Gotta win that limerick contest...

Man I love, love, LOVE that Irish Music Festival. They have Guinness and food, and crafts, and Guinness, and three stages of continuous, incredible, live, Celtic music. And they have Guinness -- Guinness is my favorite adult beverage. (meet you there, buddy)


So this year 'Gealic Storm' is headlining; perhaps you remember the movie 'Titanic'? About the really big boat that sinks and all these people die in spectacular ways? Never heard of it? Anyhow, in the scene with the belowdecks party, Gaelic Storm was the band that was playing -- they basically rock in every concievable way.


Another regular feature of the Irish Music Festival is the annual limerick contest.

So here we have an amalgamation of many of my favorite things: writing, Ireland, humor, competition, and Guinness (being on tap pretty much every twenty paces makes it an integral part of every event). To say that I want to win the limerick competition would be an understatement; I NEED to win that competition... If I don't win that competition, I'll sink into a morass of depression and self-loathing, and likely lash out at my children for imagined crimes like needing food and water, nose-breathing, and thinking too loud.


Last year, I won second place in the adult category. I won fifty dollars and two free passes, and I got to go onstage and read my winning limericks. If you're so inlined, you can click this link to my You Tube channel, and relive the moment with me. Ahhh... it brings a tear to my eye even now. My limericks were okay. Most everybody I know says mine were better than the one that won first place, but I'm not bitter. Although if I see that guy this year, I'll probably smash his kneecaps with a baton.


See here's what I got so far this year (keep in mind that they're rough - I'll probably change some word choices, and hopefully I'll come up with four or five more so I can pick the best three):

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There once was a fellow named Ray,
Who worked hard at his job everyday,
He'd come home half-dead
but if his kids were in bed,
He'd roll with his wife in the hay.

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A man of the beer-making craft,
Once swam in tub-full of draught.
It seemed quite the whim
with his mug and his grin,
Til' he drowned while the onlookers laughed.

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Keep in mind that the limerick, ancient art-form that it is, is expected to have some inherent measure of bawdiness. As saintly as I am, I struggle with this particular element, and I'm forced to summon every iota of creativity my soul possesses to fabricate such scandelous in-virtue. That being said, here is my third entry from last year (the one they couldn't print in the Muskegon Chronicle).

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There once was a fat organ grinder,
Whose monkey was always behind her.
She'd forget and she'd sit,
So he'd tweak on her tit,
Just to give her a gentle reminder.

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The Michigan Irish Music Festival is a family event.

Whoa, where's that agent post go?

Turns out, in the midst of zeal, I can be a real idiot sometimes. I had a long post here that talked about some recent, interesting correspondance with a couple big-time literary agents but now it is gone. I posted a couple email messages in their entirety, and yeah, it never occurred to me that they were private, possibly even copy-righted. Some helpful people on a message board pointed it out to me; one was another literary agent.

So anyway, to recap what's been going on without breeching anyone's trust, the really great agent that requested a full manuscript eventually rejected it. I was understandibly bummed, but I replied to her assistant, thanked her for the helpful feedback they'd given me, and asked if I could query other agents at their agency. I have yet to receive a response to that, but oddly enough, yesterday morning, another top agent emailed me and asked for a full manuscript. This lady works for an entirely different literary agency, in an entirely different town, and she said something about how 'when your manuscript surfaced, I remembered it'. I guess I just got worked up over that word 'surfaced'. I envisioned the agent in New York throwing the manuscript into the ocean, and then the agent in New Jersey spotting it washing up on the beach.

Its weird is because I haven't sent out any query letters for this book since March. And now, these major players are suddenly asking for it. What happened? Do they have me confused with somebody else?

Anyway, I'm not 'looking a gift horse in the mouth' nor any orifice, for that matter. I went ahead and spent eleven hours correcting the deficiencies pointed out by the first agent, then sent it right out to the second agent.

To any lurkers who are inspecting my blog for 'indescretions', sorry about the whole posting-people's-emails-in-their-entirety thing. I shan't do that again.

Recovering from Abdominoplasty

She's having some pain, nothing major, but she's on some good meds. Amazing what a fresh coat of paint can do for those pesky deer stains, eh?

So let's all play a game. Winner gets a free copy of my latest book printed on their toenails. To play, you'll need to get yourself a magnifying glass and hold it up to your computer monitor.... Not that close, silly, you want to go blind?

Okay, ready?

Now, can you spot the crucial bit of evidence used against me in my recent legal battle?

Working on my query - whaddya think?

Dear Ms. Literary Agent,

Turns out my billionaire father is like 300 years old. I have five older siblings (seventeen-year old quintuplets) and it turns out mental powers run in our family. Maybe because, as it turns out, we’re descended from Nephilim, fallen angels – like in the book of Genesis.

Yeah.

Anyway… some time in the past, like lifetimes ago, my father made a terrible mistake and some really bad people came looking for him. And not just one group, but a whole bunch. Like the Verticiles: high-tech pagan commandos, the Cobles: soil-borne demons, and the Nepheel Inquisitors: something worse than the other two combined. And lets not forget the mass-freaking-media – they’re a whole special kind of evil themselves. Long story short: they blew up our mansion on stilts, took our father away, broke into his secret lab to steal our bassinet (that one’s a little tough to explain), and now they’re after us.

I don’t know why, we never did anything to them, but they want us bad. The only thing we’ve got going for us is a few fake credit cards, some tae-kwon-do training, and our vicious, sarcastic wit. Yeah, we’ve got mental power too, but they’re nothing compared to that wit thing I mentioned.

So okay, we’ve also got a backpack full of ants. Sounds weird, I know, but it turns out to be important. You’ll see why if you take a chance and read our story.

