Feeling A Little Bit Better

by | Mar 4, 2019 | Articles | 0 comments

There’s an old, very bad joke that goes something like this:

It was Christmas, and everyone was feeling merry; so Mary went home.

Then everyone jumped for joy, but Joy jumped out the window.

I know those only work when spoken aloud, and in the #MeToo era, it’s a pretty safe bet to say they don’t work at all anymore. But I think there was once a variant on them involving Goofy…something about getting kicked out of Disneyworld for “feeling Goofy.” You get the idea.

I don’t usually start blog posts with blue humor, but if you’ve read any of my books, you know they’re a lot closer to HBO than to Sesame Street. If you’ve survived Brothers’ Hand or even Miles of Files, the above material wouldn’t likely raise even an eyebrow.

Feeling Bad, Feeling Better

The reason today’s post features a picture of my wife with Goofy, and some cheesy humor, is that we really need a bit of that right now. It’s been a mild winter in Florida – and thank God for it, because the past month or so has been a little rough.

The fun started in mid-February when I got a nasty sinus infection that laid me out for about a week. By the time I started feeling better, I’d sprained my right wrist, which really made February a boatload of laughs. I’m right-handed, and as a writer, I kind of need both wrists. One cortisone shot and some ibuprofen later, I was finally starting to feel like a human being again.

But then it was my wife’s turn to get a sinus infection. I’m not sure she got the same one I did, as her symptoms were different – but she needed some time off too. I think we’ve had one day in the past three weeks where we both felt 100%.

Finally, though, we’re both better…maybe even feeling a bit giddy, if not goofy. Since we’re only about 1.5 hours from Disneyworld, and have three-day passes to use, we decided a little trip to Orlando was in order. Hence today’s “Goofy” photo and theme.

All this not-so-magic stuff reminds me a bit of a post from a couple months ago called Roll With the Punches, Baby. Yes, sometimes you do. And sometimes – even if you haven’t just won something big – you have to jump in your car and say, “I’m going to Disneyworld!”

Rolling With The Changes

I’m back on the blog today after a two-week break, which hasn’t really been a break at all. At least, it hasn’t felt like one. But the topic of today’s post is change, and for good reason: I’m dealing with some major changes in my family, as my parents move past the...

How Authors Can Navigate Twitter

Way back in June 2016, I wrote a blog post about Facebook vs. Twitter. At the time, I had a whole six months of expertise as a guy running a business full-time, so no wonder I did such a great job! Well, okay, maybe I overstated my case. But the bottom line of that...
deadline

I’d Never Missed a Deadline Before—Until I Missed My Own

I’ll be the first to acknowledge my willingness to write about the newsletter I send to my email list. In fact, I know I’ve done it more than once. Back in February, I offered readers of this blog a “sneak peek” at the quarterly newsletter—the joke being that it...

How Freelance Writers Can Ditch The Content Mills – And Get Paid What They’re Worth

So today turns out to be a great day for a guest post, since I've got a sprained wrist – time to rest my hands and arms. Without further ado, here's freelancer extraordinaire Tara Malone on how to ditch the content mills! You’re sick and tired of your day job and...

Books As Extended Business Cards

As I mentioned on here a couple weeks back, my freelance copywriting gigs feed my addiction to writing fiction, not vice-versa. However, my copywriting business is just part of a larger vision for Sahno Publishing, and that's a publishing company that provides...
fumes

Running On Fumes: Pandemic Fatigue

Let’s face: the past four years have been exhausting. But 2020 is a whole other level of exhausting. If you’re running on fumes right now—and I’ll be the first to admit that’s the case for me—who can blame you? Ordinarily, I have a schedule for these blog posts, and...
sausage-making

Book Projects: The Sausage-Making

Lately I've been writing a few blog posts about my background and life experiences, some of which may be of interest to my readers. Today I'm going back to talking about books a bit, but I think this topic may interest both fellow writers and non-writers. Of course,...
humor

When Your Sense of Humor Is One Part Vonnegut, Two Parts Hunter S. Thompson

Sometimes you have to really switch things up. Even shake them up. Such is the case with artists of all types, and I’m the kind of novelist who needs to shake things up from book to book. I've never written a series, and I don't think I could unless my life depended...
wrap

… Aaaaand That’s a Wrap

​How many of you will be glad to wrap up 2020? Can we have a show of hands? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Man, oh man, did anyone have a great year? I suppose a few billionaires were sheltered enough from the storm, or profited heavily from the work-at-home trend, that...

Blatant Self-Promotion Post

This week is The Big One: the 2nd edition of Miles of Files launches on Mar. 10th, almost 15 months to the day of its initial release! When I won a book cover design from 99designs, I immediately thought of Miles. I was never quite as enamored with the original cover...
self-promotion

What’s The Problem With Shameless Self-Promotion?

While I still find it somewhat hard to believe, I've been on Twitter for almost eight years. I know this not only because Twitter shows Joined March 2015 on my profile but also because, even if they eliminate that feature, I use a tracker called Who Unfollowed Me? If...
MLK

MLK Day 2023

Here’s wishing everyone a safe, sane Martin Luther King Jr. Day. For many of us, today is always something of a day of mourning: not only mourning the loss of a great civil rights leader, but also mourning the turn our great nation seemed to take in recent years....

Twitter Tips for Authors in 2023

If you follow my blog, you probably connected with me via Twitter, whether you’re a fellow author or not. In 2020, I wrote a post about Twitter for fellow writers that got a good response. Three years later, the landscape has changed, but some Twitter best practices...
rails

Going Off The Rails (But Not On A Crazy Train)

Last April, I wrote a blog post called Back on Track With a Work-In-Progress. Part of that post was to talk about the difference between a “plotter” and a “pantser” (and to describe myself as a hybrid of the two, a “plantser”). Another, less obvious motive, was to...
French

Those Tricky French Authors and Their Obsessions

Today’s blog post was originally going to be Write Whatever the @#$% You Want, Pt. III. However, after seeing parts I and II lined up, I decided to call an audible and make it something less repetitive. Somehow the SEO gods have gotten into my head. As I’ve mentioned...
scared

Write Whatever the @#$% You Want, Pt. II

In last week’s post, I mentioned a pretty well-known author who has publicly reported his publisher “wouldn’t touch” a new release, in part because a character in his novel referred to herself as “fat.” I heard this story on a podcast, and I remember thinking, “Wait...
censorship

Write Whatever the @#$% You Want

I’ve been stewing on this for a while. It’s been brewing for quite a while. I could probably write a song about it (how about a rap?), but I don’t think I will. This is more of a blog post topic, and it might even deserve a series. And that’s the title and topic of...
gratitude

Should Every Month Be Gratitude Month?

When I was a kid, I loved Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz. I read it daily and collected nearly every paperback volume of the cartoon, so I could see what I’d missed since the comic strip’s inception in 1950.  Certain things stuck: quotes like “happiness is a warm puppy”...
robot

More Thoughts On Robot Writers and The Tech Dystopia

A couple of months ago, I wrote a blog post here called When Will the Robot Overlords Replace Us? Apparently, I’m fairly obsessed with this stuff, because every time I come here and empty my brain, it seems to come up again. Today is no different. Part of the reason,...