What inspired you to write?
I have always had a desire to start writing, after coming across an article explaining how easy it was to upload an ebook to the Amazon Kindle store I decided to do lots of research to find out more details and then gave it a shot. I have now written 9 ebooks since last August and my aim is write one ebook every two months now.

What genre to you prefer to read and write?
 I am a non fiction writer, I might attempt a fiction book in the future but my heart really is in writing non fiction for now.

Who are your favorite authors?

My favourite authors are non fiction writers, I have 3 in particular that I admire, I love their style of writing, James Altucher, Steve Scott and Michal Stawick.

Tell us something unique about your books.
My books are written in favour of helping the reader, be it self help by boosting their confidence or explaining how using a social media platform like Google Plus can benefit them, my entire writing process is based on the reader gaining new knowledge from purchasing one of my books. My latest book "Make Habits Stick To Maximise Your Time" hit number one in it's category.

What are you presently reading?
I am currently reading the new James Altucher book "The Choose Yourself Guide To Wealth" , great tips from a great man.

What plans do you have for future books?
For me any books that I release in the future I will be attempting to help the reader improve their life with simple to follow suggestions and tips based around incorporating lots of good habits into their lives. It is all about helping the reader!

What would you like to say to the readers?
Please keep supporting indie authors, we need all the help we can get.  

What advice would you give new authors?
If you are interest in writing an ebook then simply get typing away on your keyboard, if I can do it then anybody can, you just need to do some research and then write everyday. You can do it!    If you are already writing but you are finding it difficult then please stick with it, it takes a long time to hit your intended goals but keep persevering and keep believing in yourself.

My "Short & Silly" stories from my old blog were always successful posts, so I decided to post a Short & Silly TRUE story every Saturday. Some of these stories may be funny now, but at the time, they were quite serious.  Today's story is .....

My mother has NEVER had a sense of direction--NEVER.  I knew this at a very early age.
Thank God that when she was in the US Air Force she was not some navigational crewmen or something like that. The USAF fleet would still be lost over the Bermuda Triangle or something.

When I was about six years old, my mother would take the family shopping, and of course, my brother and I would want to go play the new home game systems--- Atari 2600 and Intellivision.  Consoles would be set up in the toy departments of stores across America, and parents would drop off their kids to be entertained while the parent shopped. The inevitable time came when the shopping would be done and the kid would be dragged away--- kicking and screaming, "But WHY can't i have it? I want that game! Please?"

Such was the ritual that my mother decided to break. Instead of her coming to the toy department, she told my brother and I to meet her in a particular part of the store at a particular time. When my mother did not arrive, my brother and I went to the Customer Service desk at the front of the store and said, "Could you please page my mom. She is lost."

The lady at the counter said, "Don't worry.. you are not lost. Everything will be alright." Apparently she did not comprehend the situation.

I repeated, "I'm not lost. My mother is lost. I know where I am."

The woman then proceeded to page, "Would the lost mother of Rhoda D'Ettore please come to Customer Service." 

After a few minutes, my mother arrived, pushing a full shopping cart, "I'm sorry I took so long. I could not find Customer Service."

I was six years old, looked at the woman at the desk and said, "See... she gets lost even at the front door of the store."

A few years later, Mom decided to take us to Dutch Wonderland, an amusement park in Pennsylvania--- that part is important. Pennsylvania.  The park is about 90 minutes Northwest of our home. After driving for a couple hours, my  mother decided to send me into McDonalds with a pen and paper and ask for directions. I guess that even at 8 years old, I could understand the directions better than she could.

I enter the establishment, and the sweet lady at the counter said, "Honey, you are in Baltimore, Maryland." It turned out that my mother got lost in four states that day... New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland.  She turned us around and started over from the start. By the time we reached the park, we were only able to get on two rides before the place closed.

These events in no way stopped her from trying to get us to various tourist spots. On our way to Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, Virginia, my mother landed us at the gate of a "secret military facility". A soldier approached, M16 in hand, "Turn your vehicle around and remove yourself from this property immediately."

