Saturday, January 26, 2008

CONTEST for free book


CONTEST for FREE Download

I am offering contest to win a free PDF download of my newly released horror novel, “Beckoned”. It is open to everyone. To win, you need only send to me on one of the following sites the answer to this question.

Where did I get the symbol that appears on the cover of “Beckoned”? I’ll even give you two hints

(1) an unaltered image of the original symbol can be seen on, http://ronaldscala.blogspot.com/

(2) Released September 1970

If you think you have the answer, send it to me at the Blog or to my email address ronaldscala@gmail.com

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Art Imitating Reality—or Vice Versa?

A feature in today’s New York Times reported overweight people are resisting entreaties to become rail-thin. “Blogs written by fat people—and it’s fine to use the word, they say—have multiplied in recent months, filling a virtual soapbox known as the fatosphere.” The bloggers (Kate Harding’s Shapely Prose at www.kateharding.net has 3,710 hits per day) resist the notion that a St. Bernard has to become a greyhound.

Hurray! “Laura Lard Takes No Prisoners,” one of my stories in Cruising the Green of Second Avenue (published by Wild Child, of course) has our eponymous heroine telling a waitress, “[Salad] is not the food of my people. Where I come from, a decent meal should be heavy enough to hold down a circus tent in a hurricane.” She has enough confidence in her image to make the cosmetics sales ladies at Bloomingdales wet their panties.

I’m a skinny guy, so maybe my opinions don’t count. Laura’s story line, however, is that her being fat is an attribute, and she defends it by doing an Elliott Ness against the Prejudice Mafia. Writing this, a part of me expressed a strong belief that public sentiment wants to remake the obese, corpulent, oleaginous, turgid, stout and plump minority into the size, shape and silhouette of the chosen. Health and science demands it, the evangelists say.

That scares me. It’s just a matter of time until I become a target because I’m a casual smoker, whiskey drinker, book reader, fiscal conservative and social liberal. Oh—wait a minute! I already am a target! Beware the Prejudice Mafia. They’re watching you.

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Full Moon at Midnight


Amazing night. I went outside around midnight. Waxing toward Full Wolf, the moon illuminated the backyard, the trails and the woods and cast deep shadows. Already below 10 degrees, I wanted to check on my dogs, Yukon, who is half wolf, and Kato, my Husky. Though the near-full moon was bright, I could see brilliant stars, even next to it. The air was crisp and fiercely cold and the ground rock solid. The crust of snow crunched beneath my boots and I imagined this might be what it would be like on one of the moons of Jupiter; cold, sterile, brutally beautiful. Everything was so still, like the cold had frozen even time. Amazing.

Friday, January 18, 2008

G'morning from Cambridge (Mass., not U.K.)

As the new guy on the block--er, blog--let me say hello. Recent fiction credits include “Call Him Lucky” in the April 2007 issue of Northwoods Journal, “Big Willa and a Push Toward the Edge” published by Lunch Hours Stories in July 2007, “Not My Wife” in the September ‘07 issue of Mouth Full of Bullets , and "Dreaded Conversation " in the Oct. 15 issue of Every Day Fiction. Upcoming issues of MFOB, EDF, Written Word and Bewildering Stories will also carry my short fiction. I didn't pay attention in history class, so have tried to regain an education by writing for Military History Online, Copperfield Review, Whim’s Place and other print and online venues. My collection of short stories, Cruising the Green of Second Avenue, has just been published in two volumes by Wild Child (http://www.wildchildpublishing.com). Earlier, I directed corporate communications at Fortune 500 companies in New York for more than 30 years--and therein lay my misspent youth that resulted in the Cruising stories.

Monday, January 14, 2008

Greetings

Hi, all. I’m Ron Scala and I am new to this Blog. In fact, compared to most of you, I am new to the field. My first novel, Beckoned, was just released on Jan-2 by Wild Child Publishing (Thanks, again, Marci.). It’s a horror tale with just a bit of paranormal romance that hopefully will make it interesting to folks inclined to either genre. It was expertly edited by M.E. Ellis www.meellis.blogspot.com to whom I am indebted. Please visit my Blog at http://ronaldscala.blogspot.com/ .

Ronald Scala