Welcome to Movember -Tribute Post

Well, it's that time of year again;  that time where the autumn air is crisp and the promise of winter lingers just beyond the horizon.  It is a time when, more than ever, men around the world need their facial hair in order to survive the wickedness of the winter elements.

And of course it is that time of year, where in honor of Movember, (that isn't at typo) men are required to shave their coveted and carefully crafted crumb catchers and cheek cowlicks before embarking on exemplary, entertaining, and new gregarious growths of follicle glory.

While everyone puts the focus on individuals who have to grow their man-staches. I think it is important to note the individuals who have been growing facial hair for near to a year and then need to part ways with their blessed beauties in order to start from scratch.

So with that in mind, let us pay tribute to our fallen facial hair giant.


   

In a later post I will do a team lineup.  Getting pictures from everybody is like herding cats, so for now just enjoy the glorious metamorphosis above or check out our team page and leave a small donation for men's health if you feel so inclined.

Team page for the Fu Manchu Men

TTFN Denmonites!

-ND

Guest Post: Author Ed Dasso of Past Aghast

Ed Dasso is the author of Past Aghast.  He has agreed to do a guest post for those of us at Cat Get Off My Keyboard.   I asked him to write a bit about the underlying Post Traumatic Stress Disorder theme prevalent in his novel.  As our warriors return home from engagements abroad, and there are sure to be more engagements to come, I felt like it was as good a topic as any when exploring current relevancy within a piece of literature.

His novel is excellent and you can purchase it by clicking the cover above.  

Ed says:

“You read about it in the headlines - Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has been blamed for a number of behavioral health issues for war veterans…” is not only the start of the synopsis of my novel, “Past Aghast”, but also describes how I developed the plot for my first major work of fiction.

As a physician I’ve had plenty of opportunity to see people afflicted with PTSD and see how it can significantly impact their lives. One day I received a call from a long-time friend, who had been deployed to Iraq twice. He told me that he’d just learned that a third deployment colleague of his had suffered from PTSD, returned to the States, and put a gun in his mouth as a way to escape the torment of PTSD.

I decided it was time to put pen to paper.

Even though I strove to make this an entertaining work of fiction, I’d also hoped that the main protagonist, being a veteran afflicted with PTSD, would somehow help to raise interest in veterans who suffer from PTSD. Sometimes these veterans suffer for the rest of their lives. In case you are interested, my blog contains links to articles about how PTSD increases the risk for depression and suicide for veterans. In creating the plot and characters, I used many actual experiences from my medical career and weaved them into the story. I wanted to create a story that combined the gritty characters like those in Vince Flynn books with the intriguing medical setting story lines found in Tess Gerritsen stories.

I also wanted to portray my female characters in a way that is consistent with my medical experience with many nurse colleagues, so you'll find the women characters in my books to be strong-willed but compassionate. My main character is intended to be someone who is believable; someone who is smart, compassionate...and yet has human flaws. I feel the main character should portray an example of the old adage, "there are no heroes, just ordinary people who perform heroic acts.” The book offers some "behind-the-scenes" views of the strange occurrences that can happen in the field of medicine, especially at large, metropolitan medical centers.

Fact is stranger than fiction far more often than most people would believe and many might be surprised at the number of events in my book that are based on an actual experience of mine. Lastly, this book is a work of fiction and, as in many works of fiction, I've taken a common issue and given it a different life. The character's responses to his affliction of PTSD are not necessarily reflective of current medical knowledge and scientific facts related to PTSD. I do hope, however, that the story may bring some attention to the struggle that many veterans face in dealing with PTSD.

Though I’ve published articles in national healthcare journals, written many "Ask the Doctor" columns and spoken frequently at national healthcare forums, fiction writing is reviving a lost love from earlier periods in my life where I enjoyed writing short fiction stories. In addition to a number of years as a practicing anesthesiologist and critical care specialist who spent many hours in emergency rooms, operating rooms, and intensive care units, I’ve also led teams in designing, creating and deploying population health programs to help people deal with depression related to their poor health.

I hope that you give Past Aghast a look and find embedded in the harsh realities of PTSD an entertaining novel that also makes you look at life with just a bit of a different tinted lens.

-Ed Dasso

Guest Blog Post: DCJ Wardle

Pubshelf has a new client named D.C.J. Wardle who wrote an interesting novel that is a humorous take on one man's ambition and the lengths he will go to to climb up the social ladder. I asked him to come by and share his thoughts on his novel "Trading Vincent Crow" as well as his process when it comes to writing. Before we jump into it, just a friendly reminder for all my Denmonites, on Friday is the cover reveal of Ashes to Ashes, the third novel in the Upstate NY Mafia Tale trilogy.

