Tag Archives: Imagination

3 Dreams of Missed Opportunities

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SleepingDream #1

Ninjas!

I awoke in bed to find I was completely surrounded by ninjas!

Adorned all in black, they were the night, they were the shadows. I began to sit up and scream when one of them lightly jumped on my chest, putting his hand over my mouth.

“No noise.” He didn’t seem to speak using his mouth (or at least I didn’t see it move through his mask), but I could hear him.

I nodded my head. His voice carried the type of gravity that it would have felt wrong to react any differently.

“You have been chosen,” he said to me in his deep and very dramatically slow voice. “The world is in peril and we need you. The elders looked into their green smoke and found you. You will be trained at the top of the great ghost mountain in the way of the specter ninjas. It is our sacred duty to protect the Earth from all of the perils the commons do not know about. You will join us in fighting the giant rock lizards of Mars, the beautiful Venus army, and the ravenous smelting beasts.”

He removed his hand from my mouth and sat up. “The specter ninjas need you. You are to be our new leader, our hope. Scott Southern…”

“Scott Southard,” I corrected.

I couldn’t exactly see the ninja’s expression, but I knew it was confused. “Excuse me?”

“My name is Scott Southard, not Scott Southern. It is a common mistake.”

The ninjas looked around at each other and in a flash of green smoke they were gone.

I woke up feeling regret. Continue reading →

New for Kindle! MEGAN, a real-world fantasy adventure with a big imagination!

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MeganI’m proud to announce that my novel MEGAN was just released for the Kindle! It can be found on amazon via this link (http://amzn.com/B00MUEAW48).

I love the format of this book.  I’m sure most of us—as children or even now as adults—have made up worlds within our imaginations and spent hours daydreaming or play acting what occurs in our imaginary worlds.  Our protagonist, Megan, is stuck in a boring job, with coworkers she barely coexists with, with a boss she hates, and nothing interesting or exciting happening in her life.  She escapes this monotony and the dreary reality of her life by imagining the world of Prosperity. -Definitely Not For the Birds

Published by iPublish Press, MEGAN is the story of Megan Wane. To me and you, she is just a normal worker in a drab office, but in her imagination there exists an entire world, one she has escaped into ever since she was a child. It is the land of Prosperity and it is filled with dragons, castles, trolls, moon people, and wizards, And in Prosperity, Megan is a princess and a super hero. MEGAN is the story of her worst day and how Prosperity saved the real her.

If you will like to learn more about this novel you can do so on this site. There is an excerpt as well as a post about the writing of it (here). And, as AN EXCLUSIVE for the Kindle version, it contains a brand-new preface to the book written by… well… me.

I am very impressed with how Mr. Southard has interwoven the two world’s of Megan. It is very artfully crafted with vivid descriptions. I enjoyed it! -S. M. Nystoriak, Writer’s Block

Grab a copy today, tell a friend, tell a dozen! You can get your copy on amazon here. I hope you like the book!

If I was…

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My Audience1 of 4

If I was a rock star I would’ve started the band because I thought it’d be fun.  Also, it was a way to meet girls, or at least that is how my friends and I would’ve imagined it as we sat around with our guitars trying to figure out chords in my parents’ living room. In time there would be gigs. College parties, the occasional music festival. We would want to play our own songs, but the audience wouldn’t care. They were there for a good time and we were unknowns then. So we learned the classics and I would attempt to mimic other singers at every show. Then one day, while opening for a much better band, I would try out a new song. It would be a cynical piece but people would latch on to it as a love song. Before we knew it, we’d have a record contract and to our shock the song would jump up the charts.  While the attention and money is nice I would become frustrated by all of it.  Everyone (everyone!) wants us to do a song similar to the hit, but that just doesn’t interest me. That song was a fluke, it isn’t me! I would want to try new things, experiment, break ground in my music. It’d be probably at this point that some of my friends would begin to quit the band. But the rest of us would go on, because it had gone from fun to important to a job. Just a job. And later on, sometime during the middle of some random set at a casino, I’d look out over the audience (noticing again that the size is dwindling) and wonder when did this change? When? This was supposed to be fun, right? Fine, I’ll play that song again. Fine. Continue reading →

While You Wait…

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I like to think of life as a theater sometimes. Mainly this is because I had so much experience growing up around the stage since my brother was a young actor and I was dragged along many evenings (sometimes even helping backstage with the crew).

