No, Seriously, I Want to Hear It (Book Report, Part Two)

Update on all the books you're going to be enjoying soon:

GRAMMAR SLAMMER

All right, it's almost done; my book on Grammar. It's at the editor now, and I suspect it'll be done in the next few weeks. Surely by the end of September.

I'm covering how to explain all that hard stuff -- verb tenses, conditionals, the difference between verbs and vowels -- all that.

Now, just need to decide: red gradient, or red flames? The flames too busy? Do I want to go with the e-book flow, and make the title and name bigger?

I'm also including some very basic speaking activities to deal with the stuff I talk about, and as in SPEAKING ACTIVITIES, I'm presenting all this mostly through dialogues. (Which will of course be fucking piss-your-pants funny.)

But let me ask; anybody got any particular grammar points that they find confusing that they want to make sure I address? I'm getting all the really hard stuff -- the dreaded perfect tenses, the difference between "the other" and "another" etc. But feel free to ask about it before I put it out, maybe I forgot something.

HOW TO SURVIVE LIVING ABROAD, 2013 EDITION

Hopefully the final cover won't be quite that fluorescent, but as I stated previously, I'm going to do a new edition of HOW TO SURVIVE LIVING ABROAD, which is my lowest-selling title, despite being the most generally useful. (So much for writing for a broader market.)

As I said, I want to jazz it up with interviews with people who've had difficult experiences abroad. (Remember, we're looking for difficult -- any submission with too many exclamation points or uses of the word "awesome" or "epic" will be rejected.)

I've got three cool submissions already:

- a story about being robbed in Nicaragua from 30 DAYS TO X blogger Robert;
- some information about working as a military contractor from Raul Felix;
- a repost of a story about an experience with two greedy deceitful Ukrainian girls from Eccentric Expat

as well, I'm waiting for a story about diarrhea from Crazy Bob; you know that'll be good, and I'm hoping another former colleague will write up a story about a moped smash-up in Southeast Asia, and I have a couple of others I'm sniffing after.

So again, I put it to the gallery -- if you have any stories you want to share about hard times abroad -- rip offs, robberies, food poisoning, scams, heartbreaks, illnesses, problems with documents or corrupt cops or infrastructure or employers, drop me a line at englishteacherx(at)yahoo(dot)com. I won't pay you except in free books, favors, posting links to your blog, etc.

REQUIEM FOR A VAGABOND

So I'm actually getting excited about my next memoir; it'll be all about my time in the Kingdom and the Girlfriend, of course, but then the middle part will be a look back at my high school and my college years in New Orleans as well as my first backpacking trips abroad. Those years had enough drunk goth chicks and LSD an such to be a pretty interesting read for those who love the gross and sordid stuff.

A few high points should be:
- My real fling with a genuine Catholic school girl (in uniform, natch)
- My first speed-crazed botched 3-way
- The summer of 100 hits of LSD
- Running with the bulls in Spain (and yet still not feeling especially manly)
- Up close and personal with Giardia in India

etc.

And then it'll all tie together in a massive orgy of middle-age failure, like a beautiful Greek tragedy. Heck, I'm beginning to wonder if I've washed out my current life just to give the next book more poignancy. That's the problem with being the hero of your own work ...

NEXT WEEK: Something about whores. Promise.