My mother did not understand this man's determination to eject us from the premises. "But, sir, we are looking for Busch Gardens. I have no idea where I am. Can't you help me?"

Agitated, the solder repeated the order, "Ma'am, you are to remove yourself from this installation immediately. This is a Top Secret military installation, trespassers will be shot."

At this point, you would think a 48 year old woman in a station wagon with 4 kids would just turn around. Not my mother, "I was USAF and a GS-11 with top secret clearance. My number was AA-02678-9 (I made up the number, but you get the point). Now, please give me directions back to the road."

I don't think she realized he didn't care what clearance she had 15 years prior... all he wanted was for her to take her car, bags, brats and leave.  His response, "If I give you directions back to the road, then you will know how to trace back to this facility. Therefore, I cannot."

We kids started shouting out the window, "Please... tell us... trust us.. she will NEVER find her way back here. I'm shocked I'm not speaking Mexican by now!"

My mom always tried though. And we did make it back to New Jersey--- eventually. 

Stay tuned for next week's adventure of "Short & Silly Saturday"

Saturday's post of Short & Silly was so popular I decided to try to write one every day.  Growing up in a family with 5 kids certain has provided me with enough material to do so! :)

My father died, leaving my mother with 5 kids-- ages 2, 3, 14, 16, 17. As if that was not bad enough, our house was incredibly tiny... a 2.5 bedroom house with a bathroom the size of a closet. Who the hell ever heard of a "half of a bedroom"?  This basically forced us to be on top of each other at all times. We might as well have just written "D'Ettore Asylum" on the front door and petitioned for grants from the state. Things were THAT crazy sometimes.

Occasionally my mother would have the delusion that taking our tribe in public was a good idea... uh.. I'm still think she must have been on drugs.  One day she took us to "Rustler's Steak House", a cafeteria style steakhouse that cooked your steak to order right in front of you. Even at 5 years old, I wanted well done. There was no way I wanted to be hacking into something that was bloody and about to run away.  The trips there always included packing some doggie bags to take home.

The adventure did not end in the restaurant. Any parent knows that kids love the front seat of the car.... so all five kids would run from the door of the store/restaurant to across the parking lot and screaming, laying claims to the front seat. This particular night I remember my brother and I trying to push the teenagers and getting nowhere. My sister, Lee, grabbed Gail's hand, trying to remove it from the handle.

"I want the front seat! It's not fair! You always get the front!"

"Shut up! You're too little!"

"You shut up, you had the seat last time!"

All the kids were pushing and pulling so much that no one could open the door. My mother got frustrated and placed the doggie bags on the roof of the car, yelled for us to "act normal"... (uh.. lady.. where have you been my whole life? This IS normal). Finally my mother selected one kid to sit in the front seat, then opened the door and allowed us all to climb in. 


As soon as the car started, everyone started yelling about which radio station to put on. Kids' arms darted from the back seat to the front as cries of joy or disappointment rang out at the selection. At a stop light, my teen sisters noticed a car full of boys in the next lane. Each of the three girls pushed and argued over which of them the boys were admiring. They blew kisses and winked at the boys for a mile or so. Then my mother hit the brakes to stop at the next light.


All three sisters jumped to the floor of the car as the doggie bags from the roof slid down, drizzling gravy all down the windshield. The boys in the next car were laughing and pointing. They honked their horn and blew kisses back before they took off.


Of course, all parents have done something like this. My mother was always leaving her purse or coffee cup on the roof of the car. To this day, I have no idea have none of us wound up falling off that roof... because, as you know from Saturday's post... my mother would not have been able to find her way back to the original spot to find us.

If you like my humor, be sure to check out my book "Goin' Postal & The Creek".

The Philosophical Ramblings of Some Amateur Aspiring Writer

I hate reading.

