Saturday, January 23, 2016

PLEASE NOTE

For those of you who were planning to attend the Author Panel tonight at Summit Artspace to see me, I am unable to participate for personal reasons. I would like to encourage you all to still attend and check out all of the wonderful authors who will be there.

I am truly sorry to disappoint you all, and I hope you understand that I am at least equally as disappointed.

Thank you, Mila, Dan, and Brian for inviting me to participate and help plan the event. I really appreciate all of the hard work that you all put in to make this happen.

Thursday, January 21, 2016

SATURDAY! SATURDAY! SATURDAY!

Author Panel @ Summit Artspace


 6:30-9 p.m. in the Ramp Room
140 East Market St
Akron, OH 44308
http://summitartspace.org/


FEATURING...



Dan Cuthbert 

Storyteller and creator of worlds. Dan’s prefers that his stories induce visions in the reader, based on his background in the visual arts.



Jason Plants 

Author of a memoir about living with a disability and what he went through when he was growing up.



Laura Rose 

Bringing childhood memories to fruition with rhyming picture books!



Phylliss Steiner

Director of Hattie Larlham’s Creative Arts, Phylliss has developed the program to include a Writing Division. The goal here is to help give voices to those that literally don’t have one.



James Tan 

Collaborator for The Shipyards of Sing and struggling author.


And yours truly!


There will be an activity and plenty of discussion on writing. Come with questions for us panelists and get your copies of our books (if you don't already have them), and get them signed. I will, of course, have copies of Escapes for sale.


I look forward to seeing you there!

Saturday, January 9, 2016

Tales from the Fringes (Remastered): Coming Soon to an Online Book Retailer Near You

If you have been following this for long enough, at least a few months at any rate, you will know that in addition to my next novel and a few other ongoing projects, I have been working on a new (and final) edition of my first book, my short story collection, Tales from the Fringes, which I originally published in May 2013 while I was a grad student at the University of Akron. The book originally came about as an experiment in self-publishing.

Since then, through three editions of my first novel, Escapes/Out in the Garage, I learned a lot about publishing. I also finished grad school and gained some experience teaching college-level English, and now I have a steady, full-time job, and a little more free time.

Originally, I only intended to mainly focus on the formatting, and also fix a few typos and grammatical mistakes, but as I began working on it, I realized that I had also come a long ways as a writer and an editor, and these stories were good enough for me to put a little more time and energy into getting right.

Now I am to the final editing and proofreading stage, and I am waiting for the proof to come in the mail, which should hopefully arrive on Monday.

In case you were wondering, here is the new cover and description:


Description
In Tales from the Fringes (Remastered), readers get glimpses of people’s lives from where nothing comes easy and happy endings are relative.
In “Greasy,” the Eggman, when he is not working at McDonalds, he is partying, sleeping around, and playing in a band, to no end. In “The Backwoods Incident,” four teenagers run afoul of Master Bael, a demon dog at the head of a cult of dagger-wielding humanoid opossums. At least that’s what the narrator, “The Marlboro Man,” thinks happens. In “The Banamen Prophecy,” a senile fashion designer, Howard Von O’Steinsonmanskinelli, brings about the end of the world by fulfilling an ancient Mayan prophecy.
This collection of twelve stories started as a fiction blog, the domain of which is the author’s homepage (www.gabegott.com). In this “Remastered” edition, each story has undergone some careful fine-tuning, producing what is sure to be the defining version of this set.
As you might be able to tell even from that little blurb, there are differences. However, the things that I liked and that other people seemed to like about the first one are in tact, and I really only changed the things that needed changing. A few of the key differences between the original and the "Remastered" versions include:
  • Fewer stories: a few of the stories were redundant and/or not as good
  • More professional formatting: this is the stuff I originally set out to change
  • A slightly different order: I wanted there to be a certain flow through the stories
  • Better writing: the more that I read, the more that I write, the more that I work towards it, the better my writing gets, and hopefully that is evident here
Once I get the manuscript to a point where I am satisfied and can read through it without changing anything, I will format the eBook version. Finally, once I am satisfied everything is to my liking, I will release it.

I don't have an exact date in mind yet, but when I do, you will be the first to know.

Friday, January 1, 2016

It's Not Radiation

It's Half-life is Nothing like Uranium


Recently, I went without a functioning computer for a week, and it made me realize how much my life truly revolves around sitting in front of a screen. All day at work. Most of the night until I go to bed after I get home. Sometimes, I wonder, for all the time that I spend on one of these machines, how much in the real world am I missing?

During the summer, my wife and I like to go jogging around the various Cuyahoga Valley metro-parks, so I have some sort of direct connection to it. During the winter, on the other hand, I mostly stay indoors, so maybe that's why this, call it seasonal affective disorder, comes to play.

It's like some demon cat in the hat invading and reining in terror for a few months. I try not to let it get to me, though. Sitting here, Thing 1 and Thing 2 making a racket in the background, I type out these words, or sit with my pen and on one of my notebooks, and work on one my many on-going projects, with music keeping me in a trance, and I channel this negativity, spinning it into something positive.

When I get done I feel, kind of, liberated, is a good word to describe it. The weight of the world isn't quite so crushing for a moment--this euphoria, however long it lasts, is worth everything.

In that way, writing has a similar effect as going out and immersing myself in nature does, and I truly need both.

When I can, I like to find rock beside a stream and sit and behold, even for a few seconds, closing my eyes and listening to the water as it gurgles along its way, and just try to clear my mind. I grew up next a river, in a heavily wooded area, so, perhaps, subconsciously, it also takes some part of me home, which is gone everywhere but in my mind.

Sometimes I come up with some of my best ideas when I am actually able to let my thoughts go and just try to be present for a moment.

The sunlight is nice today. Maybe I should go for a walk.