Halloween bluegrass!

/ Timothy G. Huguenin / 2 Comments

Happy Halloween, folks! Here’s some Halloween bluegrass for ya.
The first one is performed by Blackstone Valley Bluegrass, but the real reason I’m eager to share is because the lyrics are written by my grandfather Marcel “Pepe” Huguenin, also remembered by some in the Connecticut area as “The Bluegrass Coyote“! Lots of great memories with him at bluegrass jams and teaching me how to play bluegrass in his garage. Thanks, Pep! Hope you have a great Halloween!

 
And thanks to Mark Lynn Ferguson from over at The Revivalist for finding this spooky song from one of my all-time favorite bluegrass artists, Del McCoury!
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Nmu53fAN0DI%3Ffeature%3Doembed

Del McCoury Band and The Fairfield Four deliver a perfect tune to get you and your goblins in the Halloween mood. Recorded for the All Star Bluegrass Celebration II, this one’s become a contemporary classic.

via One Song: It’s Just the Night — The Revivalist
The Revivalist is a stellar website dedicated to Southern Appalachian culture, highly recommended.
Don’t forget, today is the last day of the 99 cent sale of the Kindle version of When the Watcher Shakes. Don’t miss out, get it before it goes back to full price!
Of course I want to show off our jack-o-lantern, so I’ll leave you with some pics of what Emily and I did this year. The all-seeing pumpkin eye will bring about the New Pumpkin Order. The Pumpkinati is amongst us, waiting patiently to strike when the time is ripe.

Macbook being worked on, but still trying to continue with life

/ Timothy G. Huguenin / Leave a comment

Well, a quick update, since I’ve been pretty quiet lately here on WordPress (and if you’re a mailing list subscriber, you may notice that I’m a little late with my monthly update as well).
I’ve been pretty busy; last month I finished the first draft of my next novel, then the last couple weeks I’ve been going over the manuscript getting ready for the first rewrite. However, my Macbook has a rare but worrisome problem with the hinge of its display, so while it’s still under warranty it is at the shop in Jackson. But the tech there is out of town for a week so it’s going to be even longer before I get it back 🙁 Until then I can’t really work on rewriting my manuscript, even though I have a marked up version ready to type back up.
I’m using a computer at my “office,” a.k.a. the Sublette County Library, to write this. It’s rough and hard to get things done without my own computer but I figured it’s good to let you guys know what’s up. Unfortunately my mailing list subscribers will be updated later than normal because of this, too.
I just got back from the Boise Book Fest, which was super fun. I met lots of great writers and readers. Unfortunately I forgot to take any pictures, so just imagine how great it was! You can do it, I believe in you. Thanks to Priya for organizing this great event, and thanks to all the great writers I met and to the people who bought my book.
While I was editing my manuscript, I also got a rough draft of another short story done! Still letting it sit a bit before I go back to it for editing. It was a story that I had started months ago and felt like it wasn’t going anywhere. When I came back to it at the beginning of this month, somehow it all just kind of came together, and the end came to me pretty easily. That’s such a great feeling when that happens. The moral of the story here is that if your fiction is going nowhere, don’t toss it out! Maybe all it needs is for you to forget about it for a while and then come back to it with a fresh mind.
Mailing list subscribers, don’t lose hope! I’m going to try to get a new newsletter up as soon as possible! And thank you, my loyal blog followers; sorry that I’m not the greatest blogger. But I do what I can.
I’m really excited about my new novel. I have a great designer working on the cover, but I’m going to keep that a secret for a while. I will be looking for a few more beta readers soon, so if you are interested, click on the contact link and let me know! I can’t promise to let everyone who contacts me do this, since I am looking for certain kinds of readers, and I already have a good handful selected, but I could use one or two more. So give me some info about yourself and what you like to read and stuff and I would love to get back with you about whether or not you could help me in this way.
My apologies for being such a recluse when it comes to this social media stuff. I still love you guys. I’m just really not a great blogger or Facebooker. But I’m doing my best here. I’ll try to blog again more regularly when I get my computer back, and I promise that I’ll be getting that newsletter out soon.

The Count of Monte Cristo is long

/ Timothy G. Huguenin / Leave a comment

I’m getting close to the end of my current WIP’s first draft. I had hoped to have a 70,000 word manuscript to edit by the end of this month, but the story is starting to wind down already, and at this rate I’ll be happy to get to 60k (the final version of When the Watcher Shakes is somewhere around 60k words, in case you were wondering). That’s all right, since it’s still in the novel-range, but it’s still probably going to be on the short end, and I had hoped to bring something a little heftier to the table next summer for those of you that read through WTWS in one day.

I don’t want to give too much away this early, but a character in my new book (currently untitled) identifies a lot with her literary hero, Edmond Dantes. But it had been so long since I’d read The Count of Monte Cristo that I decided I needed to go back and reread Dumas’s famous and influential work again.




I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, it is wayyyyy long. The copy I own is just over 1,200 pages (I’m currently looking down the home stretch at page 1,040). And the print is not very large. I remember loving this book and tearing through it when I first read it, I think the summer of ’08 or ’09. And I guess you wouldn’t say that I’m slouching in pace this time, either. But there is just so much going on in this book. I think it suffered from being written as a serialized piece; it’s like every three chapters he pulls yet another plot point out of thin air to work into the story, like a J. J. Abrams TV series stretched longer than its run should have lasted. I often find myself thinking, Oh come on, why didn’t Dumas just name this guy the Count of Deus Ex Machina? Also, the Count doesn’t really become a very likeable or identifiable character. If I didn’t feel like I needed such a thorough refresher, I probably would have given up by now.

On the other hand, this book is, of course, a classic, and there’s a reason it has stood the test of generations. Every night before I go to sleep, I reluctantly but faithfully return to this improbable tale, and somehow I still usually find myself stretching my bed time for “just ten twenty more pages.” Convoluted as the plot gets, Dumas does seem to keep track of most of it and tie it together completely as he goes, if not always believably. And there is some imagery in this book that just can’t be beat. Edmond’s escape from the Château d’If is one of my favorite scenes in all of literature (Yeah, sorry, no spoiler alert–it’s been 172 years, you’ve had time–besides, at that point you’re only like 2% into the book).

But it turns out that I might just finish The Count at the same time as, or maybe even prior to, the finishing of my rough draft. It would be pretty cool to finish on the same day. My main takeaway from this experience? I wish I could write as fast as I read.

Writer Resources: Polgarus Studio Formatting

/ Timothy G. Huguenin / 1 Comment

Formatting a book is something that a lot of self-published authors attempt on their own, and not always for the better. It appears that many are well suited for it, or at least are able to do it well enough, while others experience headaches and turn out a book that doesn’t look exactly right, or as professional as one would hope. While I’m usually a pretty quick study when it comes to computery things, the last thing I wanted to do in getting this book ready was to take on all the tedium and possible nightmares of book formatting in addition to all the other responsibilities a self-published author has.
Thankfully, I found Polgarus Studio.
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