How’s that for a catchy opening? That’s what we’re supposed to do in writing, isn’t it? Then again, such a statement is pretty much blasphemy in the intellectual world. Reading is elevated to almost divine status in every corner of the academic world. Perhaps with good reason. It is indeed hyperbole to say that I truly hate reading. I suppose it’s a lot more accurate to say that reading is often difficult for me because I often find so little actually said amidst the wall of words I’m greeting with when I turn a page. Maybe that’s because writers so often get so caught up in the “rules” of writing that their story is smothered, or maybe they ignored those rules so much that their unbound literary chops are dispersed in the wind never to be made any sense of again. Either way, I’m left closing the book or logging away.

You’re probably ready to do that now, right? Why on earth would you sit through some soapbox from a self-professed writer who is getting on some high horse to justify why he doesn’t read that much? Beats me. I’d probably be long gone by now so kudos to you if you’re still here.

I suppose the motive behind it all is that I think writing and reading should, in theory, be all that it’s cracked up to be. But so often it’s hindered by it’s own pretentiousness into something reserved for the intellectual elite and the bookworms. It often becomes so detached from the human experience that it becomes neither a sobering look at humanity or a sudsy escape. It just becomes a chore. At least, this has been my experience. I’m lazy. I don’t like to work. And I certainly don’t like to work doing something that is supposed to be a pastime. Leisure. Fun.

Now I’m not saying we need to throw all or even any of the writing “rules” to the wind. I just think maybe we get so hung up on them that we lose the joy of sharing pieces of ourselves with other people. Often I find myself reading a story and I’m just flat out bored. I see what’s happening, but I don’t particularly care. Maybe it’s brilliant and relevant literature. It could be the best thing written since they invented the word processor. But all too often, it just doesn’t resonate and after just a little bit, I need a break. Not all books are like this for me. I have enjoyed that high of picking up something truly engrossing. I even read a few books in a day’s time each, which for me is extremely rare. In hindsight, many of these books have noticeable “flaws” according to all the things you’re told you absolutely have to do if you want your work to not suck. And yet, they connected with me in ways the books that “get it right” never do. They got me to care about these characters in the ordinary moments.

Maybe it’s not so remarkable to capture attention for the midst of chaos. Afterall, even in real life we are fascinated by the extraordinary. You can’t go one day without news trumpeting something life-shattering being mentioned every few minutes. Occasionally, heroic triumphs over obstacles get a segment to themselves. But do we ever care about the emotion of the day-to-day lives of others? Why would anyone care about that? It’s only where most of us are at any given time. Who wants to read about that? Well…me. That’s not to say conflict isn’t the heart of a story or that we should waste too much time watching characters watch TV, eat dinner, or take a bath. But the good stories that affected me the most always made me just as interested in those moments as when the characters are running for their lives or lamenting the loss of everything they hold dear. Those are the often-unseen stakes that fuel the importance of all the life or death conflicts that truly interest everyone, myself included. Doing those scenes right is every bit as hard as anything else, but I think it’s a detail that I often find missing in the stories. Too often, everything just feels so rehearsed and stuffy. So manipulated. So written. It’s hard to get lost in something where you’re strapped down and forced to watch something unfold.

What’s the point of all of this? Again, heck if I know. Maybe it’s just some over-psychoanalyses for why it’s so hard for me to get into a book. Yet, for all of that talk, I am a writer. I’ve written at least a draft of eight novels in addition to lots of projects including a serial that had over half a million words to it. I’ve slowed down as of late but I can safely say I’m proud with how much I’ve written already. Maybe writing gave me the buzz that reading never did, a chance to truly immerse myself in another world without the trappings of it feeling written. But then I started getting critique and that joy started to strangle. Don’t get me wrong. Most of the critique made me a better writer, even if it was only in being able to recognize when somebody was completely full of crap. But it did perhaps show me that sometimes we get so caught up in the things that don’t really matter in a story. One of my mentors once told me that the readers don’t care about all of the things writers do. Writers often spend so much time obsessing over this detail or that details, worrying about adverb number, person agreement, and all that jazz that on paper matters and is an essential element if you want to reach readers. Yet, do readers really care about things as much as we think? If a reader is truly caught up in a story, will they notice a little slipup in these golden hallmarks of professional quality? (This isn’t an excuse to start putting out typo-ridden messes, folks)

