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

The ISBN for the paper edition is 978-1-879211-01-8, and the Kindle edition is ASIN: B00522VEME. Other e-book formats are in progress, and Jay's considering an agent to market more works, television rights and whatever else.

Everyone who knows Jay knows he's been working, secretly some would say, on works of fiction since, like, forever. Jay's a graduate of the newspaper business, and novel writing in the newspaper business is a long standing tradition, especially among stereotypical mild-mannered (or othrwise) reporters.

Jay was hardly known for mild-manneredness, though he aspired otherwise, but he did honor the time-honored tradition of writing fiction in his spare time. He set out on his first novel in the late Sixties when a serious ankle injury left him laid up for a few weeks. With plenty of time to write, he did just that, passing the 200-page result around among friends at the newspaper in South Carolina for comment. After changing jobs and cities and a few other interruptions, he finished the book a couple of years later in Charlottesville, Virginia. That being before humanly ownable wordprocessors, the book was in tatters, with pink and yellow pasteups where changes had been inflicted and much scribbling between the lines for edits and amplifications. After another break of two decades with a bunch of life's vicissitudes sailing by, Jay dragged the manuscript, then around 300 pages, out of a trunk and set about typing it into his favorite wordprocessor. That was several computers ago. Most of that manuscript is still in a state of pink-paper paste-up, and that's not the one that is - brace yourself - now freshly published.

So it is that Jay's first-published novel is actually his second. He got it off to a good start in 1982, on paper with an actual typewriter, parked it several times over the years, and brought it to life and paper and electronic versions this month, May 2011. Here's the cover.

The action takes place in a fictional town near Atlanta. No, not in South Carolina, because the book's characters needed a larger city with room for high-rise condo complexes, traffic jams and other discomforts of urban living, since the characters go looking for an escape from all that, and find it haunted. Jay had a great deal of fun drawing the town's characters, especially the flirt Gertie, waitress at the local diner, and the mysterious, clairvoyant Isabel, proprietor of the local antiques emporium. A couple of herds of shrinks can spend decades trying to figure out which characters are influenced by real people from Jay's past, but really, they're all creations of Jay's imagination. The many years of development allowed Jay to hone the characters, slowly replacing all aspects of reality with entertaining lies. Namely, fiction.

While Jay's been neglecting this blog he's been hard at work procrastinating loads of other work and getting one of his novels ready, at last, for publication. It's actually his second novel, but the first one to see print.

Jay has four non-fiction titles to brag about, all of them moldy old and out of print. Obsolete, if you must. He's been crafting fiction on the sly all these decades, stashing the completed works. Available imminently, The Naked Ghost, spent decades in development. Jay first put typewriter ribbon to paper for it in 1982. That was before he owned a word processor, or even a computer. Ahhh, those were the days.

Besides moving, sometimes with some difficulty, through several brands and types of computers and multiple incarnations of word processing software, the novel has gone though much revision over the years. Jay inflicted readings from it on his local writers' group, The Twisted Scribes, from whom he derived much assistance in polishing the humor and honing the characters.

The revision for publication entailed bringing it up to date once again. The story takes place in "current" time, with but one flashback and a flash-forward to fracture the flow. What was "current" in the mid-Eighties, well, isn't very with-it now. So Jay revisited the manuscript and brought many references into the present while proofreading, checking and editing. He also tightened a few places that didn't move quick enough for "current" time, though they ticked along just fine back in the Eighties. Jay's had a wonderful time with all this, and looks forward to finishing the sequel.

You noticed, of course, that this whole discussion fails to answer the question: What's the story about? So glad you asked. Here's a fresh promotional synopsis destined for the back cover:

The piano plays torch songs and the fluffy house cat has mischievous habits that transcend even the paranormal. And then there's that little wet dog... Atlanta gay couple Whit and Casey find the country home they dream of, but find out it's haunted. After a spat and some scary adventures they buy the place anyway, but can't decide whether to move in. The sexy ghosts turn out to be pre-incarnations of themselves, and a good time is had by all.

Unless disaster strikes, the book will be available in paper and electronic editions before the end of May 2011. The ISBN is 978-1-879211-01-8. With any luck it'll be banned in Boston and burned in Concord, North Carolina. All the better for sales.