember which.

The title said something like "How to Create a bestselling book cover."

I have to be honest, this threw me into a murderous rage. I even lost track of time for a while. Just came to myself an hour ago. Have no idea what I've been doing. Painting seems to have been part of it. Which is weird. I hate painting. And red is my least favorite color. Maybe I was helping a farmer winterize his barn. I don't know. I hope all that crimson comes out of my Pokemon Go t-shirt. Also weird, where did this vat of sodium hydroxide come from?

I've had a rant simmering in the back of my mind for a while, and here it goes: I don't think book covers serve a purpose so much as hack a weakness.

Something that "serves a purpose" in my mind is something that fills a need. Humans need good stories. Books can fill that need.

A book cover doesn't fill any need known to mankind. All a book cover does is entice people to spend. Good book, bad book, doesn't matter. A book cover has no say over the excellence or excrement it covers.

I'm as guilty as anyone else. When I was young I would buy pretty much anything with Frank Frazetta art on the front. I know what you 're thinking and no, my appreciation for Frank's take on sword and sorcery had nothing to do with skin and cleavage. Truth is, when I think back on those reads, a ton of those books sucked. But they had cool covers.

One thing I did right was identify a few authors that I loved and basically read everything attached to their pen. Edgar Rice Burroughs, Louis L'Amour, Phillip K. Dick, Orson Scott Card. Shakespeare. (okay, that one's B.S.) If they wrote it, I read it. Covers didn't matter for those authors.

We are all too enamored with the sell. All that glitters. All that gleams.

Not that this matters. Alien spaceships landed in a field behind me a few days ago. That pretty much signals the end of the world anyway. Can't believe I was smiling in the picture.

Baltimore writing

Not sure what it is about writing in a hotel room, but put me next to a window and I can totally rite lotz ov wurds. Even in Baltimore.

Work "fajita mix" into the next sentence

Driving home I might pass a restaurant with something painted in the window, something about "fajita mix," and that might get my mind to wondering what fajita mix is, and maybe something about those two words put together strikes my fancy, and I decide I'm going to throw the phrase "fajita mix" into the next sentence I write in my story when I get home.

Just a fun, zany challenge, but it gets me wondering about what kind of writer I am. Maybe writing is just that, the next zany challenge, even though I dislike the word "zany." Writing is certainly an itch I have to scratch, but at the same time is it just a string of passing fancies? Do I search for truth in my words? Do others see truth in my words."

They just saw fajita mix, I'll tell you that.

Foggy day in Boise

Working in Boise, but got some writing done first thing in the morning. I hate the first five minutes of writing where you tell yourself you suck and the story just isn't working, and then you fall into the groove and it's so easy it should be illegal.

Positive Review - Folded Pages Distillery

Dream Ender got a positive review on Folded Pages Distiller. Here is a part of the review:

. . . C.K. Edwards is one of my favorite self-published authors and this book is a great representation of what he is capable of. I found the amount of action and romance to balance each other well. The plot line was engaging and the character building strong. It was hard to put down, especially with the cliff hanger endings Edwards uses for his chapter breaks. I became genuinely invested in each of the characters and found Vincent to be a great protagonist who drove the story forward, always doing something and never stagnant. It was interesting to think about what our world could really be like if dreams, nightmares, became reality.

Library fun

Do the two words in the title above sound like an oxymoron? Stop reading then, please.

However, if library and fun always go together in your mind, please consider the following for this evening's entertainment:

Author C.K. Edwards at Eagle Mountain Public Library

Topic - Getting Started On Your Book

Give me a chance to ruin your opinion of library fun FOREVER!

Shadow and Shade the paperback (giveaway)

No, not Shadow and Shade the movie. That hasn't come out yet. This is for the paperback book titled Shadow and Shade. Duh.

Go to this link for my Amazon giveaway for a chance to win Shadow and Shade, the first book in the Without Mother Without Father trilogy.

Your chances of winning might be better than your chance of meeting Louis Tiffany the next time you attend the Antiques Road Show (good odds, actually, because he's dead).

Uno (not the game) days left for free Pocket Hole

Tommy's dentist, Dr. Smiler, strongly suggests that you grab a copy of Pocket Hole. If you don't, well, he can be very persuasive.

Pocket Hole free for two days

Yesterday, Pocket Hole was free for the next three days.

But one minus three. You know.

So, free for the next two days. Bobby Bob is of the opinion that if you didn't get Pocket Hole yesterday, you should get it today.

