F. P. Dorchak

Speculative Fiction Author

Writing

Do The Dead Dream? Update

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Do The Dead Dream? (© F. P. Dorchak and Jan C. J. Jones 2016)
Do The Dead Dream? (© F. P. Dorchak and Jan C. J. Jones 2016)

Just a quick update!

I have begun requesting blurbs and looking into reviewers. I have been pleasantly surprised at the level of support from my writer friends! Thank you, all of you, for your consideration and possible participation! I know that just because you agree to taking a read, does not necessarily guarantee that you will actually provide a blurb…if you don’t like what you read!

If my material is not for them or to their liking, I will not blame them one bit for passing. But I am eternally grateful that they are giving me the time-of-day and support in trying to help me out. That is all I ask.

So, blurbs are under way. Editing is continuing. No cover art yet. And I will still make one more intense pass over the collection, en masse, once all stories have been edited and included.

Do the dead dream?

Oh, they do…and they have so much to tell….

PPWC 25th Anniversary

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This past weekend I attended the 25th anniversary of the Pikes Peak Writers Conference (PPWC). I had not attended the PPWC since 2012, its 20th anniversary. So, except for six conferences (I think it’s been) I’ve been attending since Jimmie Butler started this whole thing 25 years ago.

And I’m glad I did!

I learned a lot from this conference, focusing on social media and promotion, but it was also fun getting back together with many I hadn’t seen for a few years. Some I’d seen in other venues, like Denver Comic Con or MILEHICON, but some I haven’t seen since I 2012. It was like I hadn’t been gone, when we all got back together and caught up. It was fun!

I again volunteered. I just can’t come to a PPWC and not help. It’s fun for me and I like to do what I can. I so rarely can do much during the rest of the year. I moderated two sessions that both happened to be helmed by fellow writer-friend, Kevin Ikenberry. I also assisted in a couple of other areas at the PPWC.

And it was great seeing Jimmie Butler again, the founder of PPW/C. Sure, he had help, but he was the one who spearheaded it all and got this massive ball rolling. Jimmie put a lot of his heart and soul into PPW/C and tried to make it the best learning experience for writers of all levels, and to see where it is today…well, I can’t even imagine what he feels. He created this organization and it has taken on a life of its own. I just can’t imagine how he must feel about something like that.

There was much good about this conference, so many friends I reconnected with, so many great sessions, I can’t begin to attack it all, or it would take me days to do so. But I do know I have a lot of work ahead of me in reworking my social media presence. That feels quite overwhelming, but I’ll just have to attack it one forkful at a time (how one not only eats an elephant but writes a book). I’m actually in the process of revamping things anyway, as I’m doing with this website…and in moving all my WordPress blogs over to it. But. There’s. More.

And then there’s the writing.

Plenty to do. So…guess I better get back to it…and close this post…

25th Anniversary Pikes Peak Writers Conference

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I am attending the 25th anniversary of the Pikes Peak Writers Conference, held in Colorado Springs, CO, April 28 – 30th, 2017. The Colorado Springs Marriott, at 5580 Tech Center Drive, Colorado Springs, Colorado 80919, is hosting it. The Marriott’s phone: (719) 260-1800.

I think I’ve missed six conferences, but I started out with the very first on back in 1992, when Jimmie Butler, a retired Air Force colonel, created the PPWC and a local critique group, of which I was a part. He was a huge influence in the region. I don’t keep in contact with him as much as I used to, but I do run into him at the occasional author event or two I attend. I’d write more about both Jimmie and the conference but I have really gotten behind the power curve on getting this post created and getting ready to hit the conference today. Life has been a wee bit overwhelming for me lately, but read Jimmie’s books—I’ve read a couple of them—and he’s a great writer. I recommend A Certain Brotherhood (which the critique group he’d created had helped him refine—and I’m glad to say that I was a part of that!), and The Iskra Incident. Jimmie will be making an appearance at this Sunday’s luncheon.

