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Blog postYou deserve a good mansplanation The mansplainer, proud to share A series of articles about stuff you might already know.
I won’t apologize for assuming you don’t know something I write about. When humanity was at its peak, people yearned for knowledge. Now that we are on the decline, people with knowledge are ostracized or labeled “elitists”. Today, the hoi polloi asserts its right to ignorance. And thus the term “mansplaining” is born.
What’s “hoi polloi”? You can Goo -
Blog postIn celebration of the end of four years of hell. Donald and Melania Trump by Daisy Rockwell (shreedaisy) Today I read that Trump told his supporters to pipe down when they booed him on national television. He advocated that everyone should get the booster shot. Huh.
No one is all bad. As much as I couldn’t bear to listen to Trump, he did a few things during his presidency that were positive from my perspective. It was often due to his incompetence that he did the right thing, d -
Blog postA loose scrap collected by a dear friend What I Did For My Summer Vacation Most young adults in my circle spent the summer after freshman year doing interesting things. Some went to live on a winery in Italy; some worked on a kibbutz. I had a full-blown psychotic break and spent the whole summer in the mental hospital.
It was only slightly worse than working in a communal agricultural setting, but almost nobody from my original circle of friends can say they did the same. That’s why -
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Blog postReadership vs. Mission I wrote 5150 and the other books in the Psychotic Break Series to make known what was unknowable. I wanted to take the reader through the mind of a new adult whose fragile mind shattered and rebuilt itself several times. My mission was a success. What I hadn’t considered was the readership […]
The post What I Have Learned About My Books appeared first on Duncan MacLeod.
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Blog postIf you’re a fan of my novels and novellas, you may get a kick out of the short stories I published on Instagram as @5150DuncanMac.
In addition to “What Lurks in the Library”, I also published “The Baptism” and “The Phone Calls”. They are a blend of humor and horror lite. The trick to reading them is to follow the trail back to the one that says “1 of 7” or “1 of 9” or whatever, then read in chronological order. Occasionally, there was something so damn exciting I had to post, ruining< -
Blog postA short horror story about bullying and its underlying causes
What Lurks in the Library: A queer horror story by Duncan MacLeod
Julius Highbaugh loved books more than anything. He read a book every couple of days and listened to audiobooks when he walked to and from Midvale Junior High. School was a mixed bag. He liked math, science, English – all the classes except Gym. He was good friends with two of his teachers, but his fellow students were nasty and picked on him.
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Blog postTap on the book cover to go to the Amazon page What was your favorite part of 5150? Your least favorite?The author intended to reduce stigma around mental illness by putting a reader inside the mind of a psychotic. Do you think they reduced stigma? Why or why not?Although 5150 is set in the past, in a pre-internet world, do you still feel it resonates with its readers? What about it is timeless?If you could speak to one of the characters directly, whom would you choose and what would you disc
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Blog postLooking for a quick trick for clearing the mind? In olden times, when we had to navigate our computer using text commands, there was one DOS command that always scared me: ‘del *.*’, a command that wipes out all the files in a given directory and all its subdirectories. If you did it at the C:\ prompt, you would effectively erase your entire computer, losing all your software, files, photos, etc. Today it popped into my head while I was thinking about my novel in progress, Jagniel, sequel to
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Blog postSome cleaning is best done by hand
When I’m not writing and editing my bestselling novels and short stories, I actually work a day job with numbers and spreadsheets and databases. I found my niche in that market. Think of someone who has to write, edit copy and make improvements to a manuscript. What skills do they possess that could possibly be needed in database administration? It seems like a completely unrelated field.
It’s not unrelated. Think about these skills:
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Blog postI met Bill Rasmussen in Fourth Grade at Mills Elementary School in Benicia, California. Bill came from a large, poor family who lived in a big house on East J street. His mother, June, was very good at stretching dollars. She baked her own bread, served Carnation powdered milk, and forced the family to go vegetarian so they wouldn’t starve. Bill’s father, Larry, was a carpenter. He chose the job in honor of his childhood hero, Jesus.