Pocket Hole free for three days

For the luv. Here are some questions you should ask yourself.

Giant star-nosed moles - what do they smell like?

If you ever run into a galbog should you touch the cone on its head?

Why are all dentists from Scipio?

All important questions that are answered in Pocket Hole. Don't delay any longer. You can download this book for free the next three days. Did I say don't delay? I don't know, I can't spare the time to read what I've written above. Hurry!

The battlefields are many

The order comes from a man who received his from another man who probably received the same from another and so on up a chain of command you do not know and wouldn't care to.

Doesn't matter. The only order that counts is the one given directly and it is to go and take that hill from the enemy.

Undiscovered country.

You are compelled to move. The hill is a hill, not unlike the hill you took yesterday and the hill you will take tomorrow. If anyone knows the significance of the hill, all you know is that it isn't you. Will this rise in elevation hold significance for some on a distant date? Will there be a memorial marking at least the day, if not remembering you?

A day in fatigues or another day at the keyboard. I am set to take another hill, write another string of words, not compelled by orders any stronger than the incessant clamor in my head.

In the grand scheme of things, will it ever matter? Who will mark this day besides myself? Just another hill.

So you finish a book

So you finish a book.

Sure there's the fireworks and crowds of well wishers pounding at your door all hours of the night, but when that fades you are left alone again in your mind. Characters that had moved in and taken space have left.

Possibly you killed them and they shant return. Others found their denouement and have no need to ever see you again, lost wholly to their happy ends.

And you alone in your mind.

Some writers are rather loose and will shack up with the next promising protagonist that happens by. Indeed, I know some writers who have hordes of amorous heroes and heroines clamoring to be the next conquest.

Other writers bid adieu to a story and are more like the widow returning to an empty home after throwing a last flower on a casket set to be lowered. A lifetime with a soulmate is over and recreating that same magic will take time.

I am more like the latter. Sometimes I wish I was a little more strumpet-like.

This was a fun book to write

I wanted to write a book where monsters could be real but where the Earth's population is, for the most part, unaware of this minor detail.

I know, other books do this, but you really have to suspend disbelief that all the normal humans live unaware of the body count around them or not once capture the shuffling walk of a few mummies on their iPhones.

I mean, dude, if Lon Chaney Jr.'s Wolfman was real don't you think I would have tracked him down by now and asked for a paw print autograph?

Of course I would.

Well, here is Dream Ender, a couple days from the life of a guy named Vincent. He lives in a world, maybe ours, where anything can happen and usually does. We just don't know about it because we forget.

Next great American novel

This is a picture of the next great American novel being created.

Yeah, no bald spot yet

Once my daughter brought home a cat she got at Walmart

I don't even remember what we called that cat. We had it for a couple weeks and then it ran away. I didn't mourn.

I always feel bad when I excise a portion of a story from a novel I am writing. I can tell when I have to. I'll be chugging along on the story and then for a week or two I won't hardly be able to write a word. That's my computer screen telling me I've gone down a wrong path.

I am all for the whole write so many words a day rule. I buy into that maxim wholeheartedly, but I also  think you have to listen to the story when it tells you that you are starting to make it suck. I say this because I might be at a part in the novel I am currently writing where it is telling me I'm an idiot. I'm not sure yet, but I might have to backtrack and cut some stuff I have written.

I always cut/paste this stuff into another document and then save it in the same folder labeled didn't make the cut. It's interesting to go back to this once the novel is finished and wonder what if. I'm always glad I listened to the story. I've taken some drastic turns as a result of these deletions and I've never regretted it.

Still, it's sad to revisit story threads that could have been but never will. They seem sad.

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity

Robert Heinlein said that.

I read a book the other night. It was a best seller a few years ago. Well, I tried to read it. The book was really quite awful. It was a political thriller and the first twenty pages were almost all flashbacks. And then the rest of what I read, maybe 170 pages worth, continued with the flashback theme and added thirty or forty different point-of-view characters and lots of tidbits about historical buildings. It was mind numbing. 170 pages of flashback and historical trivia with story interspersed. Shakespeare couldn't make that worth reading.

I finally put the book down even though I will have to discuss it in a couple weeks at book club. Yet it was a best seller. What the hell is wrong with you people? And by you people I mean all you people who aren't me. I'm fine. I like good books. I write good books. Stop buying crappy stuff you guys. Buy good stuff.

I should put that on a t-shirt and sell it. Or maybe a wrist band. Wrist bands are big right now aren't they?