Well, gotta run! I’ll be mainly hitting social media and marketing sessions, but am also moderating two sessions, but with Kevin Ikenberry (R&C Author and BookBub: A Post-Mortem), another terrific person and also a writer friend of mine. Check out his Sleeper Protocol. Kevin’s never without an outstretched hand for a handshake and that charismatic smile across that face of his….

Hope to see you there!

#PPWC2017

Transitions – Evil Plan II

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As I’d previously mentioned in my last Evil Plan™ post, I am transitioning over to a self-hosted site on WordPress.org. The intent of this move was to consolidate my blog posts with my website so it would be easier to manage both.

Weeell, things have not turned out so gracefully.

As things currently stand certain things promised don’t seem to be able to be delivered quite as easily as presented. #ThatsHowTheyGetcha

I really hate to complain—I really do—but the way the whole “move over to us–it’s easy” is anything but and it looks like I may well lose all my blog posts from this site, Runnin Off At The Mouth (ROATM). Unless I keep this account active. Which I did NOT want to do. I wanted to export my posts from ROATM and Reality Check (RC) and terminate my WordPress.COM account, and just have my new account, fpdorchak.com, on the WordPress.ORG location. The long and the short of it is that after a brutal setup experience that involved me getting redirected all across God’s green Earth and many, many e-mail problem tickets, IMs, and even phone calls, I finally got my new fpdorchak.com site up and running. then I tried to import my blog posts. The RC posts all came over easily. Yea, I was happy! Then I tried ROATM: nope. Instead of one file to import, they had to split my data up into two files. Then, just like the scarecrow in that classic Wizard of Oz scene, WordPress kept directing me to Blue Host (BH; my server for my new site) and BH kept directing me BACK to WP. WP says all you have to do is ask BH to expand your memory settings to allow you to import the larger files. I’m here to tell that does NOT work. And I have spent two weeks trying to get it to work. So WP does NOT know what they’re talking about. BH doesn’t even what that means. They copied all my stuff over onto their BH server…but guess what? Through the miracle of technology I cannot access that data.

Then I found there’s a WP service (for $129) where they tell you “let US do the heavy lifting and move all your stuff over.” What they don’t tell you until you read the fine print is that it’s a mirror of your WP.COM site and will totally OVERWRITE any work you did on your new WP.ORG site. That means you’ll have to totally reconfigure the theme you created. And after just spending two weeks of frustrated HELL being redirected all over God’s green Earth and countless e-mail tickets to figure out how to do what I finally got, not only no but HELL NO am I going to go through all that again. And, BTW, the Happiness Engineer I’d be working with on this? He doesn’t know much about the Studio Press themes I used for fpdorchak.com.

So, I’m here to tell you that I might be losing all these posts and your kind patronage—unless WP.com can figure out a way to export ONLY MY BLOG POSTS and your links to my new location. I do not want to transfer everything there (theme, posts, menus, etc)—I don’t want that. Just the posts. Why should that be so danged difficult? Well, apparently, through the world of high technology…it is.

So. I have not yet heard back from them, but writing this post has been extremely difficult…like it’s being “accessed” in some way…because it’s severely delaying my typing, I don’t always see the cursor “I-bar,” and the words I type keep pausing, so MAYBE they (being them) have found a way to do this. Don’t know. But in case it all falls flat, I humble ask that all my kind readers go over to my new location and and please sign up for my blogs at www.fpdorchak.com/blog/ and scroll to the very bottom of the page and subscribe by e-mail there.

I am a very patient man, but this has truly tested my limits. I realize Studio Press is brand new, but they simply went to market too quickly before created a sold, consolidated set of procedures that clearly state what one has to do with WP.com, WP.org, Studio Press (SP), and whatever hosting platform you take on. And, be aware, that whatever you do with these folks, PLEASE, for the love of Bogey, port over your existing WP.com site BEFORE adding your new SP themes. You WILL have to redo all you work. I’m told there is no way around it, though when I imported my RC blog posts, it did NOT mess up my new SP Author Pro theme, so I really have NO IDEA what these Happiness Engineers are talking about or if they truly understand what happens with whatever the hell it is they think they’re doing.

