Casey's Just Sayin'

What do radio promotions and blogging have in common?   A lot... maybe.   Many who read this know that in a previous life I was in radio. I spent twelve years playing in that sandbox before jumping in to the related field of commercial banking. (see - sarcasm)   I know, it's weird.   Radio is a highly reactive industry, meaning the content must be associated to what is going on in the world. I remember sitting in promotions meetings at the end of the year, literally going through the calendar and marking local events and holidays. "So, are we going to do the Freedom Rocks concert for 106X this year? We need a beer permit for the park and let's order some promotional balloons."   "We're kicking around the idea of doing an Easter Egg Hunt on K-Shasta where we hide eggs all over town and give away grown up easter baskets to the finders. We'll give clues on the air."   "Where's our booth going to be for Oldies 105 for Kool April Nights? L...

So I've lived in the same home now for almost 13 years. One things that length of time means - aside from buying a house for cheap, a few years later thinking it's worth way more than I paid for it, then a few years after that realizing it's not - is that I have gotten to know the stores in our neighborhood. This is a Google pic of my Circle K This is an actual Google pic of THE Circle K Specifically I'm thinking about the Circle K convenience store, which is reachable from my house in about thirty seconds by vehicle and five minutes or so by foot.   I've spent a lot of money at this store. The gas isn't the cheapest in town, but it's by far the most convenient for me.   The beer is more expensive than the grocery store (also nearby), but it's just easier to pull in and grab a sixer on the way home.   The coffee they serve in the morning is not great, but there is a lot of it and I can grab a cup on my way to work in seconds.   Then there are the Ga...

  I was one of the first to purchase and use an iPad. I couldn't wait to get one, was overjoyed when I did get one and loved it so much I even had a contest to name it.   That was 2 1/2 years and three generations ago, if you count them as iPad, iPad 2, New iPad and iPad with Retina Display, four if you include the iPad Mini.   So, is Padrick getting old?   Let's see what I've got now.   External: Padrick certainly has some small dents and scratch marks on the back casing. But for me, that's like the bed of my pickup. It just means it's well used. And even though I've never purchased a screen cover for it, the screen appears flawless. I should note that I've dropped Padrick many times and about half of those times the landing was not soft.   There's No Camera: I can't take photos with it, which I suppose is a negative, although when I see people trying to take pictures with their iPad, I'm a little embarrassed for them. It looks silly. The two ...

I believe in that voodoo mumbo jumbo Jung philosophy known as synchronicity.   M.W. calls it "the coincidental occurrence of events and especially psychic events (as similar thoughts in widely separated persons or a mental image of an unexpected event before it happens) that seem related but are not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality."   I'll just take "the coincidental...similar thoughts in widely separated persons...that seem related". You know, when you start thinking about something in the morning like... well... let's say the stickiness of a frog's tongue. And then you head to work and walk in and within a few minutes some dude is verbally pondering the stickiness of a frog's tongue. Later that night you get home and your daughter is working on a paper for biology that deals with, you guessed it, the stickiness of a frog's tongue.   Now there are often possible and plausible explanations for this. Maybe the night before ...

There are more people out there writing novel-length prose. The problem is they are all doing it in blurbs of 140 characters.   Look at your Twitter account right now. I double-dog dare you. (I'll wait...)   Now look at the number right above the word "TWEETS".   For some of you its in the tens of thousands. It is my opinion that it's OK for you to be proud of this number. It's a pretty significant accomplishment.   I'm even a little proud of my 9,062. How many words is that? Well, if I count the number of words in my last 10 tweets (7, 24, 9, 2, 23, 23, 19, 8, 24, 21) and divide by 10 I get an even 16 words. That is 144,992 words in the last two or three years. That is one hefty tomb or two decent-sized novels.   Now I'm fairly certain stringing those tweets together to form a book would at the very best be confusing and at the very worst be unreadable.   But it does bring about some truths for us writers.   We can write novels. Almost all of us....

I think a sense of humor helps me get through the more difficult aspects of existence. Being generally optimistic is hard work, but mostly I believe I succeed and my life is better for it.   When it comes to money, there's very little funny.   It's like when, in Meet Me in St. Louis, Rose says, "I hate, loathe, despise and abominate money!" Mr. Smith quips, "You also spend it."   And that's most of our relationships with money, isn't it? We don't like it and yet we embrace it every day, justify spending it, run out of it, get some more of it, try to be frugal with it, justify spending and so on.   And this time of year, in the good ol' U S of A, I can see the strain in the face of most people. Money is running out and most folks are in the process of spending more of it than they should. In short, they are mostly miserable. I was in Walmart the other day (don't ask, we don't shop there, I didn't buy anything and I feel guilty ...

I’ve become a podcast listener over the last two or three years. Mostly while in my truck, I’ll have one of the fourteen casts to which I subscribe playing in my Bluetooth earpiece, a Plantronics device that cost way too much and is starting, frankly, to fall apart. But in case there are any other podcast junkies out there, and like me often search for new material to add to the mix, I thought I’d briefly mention my choices, which are all available free on iTunes. If you’ve never listened to a podcast, this might be a good place to start. WRITING PODCASTS Writing Excuses – This is the best and it’s only 15 minutes long because “you’re in a hurry, and we’re not that smart.” I wish it was longer frankly. Those 15 minutes are packed with terrific advice for fiction writers and a solid, nerdy chemistry amongst Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal and Howard Taylor, all very successful creators in their own right. Writing Show with Paula B – In this podcast Paula actua...