Confused and Mystified

Confused and Mystified

Participating, watching others participate, wondering what and where is the magic in this digital mind-boggling world. You are a writer. You write because of need and because you have identified writing as the talent you most likely possess more than any other, because just maybe that activity keeps you alive and in tune with the world around you. You go through the spasms of depression, frustration, and an occasional adrenaline rush of encouragement and excitement.

Then, you take a look at the marketing aspects of selling your books, the various providers of platforms, tools, and applications. Perhaps, like me, you become aware of the specialized and confusing language used in the digital market places, things like Avatar, widgets, SEOs, RSS feeds, URLs, hash marks, and all of it somehow cannot seem to make sense to you. You become angry with yourself, with the computer and its devious foreign language, and with the madness of minds making life so much more complicated than it really needs be. You wonder what you should be doing that you are not doing but most of all how to do it. Could you have been selling more books and yourself if you had joined this group, used this platform, done this, done that?

Sure, you can hire someone for a tidy sum you think you can trust to take the marketing worries away that allows you to concentrate on your writing. Yet, you either feel not quite comfortable among the so-called professional or you are too money-tight to give it a try. So, you muddle on, writing good books – books that should be selling – and attempting a one-person publishing house. Is there an answer? Is there a Nirvana out there for you?

The odds might not be great, but you figure to keep on writing – because that’s what you love to do. Hopefully, before the grim reaper comes calling, a benevolent event, a magic will come your way and finally make all those moments at the laptop pay off. A Publishing deal with a handsome sign-up bonus? An Amazon selling spree that puts your books virally in the top echelon of the Indie market? Okay, more realistically, beautifully written and sincere heartfelt reviews may lack the money and fame but they do make you soar for a few moments in those heady clouds of success. Maybe that is all we can hope – that and learning the foreign language that is the internet.

Writing mimics life and weather! Just wait a few moments with the emotion you are currently feeling…it will soon pass and be replaced by another. Time is the arbiter of all things – it is here and gone!

Just in the time it took me to write this blog post, I became a famous writer! Talk about an emotional uplift… A good caring and loving spouse can do that for you.

Keep Writing! Good things can happen!

Billy Ray Chitwood – November 1, 2018

NOTE: If you’re into faith,family, abuse, love, redemption, please check out my NEW BOOK:

“Hammer’s Holy Grail” – It’s a great read !

Here’s a couple of Amazon Reviews to entice you:

Life reflections woven into a powerful story

September 10, 2018

Format: Kindle Edition

– by Gwen Plano –

Billy Ray Chitwood has a wonderful way of telling a story. He writes as though he is sharing with a close friend. With humble casualness, he draws the reader into situations often hidden from sight and exposes a deeper story. His characters are familiar and their passions relatable. Through their vulnerabilities, we see our own. We experience domestic violence – as the hurt child, as the beaten spouse, and as the abuser. We experience love – driven, consuming and also tender. Hammer’s Holy Grail takes the reader on a journey through life’s challenges and life’s gifts.

Please Preview all my books at:

https://billyraychitwood.com

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https://brchitwood.com

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https://twitter.com/brchitwood

“Mama’s Madness” – Re-Launch – June 21, 2018

One more time!

“Mama’s Madness” has been among my fourteen books my best seller, and I’ve changed the cover a few times. WHY AM DOING IT AGAIN?

Call me crazy, but this time I also did some re-writing, making some changes here and there – nothing major but enough, I believe, to make it even better. The old edition had some sixty reviews, most of them 5-STARS and 4-STARS, so maybe I am a bit nutty to be making a change again. However, I’m committed to this change and I hope that my friends and followers will help me with this re-launch…I’m awaiting proof copy and will be shooting for a June 21, 2018 publication.

