Sunrise
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LXOXHBI
Tag: Andrew Joyce Author
Tree
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LXOXHBI
Sunset
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01E83YVJA
YELLOW HAIR (Coming soon)
Yellow Hair documents the injustices done to the Sioux Nation from their first treaty with the United States in 1805 through Wounded Knee in 1890. Every death, murder, battle, and outrage written about actually took place. The historical figures that play a role in this fact-based tale of fiction were real people and the author uses their real names. Yellow Hair is an epic tale of adventure, family, love, and hate that spans most of the 19th century.
This is American history.
Resolution Blog Tour
http://www.sagesblogtours.com/resolution.html
Heteronyms & Homographs
Emailed from a friend. (And don’t be so surprised. I got a few. Well . . . at least one.)
Homographs are words of like spelling but with more than one meaning. A homograph that is also pronounced differently is a heteronym.
Some Examples:
1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture.
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
Editorial: Self-publishing > Traditional Publishing
This article is reprinted with permission from Fred Johnson of BubbleCow.com
Hi everyone.
The school holidays are almost upon us, and I wish those of you with kids good luck. May your family holidays avoid disaster and may you never hear the dreaded "I'm bored!" It might be a good time to lock yourself away and work on that novel.
And when you finish it, go ahead and self-publish. That's right, I'm not even beating around the bush any more. Self-publishing is the way forward, and big publishers know it. They're scared. They're trying to shut us down, man.
Okay, so they're not actually trying to shut us down, but they are panicking over things like digital rights acquisitions and trying to keep the prices of eBooks up. Self-publishing is becoming more and more prominent each year. Self-published writers are starting to worm their way into the limelight and into the critical establishment. The time of reckoning is nigh.
And yet there's still a residual shame surrounding self-publishing. It's still seen as second best, as a sign of implicit failure. It's vain and narcissistic. It's something your dad shakes his head at. Get a real job son.
No matter that self-published writers can earn far more than most publishers will offer writers in their book deals – what's 15% royalties against 70%? No matter that when you traditionally publish you can kiss goodbye to distribution rights as well as potentially to a whole load of other rights too – one contract some poor Redditor signed forbade him from blogging for two years. I suppose it also makes no difference that traditional publishers will stop marketing your book after a month if it's not instantly a bestseller. I hope that advance was worth it.
Then again, if traditional publishing is so bad, why has literally every great work of literature ever gone through it? Where's Jane Austen's self-published collection? Where's Don DeLillo's Amazon profile? Why wasn't War and Peace a poorly formatted eBook before it was a mighty hardback?
Self-publishing is new. People don't trust it. They visit Amazon's Kindle marketplace and they see an ocean of erotic fan fiction and some eye-meltingly offensive cover designs. They dig through Game of Thrones knock-offs and veritable acres of romantic Vampire fiction and then they leave, crossing themselves and muttering about the rapture.
It doesn't have to be like this. Writers know that, economically speaking, self-publishing is a sensible option. They know that it offers them total control and total freedom. They know that for the vast majority of writers who snag a book deal with a major publisher, only the tiny minority will see major returns with a runaway bestseller. Fewer still will be lifted into the hallowed halls of the literary elite. What are the chances that you're one of those lucky few? Statistically speaking, minuscule. It's like the literature lottery – sure, you can't win if you don't play, but hey – you're still not going to win.
And yet – what if you really are that special writer whose stars have aligned just right? What if your book doesget picked up by Penguin or Faber and you get a chunky advance with several zeroes? What if your book reallydoes sell millions of copies? Maybe Michiko Kakutani will call your novel "the greatest book ever" in her review for The New York Times. Maybe Thomas Pynchon will send you a picture of his face in the mail. You always knew you were special, that you were destined for greatness. Behind you, your literary agent adjusts his glasses and looks at you. He nods and smiles, unexplained sunlight sparkling from his silver beard. I'm proud of you, he mouths. In the crowd, the critics – hard-eyed, bastard critics, people who've made a career out of being spiteful – they're weeping. Their pads and laptops lie forgotten on the ground. Academics have gathered like birds outside to peck at the crumbs you toss their way. Schoolchildren will be reading you for decades to come. You've done it.
Pull the plug. I'm sorry, I was getting carried away there. If you found your eyes misting over a little, chances are you want what most of us want: recognition. Writers aren't typically people overly concerned with making a lot of money. After all, there are far more lucrative avenues to walk if that's your objective. What writers want is recognition – someone to say, hey, I see what you've done here. This is good. I want to read this – more than that, I want to tell my friends about this. I want to shout from the rooftops about how much I love this book.
