What’s it all about

Karl ElvisLeave a comment

For the first time in at least a decade, i’ve updated the About page for this site (also linked on side bar and in menus, here here here, oh, everywhere, as the Genie said.

You should read it, it’s unimaginably brilliant. Really.

Also, on the off chance that anyone is reading out there, I really appreciate comments. You don’t have to use a real email and i’m definitely not saving anyone’s emails; that shit’s just there to ward off spam comments (which, despite nobody reading, I still get a cubic fuckton of daily).

Everything that’s old is slightly less old

Karl ElvisLeave a comment

I pulled out all the old stories that were once up in a writing blog off of an old archive disk, and am gradually going through them.

It’s a mixed bag. There’s nothing anywhere as good (he says, full of humility) Wanton, of which i’me very proud, particularly after a revision.

But there’s some treasure.

Long Dark Car (a story based on a long ago sex dream about – well, some minor TV star) is actually pretty good, and required no editing to speak of (aside from cleaning up typos).

The Man with the Bag is better than I remembered it being; it’s actually a lot of fun. It was written for a long-ago contest for long-gone erotica site Satin Slippers; we were asked to write ‘Bad Santa’ erotic stories. Mine won. Note that it’s password protected right now, because it needs a disclaimer (the site it was written for hosted a lot of non-consent type stories, so it was written with that in mind – yes, he’s a very bad santa). It needed a little revision, but not much. If you want to read it, you’ve been warned – the password is mister Claus’ first name, all lower case.

Aside from that, I have a half dozen short pieces (some erotic, some not) which I have to go through to see if they should be fixed and posted, or if they should just stay in the archive permanently. We’ll see.

An admission of guilt, or at least, of writing

Karl ElvisLeave a comment

Well, today I more or less announced myself as a writer in Facebook.

which won’t be big news for the people who used to  read this space, or for the very few who have read my fiction, but in the modern, post blogosphereera world of social networks, I don’t think many of the people I interact with know me as such, despite this site having been linked from FB and Instagram for years.

but after completing a marathon revision session on my novella Wanton, I both needed acknowledge my own progress, fighting back from years of feeling unable, as well as, I’ll admit it, hoping somebody would go read it. I don’t work in a vacuum well; I’ve always needed an audience to write for, or at least hoped my work would find one. So while I did t link direst to this site or to the novella in question (yet), I am hoping I get a hit or two and somebody says, I’d like to read that.

One thing that’s changed since I wrote this is the need to trigger warning it; I never before felt I needed to label my work, despite it being largely erotic, because I consider Wanton, at least, to be fiction, a love story, rather than a wank-piece. It may get you aroused, and I hope it does, but the intent is to tell a story about two characters in an obsessive, destructive relationship. It’s about the people, not about what they may do.

but, the story is filled with blood, pain, come, drugs and both physical and emotional harm. The last  two people I shared it with pre-edit, I didn’t warn, and I think it gut-punched them in different ways.

going forward, then, it has warnings.

 

Protect ya neck

Karl Elvis2 Comments

Or more accurately, your shoulders.

I’ve spent the last 10 weeks recovering from a rotator cuff surgery, so unable to drive stick shift, ride my motorcycle, work out, or do fuck all that needs my use of my right (dominant) shoulder. (Ok, all of me is dominant, some of you know that, but, well, that’s means something else.)

 

Let me give you all a piece of advice: no matter how fit and strong and young you are, your shoulders are vulnerable to injury, and shoulder injuries fucking hurt. Shoulder surgery hurts like hell, for a long time, and is incredibly slow to heal

That gets worse as you get older.

My orthopedic surgeon tells me it’s one of the most painful, slowest healing surgeries around, and from person experience, I can agree with this.

If you’re working out, trust anyone who tells you you’re risking injury with a technique. There are right and wrong ways, and you can only get away with wrong for just so long before something give out,

 

All that said, it’s healing, but it’s going to take months more before I can do a push-up, pull-up, bench press, or just ride my harley.

So trust me on this one, take care of yer goddam shoulders.

Old words, new friends.

Karl ElvisLeave a comment

I suppose every writer understands the awkward, uncomfortable experience of trying to re-read or edit something they wrote a very long time ago. 

For me, at least, that experience tends to begin with cringing, and then moves on to a desire to we-write from scratch, just to avoid any more uncomfortable re-reading. 

At that point I usually just close the editing tool I have open and walk away. 

I used to write all them time. I was once a reasonably accomplished tech writer. In  early 2004 I started blogging, writing almost daily. Writing short essays several times per week is great practice for a writer. 

I’ve written a number of short stories, started a novel at least three times, actually finished a novella. 

It all stopped a few years ago. Social media rose and blogs stopped being a thing, and then the friend who hosted my web sites died suddenly, leaning me locked out our server for good (I was able to export most of the writing, fortunately, and have since at least gotten the blog back up, if not kept it up to date).  

In any case, I just stopped writing, for a very long time. 

Recently, however, a friend of mine asked to read something of mine, so I fished a piece of fiction out of archives and shared it, getting positive feedback; this got me stated writing a few things, just descriptions of events or experiences. Nothing ambitious, but vastly more than I’ve written in a decade. 

