A 'lil HooHaa

Messing with the blogging world since 2005

fiction

Woodland murder is still a mystery at Wilber Lake

This body was found recently at Wilber Lake. No identification has been made.

(Side note: This is obviously me delving into fiction here based on finding this object during a recent geocache outing. Enjoy!)

ONEONTA — Cops still had the area taped off Thursday night as they investigated an apparent murder at Wilber Lake.

The body was found by a group of geocachers as they traipsed through the woods looking for what they called treasure. Cops said none are suspects.

The gruesome scene made some cops shiver.

There are many trails through the park.

“I’ve never seen anything like this in 30 years as a cop,” said local police officer Joey Bagadonuts. “This was a heartless and pointless crime. This kid had a full life ahead of ’em.”

The victim, who has not yet been identified, was found beheaded in the woods. Cops said it appears like the body had been here a while, which will make it tough to find clues.

“The area is pretty clean, outside the body,” Bagadonuts said. “There’s the nearby lake, too. We’ll be looking for clues in that as well.”

The body was clothed, though some of the clothing was tattered. That could be because the body had been in the elements. A lot of dirt and mud was also on the body, which could show there had been some sort of struggle.

Cops said they will be on the scene for another day or so as they comb the area for clues.

Sources close to the situation indicated the head has not been found yet and DNA has been taken to see if it could be matched with those on missing person lists.

The body was found in an underused area of the park. There was a slight trail and the body was in the open.

“I’m shocked nobody discovered this before,” Bagadonuts said. “Unless it was placed there recently.

Those who found the body were geocachers. Geocaching is a game that is played where people hide containers in the wild and upload GPS coordinates to a website. Others will then get the coordinates and go find the container.

The headless body was found by geocachers.

The group stumbled upon the horrific scene on a crisp fall morning.

“They called police right away,” said Burt Bakon, public information officer for the local police. “It was my understanding that they were quite shocked and emotional, which I can fully understand.”

Police are also trying to figure out how somebody brought the body into the park. There are numerous trails and the area is popular for fishermen.

The trail systems are pretty straight forward, but people also paddle on the water.

“There are many ways to get to where the body was found,” Bakon said. “We’re exploring every possibility and asking anyone with information to contact us.”

Police said the body was also found with black-and-blue marks as well as red rashes. This could be a sign of a struggle, or could have come after the attack.

The body was also found without any identification and cops say they can’t start to figure out some things without identifying the body.

“This is going to be one complicated case,” Bakon said. “It’s the worst I’ve ever seen.”

Other images from the seen are as follows:

Black-and-blue marks were found on the body.

Marks were all over the hands, which could possibly show the victim was fighting back.

The body was found clothed.

Geocachers found the body on the side of a trail.

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog [at] gmail.com. Also, please “Like” HooHaa Blog on Facebook!

Guest post: ‘Royal Flush’ shows rejection isn’t bad

(Editor’s note: Today’s guest post is by Scott Bartlett, the author of Royal Flush. This is a book I’ll be reviewing in the future. He’s doing a blog tour this month and today he’s visiting us. Enjoy!)

Good day, readers of A ‘lil HooHaa. I come to you not only to complete today’s stop on the blog tour for my humor novel Royal Flush, but also to psychoanalyze myself, and figure out what it is that caused me to write a book of this nature.

Royal Flush, you see, is about a man known only as the King — an incredibly incompetent man, who is morally bankrupt and who endures repeated romantic failures, one after another.

Some of my friends have suggested that the King is based on me.

Scott Bartlett (not the King!)

I object to that interpretation, for obvious reasons. I truly don’t think the King is me, or that I’m the King (something you may be relieved to hear). But I do think the King’s hilarious ineptness when it comes to ladies stems from real frustration.

Let me begin again. Royal Flush is a novel that asks the question: can a man who throws his dates in a dungeon succeed romantically?

It’s divided into four parts, and in each one the King fails spectacularly with yet another girl. (Whether this happens in the last part is something I can not, of course, divulge here.)

