Writing As Work

Posted on 09/11/2024 by Grumpa Joe

The real work of writing is in the publication. That is why I love blogging. As a blogger, I can publish my work immediately in the blog kingdom or not, as I choose. Since I started in 2008, I have never restricted my posts. I received several messages asking permission to reblog my post in that time frame. And a couple of times, I was invited to join the communist party. That one made me nervous. What could I have said to make them want me to write for them? Recently, Facebook removed one of my posts because they felt I was trying to get likes. Hell yes, I’m trying to get likes!

As I said above, the real work is finding someone to help me publish my novel. In the last three weeks, I have spent numerous hours researching agencies and agents who are in business to help slugs like me. So far, these people are pretty specific about what they want to work on. The key word is genre. My story doesn’t fit into any of their particular genres. If you have a job that is called writing, you are supposed to know about these things when you begin putting the words down. If you wait until your story is complete and then try to squeeze into a genre it is even more work. You see, a real money making writer knows things like which genre sells and which don’t. If you want to see some ode in your til you will master the art of writing stories that fall into the highest selling genre even if you hate those kinds of tales. If you do what I did, you will struggle looking for an agent/publisher who will help you.

When I finished my book satisfactorily, I began searching for an agent by Googling literary agents. The very first hit I got came from Page Publishing. Excited, I dove into their website and started answering questions. The next day, I received a call from an agent. I returned the call and listened to his pitch. It sounded too good to be true. A voice in my head said, “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t.”

I Googled Page Publishing, and it is a legitimate company. They are what is called a vanity publisher. The agent kept calling me, and each time, I learned more about how they work. I sent them a copy of my manuscript and was notified within 24 hours that my book was marketable. WOW! That really got me excited. The hook was that they would help me after I sent a signed a contract along with a pile of money. Here are some of the things I learned: only 25% of manuscripts they receive get to this stage. I would get ten hard copy books as part of the deal. They print only when they get orders from book stores, and sellers. I would be assigned an immediate editor to work with me to get the book ready and to work out the details of advertisements, TV appearances, Podcasts, etc.

I had forty-five days to accept the offer. I can’t believe those days passed by so quickly, but they did. In that time, I was researching how to do things on my own by finding a Literary Agent. I always thought these guys were waiting in line for me to come along and would snatch me up at the first nibble on my bait. How wrong I was. There are hundreds of Literary Agencies throughout the world. All of them employ several agents whose job it is to find novels that will work in the system; work that fits the genres they like, stories that grab you by the short hairs and yank your emotions alive, etc. and, these people have to have time in their busy schedules to fit you in. It is overwhelming. I called my niece who is a published author. She directed me to a program called Query Tracker which I immediately got familiar with. That is what I am spending my time on now. I find agents who want to see work in Family Saga genre and then click on the form. I then, complete the form with my contact info, my biography, a query letter, a three to twenty page sample of the manuscript, a one page synopsis, and a pitch. Then I send it off into the either world and pray to get a bong or a hit.

To date, I have received five bongs, and the remainder continue to float in the ether world. I won’t hold my breath. In the meantime, I am thinking about new stories in genres that make money. The problem is that I keep inventing stories that I like but do not fit the genres that agents sell. It is back to blogging for me.

Filed under: Biography, Writer | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

PSA-241108-Who Took Our Money Away?

Posted on 08/11/2024 by Grumpa Joe

WHO TOOK MY MONEY?

Actually, Democrat President Kennedy and Sergeant Shriver were the first ones to misuse the Social Security account.  They used Social Security funds to start the Peace Corps.   Not the first or last time our money has been taken from American citizens and given to foreign nations. Things every US citizen should know and remember about Social Security and changes made: A History Lesson on Your Social Security Card . . . Just in case some of you young whippersnappers (& some older ones) didn’t know this.   It’s easy to check out, if you don’t believe it   Be sure and show it to your family and friends.   They need a little history lesson on what’s what and it doesn’t matter whether you are Democrat or Republican . . .Facts are Facts

Social Security Cards up until the 1980s expressly stated the number and card were not to be used for identification purposes.   Since nearly everyone in the United States now has a number, it became convenient to use it anyway and the message, NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION, was removed. Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat, introduced the Social Security (FICA) Program.He promised:

1.) That participation in the Program would be Completely voluntary.
No longer Voluntary

2.) That the participants would only have to pay 1% of the first $1,400 of their annual Incomes into the Program.
Now 7.65% on the first $90,000.

3.) That the money the participants elected to put into the Program would be deductible from their income for tax purposes each year.
No longer tax deductible
4.) That the money the participants put into the independent ‘Trust Fund’ rather than into the general operating fund, and therefore, would only be used to fund the Social Security Retirement Program, and no other Government program.
Under Democrat President Johnson the money was moved to the General Fund and Spent.

5.) That the annuity payments to the retirees would never be taxed as income.
Under Democrats Clinton & Gore Up to 85% of your Social Security can be Taxed.

Since many of us have paid into FICA for years and are now receiving a Social Security check every month and then finding that we are getting taxed on 85% of the money we paid to the Federal government to ‘put away’ — you may be interested in the following:

Q: Which Political Party took Social Security from the independent ‘Trust Fund’ and put it into the general fund so that Congress could spend it?
A: It was Lyndon Johnson and the democratically controlled House and Senate. Q: Which Political Party eliminated the income tax deduction for Social Security (FICA) withholding?
A: The Democrat Party. Q: Which Political Party started taxing Social Security annuities?
A: The Democratic Party, with Al Gore casting the ‘tie-breaking’ deciding vote as President of the Senate, while he was Vice President of the US

Q: Which Political Party decided to start giving annuity payments to immigrants?
A: That’s right!   Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party.   Immigrants moved into this country, and at age 65, began to receive Social Security payments!   The Democratic Party gave these payments to them, even though they never paid a dime into it!