FIERSOM’S BROOD is a one-hundred-fifteen thousand word urban fantasy for teens. It’s my tenth novel, all juvenile to young adult, and while they’re all unpublished, I did win the top prize in a short story contest that publishes in anthology. I’m a thirty-seven year old surgical technologist who proudly stands for God, family, and country. I’m a former children’s pastor, a blissfully married father of four, and an infantry combat veteran from Desert Storm. On the less intense side, I love Spiderman, Playstation, guitars, and yo-yos.

With many sincere thanks,

Ray Veen

(that last paragraph there is probably the biggest thing I'll change)

Dang it, Mike, I thought you were my friend.

The last 24 hours can only be described as 'eventful'. I found myself in the back of a police cruiser for one thing. And for another, I got perhaps the most exciting email of the year this very morning. But where to begin? Man-oh-man, my head is spinning.

All right, the only way to do this is chronologically: Ten o'clock last night, I ran to the video store to get a movie for my bored family (yeah, we're on vacation again). I also got popcorn, and some Mike's hard lemonade for Cindy. So on the way back, in about exactly the same spot as my three previous times, I struck and killed a freaking deer. That brings my total car/deer accidents to four, and all of them on the same half mile stretch of rural 64th avenue. I'm tempted to break off into a vulgar string of expletives at this point, but I'll restrain myself - for the sake of forward momentum.

The 911 dispatcher said it would be a half hour until an officer could get there, and an hour later, he finally shows up with his professional demeanor and massive flashlight. I couldn't find my registration, I couldn't find my proof of insurance, and guess what Mike did to me?

He spilled all over the floor.

Yeah, two of the Mike's hard lemonades smashed on the floor of my van, so guess what the officer smelled? "How much have you had to drink tonight, sir?" Honestly, I'd had two Guinnesses much much earlier in the day, so I told him that (cuz without my honesty, I am nothing).

"I'm gonna have to ask you to step out of the vehicle."

So the field sobriety tests consisted of a series of impossible tasks that anybody would have had trouble with even if they were sober which I totally was, but ultimately, I didn't do so good. Probably because, yes, I was nervous as crap. Like following his finger in the darkness outside the pool of light from the flashlight directed in the center of my face. What kind of test is that?

After a series of daring stunts both physical and intellectual, I found myself locked in the back of his cruiser while he filled out paperwork. Out of the goodness of his heart, he wanted to allow another fifteen minutes for my breath to "cool off" before he administered the breathalyzer. (I happened to smell like alcohol because after an hour of waiting for him to get there, I was sick of getting gnawed on my mosquitos and had just put on a heavy layer of bug spray)

Meanwhile, Cindy had found a current proof of insurance and wanted to call and tell me. Since I was, at that moment, being questioned in the back of a police cruiser, I chose not answer. So she called back - repeatedly - because she was concerned. That turned into a mini-ugly in itself, but, that's another story.

Anyway, I blew a perfect zero-point-zero-zero-zero, and he let me go with a warning about the insurance. Of course, two hours of emergency flashers had run my battery dead, so I had to call Cindy to bring me a crowbar to get at the battery. I tell you, the fun never stops.

I did get it home, though. First thing this morning, I dismantled the hood in a retrograde fashion to survey the damage, and yeah, it's fairly bad. I asked Eddie to come over and give me his opinion, and while we were looking at it, this salesman pulled up in the driveway. I explained to the guy that it really wasn't a good to look at his five-hundred dollar textbooks (in case my kids want to do a bunch of extra studying), but he would not take 'no' for an answer. So I indulged him, for what he called "five minutes" - enough time for Eddie to almost totally tear down the front end of my van.

Sooooo..... the insurance guy wanted to send an adjuster over to take pictures, and yeah, we had to put it all back together. That's where things stand right now.

But how's this for timing? I finally walked into the house, sat down and checked my email, and the first thing I see: is a request for a full manuscript of Elfhame - from Amy Berkower. For those of you who don't know, this is pretty much the most successful literary agent in New York City (I'm not exaggerating - here's proof - I totally want my books listed alongside these) and she's been my number one dream agent for the last three years. Thing is, I haven't sent out a single query letter in four months. Yeah, she requested a partial back in March or so, but then I didn't hear back from her, so I figured it was more than likely a 'no'. And then moments after the whole 'van/deer/drunk test/pushy salesman/unnecessary auto dismantling' thing, she requests a full manuscript.

I was excited. So I called Cindy into the office. And she was excited. She literally jumped up and down. "Ray, Ray, Ray... this is exactly what I've been praying for - that you would hear good news from an agent by our anniversary."

Course our anniversary was two days ago, so, God couldn't possibly have anything to do with any of this, could he?

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All right. Take a deep breath. Mull things over. Then check out our latest video on Youtube. Me and Hailie and Chantze did a music video parody of Hannah Montana and Billy Ray Cyrus. Click this link, or the one on the side. Don't really matter none which link y'all use, the important thing as that you watch it. And maybe comment, or better yet, subscribe.

Chantze's Baptism

My only son. Baptized. It was truly a proud moment. Chantze can be goofy and silly and downright gross sometimes, but the kid has a very real faith. All potty jokes aside, he understands what we were put on this Earth for, and he's more than ready to live it. Hard to believe? Go ahead and ask him about it - you'll see what I mean.

He's been wanting to get baptized for several years now, and I'm glad I finally gave in.

The event took place on July 27th at Wolf Lake. Presiding were Pastor Dan Smith (a very nice, very cheerful little guy) and Chantze's grandfather, Lloyd Jenkins, who is an elder/deacon of the church. The collage above is a series of screenshots captured from the video, so, the graininess is a culmination of poor video quality, distance, and cropping issues. My apologies.