The aforementioned serial was essentially a primetime soap opera written with weekly “episodes” and casts of characters complete with ideal actors I’d cast for the part. I had a good five or so readers throughout the whole thing. It was beautiful. And a hot mess. The structural and compositional qualities of this thing were putrid. Especially from my grown perspective now. But I had readers. They cared about my story and my characters and I honestly think they were probably more involved than readers were for my more academically sound stories. At the end of the second season of that show, I killed off several main characters, and one of them was a boy that one of my readers had grown incredibly attached to. It was drawn-out, schmaltzy, sentimental hogwash. Yet it affected this reader profusely. It devastated her. Some six years later, she still remembers it and holds it against me that her favorite character met a violent end. That’s a proud moment for a writer. For all the amateur execution, my story connected to somebody. And now I spend so much time fretting over this detail or that detail. Does it matter? Probably. Getting bad writing out of the way makes it easier to connect, obviously. But yet, so many of my readers probably don’t even notice. They don’t remember this sentence or that. They don’t even remember that this little point-of-view slip. They remembered the journey of these characters. The pain when they died. The joy when they were safe. The thrill when they didn’t know which way the story would go. And yes, even sometimes the often mundane antics that occur in houses across America day to day. They remembered the people.

All of this is to say, don’t let writing become a chore. Yes, make sure you know the craft. Be vigilant in correcting mistakes. Make your word choice intentional. All the things you are taught, keep them in the back of your mind. But don’t let the rules drive your writing. Often enough, we follow the rules a lot more closely than we realize without even thinking about it. It’s the fretting about it that actually makes us more prone to violating the rules. Just write. Let the story flow. These are people. They have lives they cherish and I want to cherish them too. If somebody is threatening them, let me care. I’m not looking for ascetic perfection. I’m looking to give a hoot. They say that the writer should disappear in a story, and they are right. But that is often done passively and not actively. You don’t disappear because you try to. You disappear when you are right there with the reader experiencing this story.

“Blood Chain” still thrills me even 5 years after it first popped into my head. Now that it’s finally out, I can finally share those thrills with others. Is it perfect? Heck no. Is it even a remotely decent seller? Nope. But it’s finally fulfilled its purpose and connected with readers. I could’ve done a lot better. I also could’ve done a lot worse. It could’ve just continued sitting around collecting digital dust, occasionally being tweaked with, awaiting the hope that one day it would be this perfect bestseller. Perhaps it would’ve been waiting forever. Instead, now it truly lives. Maybe in some small corner of Amazon, but it lives. It has readers. It was a story that revealed itself to me, in all its awkward messiness, and I published it. And people have liked it. Not everyone, but more than ever could’ve seen it otherwise.

Think I’m an out-of-touch and full-of-crap nutcase? I can live with that. Maybe I’m just a dreamer with too much time to ponder the philosophical facets of what makes a good story. All I know is that I am a person who wants to connect with others. Something either does that for me or it doesn’t. Writing does that for me. Reading only occasionally does. When it happens, it’s amazing. And if it doesn’t, it’s not necessarily a fault on that author. But even if something is heralded as amazing, if it doesn’t connect with me, what use is it? Regardless of your thoughts about writing and story, never lose sight of the real end. It’s my theory, at least, that we become so obsessed with writing a certain way that we end up losing sight of what it was we were trying to do. We’re a generation that doesn’t read. We want instant gratification. Maybe that can’t be fixed. Or maybe it can, if we redirect our approach on course. If we remembered the reason we started reading and writing in the first place.