F. P. Dorchak

Speculative Fiction (New Weird) Author

Blogs

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….

 

 

 

 

 

 

And Now…I Will Leave You….

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I Will Leave You To The Dark…. (Photo © F. P. Dorchak and Jan C J Jones, 2016)
I Will Leave You To The Dark…. (Photo © F. P. Dorchak and Jan C J Jones, 2016)

Black Friday—how apropos in terms of title!

I had not planned on publishing this here. The origin of this piece is kinda funny: it had started as a blog comment on my friend, Susie Lindau’s, fun Hallowe’en blog post, “Welcome to the Wild Halloween Blogger’s Bash“! Susie is a trip, and she comes up with really cool ideas for posts, like this one, in which she’d said: “Drop a link to your blog in the comments and leave an enticing hook that penetrates the victim’s soul, if they have one.” In her post she also had a cool graphic with the words: “Join me in a blog party that will leave you breathless.”

Well…I had to try to come up with something. This was way too cool of an opportunity to pass up—and on Hallowe’en, my most favorite holiday (and yes, it really should be a holiday where you actually get the day off)!

Anywho, while in the middle of doing half a dozen other things for which I took the day off, I sat down and belted this thing out. Posted it. It literally got me chuckling like an evil little clown doll!

What I had tried to do was write up something creepy that involved imagery from as much of my writing as possible, without going too overboard. To lend an horrific flavor to my overall short story effort. It was so funny and creepy I thought, you know, I should post this on Facebook (and here). So I did. It would be my little “Hallowe’en decoration,” though I’d also posted a Hallowe’en short story, called “The Hallowe’en Tree.” It was fun, that’s all it was, and it was fitting! And with one modification, the rest is as I’d written it that day. Thanks, Susie, for the cool inspiration! The title and subject matter are also “wildly” appropriate, here, becaaause…

This concludes my free short story releases!

It’s been exactly a year of releases! I’ve released 55 short stories/poems and one essay. And I know, not all of them were, well—good—but I sincerely thank all of you who read and commented and followed my work! I had wanted to post the best of my work over the years, in as close to their original form as possible, on this site. To have a “paper trial,” if you will. Then I would heavily edit as much as possible the better of these, and put them in my first and only short story collection, which is due out next year (2017). I will also include any new stories I might come up with prior to its publication (I’m currently working on a new one). The collection is tentatively titled, Do The Dead Dream? It will be released in both e- and print book formats. I’m really excited about finally getting these out there! This has been such a labor of love and quite the trip down memory lane!

I thank Mandy Pratt for her editorial, copyediting, and proofreading assistance! Her efforts will be seen in the final versions in the 2017 collection. She has largely been in the background of these posts, but a couple of times I did employ her for a post or two that really needed an extra eye up front. “The Wreck” was one of them, as well as “Rewrite,” which was a brand new story I’d written this year.

Once again, thank you all for your support and kind words! It’s been a crazy, sometimes eye-opening journey reliving my younger-self’s mindsets and creativity, and I hope I’ve managed to both entertain and enlighten! It is truly with a measure of wistful nostalgia that I finally move on from these works into whatever future belongs to my new efforts….

This post had originally been published October 31, 2016, on Susie Lindau’s “Welcome to the Wild Halloween Blogger’s Bash.” And so…

 

I will leave you breathless

I will leave you headless

I will leave you lifeless

I will leave you soulless

 

I will leave you inside-out

I will leave you ripped about

I will leave you full of knives

I will leave you praying for doubt

 

I will leave you to the dark

I will leave you largely in parts

I will leave you worse than I came

I will leave you to my arts

 

I will leave you on the floor

I will leave you on the wall

I will leave you on the ceiling

I will leave you cloaked in pall

 

I will bruise your mind

I will rend your spirit

I will make you mine

I will have you…upon which to dine

 

I

Will never leave you.

 

Short Story Links

Links to all my posted short stories are here.