Now for the main attraction...

The blurb:

“Trading Vincent Crow” is the humorous journey of a young man, desperate to extract himself from the bottom of the heap as he tries to leapfrog his way up the ladder of success, continually trading his life for a new and better one. This means that he has to swap his entire life – the job, the pad, the threads, the girl, every three months to ensure that he is rapidly propelled forward to where he needs to be. His travels from obscurity toward his dream of being slightly less obscure force him to tackle new social challenges, to keep pushing himself upwards, and not to become comfortable with small gains. Of course, that all sounds like a water-tight plan, noble and worthwhile. In reality Vince ambles ill-equipped and with social ineptitude into new and unfamiliar situations where he becomes a bit-part actor in a variety of other peoples’ dramas and plans as they also play out their own selfish aspirations of personal betterment. 

D.C.J. Wardle:

The book is written to be fun and entertaining. Of course humour is a very personal thing, so to qualify that statement, it’s primarily written to be fun and entertaining to me. Hopefully readers will also be able share in the enjoyment that I had through the process of writing it. The journey toward self-improvement enables numerous disparate and quirky characters to emerge in to the pathway of Vince, some of whom are sympathetic, some selfish, some are villains, but all provide texture and colour to the world that Vince must negotiate if he is to make something better of his life. The style of writing is quite episodic, and with every change of job or situation the plot is able to spiral in a new direction and maintain pace and interest. The many sub-chapters provide a fantastic space in which to work tangential sub-plots and off-beat observations. It was particularly entertaining as a writer to use this device to deviate from the plot momentarily and provide a vignette for an incidental character. This opportunity seemed to fit well within the style of the book and provided a wealth of openings for comic scenarios.

In comparison to my earlier creative writings, Trading Vincent Crow is something of a departure in terms of style and content. Over the years I’ve developed more confidence in my writing which has enabled me to write not only what I think is entertaining but also put it out there for public scrutiny. I actually started to really enjoy the process of creative writing about fourteen years ago. It was during my first overseas posting, and as a development worker I was posted to a small village in Cameroon, a lone volunteer managing the construction of a water supply project. The village was remote. There was no TV, telephone, or electricity. We did, however, boast a village chief who was the most powerful of all the witches in the region, and the villagers lived in fear of his dark magic. There were ceremonial rituals involving the village elders, a number of unfortunate goats, dancing around the drums in the firelight, and various adventures to different parts of the country. Consequently, for the first time in my life, I had a lot to write about, and began to really enjoy sending letters home about my adventures. I then decided to write a short story about the pop band that I had played in at college. I wrote it on scraps of paper, and found myself cutting out paragraphs from different pages and sticking them at the sides of others with duct-tape. The resulting collage of scribbling needed instructions to negotiate. After discovering the pleasures of this creative process I went on to write longer stories about my adventures in Cameroon and the subsequent places I’ve worked. This led me to get more involved in writing fiction, which has included writing a couple of novels, and a series of children’s books about the environment. My writing about my travels seems to have waned a little in recent years. I think that after so many years of moving between countries for work I am a little less fascinated by the experience compared to my earlier career. However, I’m never quite sure where I will find myself next, and so the prospect for inspiration is never far away.

At the moment, a big challenge is finding the time to write. However, I found that having a full time job actually suited the development of Trading Vincent Crow. This is because having a limitation on my writing time forces me to spend more time thinking about an idea, enjoying it, and letting it evolve and develop long before anything is written down. During my busy week there will be times when plots or situations are brewing away intensely in my head but I have no opportunity to express them. When I do get the chance to put down the narrative, I have scenes that have been rattling around inside and comic lines that I have been rehearsed in my head for so long that I’m ready to feverishly get the whole thing out of my system. This has been great for Vince in achieving the concise style I was aspiring to. It often results in writing where the sub-chapters are not only contributing to the bigger story but also becoming mini-stories in themselves. In taking such a long time to write a book, I feel that it is not rushed or forced, and is richer in its ideas and content as a result. I have very purposely avoided too much descriptive narrative or in-depth development of emotional nuances so that the story bounds onwards like an enthusiastic spaniel, and hopefully it’s not too long before the next wry smile is induced. Usually I will try to sit down each weekend for several hours and expunge the build-up of thoughts that are cluttering my imagination in to my laptop. I have applied the same approach to the sequel to Trading Vincent Crow which I am currently in the process of finalising.


Me:

Thanks for stopping by!  Really appreciate the insight and I know several people who are already interested in snapping up your novel.  Come back soon!