He is a man of astounding depravity. At one point, he must defend his castle against a siege with only his royal fiddler, while trying to steal his royal fiddler’s girlfriend.

I’ve wanted to be a fiction writer since I was 15. Back then, I tried to write a novel, but gave up halfway through the third chapter. I tried again in high school, but I still had a major problem: what the hell was I going to write about?

I wrote a terrible science fiction novel, which no one is allowed to read and which I will never do anything with. And once I got to university, I still had the same problem—an utter lack of experience.

But wait. There was one thing I had ample experience in doing — getting rejected repeatedly by beautiful women!

Yes, I realized, I had plenty of romantic rejection stories — both of the short, blunt kind and the drawn-out, brutal kind.

I didn’t base the King’s experiences directly on these stories, just as I didn’t base the King directly on me. (I swear!) But I’d been rejected so many times that I started to become amused at the consistency. Throughout high school, I was unable to secure even one date!

Being a helpless egomaniac, my self-esteem was still robust. But I decided to write a book about the sort of character who would be universally rejected by women. Simply being a jerk was not enough — plenty of jerks get girls. This man would have to be utterly debauched, and completely moronic.

I repeat: the King = NOT ME!

You know what? All that rejection was good for me. As a writer, an immunity to repeated rejection has served me well. In this field, you have to get used to your manuscripts constantly getting turned down by agents, publishers, and competition judges.

Also, being okay with rejection has come in handy as a person who seeks romance, which I have found and lost a few times since writing Royal Flush. I’m confident I’ll find it again, though — and I know how to go about doing it.

Scott Bartlett has been writing fiction since he was 15. His recently released novel, Royal Flush, is a recipient of the H. R. (Bill) Percy Prize. Feel free to follow Scott on Twitter. You can find the book on Amazon (Kindle/Paperback)

Book Review: The Cards of Unknown Players

I need to start out by saying The Cards of Unknown Players is a Kindle e-Book. It appears to be in other digital forms, too. (A quick check shows it on the Nook, so I imagine it’s out there for other formats, too).

This book reads fast. I don’t think it took me more than a night. Maybe two. It’s a nice story about a father and his son, collecting cards and some life lessons. It’s not just about baseball cards, though. It’s more than that.

The product description says:

A disabled boy finds the baseball card of a non-existent major league player and the boy’s father embarks on a quest to find out how that could have happened. What he finds will give him hope for all the unknown players.

What happens is quite interesting. It’s a cool tale and it’s the right size. With the story being somewhat focused, having a quick read makes it good.

Now for my thoughts…

The good

The story.

Cards of Unknown Players

In this day and age, some books are really in-depth or not thought out. This one is good because it has a solid story. From finding the card, to finding the story about the card.

Where the card leads the father is good, too. It’s not very predictable, which is good.

What I really liked was that in a day when stories seem to go off on different directions all the time, this story stayed on the same line. It didn’t stray. You learned the details. You met the people. And you saw where things went and how they developed. That was a nice part of this eBook.

The bad

The book was far from perfect.

Some might say it was too short. Some might complain about character development (there’s a little, but not a lot). The writing isn’t the most perfect in the world (some grammar and spelling issues). But overall, it’s the normal complaints. I didn’t think there were any major errors to the book and being it kept my attention quite well, some things I overlooked.

Still, it wasn’t perfect, but with it’s length and story, most things can be overlooked.

Overall thoughts

Besides being a fast read, it was good. It was, for lack of a better term, wholesome. It’s a good thing to show relationships between a father and a son and this does it. The other good part is that one doesn’t have to be interested in baseball or baseball cards to read this story.

The book’s plot and ending weren’t predictable, which is nice because it takes you away from thinking this is another sappy book. Though the ending is happy, the way you get to it isn’t the normal way.

Rating

Based on everything from above, I would give this book a strong 3.5. I don’t think it was perfect. The story was strong and the characters were believable. I liked it overall and would recommend someone read it.

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog [at] gmail.com. Also, please “Like” HooHaa Blog on Facebook by clicking the button on the right side of the page!