AND THE ANSWER IS?

NO!  Not just no, but hell no!

I'm coming up with a standard answer these days.  Just say no.  Here are a few.

No, I don't want to go to dinner at an expensive restaurant.  No, I don't want a new car.  No, I don't want to go to your church.  No, I don't want to take a cruise . . . anywhere.  No, I will not respond to your text message.  No, I don't want a drink of anything with alcohol in it.  No, I will not loan you my pickup truck.  No, I will not loan you money (unless you're a kid or grandkid).  No, I will not enter your contest.  No, my tools are not for loan.  No, I will not buy your foreign raised anything (like Walmart fish).  No, I will not wait for hours if my appointment was at 10:00 o'clock.  No, I will not stand in line to see a movie.  No, I will not attend a concert with you (Unless it's James Taylor or some other entertainer I admire).  No, I will not donate to any national fundraiser.  No, you can't have one of my cats.  No, I do not want to be a Mormon or Jehovah's Witness.  No, I won't write a poem for you.  No, I won't play guitar and sing for you.  No, I won't go Black Friday shopping with you.  No, I won't go tubing down the Guadalupe with you.  No, I will not play golf with you.  No, I won't watch Duck Dynasty or any other redneck show with you.  No, you can't have free copies of my books (unless I owe you).  No, you can't sell my collected stuff on ebay (until I'm dead).  No, I will never euthanize an animal out of convenience.  No, I will not go hunting with you.  No, I will not go on vacation with you (unless you're my wife).  And no, you don't have to read this idiotic blog if you don't want to (I should've said that first, right?)

WHO INSPIRES YOU TO WRITE?

I write something everyday, and sometimes I do that without inspiration from anyone or anything.  I just do it because pecking out words on a keyboard makes me happy.  It's not an ego thing, not something I do to exorcise demons or impress anyone or anything like that.  Call me crazy, but I even talk to myself, and I don't like the sound of my own voice.  I'm not even particularly interested in anything I have to say either.  The only thing good that comes from talking to yourself is that sometimes what you say strikes you as stupid or off base - something you wouldn't want to say to anyone else.  Writing to yourself sometimes comes across the same way, and that's why they put the delete key on a keyboard . . . for people like me . . . and I  use it a lot.

Nobody in particular has ever really inspired me to write, but several authors have sure inspired me to read.  One of those authors is Dan Jenkins, a sportswriter and novelist.  Funny man, and fun to read.  And, he's a fellow Texan.  I loved his Baja Oklahoma story, partly because I lived in Oklahoma for a long time.  I loved Dead Solid Perfect, and several other novels he wrote.  I can't remember reading a single Sports Illustrated article by him, but I liked his books.  And even though you don't get much inspiration from reading other authors, there's no denying that what you read somehow turns up in what your write.  Many years ago, back in the 1980s, I read a rejection letter from a major publisher back east and was delighted when the editor compared my writing to that of Dan Jenkins . . . said I reminded her of him.  I took that as a compliment, even though I can't see much similarity between what I write and what Jenkins has written.

This is my 100th blog, and I'm writing it completely without inspiration and with little to say.  Just wanted to see the number roll up, I guess.  I'll probably write more, and I'll do so without caring where the words fly off to when I hit the publish button.  You never know when what you peck out will be the last thing you write, especially at my age.  I don't even care about that.  Writing blogs is like working out to stay in shape.  Before long, I'll finish several more novels and get them in print.  It's different with a book.  They're going to be around a long time after I'm gone.  I don't know where, but they'll be out there somewhere, and something I did in this life will still be alive.  And even if they die away in time, they still will have outlasted me.  I like that.

BLOGS: HOW ARE WE DOING?

I started using this site to blog about 3 months ago, and I knew going in that it takes a while to acquire an audience.  I'm not new at this, got big into blogs years ago, then got bored with it and quit.  Until recently, I haven't done much blogging, and that now includes sites here at Blogger and at Wordpress . . . and several less used sites at Weebly.  This one gets the most views, about 1,700 since I started back in early October, and some 940 this past month.  Nearly half the views come from Malaysia, and that surprises me.  A few are coming from Europe.  On the other sites I maintain, almost all the views are from the U.S.  Overall, my blogs have had about 1,500 views this month (all sites), and that's only about fifty a day . . . not many.  Still, Blogger is my best site, the one I like using the best.  My attention span is short, meaning I get bored easily, but we'll stick with it a while and see what happens. 

I'm not disappointed because I don't write blogs intended for mainstream readers, like those catchy things about politics or social issues, etc.  I'll do one now and then, but mine are usually little lighthearted things, nothing of great importance.  I write about books I've written or those I'm working on.  I write about rural life, small town living, cats, and hobbies or crafts I pursue.  And I write about life as an old guy, something a lot of folks don't even want to think about.  Yeah, I'm old, and I can't do anything about that . . . other than write about it.

