This week’s tale was inspired by Greg Smith’s prompt: Laughing in the wrong place.

Thanks, Greg!

Harry’s Last Stand

Judge “Hard-ass Harry” was in the middle of the murder trial when the defendant interrupted the testimony.

“How could I shoot him six times with my five-shot revolver? Where’d you find this coroner—Craigslist?”

“Craigslist!” the court reporter cackled and fell out of his chair.

“Way to stick the landing, Simone Biles,” Harry deadpanned.

The jury exploded in laughter.

“Objection,” the defense attorney said. “Joking’s completely inappropriate.”

Harry winked. “Don’t judge me.”

He snatched the microphone, did a classic mic drop, threw down his robe and marched away.

“This gig lost its appeal,” Harry muttered as the door slammed behind him.

Prompt: Laughing in the wrong place

FAST FICTION, Vol. 2: Man Vs. Machine arrives

The first shipment of Vol. 2 rolled into town last night.

According to the publisher, it will take 2-3 weeks before Amazon and all of the other book sellers update their computers to begin taking pre-orders for an August 15th shipping date. My tentative plans are to set up some kind of massive campaign blitz so I can generate a lot of sales/giveaways or whatever it takes to reach best seller status–at least long enough to claim the title for future marketing. That will all happen sometime around August 15th (I’m thinking maybe a day. or two before then). In the meantime, if you are SOOOOOOO obsessed with getting your hot little hands on a print copy of the book, you can go to this link where my publisher will send it out now (instead of mid-August).

I’m not asking people to do that because, as part of the Amazon strategy, I need to get a significant number of pre-sales, which will let Amazon know they need to have books on the shelves and ready to go on 8/15. Amazon will never know about purchases made directly through the publisher, so I’m definitely not going to push dealing directly with BookBaby–at least not until I’ve made a big Amazon push.

Having said (well, typed that), here’s the link to BookBaby (my lil’ publisher).

Finally, I’ll be doing a presentation at a Rotary club in Salinas next week. It’s the first time presenting at one of these service clubs but I’m actually looking forward to doing a whole lot of them. From what I hear, a lot of similar clubs meet every week and they’re always looking for guest speakers. For me, it’s a lot of fun sharing stories with groups, talking about the writing process, and selling books.

If you’re in a club like Rotary, Lions, Kiwanis, Elks, SIRS, VWF, Hells Angels, AA, Mickey Mouse Club, Club Soda, or any other group that you think might like to break up their valuable time with someone like me, I’d love it if you’d reach out and let me know who to stalk–er…contact. You know what I mean.

OK, that’s it for this week.

As always, thanks for listening

Please do keep those prompts (and Amazon reviews) coming.

Scotty out