The changes I’ve made to “Mama’s Madness” do not lessen the evil transgressions in the book. It is still a book that will shock readers, make them angry, make them not believe what they’re reading, but this book is inspired by a true California case some decades ago. When I read the newspaper clippings of this ‘mother’s’ brutal treatments of her six children, it made me angry, made me sad to the point of tears, made me think of my own children and their lives…thank God, they never suffered the beating, the dark-closet confinements (for days, NOT hours!), the unsavory introduction to sex, the eating of lard and their own retch. Because my kids did suffer the emotional stress of a divorce, they never suffered from a lack of love.

In short, I had to write this book!

No one needs perhaps to be reminded of the evil in our world, but the urge was so powerful to fictionalize this mother’s brutal and psychopathic behavior for my own inner compulsion but, hopefully, to also remind people people of their vigiliance and environments, to be aware of that solicitous smiling stranger in the park, that passing car with a weirdo at the wheel making gestures, the friendly co-worker who offers a ride home.

Yes, there will be some who see “Mama’s Madness” as a gratuitous penning of some lurid and sensational events. Those who feel that way will not have seen an author’s tears as he wrote some sections of the book.

“Mama’s Madness” will always be to me my favorite book, NOT so much because of the evil portrayed within its pages, but because it awakened me as an author, made me so much more aware of the events in our world, and the ultimate power of words.

May I ask of my friends and followers to assist me in getting this new edition of “Mama’s Madness” re-launched. It is a novel I believe to be by anyone’s writing standard a quality book.

“Mama’s Madness” was recently posted by Caleb Pirtle: “Five of 100 books you should read before you die.” https://calebandlindapirtle.com/five-100-books-read-die-2/efore You Die!

At the top you see the new cover for “Mama’s Madness” – Do you like it!

Any assistance you can give me will be appreciated – reblogs- suggestions.

You can read part of the ‘Prologue’ of “Mama’s Madness” here:

~*~

PROLOGUE PORTION “Mama’s Madness”

“Help me! Please help me!”

It is a piteous whimper, lost in the black void of the narrow closet. The weak and eerie sound of her own voice chills her more fiercely than the cold. The thought brings an aberrant amusement. Her own small voice frightens her!

A sound! A creaking sound. Far off. A footfall! Is it?

No. It is not a footfall. It’s just one of the strange noises that comes in the night.

Is it night?

Time is lost. Time is gone from her world like a chunk of youth. The black hole draws her toward an uncertain vortex. She must close her eyes. But, not so tightly. She sees less with her eyes lightly closed. There is better control of her quivering body. With eyes open, the blackness comes alive with trickery.

Some crawling thing moves along her upper arm. That is her perception. She shifts and finds a wooden wall protrusion. A vertical beam. She moves her arm and body in back and forth rushes to accommodate the itch.

Her wrists are painfully numb and raw. The handcuffs seem now natural extensions of her hands.

Her shoulders ache in their sockets. They are taut from the pull of arms bound behind her back.

How long? God! It seems an eternity! A small lifetime she has lived in this palpable darkness. Maybe, it has been two days. The air has no texture or stir. It hangs there, stale and dank.

Her face is flushed with fever. It feels stiff and crusty from the tears running over her abrasive wounds. She squints and contorts. She opens and closes her mouth. There are sharp responses of pain. Her entire body feels leaden and bloated. When she moves there is a burning chaff between her thighs. A complacent soreness pervades. It no longer matters. Nor does the stench from her body’s waste matter.

It is her mind which throttles her. Whisks her off in searing flashes, abates, lingers amid the blackness. A fragile sentry. Both enemy and friend.

It is all happening again! She is next to die. Just like Celia. Was it a year ago? Two? Time, again, is elusive, lost. What does it matter? A year or an hour ago! Sarilee knows she is next. Just like Celia…

End of ‘Prologue’ portion…

~*~

Again, thank you for helping me in this re-launch. I’m trying for a pub-date of June 21, 2018. Any suggestions you have will be welcomed, as will any and all re-blogs. If you have comments about the cover, please let me know.

Tag: Abuse