Right now, I have two books waiting in the wings, being prepared for their performances (A Jane Austen Daydream and Maximilian Standforth and the Case of the Dangerous Dare). So while you wait for their appearances in a few months, why not check out some of the acts ready for the spotlight? I’m extremely proud of both of these books and I think you will enjoy them.

My Problem With Doors

My Problem With DoorsJacob is lost in time. He has been lost since as a toddler he first stepped through a door and ended up in a different land, in a different time. Over the course of the tale, Jacob tells of his struggles growing up in history. From the battlefields of WWI to an Afghanistan terrorist camp to the streets of Jack the Ripper to the estate of Lord Byron to a pirate ship, Jacob explores what it means to be human and if he, with his unique problem, has a purpose, a destiny. Romantic, surprising, and full of adventure, My Problem With Doors is filled with twists and turns.

You can find the book:

  • In print on amazon for $15.95 here.
  • It is available as an eBook (and will work on all devices) via Google Play (here) or on the publisher’s site (here).

You can read a sample from My Problem With Doors here.

Megan

MeganMegan Wane lives in two worlds. In one she is a beloved princess and secret superhero fighting to save her dream-like kingdom of Prosperity from disaster with a magic sword firmly in her grasp; and in the other world Megan is an event planner living in a stale cubicle, lost in the drab of an uninspired 9-to-5 existence. Megan is a story about the line where dreams and tragedy meet and the repercussions of the choices we make in our precious lives.

You can find the book:

  • In print on amazon for $15.95 here.
  • It is available as an eBook (and will work on all devices) via Google Play (here) or on the publisher’s site (here).

You can read a sample from Megan here.

Nine Thoughts on Turning Five

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My wife was in labor for 22 hours. 22!

It started the night before and I was deep in sleep when she broke the news we needed to leave for the hospital NOW. I was so deep into it that it took almost a minute of her waving at me, as I stood dumbfounded, that we needed to move.

I drove so slowly to the hospital, my wife was getting frustrated. I wanted everyone to be safe, I even avoided the highway, worried about drunk drivers.… Yes, it was a Sunday night, but someone could be drunk on a Sunday, right?

Once we were there my wife’s suffering began as future parents after future parents went in the delivery room before us. Finally, I had had enough. There are only a few times I can remember that I got all “extreme,” but this was one of them, as I confronted the doctor and nurse in the hallway. They said there were two ahead and I corrected them, without blinking, no, my wife is next… After five minutes of arguing, my wife was being prepped and ready to go.

One of my most vivid memories is of my son’s birth. When we first heard his cry, my wife turned to me, her mouth open in surprise, tears streaking her happy and tired face.  Then they showed him to us. His face was bright red from the screaming. I asked politely (and very overwhelmed) if I could see him; they of course said yes. I stood over him consoling him. At the sound of my voice he immediately stopped crying and then rolled on his side towards me.

You don’t forget things like that… Continue reading →

The Playhouse Rationalization: Introducing My 4-Year Old to Pee-Wee Herman

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“What is that?!”

I knew that accusatory tone too well. My 4-year old usually pulls it out of his arsenal when he catches me doing something secret in front of him, like taking bites of a cookie I have no desire to share with him (that weird conundrum parents get in when they want to set a good example, but, damn it, they also want a cookie).

This time the tone was related to something I was watching on Facebook. Jimmy Fallon had Pee-Wee Herman dub his voice into a The Dark Knight Rises trailer (You can see it here) and it was awesome.

I was having a hard time holding back my laugh, but watching that trailer was kind of off limits for the boy. While my son loves Batman, Christopher Nolan’s films are definitely out of his age bracket; hey, sometimes they feel out of my age bracket (I had a hard time getting near pencils for a week after seeing The Dark Knight). Continue reading →