This kind of affirmation is what writers live for. They need the reinforcement, the encouragement – the yes, this is good, keep at it. What you're doing has worth – people need to read this. It will bring them something that money cannot. Writers need to keep hearing this, and this is what keeps traditional publishing in the ring. Maybe you started off writing in school when a teacher liked your short stories. They told you that you had some talent for it – it felt good. The literary agent is much the same: an approving expert. If this guy likes it, it must be good! And then, when the publishing house agrees a modest advance and a three-book deal, holy cow, now this is validation.
This is the kind of validation that not even big sales as a self-published writer can grant. Big deal, I sold ten-thousand books. What do people know? To quote Peep Show's Super Hans: "People like Coldplay and voted for the Nazis, you can't trust people." There's something about having that select coterie of wise old literati and cold-blooded critics approve of you and your work. You're one of them now.
This, I believe, is the thing that's keeping writers pursuing the traditional publishing route. It's this support framework that self-publishing lacks – you have to do it alone. There will be no agent to encourage you when you hit a wall, and no editorial team reinforcing your status. But you know what? Times are changing. Self-published writers are winning awards. They're having well-respected movies made from their books – seen The Martian? That's a Spielberg film based on a self-published novel by Andy Weir. As hard as it can be to believe, beneath the Kindle marketplace's masses of housewife porn lurk some seriously good books by talented writers.
Of course, these truths are easy to know – they're much harder to internalise. I know that eating meat is bad for the planet and is cruelty on an industrial scale, but damn it if that truth isn't hard to internalise and apply. Writers know that self-publishing is the logical choice. They know it's only getting bigger and they know that critics are starting to pay attention. They know they'll have more freedom, that they'll keep the rights, and that they'll probably see more money in the long term. But they'd still sign a book deal quicker than I could blink if given half a chance.
Resist this urge. Self-publishing is no longer a failure, no longer a second-best avenue for mediocre writers. Self-publishing is the only option that makes sense – it is a victory. Don't listen when people assume you couldn't get a book deal. Choose self-publishing. Champion it. Reap the rewards.
Go forth and conquer.
Fred Johnson, Editor
Belinda Mulrooney, Queen of the Klondike
While doing research for my latest novel, Resolution: Huck Finn’s Greatest Adventure, I came across an astounding woman—one who bested some of the toughest men in the world at their own game. Her name was Belinda Mulrooney.
The setting for RESOLUTION is the Yukon Territory in the year 1896. The biggest discovery of gold had just been made and the outside world was flocking in by the tens of thousands. The women who made the arduous climb over the Chilkoot Pass and flowed down the Yukon River to Dawson City—the hub of the goldfields—all travelled with their menfolk. All, that is, except the twenty-five year old Belinda. She came to Dawson City in 1897 . . . alone.
She arrived without a dime to her name, but she had had the foresight to bring along something that she knew would be in great demand in that hostile environment. She brought one bolt of silk and another of cotton along with fine and delicate ladies’ undergarments. She had trudged over the pass carrying dresses, petticoats, and things that the women who had been in the vicinity before the gold strike—and those that were pouring in—would pay a hefty price for.
Belinda constructed a crude cabin from scrap lumber to live in; its roof—a piece of canvas. The cabin also doubled as a makeshift store. She set up a wood plank to act as a counter and went into business.
After months and sometimes years of wearing coarse, men’s clothing, the women were more than ready to feel a little softness against their skin. They had their men pulling out their pokes of gold dust and lining up with them to purchase the frilly treasures before they were all gone.
Once the last camisole had been sold and Belinda had a substantial poke of her own, she cast an eye about to see how she would next separate the miners from their dust.
She noticed that the few eating establishments in town offered a very dull bill of fare, so she hired herself a man to do the cooking and converted her store into a restaurant. The food she served was so far superior to her competitors’ that the miners were soon lining up outside her cabin, waiting for a seat at one of the few tables inside.
Her poke grew even heavier.
When Belinda saw that the influx of people to the area was not abating, but growing, she went into the property development business. She bought empty lots in town, hired men to build cabins on them, and sold the cabins for an astronomical profit.
Her poke grew heavier still.
At the time, all the mining took place up Bonanza and Eldorado Creeks. When the men needed supplies or just a respite from their back-breaking labors, they would have to hike into Dawson. But first they would have to trek down-creek anywhere from five to ten miles to where the creeks converged. Then it was an additional sixteen miles into Dawson.