Then a second friend made a similar request to read something. That friend then recorded herself recording a piece of  my writing, is planning to do a more complete recorded reading in future.

Hearing it out loud, hearing the story, and hearing all the little things I needed to fix somehow gave me the kick in the ass I needed to actually complete a long-avoided re-edit. A task I’ve been avoiding for literally a decade, if not more. 

It’s been cathartic, and I am thankful for the friend who got me started on this, as well as the one who liked my work enough to try reading it out loud. 

And that brings us up to date, again, with nothing

Karl ElvisLeave a comment

it’s weird to realize the last time I posted was just before – well, weeks before but time means nothing, never would again – before the world changed all at once (which is going ti be a theme for everything I post today, which is, well, this I guess).

I see my last post before pandemic,  of me playing my then-new gretsch in my friend Chris’ house, shortly before the last xmas that actually felt like xmas.

Since that time, i’ve more or less stopped playing guitar (at least stopped playing nearly enough), sold all my motorcycles (the FXDB and the thruxton), bought a new one (FSLRS low rider softail). I’ve gotten older than I ever shiould have gotten, and then started to fight back with a renewed go at fitness. I’ve quit caring about work, so much so that i’m now having to decide if I can ever get back to being good at something for a living again.

I’ve been though familial upheaval I wasn’t sure all my family would survive, though we did, at least so far; my younger daughter now lives in North Carolina, where she’s doing vastly better, as are we with her there.

And I’ve figured out that my favorite people in the whole world are dogs, and that I don’t really need anything much from here on (see the instagram links to the left, if they still work, or way below if you’re on mobile, for pictures of my dogs, who are so cute they’ll melt your eyes).

It’s been ten years in two years, and yet in effect nothing happened, and everything changed, and very little seems very real anymore.

I should have more to say about it than this, really, but it turns out that I had nothing at all to say for two years, so, this may take a bit of practice to get out, since writing is now something I do only into slack windows, with people who care way too much about things that do not matter in the least, and who will throw a fit if you use the right words for things and they don’t like the words.

So writing, as someone once said to me, without a net isn’t something I know how to do anymore. At least not yet.

Who knows if anyone will ever notice; blogs seem so quaint in 2022.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The world changed

Karl ElvisLeave a comment

My god it’s been a long time.

I miss being what you might call a writer or at least a blogger.

I miss days when it mattered.

I miss being creative, and living a life that routinely got me in trouble – I miss the trouble, and the people I used to get into it with. Well, certain people anyway.

It’s been a long fucking pandemic; will any of us ever be the same, when this is objects-closer-than-they-appear in the rear view? Not the over that people are pretending now, the ‘it’s not over at all but we’re too tired of it to know that’ kind of over thats’ whole-cloth nonsense. Will we ever, though, be who we used to be?

I need a martini, but I need it with the people I used to drink martinis with. My dogs are good company and all, but, well, it’s not the same, now, is it? They can’t mix a decent drink, and though they’ll definitely kiss, they also don’t kiss nearly as well as – well, as some other people –  and gin doesn’t cover dog breath.

I need to write something better than this. See if I still can.

Maybe i’ll be back tomorrow. Or maybe in another year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What i’ve been doing since.

Karl ElvisLeave a comment

It’s been a long, long time since I was active as a blogger, and i’m not going to go recap everything in my life since FEBRUARY 7, 2014, the last time I wrote a blog entry (before Brandon’s death, which is where it all ended with losing my server). And anyway most of the people who used to follow me here either are Facebook friends now, or follow me in Instangram, or are long lost as far as this place is concerned.

But, life moves and on I figure a few things would be worth mentioning, if not in one post, then in several.

In no particular order, then, i’ll start with the most significalt personal achevement.

This was something I posted a year ago, so this would now say ‘about two years ago’:

One year ago this week, I quit talking about taking up the guitar, and actually did it.

I dug my old 80’s epiphone strat out of storage, re-strung it, and tried to remember more chords and that E, G and F.And with the aid of tutorials on youtube (which didn’t exist 30 years ago), I starting over at the beginning.

A year later, i’m still working. I’m not a natural musician, but week by week, i’m learning. Learning technique, improving my ear, getting vaguely closer to having a sense of rhythm. I’m a long way from ‘let’s jam’ or getting up in front of anyone and getting through a song. But i’m not in any hurry, because it’s not about that; it’s about the challenge, and about (i admit it) the gear. I now have a couple of decent guitars i love playing, a hand-made amp and some cool pedals, and I’ve met a lot of really talented, unique gear makers and players who inspire me to keep going and keep learning.
Because, as Lemmy once said, “If you think you are too old to rock ‘n roll, then you are.” And I don’t think there’s any such thing .

It’s been a long, slow process; I”ve taken lessons for the better part of a year and while my practice hasn’t been quite as consistent since I posted that in November ’18, I a still working hard to build on my rudimentary abilities. I’m getting slowly better at it, and better at getting good sounds, which is in many ways as important to me as being skillful.

Am I anywhere near being on a stage? No. But it remains a goal. I don’t have any dreams of being in a band or making records – but some day i’ll be able to play a song with my (vastly more talented) friends, without it being tragic. Hey, it’s a goal, anyway.

Not My Guitar