Chocolate Fest - 2016

I had such a lovely time yesterday, I thought I would say a few words about the Annual Chocolate Fest in Portland.

Thought you might want to see where our chocolate comes from. Here is how it grows on the trees.

They grow off the trunk like my columnar apple tree.

Serialized Fiction - Declaration of #SerialSaturday

Back in the early 60s my Mom and Dad used to watch for the postman’s delivery of The Saturday Evening Post. This magazine always had a serialized story running in it. When my parents spotted the Post’s delivery they would make a beeline for the mailbox to see who would be the first to read the next chapter of the story.

In 1962 it was The Day of the Triffids. This serialized story went on to become a book and then had several turns on the big screen as motion pictures in 1963 and in 2009.

The Post is not the only one who has had success with short stories growing into books in print.

My friend, Carla Monticelli, posted her first book Red Desert as a serialized story on her blog prior to publishing it as a book. She has since built up such a loyal following that Amazon picked her book, The Mentor, up as one of their international translations into English.

I have personally posted several serialized Farloft stories on my blog which I have since published as books in The Farloft Chronicles. People who follow me on my blog will get a glimpse of the ‘first’ draft of some of my novels.

I have some very loyal readers (over 115,000 blog hits and over 1,500 weekly readers) who drop in to check out the latest chapter of my current story on my Blog. I post each Saturday, because it is important to be consistent in order to build a following. I shift between genres, Scifi, Paranormal and Fantasy.

There are several stories archived on the site: “Fur & Frost – A Dragon Love Story" (fantasy), "Yaltzee Shift" (paranormal) and "Planet Designation 014.666.2460" (scifi/fantasy smashup), among many others. The main blog also has a link to the scifi “Star Trader Updates” blog which features my kickass Star Trader, 3su, on her missions through the known verse.

So, I propose a designated day for serialized stories. I hereby declare Saturday #SerialSaturday and may all you story bloggers out there have as much success with your postings as John Wyndham, Carla and me.