Then, after violating the original contract (FICA), the Democrats turn around and tell you that the Republicans want to take your Social Security away!

Filed under: Government, politics | Tagged: , , | 1 Comment »

American Uprising

Posted on 07/11/2024 by Grumpa Joe
American Uprising
Tue, 5 Nov 2024 11:40 PM PST by Daniel Greenfield

This wasn’t an election. It was a revolution.

It’s midnight in America. The day before million of Americans got up and stood in front of the great iron wheel that had been grinding them down. They stood there even though the media told them it was useless. They took their stand even while all the chattering classes laughed and taunted them.

They were fathers who couldn’t feed their families anymore. They were mothers who couldn’t afford health care. They were workers whose jobs had been sold off to foreign countries. They were sons who didn’t see a future for themselves. They were daughters afraid of being murdered by the “unaccompanied minors” flooding into their towns. They took a deep breath and they stood.

They held up their hands and the great iron wheel stopped.

The Great Blue Wall crumbled. The states fell one by one right down to Pennsylvania.  The working class that had been overlooked and trampled on for so long got to its feet. It rose up against its oppressors and the rest of the nation, from coast to coast, rose up with it.

They fought back against their jobs being shipped overseas while their towns filled with migrants that got everything while they got nothing. They fought back against being told that they had to watch what they say. They fought back against being held in contempt because they wanted to work for a living and take care of their families.

They fought and they won.

This wasn’t a vote. It was an uprising. Like the ordinary men chipping away at the Berlin Wall, they tore down an unnatural thing that had towered over them. And as they watched it fall, they marveled at how weak and fragile it had always been. And how much stronger they were than they had ever known.

Who were these people? They were leftovers and flyover country. They didn’t talk right or think right. They had the wrong ideas, the wrong clothes and the ridiculous idea that they still mattered.

They couldn’t change anything. A thousand politicians and pundits had talked of getting them to adapt to the inevitable future. Instead they got in their pickup trucks and drove out to vote.

And they changed everything.

Americans were told that walls couldn’t be built and factories couldn’t be opened. That treaties couldn’t be unsigned and wars couldn’t be won. It was impossible to ban Muslim terrorists from coming to America or to deport the illegal aliens turning towns and cities into gangland territories. It was all impossible. And they did the impossible. They turned the world upside down.

It’s midnight in America. CNN is weeping. MSNBC is wailing.  It wasn’t supposed to happen. The same machine that crushed the American people for two straight terms, the mass of government, corporations and non-profits that ran the country, was set to win.

Instead the people stood in front of the machine. They blocked it with their bodies. They went to vote even though the polls told them it was useless. They looked at the empty factories and barren farms. They drove through the early cold. They waited in line. They came home to their children to tell them that they had done their best for their future. They bet on America. And they won.

They won improbably. And they won amazingly.

They were tired of seeing their America disappear. And they stood up and fought back. This was their last hope. Their last chance to be heard.

The media had the election wrong all along. This wasn’t about personalities. It was about the impersonal. No one will ever interview all those men and women. We will never see all their faces. But they are us and we are them. They came to the aid of a nation in peril. They did what real Americans have always done. They did the impossible.

America is a nation of impossibilities. We exist because our forefathers did not take no for an answer. Not from kings or tyrants. Not from the elites who told them that it couldn’t be done.

The day when we stop being able to pull of the impossible is the day that America will cease to exist.

Today is not that day. Today fifty million Americans did the impossible.

Midnight has passed. A new day has come. And everything is about to change.

Filed under: Conservative, Election | Tagged: | Leave a comment »

Poor Planning?

Posted on 03/11/2024 by Grumpa Joe

My logic on this perspective may be perverted, but hear me out. Recently, I have viewed several pictures of airplanes revealing themselves from within deadly glaciers. Many crashed in the nineteen forties, fifties, and sixties. All of them were buried in snow and ice until recent heat waves melted the ice and revealed the carcasses of the wreckages. My logic tells me that since they crashed there has been global cooling because the wreckages were covered in snow and ice, and further the many recent reports of global warming has caused the ice to melt and reveal the wreckages. This is evidence of a cyclic temperature change that has occurred. There is also evidence mastodons, long declared extinct, have been found in ice; also uncovered when the ice melted. This is evidence of another cycle of temperature change. My logical conclusion is that we are currently in another warm period of a cyclical shift in temperature that has absolutely very little to do with carbon dioxide gasses being emitted from man’s use of fossil fuels.

All it would take to shift from global warming to global cooling is for the volcano residing under Yellowstone Lake in Yellowstone National Park to blow up. The resulting volcanic winter would last for years afterward and cool the earth enough to give rise to another ice age. This event would change the process so fast from global warming to global cooling that the liberal geniuses who fear the polar ice caps will melt and flood North America would not have enough time to invent a new narrative.

The current theory is that we, as residents of the planet, should give up our fossil fuel-guzzling cars to prevent greenhouse gasses from heating the planet and melting ice caps, but shouldn’t we also be planning to avoid the ice caps going the opposite way to form another ice age? We should be inventing ways to deal with the mother of all volcanic eruptions from occurring. We have lots of evidence to show us that ice ages have occurred several times, however we have not yet uncovered evidence of ice melts that flooded continents.

Filed under: Education, family | Tagged: , | Leave a comment »

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