Jay's still preening about the publication of his novel, The Naked Ghost, and his second novel is now imminent, mere days away from seeing the light of day. Before that happens, however, he's giving credit where credit is due.

Jay began The Naked Ghost on an actual typewriter. Those contraptions employ the impact of raised letters through inked ribbons for the torture of posterity. That was barely as many years ago as Jay generally likes to admit being old. After languishing for years, after revisions and re-revisions, and after being ported to a succession of computerized wordprocessors, Jay read the manuscript ten or so pages at a time at meetings of the Twisted Scribes writers group, whose members are hereby properly and thoroughly thanked, as well as being acknowledged in the book. So, what did Jay get from the Scribes?

Plenty. As you read The Naked Ghost, thank the Scribes for the activities near the beginning that the two main characters don't see - sure indications that something is "odd" while Whit and Casey explore the haunted mansion and its grounds for the first time. Good suggestion. Introduced the ghosts, and set up a mysterious conflict. Thank them also for suggesting other plot twists, but particularly for nodding off when Jay's readings from the book got a little tedious. Those somnolences helped greatly, because Jay wisely paid attention to the nods and snores and spiced up the novel accordingly.

Alas, the Twisted Scribes folded, but not before Jay was able to inflict his second novel, Company Time v1.0, on them and obtain their sage guidance. As a non-computer-geek audience, the Scribes' reactions were extremely valuable. Jay calls the book "a geeky novel," and it is. The non-geek Scribes had difficulty understanding some of it, so to help them out Jay interwove a cool discourse on the inner workings of computer software and the process of creating it. As the characters pursue their elusive goal of not being fired, sets of curly braces - it's a programmer thing - interrupt for explanations of things software. The geeks among us won't need those explanations, but Jay's made them cynical enough for even C++ experts to enjoy.

The Naked Ghost is available in paper and electronic versions at booksellers, Amazon.com, and Smashwords.com. Company Time v1.0 is coming soon - real soon now - in paper and electronic versions. Here's the cover and a synopsis. And Jay's working on yet another book, as we "speak."

For entertainment, here's a nice bunch of internet magic that features Jay's photos from