My God, I’m in hell!

Again, pardon my ranting. I hope things can work themselves out, but I am very, very frustrated right now. I don’t know if I’ll keep this account open or not yet. I need to allow my frustration levels to bubble the hell off so I can see clearly—and who knows, maybe my Happiness Engineers WILL find a solution.

In any event, please sign up for my blogs at www.fpdorchak.com/blog/ and scroll to the very bottom of the page and subscribe by e-mail there.

Thank you..and thank for your kind patronage and support over the years. And pardon my ire, my frustration. It’s been three weeks of utter insanity.

BREATHE, Frank, BREEEATHE….

 

 

 

 

 

 

New “Clowns” Review!

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What Makes a Good Clown Go Bad? © F. P. Dorchak and Lon Kirschner, 2016.
What Makes a Good Clown Go Bad? © F. P. Dorchak and Lon Kirschner, 2016.

I just discovered that I have a new “Clowns” review on Amazon.com! Thank you so much, Queen Farm Chick!

5.0 out of 5 stars Great read!
By Jill on April 6, 2017
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
“It may be a short story, but F.P. Dorchak did a great job at putting me on the edge of my seat and only increasing my fears of clowns. Clowns had my full attention from the first paragraph all the way through to the end.”
Find the source here!

Transferring Over

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Welcome!

This is my first new blog post on my new platform for fpdorchak.com! I hope you like the new look…I’m really happy with the outcome, though the process has been a veritable slog.

I won’t go into all the details, but let’s just say it was not as easy as everything made it to appear. One of my remaining issues is the inability to import over all my Running Off At The Mouth (ROATM) blog posts from WordPress.com. You see, I’m now “on” WordPress.org (called by “registrar”). And my old fpdorchak.com was moved from Homestead to Blue Host (my hosting site for fpdorchak.com). I’m using StudioPress “themes” (how my stuff appears on-screen and is “worked” through SEOs, etc). And it turns out with the past two or so weeks I’ve been working all this, that since I have several years of blog posts, it’s not an easy thing to do. At all. My Reality Check blog posts moved over easy because I don’t have as many, but since I have so many ROATM posts, I need to fork out an additional sum of $129 to get ye old “Happiness Engineers” at WP.com to do the deed. And there is no way around this…unless you have coding background (which I do not have) to get this done.

But…no worries to readers! This will be done without interruption (I’m told). In fact you can still view all my blog posts as they currently exist…but once the transfer has been made, you will automatically be redirected to this location.

So my “Evil Plan” is nearly complete!

Please stay tuned and continue to check back. I still need to add a newsletter, and I also plan on creating a new site for my burgeoning amateur photography. And have to clean up loose ends like having default crap from the demo templates in my stuff. But for now…I’m kind mentally spent on this whole “Evil Plan” transition thing. I’m not cut out to do evil plans, I guess. There is SO much more than meets the eye in today’s website creation/transfers than when I last did it, and none of the “easy” procedures theoretically “spelled out” across WP.org, WP.com, and StudioPress are easy. They list stuff piecemeal, but not by function, like “To add books, you need to do all of the following.” They instead show you how to “add books,” but not how to arrange them on the page, and do all you need to do to make them presentable in one easy procedure. They are all listed a la carte, so you have to know what else to do and search out and stitch them together on your own. Or so was my experience.  I created many trouble tickets—and to be fair, the SP Help folk were quick in responding.

BUT.

Give them screen shots when you contact them, because otherwise you’ll be running round and round with them as they initially and continually tell you to just “follow the instructions.”

I’m exhausted just thinking about all this again. But happy with the end result.

Later.