About

Howdy. Welcome to Dog’s Breakfast. I’m Matt. The purpose of this blog is to connect. Well, yes, that’s the big picture, as in connecting in a communal way. You know, the deal where I’m sitting on my bloggy porch, with my wife, and you walk by.

“Howdy neighbor,” I call out.
“How you doing, Mister Bowes?” you say.
“I’m just dandy, _______* Reader, and yourself?”
“Fine , fine,” you might reply.

* Ms., Mr., Master, Mrs., Miss, Decline to State. Fill it in with whatever you are at the moment.

Then we will discuss the weather. But weather is one of those surface topics when you don’t want to be emotionally involved with someone. Strangers can talk about it. It’s trite. So maybe we talk about stuff that’s more deep than that.

We can converse about writing, if you want. I’m constantly struggling to take good advice and put it in practice, and while I might emotionally connect with you, I’m not sure my writing meets the criteria for, say, selling to the unsuspecting and fickle public. I’ve got a manuscript or two that are in progress, and I’ll relate my struggles with issues and maybe you can chime in with something useful, like “Hey. Show, don’t tell.”

No, wait. Don’t say that. It’s the reason we can’t have nice things.

Writers are fickle. “It’s awesome!” we shout. Then we look around, and when no one agrees, we start to wonder. “Maybe it’s not? Maybe it’s terrible. And no one is saying anything.” Then we get miserable and drink like Hemingway without any of the commercial success and die of cirrhosis. (Thanks, spell check!)

It is my hope that what you read here helps you decide that you’d like to help me out and give my novel a read when it finally publishes.

Plus there’s all the other stuff about me that you’ll want to know. It’s that If you Give a Mouse a Cookie sort of ADD stickiness: If you read one thing, maybe you’ll read another, and then you’ll think, “why, Matt is a pretty good guy. He and I don’t always see eye to eye, but he’s always polite and sincere and pleasant. And funny. He’s very funny.”

Yes, I hope that I meet the polite, sincere, pleasant standard.

As an added bonus, you get access to my external processing, where I talk about the Guts of Writing. That’s the nice way of categorizing all the crud that’s pertinent to me about how you construct a good story that people will like to read. Some of it is frying pan obvious, but if you haven’t been hit by that particular frying pan yet, it’s not so obvious.

My Opponent? Old age and death and mediocrity. I don’t want to write crap. Does anyone ever sit down and think, “Why, I’ll churn out 4000 words of complete and utter excrement today!”? That’s what happens, anyway. We may read unfiltered writing here, but the thing for which you pay your hard-earned money will have a professional editor between you and me. Because collaboration. That’s why. It’ll be worth your time.

Thanks for stopping by. All you readers, settle in and make yourself comfortable.

Postscript: A dog’s breakfast is an English term for something that is awful or messy or only fit to feed to the dog. Self-deprecating humour, that. While I have a higher opinion of my writing than that, it’s a better name than “This Blog is Better than Yours,” which for some reason sounds snotty.

Things you’ll find here:

writers books
writers writing
Steps to writing a book
How to write a story
How to write a novel
Epublish a book
Amazon e publishing
Publish ebook amazon
Writing my novel