in my chair, on a cold mid-november day, snow and ice outside. i'd listen to the song, "cold rain and snow," but i've lost enough of my hearing that i wouldn't enjoy it much. instead i am reading and writing a variety of things. my wife is impatient that i spend so much of my time in this chair, dog on my lap, in a prone position.

yet most of my business is absolutely here. i've read a huge volume of indie works, in the process of getting my own ratings up to a respectable level and having an actual readership, albeit entirely other authors. i don't know well how to widen my base, get more readers, though i'm trying other things, but that - mostly signing onto amazon ads - is also a kind of prone thing. i do it here at my chair. i see little point in going out in the snow except when absolutely necessary, like taking out the garbage, running kids around, or maybe shoveling, if it comes to that.

the house is actually quite comfortable. the recliner goes back and from here, i look at the neighbor's trees, and at a fireplace that we haven't run too much. it's got a problem, which is that its own fan blows out its little propane jets. what's up with that? i guess i'll have to find out.

i write a few experimental stories, which is good, because if it weren't for that, i'd have nothing to show for several days. if they're any good i take them off that site and save them. if they're in between or i don't know quite what to do with them, i leave them there and let them take up space. my fanatic read-marketing sometimes bogs me down. it saps my creativity and it makes me check the read sites a little too often.

somebody asked what we readers get out of all that fanatic reading and i answered them. maybe that was the wrong thing to do, late at night, because it got me thinking and that made it hard to sleep. but i shouldn't complain - comfortable chair, warm bed, enough food, nice-smelling house (lots of bread & cooking) - things could be much worse.

i will, eventually, spell out what i've learned from reading volumes of indie works on the market. it's really quite incredible, that people are cranking out so much, and that some are so successful in a very competitive world. you crank it out, someone will read it, somewhere, and if they like it, hopefully they'll keep reading. one can only hope. i like to dangle my characters over the edge of the important ledges of life, and then that kind of keeps the reader out there, staring at the abyss, and i know that's a kind of torture so in the next story i promise i'll bring them back to the mundane at least temporarily. i like to sprinkle widespread geography throughout my stories just so mundane people appear to have widely various possibilities, and are aware of them and act upon them at will, just so the reader doesn't get bored. i'm still working on the one you're looking at (probably), train yard. it's an example of a story that could be a little tighter in terms of how much information i give the reader.

cold rain and snow. dog barking outside. she's a labrador and actually likes this stuff, but she likes to bark when she's had enough of it. when a dog joins your family, it expects to have a place, right near you.