Belinda looked at the spit of land where the creeks met and thought it would be a good place to build a hotel and save the miners a thirty-two mile roundtrip hike into Dawson. And at the same time, add a little dust to her poke. Hence, she built the Grand Forks Hotel—a two-story affair. The downstairs housed the bar and the dining room. Upstairs were bunk beds for the miners to catch forty winks before heading back to their claims. The place was always filled to capacity . . . and then some. The hotel was such a success that Belinda built another one. The Fairview Hotel was the first three-story structure in Dawson.
The gold dust continued to pour in.
With no sewers or sanitary conditions to speak of, the water around Dawson soon became polluted. So Belinda started the Yukon Hygeia Water Supply Company, which sold boiled and purified water. The endeavor paid off handsomely. She also bought stakes in numerous claims up and down the creeks. Within a year of landing in Dawson as a penniless, single woman, she had amassed a fortune of almost three million dollars.
The next year, she married a man that was more in love with her money than with her. After he had gone through a good portion of it, she caught on and divorced him.
In 1908, she settled in Washington State where she built herself a grand mansion. She lived there until the 1920’s when her money ran out, forcing her to take menial jobs such as housekeeping and sewing dresses for the wealthy ladies of Seattle.
She died in 1967 at the ripe old age of 95, feisty to the end.
Belinda Mulrooney left the Yukon Territory with as much gold, if not more, than any of the miners. And she did so without panning for an ounce of it while standing stooped over in the freezing waters of a creek. She did it without turning one shovelful of frozen earth. She did it using her wits and the brains that the good Lord had given her.
Belinda Mulrooney was one hellava woman!
An Interview — Published on Book Goodies Web Site
About Andrew Joyce:
Andrew Joyce left high school at seventeen to hitchhike throughout the US, Canada, and Mexico. He wouldn’t return from his journey until decades later when he decided to become a writer. Joyce has written four books, including a two-volume collection of one hundred and forty short stories comprised of his hitching adventures called BEDTIME STORIES FOR GROWN-UPS (as yet unpublished), and his latest novel, RESOLUTION. He now lives aboard a boat in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with his dog, Danny, where he is busy working on his next book, YELLOW HAIR.
What inspires you to write?
It’s more like a need to write than an inspiration. I hear a song on the radio and will knock out a story based on the title. I may see the sun reflecting on the water a write a 12,000 word short story. I have 150 short stories under my belt and four novels (500,000 words). All written within the last five years.
Tell us about your writing process.
I usually sit down to write a book with no idea where my characters will lead me. I start out with (I hope) a killer first sentence and the last paragraph of the book. Then I set out to fill the in-between space with 100,000 words. I find that the easy part. Sometimes I will bring my characters to a certain place, only to have them rebel when we get there. They tell me they want to go somewhere else and take off on their own. I have no choice but to follow.
I prefer to write in the early morning hours when things are quiet. I usually get up around 2:00 a.m. and go to work. The commute is not long . . . only a few steps to my computer.
What advice would you give other writers?
Read, read . . . and then read some more. Read everything you can get your hands on! Reading to a writer is as medical school is to a doctor, as physical training is to an athlete, as breathing is to life. When one reads stuff like the passage below, one cannot help but become a better writer.
“The afternoon came down as imperceptibly as age comes to a happy man. A little gold entered into the sunlight. The bay became bluer and dimpled with shore-wind ripples. Those lonely fishermen who believe that the fish bite at high tide left their rocks and their places were taken by others, who were convinced that the fish bite at low tide.”—John Steinbeck, Tortilla Flat
AND: Never, ever, ever, ever respond to a negative review!!!
How did you decide how to publish your books?
I had an agent and he got my first book published, but I had to do all the marketing. So, I figured if I had to do all the work anyway, I’d cut out the middlemen. Now I self-publish and get my royalties every month instead of twice a year.
What do you think about the future of book publishing?
I think it’s going to be around for a while.
What do you use?: Professional Editor, Professional Cover Designer
What genres do you write?: Historical Fiction, Action/Adventure, Westerns
What formats are your books in?: Both eBook and Print
Website(s)
Andrew Joyce Home Page Link
Link To Andrew Joyce Page On Amazon
Night Moves
They are always with me. At times they appear out of the ethereal mist and other times they speak directly to my mind. I wish they would leave me to myself, but that they will not do. No, first I must do their bidding.
They come in the night and stay until the black sky fades to gray. When the stars leave the sky and the clouds to the east turn pink, I am allowed my rest. But I ask you, what respite can a murderer have? At their behest I have killed again this night. And I will continue to kill until they go back from whence they came.