The Rasmussens were good Christians – t -
Blog postThe blog is going to remain up, but new content will be found on http://www.duncanwritesbooks.com
If you sign up for my newsletter, you get a free copy of 5150. Scroll down the home page and sign up! I write very infrequently so you don’t have to worry about your inbox overflowing with snake oil. Just a few thoughtful essays, perhaps a short story, or more grammatical fun.
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Blog postSometimes I get so excited to finish a cycle of edits on a novel, I decide it’s ready to go without giving a holistic read. The solution for this is to order review copies and pass over with a red pen. In the process of fleshing out 7th Avenue South (prequel to 5150) I inadvertently ruptured the timeline and told a half dozen stories twice. I was so anxious to get the paperback book out there. I published it before my review copies arrived.
I wasted a few hours being embarrassed befor -
Blog postMy aunt Clara, a second cousin really, was a writer of children’s books. She loved being around children, so her book tours were a source of great joy for her. She also liked to mentor young adults. When I was newly sober, after a harrowing run in with the mental health system and drug culture, Clara came to see me in San Francisco. She bought me a computer through a catalog, and I was hooked.
A couple of years went by, and I took a train out to Minnesota to visit her. I was in my mid -
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Blog postThe first novel in my series, 5150, is a gritty self-exposure of the inner workings of a teenage mind in the throes of psychosis. It’s a roman ‘a clef revealing some of my deepest secrets. Most people who know me long enough to remember that period in my life are aware I was diagnosed at the time with schizophreniform disorder. The rest of my friends were astonished to learn that I had been hospitalized and still suffer today from a fairly mild case of bipolar depression.
Good friend -
Blog post5150 and Half have always been on Kindle Unlimited, but now M3X1(0 and A Quarter are too. If you subscribe to Prime, you can read one book per month for free. If you have Kindle Unlimited, you can read all four whenever you want!
Read 5150 on Amazon for Free if you have Prime or Kindle Unlimited -
Blog postIt sounds much harsher than it is. Pathetic fallacy is a story-telling technique in which the environment surrounding a character is an extension of what is happening inside their head. My first introduction to pathetic fallacy was in Wuthering Heights when Heathcliff is raging somewhere on the moors while thunder and lightning crash and flash. At least that’s how it’s stuck in my head all these years later. It is also when human emotions are attributed to an inanimate object, like a “sad” cl
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Blog postFrom bane to boon
Readers ask me how I manage to construct complex sentences without grammatical errors. My answer is always the same: ‘Warriner’s English Grammar and Composition’.
In Junior High, I had two great English teachers. They were night and day when it came to their teaching style and curriculum. The only constant was the cursed Warriner’s grammar book.
“Today we’re diagramming sentences.” The class would give a collective groan. What was the point of breakin -
Blog postWhich one are you? Writing can be drawing if you need it to be Are you the writer who makes an appointment each day or week to sit down and write for a set period of time? Or are you the writer who can only write when inspiration strikes?
If you know me, you know I’m a bit of a slob. I blame it on left-handedness and the need to keep tasks visible on my desk. Similarly, I find schedules really kill my hard on for writing. Right brain thinkers, in general, don’t do well with disciplin -
Blog postI discovered that all four of my book blurbs were lacking “the hook”, that killer first line that makes a casual book shopper want to read the rest of the book description. I added hook lines to all my blurbs a few days ago. It should not be “keyword optimized”, but rather a well-crafted plain English one-line pitch for the book.
5150 – Psychosis is not for the faint of heart. Half – A halfway house is a terrible place to fall in love. M3X1(0 – During the 1988 financial crisis in Mexico, -
Blog postI got laid off because I was underage It wasn’t until I wrote the fourth book (A Quarter) that I at last had one of those “know thyself” moments. I have been laid off or fired from nearly two dozen jobs. I’m smart, very good at solving problems…but I don’t fit in with corporate culture. I don’t even fit in with anti-establishment culture. Here is an incomplete inventory of the jobs where I had to quit or was let go for incompetence, under-agedness, or spite:
Vallejo Times Herald – Pape
Titles By Duncan MacLeod
