Carey Burns

I'm Carey Burns, I'm a writer, and I'm a mess.  I have four flashdrives for my writing.  Four.  With multiple versions of all of my stories on each of them.  That's a lot of stories.  So finding something I'm working on is a chore in itself.  This week, I'm on an organizational kick.  I'm wiping out old versions of stories and getting down to just two flashdrives:  one working and one backup.  I know, I know, there's some Cloud out there and other services that will gladly store my stuff, but I'm paranoid and don't embrace change easily.  I still have 3.5 inch floppies!  (that sounds wrong...)  Anyway, the point is, I'm making a huge effort to treat my stories better than I have been.  Next up is getting all of my handwritten scribbles in some sort of organized fashion.  That might take a while. In other writerly news, I've decided to throw caution to the wind and join the Horror Writers Association (HWA) as an...

Surprise, surprise!  I'm getting better, I promise.  I've been very busy lately formatting my Sketchbook Project and right now it is available on Smashwords.  It is called " Sounds Fishy:  Mermaid Haikus and Wisdom " and is free--free--free!  A lovely handful of quasi-naughty haikus and my own illustrations...just for you!  Hopefully soon it'll be available for Kindle and Nook, etc.  Now that I'm finished with that formatting joy, I'm in the process of putting together my own collection of short stories.  Right now, I have just over 34,000 words accumulated and I'll be adding a couple more stories.  I already have the cover concept done and am getting a few new beta readers lined up.  With any luck, I'll have a PDF to give them within a week or so.  Then I can get back into my novel. Slimming is still a work in progress.  I  haven't gained, but I'm not losing big numbers each week like in the first cycle of The Shred...

Tomorrow is September 1st, which is the beginning of my Halloween season.  When not working my ass of at the gym or working on homework, I shall begin the fun that is decorating my house.  This year's theme is birds and I can't wait to bring my raven friends out of storage.  I'm nearing completion of my Haiku Horror Stories book and with any luck it should be out for Halloween.  That is if I don't screw something up in the self-publishing process...wish me luck with that!  In the past 3 weeks I have lost a total of 6.5 pounds and feel a lot leaner than I did before.  I start week 4 on Monday and hope to lose another 2 pounds.  Slow and steady.  I might even get brave tomorrow at the gym and ask to see what my percentage of body fat is.  As indicated by my latest credit card statement, I believe I have a booth at an upcoming festival to sell my various jewelry and crafty wares.  It will be a family affair with items from my sisters,...

Hi there!  So much is going on right now, it is hard to get a moment to be calm and puke the words out.  Let's see...what to share.... First, I've begun a new diet plan which is amazing me every single day.  I was a huge fan of the Fat Smash, but this is better and (surprise) it is from the same person--Dr. Ian Smith.  I've lost 3 pounds in 7 days and feel amazing.  I started the 2nd week on Tuesday and I'm still going strong with a only one slight "oopsie, did I shove that into my gaping maw" incident with cookies.  Oh, there were cookies everywhere I went on Tuesday...bad day. Second, the haiku horror story is nearing completion and I've been scraping some of the weirder images out of my brain right into this book.  I just hope others find them as weird and creepy as I do at 3:33am when I wake up and get freaked out. Third, I'm back to 8 hour days and working on Fridays so my habits/routines are all squinched up.  I don't like th...

Well, I've finally taken a moment to get back to the blog, so here I am.  Not much has changed in my absence--I'm still struggling with the slimming down and still pouring my soul onto paper (or keyboards).  I think those are two constants in my life.  Anywho... I was one of the lucky winners from the EHAG giveaway and I have the CUTEST Halloween plaque and then I won a copy of Flush Fiction, thanks to William Todd R.D. Wood ! This is the luckiest I've been in quite some time.  When I wasn't "getting lucky" this month, I've been reading.  A lot.  Way more than I probably should have been, but it was good.  I finished Suzanne Robb's "Z-Boat" as well as Richard Marsden's "Traveling Tyrant Casual Fridays" and I slapped up a couple of reviews for them on Amazon.  Eventually, I will add them here.  It wasn't all fun zombie and science fiction, no, it was reading a first-hand account of Coronado's travels and learning abo...

There is nothing like slamming a door on your own finger to make you appreciate the complex mind-hand connection.  It is like I'm learning to type all over again and it isn't pretty. So it turned out I submitted three stories to different publishers.  That means I'm only 9 away from my yearly goal.  Fancy!  I was going to write the ending to a couple stories tonight, but that was before the whole slamming of the finger, so that will wait until sometime in the future.  If you could see the typos I'm making here you would cringe.  Seriously! Slimming isn't going so well today, but I'm trying.  Somehow I'm pretty sure I may have gained a little weight over the weekend...just a hunch. Okay, gonna quit the blog now because it is taking longer to fix the typos than it is to type the blog.  Bah!

Well, I did not die over the weekend, though it sure felt like it on Friday...  I'm now convinced I've been having gallbladder attacks and decided to take steps to ensure that they are fewer.  (aka cutting out that damned FAT from my diet)  Seems like everytime I had an attack was after eating something with fat in it (grilled cheese...fries...ice cream...pasta w/ olive oil and parm...) so I'm trying to cut as much fat from food as I can.  It actually coincides well with jumping back into The Slimming project. Last night I spent two hours working on a very old story that might just see print in the future.  It was neat to re-read it and try to weave in the editor's suggestions.  I think it totally works and am excited for him to read it.  Hopefully I will complete it tonight and send it his way. Another project has been weaseling its way into my head and I fear all other projects will be pushed aside until this little boy's story can be told. ...