After all I’ve been through, I still remember the first time they came to me. It was a little over a year ago and since then I have killed twenty-nine people. Please do not think me insane. I assure you these beings are real and are not immanent. At first, I, too, thought myself demented when they stood before me telling me they came to save the human race, and to accomplish their mission certain people must die. They explained that the demise of the race was not impending, but if action was not taken, and taken soon, it would be too late to set things on a course to ensure the continuance of mankind.
You are probably wondering, if you do not think me crazed, why they cannot do their own dirty work. That is a very good question and one I have asked them. They, of course, are not of our time and space. They appear—when they appear—as diaphanous specters; they cannot manipulate physical matter. Thus, I have become their instrument here on earth. Where or when they are from I do not know. And why, out of all the billions on this planet I was chosen, I know not. But it has been a long night and I must sleep. I will continue this at a later date, and continue it I shall, for I want there to be a record of my actions and the reasons for them.
I am back. It has been two days since my last entry in this journal, and tonight they had me kill again. That makes thirty people---thirty innocent people . . . men, women and children---I have dispatched from this world. Yes, I am sorry to say that they have had me kill children. However, I was told that after tonight there would be no more need of my services. The human race was safe for the foreseeable future.
I refer to my tormentors as they or them because I do not know what they call themselves. Their form is vaguely human . . . two arms, two legs, and a head of sorts atop a torso, but their gossamer appearance precludes calling them human.
Tonight’s victim was a man in Moscow. I was directed to him and given his name. I then set about their business. I was told that his son, yet unborn, would one day invent something that would cause the death of billions. Being told the basis for this particular death was a departure from the norm. I had never been given rhyme nor reason for any of the others. The man’s name and the names of the other twenty-nine, with where and when they died, are in the addendum attached to this missive. I remember every one of my quarry.
I guess I should have mentioned this earlier, but my victims were scattered around the world. I do not know how they did it, but one minute I was in my room behind a locked door and the next minute I was standing in a foreign locale with the name of that night’s victim swirling through my brain. Then into my mind came the place I could find him or her in the city, town, or hamlet.
Now, the thirty-first person will die. They, at last, have left me to myself. I am now free to end this the only way it can be ended—with my death. I’ve been saving and hiding my medication for quite a while now; there is enough to kill three of me. May God have mercy on my soul.
I affix my hand to this document this 30th day of June in the year of our Lord 2016.
Signed,
Francis Fitzgerald
• • • • •
When Dr. Allen had finished reading the above, he turned to Dr. Harris and said, “Interesting, but why have you brought it to me? We both know that the man was a certified, delusional schizophrenic. How long have we had him here at our institution?”
Dr. Harris hesitantly answered, “He’s been here at Oakwood twelve years, sir.”
"Well, there you have it. It’s too bad he took his own life; it doesn’t help our reputation any, but these things happen.”
“Yes, sir. However, there is something I think you ought to know.”
“Yes?”
"I’ve taken the liberty of investigating a few of the names on Fitzgerald’s list. It’s taken me three weeks, but I’ve verified eleven of the deaths and their time and place. They all correspond with what Fitzgerald has written.”
Dr. Allen straightened in his seat, glanced at the papers in his hand, and looking Dr. Harris in the eye, forcibly said, “Preposterous! If there is any correlation, he read of the deaths in the newspaper or heard of them on the television.”
“Excuse me, sir, but Fitzgerald had no access to newspapers. He was denied them because they would agitate him to no end. And the only television he had access to was in the day room where the set is perpetually tuned to a movie channel.”
“That still does not give credence to this fairytale,” said Dr. Allen, waving the Fitzgerald papers in Dr. Harris’ direction.
“No, sir, it does not. However, there is one thing I think I should make you aware of. My sister is married to a Russian physicist, speaks fluent Russian, and lives in Moscow. I called her about the last name on Fitzgerald’s list. She made a few calls for me and it turns out that Fitzgerald was dead before the body of the man he mentions was discovered. And just one more thing, sir. The man’s wallet was found in Fitzgerald’s room. I have it if you’d like to see it.”
Turning a color red that is not in the regular spectrum, Dr. Allen shouted, “NO! I DO NOT WANT TO SEE THE DAMN WALLET!” And then handing the Fitzgerald papers to Dr. Harris, he said with ice in his voice, “Burn these, burn them now. And if you value your position here at Oakwood, you will never speak of this matter again, to anyone. Do I make myself clear?”
Dr. Harris accepted the papers with a meek, “Yes sir,” and walked out of the room. When he was in the hall and by himself, he let out with a, “I’ll be goddamned . . . the old bastard is afraid.”
But Dr. Harris did not burn the papers. He placed them with the wallet in his desk drawer and then locked it. He had some thinking to do. As he started on his rounds, a quote of Shakespeare’s kept repeating itself in his head. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”