Over at Weebly, I maintain sites called Clowder Country (about cats), Hiram's Cove (about old people in a retirement village, based on a book I'm writing), and Philip Martin Cawlfield's Blogs, which is mostly about Texas (with pictures).  Here at Blogger, I'm D. Paz Dalton, same as my site at Wordpress.  Just thought I'd mention that, in case you'd like to check 'em out.  If not, you know where to find me here.  And, thanks for looking in.

THE BLOG INTERNATIONAL AUDIENCE

I don't remember what it was called, but I used to belong to a pen pal site that allowed me to exchange letters with people from other countries.  That amused me for a while, even taught me a little about foreign languages.  The site had a language translator so I could send emails they could at least break down and understand . . . and the pen pal did the same with me.  I visited with a guy in Portugal, one from Chile, and another from Argentina . . . but that was some time ago.  Moli came along, and I got a site there and started blogging.  That turned up big for me because I got lots of reads, and I was amazed to see that most of them came from other countries.  Too bad, but Moli went down the tubes, and that put an end to my blogging for a while. 

So now I have this blog site on Blogger, and it tells me where views come from.   Yesterday I posted a couple of blogs and the site got 85 views, and most of them were from Malaysa.  A few came from Germany.  D. Paz Dalton pops up a lot if you google the name, so I understand how foreigners can find me.  No one comments on the blog views I get from international viewers, and that tells me they don't actually read them.  They view the site, but my stats gizmo shows few actual reads.  Makes me wonder if maybe I'm just wasting my time.  I usually get bored with blogging, take long layoffs from time to time.  Once I get back to working on books, this will slow down a lot.  And that's why I do it.  If I don't write, I get stale, and a stale writer produces stale books . . . or blogs, sort of like this one.

WHO IS PERCY B. HAND?

Hiram Butts, a big time developer and construction man back in the fifties, had a dream of building the perfect retirement village.  He had the time, the money, and the staff to do it . . . and Hiram's Cove became a reality.  Lots of folks just call it Crab Apple Cove because Butts loved those trees and planted lots of them.  He planted apple trees of all kinds, in fact, but the Crab Apple Trees are a signature thing at Hiram's Cover.  It's very near a nice lake in the brush country of Texas, and it's imaginary.  Author Philip Martin Cawlfield created it for a book he's been working on for years.  It's been around a while, used to have a site of its one some years back. 

Phil created the place as a home for some highly unusal characters, like Chuckie Phat Nguyen.  He's a cowboy, a rancher, and the owner of Chuckie Phat's Rodehouse, a hangout for lots of older folks looking for some fun and entertainment.  But the most dynamic resident of Hiram's Cove is Percy B. Hand - a self made writer.  You'll find his blog there at Hiram's Cove (on Weebly), but don't expect anything in the way of mainstream writing from Percy.  He's a retired mechanic, a big time animal lover, and a social critic.  He dropped out of school after the sixth grade and went to work to help suport a poor and struggling family, but hard work and some luck allowed him to live a comfortable lower middle class lifestyle.  He quit working on cars when Detroit started putting computers in them, and he flunked retraining at the local Ford garage where he worked.  He divorced is wife after thirty years of marriage, due mostly to her habit of liking to point her feet toward the ceiling, if you get my drift.  He caught her in the act with some old boy he couldn't stand, so he pinged the guy on the noggin with a small aluminum baseball bat.  He must've liked the sound because that wasn't the last time he used the bat.  In fact, he almost got famous for pinking people who needed it.  He singled handedly broke up a local dog fighting group with that bat . . . and went to jail for it. 

Percy got sympathetic with a cause that also got him thrown in jail several times.  He had a daughter living in Austin, and he fell in with some homeless people there.  He even tried teaching them a better way of getting people to give them change.  Instead of begging for money, he found a good spot along the highway and built a small mound of broken bricks.  Then he put up a sign that read, "A buck keeps me from throwing a brick through your windshield."  That's when the cops came and hauled him off to jail for a week.  Anyway, Percy wore out his welcome in Austin, and in the small town he'd lived in all his life, and moved down to Hiram's Cove.  And he hasn't used his bat once since he moved there, although he's threatened to a time or two.

Percy got tired of being undereducated and went to a local juco and signed up for some adult eduction classes.  He did well, and they even allowed him to take some regular classes.  He learned some English, how to use a computer, and that's when he decided to be a writer.  His first writing attempts weren't likely to draw much interest.  He wrote some how to essays - like how to make a slingshot out of rubbers, or how to cook roadkill, or how to fix a loose muffler with bailing wire. Then he got interested in writing about things like animal care.  He even wrote a piece on how not to castrate a tomcat, and it got lots of reads (and complaints) on the internet.  Anyway, Percy is different.  Look him up at Weebly under Hiram's Cove.  He's just started writing a few blogs again, and he's a hoot!