The Writer's Life 9/8 - Hot

In an op-ed piece in today’s NY Post, Karol Markowicz writes about the increasing violence among women. In the past 30 years there has been a 646% increase in female incarceration. I guess that old adage, “You’ve come a long way, baby,” applies to the negative as well as the positive. Is this just a blip in society’s painful evolution, or a permanent trend, the new normal, the natural result of a democracy's tilt leftward?

I’m almost done with the first phase of putting together the collection of short works I intend to publish after the start of the new year. I have six versions of it on my desktop and three in Google Docs, so wary am I of the evil forces that have access to my PC. I’d duplicated one of the stories and forgot to include one of my favorites, The Best Revenge, increasing the total to 31 plus four plays. The elimination of the extra one saved me about ten pages and, since the files of the screenplays fragmented, putting them in proper order saved me even more. I was able to go from ten to eleven point font and still come in under 400 pages, 388 so far. Eleven of the stories and a teleplay have not been published in magazines. Next comes the tedious task of acknowledging the publications that first published the others. Then I will let the file rest for a while.

I now have 401 followers at Twitter, more than I have at Facebook. I accept every request except those from people who want to sell advertising. I don't know if it leads to any book sales, but it's free, and I have had three unexpected web purchases lately. I'd guess they came from FB.

For the past several weeks business at the floating book had been better, for some bizarre reason, during high heat. That changed today. My thanks to the woman who purchased Lauren Weisberger's runaway best seller, The Devil Wears Prada, for her teenage daughter. I also received a large donation from one of the custodial staff at the large co-op that stretches from East 13th to Homecrest Avenue. 95% of it is non-fiction. The person who gave up the books must have been into global spiritualism. There is also a beautiful tome on jazz piano, and Jack Kerouac and Gunter Grass readers. The stuff's not as marketable as that of the most popular authors of fiction, but I'm thrilled to offer interesting alternatives to the same ol' same ol'. Thank you, Robert.

Vic's 5th Novel: http://tinyurl.com/okxkwh5Vic's 4th novel: tinyurl.com/bszwlxh

Vic's 3rd Novel: http://tinyurl.com/7e9jty3

Vic's Short Story on Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/k95k3nx
Vic's Short Story Collection: http://www.tiny.cc/Oycgb
Vic's 2nd Novel: http://tiny.cc/0iHLb Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/kx3d3uf
Vic's 1st Novel: http://tinyurl.com/l84h63j

Vic's Rom-Com Screenplay: http://tinyurl.com/kny5llp

Vic's Horror Screenplay: http://tinyurl.com/cyckn3f

Vic's Blog: http://vicfortezza.blogspot.com/

Vic's Web Site: http://members.tripod.com/vic_fortezza/Literature/