The more I think about it, the more that Tyro appeals to me as a Western. I’m not going to go back on the fantasy aspect of it. She’s still a collection of parts animated by the last ebbs of a dying magic. It’s the theme of the individual’s flight from society that appeals to me. Tyro is fleeing the society of her Master and slavery to a society that values personal freedom and the responsibility that comes with it. Her losing things is the act of stripping away those old parts of her new “life” as an usability.

I can’t wait to get started on this project next year. I’m going to start the outline in September of this year, so I really need to get on the stick and finish Tribal. I do want to end this year with a finished novel. I also need to get on the stick and edit The Show Must Go On to start sending out queries for it. There are so many things to do and hardly any time.

I should play the lottery. It’s guaranteed money, right?

Another theme that I really want to expand on in this book is the end of an age. In the spiritual prequel to this series, The Marvelous And Malefic Doomsday Medicine Show (God, I love that title), we see the beginning of the end of magic with Ehren. This trilogy is set some long time later. How later is up in the air. I’m thinking two hundred years because I want most of the regular people to have no frame of reference for the powers of the past, but some of the supernatural creatures to remember. I should get back to that book after next year.

Well, having the next two years planned out writing wise is a relief. I just have to get started on it. Wish me luck and take care!

I can’t stop fiddling with things. I popped off a toenail completely from its bed because I couldn’t stop fiddling with the thickness of it.

I can’t stop fiddling with the first chapter of Tribal. I don’t feel that the very first part really hits as hard as I want it to. I think this is the third time I’ve messed with it. I need to stop and get on with the rest of the book. I have managed to finish chapter three, but I keep going back to that beginning and wonder if it’s good enough. My wife and beta reader says it’s good enough…but I don’t think that bodes well. I need it to be unsettling, but not so unsettling that it makes the reader put it down. This is a very delicate line I’m walking on. I want to set the bar high and consistently leap over it. I’ve been reading splatterpunk, so that might be coloring my opinion. Yes – the author I had chosen actually wrote something that made me set the book down and I have as of yet to re-open it. Kudos to him, though – that’s a hard thing to do.

I should try to put this scene in the back of my mind and press on – there’s plenty of gore to go around for this book. Not like Aron Beauregard, but I am not going to pull any punches on this book either. This is my first official horror book. I want to get this one published in mainstream/small press. The Show Must Go On is another one, and that’s being reviewed by my writing group. So far, they seem to like it. I don’t know, though.

Stop fiddling.

I don’t know if I have said this before, but I am in a bit of a rush to get some horror novels at elast to first draft because next year, I am doing nothing but Tyro’s novel. Right now, I am reading Louis Lamour’s The Sacketts series, I picked up a book about defining genres to see what makes a Western a Western other than horses, tipped hats and six-shooters.

Tyro feel to me like Western because of the theme of the individual escaping society – which is what Tyro and her merry band of ushabit are doing. Instead of hitting the wilderness, they’re escaping into another society – itself taking on some growing pains expanding and changing into a ‘modern’ society. I would say that it’s changing from an Age of Myth to an Age of Reason. Tyro might be the bridge for that change. We’ll see. Until then, it’s an hour of reading and an hour of highlighting. It’s fun, really. I’m learning a lot.

That’s all for now. Check out my books on the right, I am trying to get something new up there. If things change, you all will be the first to know. Ta-ta for now.

Working on Tribal, still. I might have to change a scene to keep him in the dark about being a werewolf. I showed him changing and reacting, but that kind of makes the reveal superfluous at the end of the third chapter. I can change it, but I really need to have my notes near by when I’m writing. I tend to shoot from the hip without the notes to keep me in line. Doing that makes things harder, and I want to get this manuscript done as quickly as possible. By quick, I mean by the end of the year. ‘Quick’ is a relative term.

Per usual, I am looking way far ahead, and I am going to work on my Western/Fantasy series all next year. I want to get a couple of novels under my belt so I can get more published. I should use this Saturday to finish the editing of Agonizing Alibi Day and start the edits for The Show Must Go On. I think the later should be sent through the ringer of traditional publishing. After that, I need to finish the outline for Serve Me Now and call that the last one I am going to write this year.

I need to read some Westerns, since I’ve described this novel (Unbound) as “Lord Of The Rings meets Frankenstein on the set of Lonesome Dove”. I’m starting with my wife’s suggestion to read some of the Sackett series by Louis L’Amour. I think after that I am going to try Zane Grey and look for some different authors. Research.

I’m also teaching myself literary theory, and I have learned that I am not going to write literature any time soon. My current work list is more than proof enough of that. I’m not completely eliminating the idea that I will write literary fiction, but I am far more comfortable with the genres. I just don’t feel…qualified? Confident? Literary fiction seems something written by men in tweed jackets who fret about postmodernism versus mimesis. I fret about whether or not someone changing into a werewolf would remember it. Not exactly screaming “Pulitzer”, is it?

That’s all for now, I should get to work on something and not be distracted by YouTube.

When I showed the first chapter to my wife, I was concerned that the first part of it didn’t have the punch I was looking for. I printed it up and gave it to her to read. Her first comment was the question: How long had he been sleep walking like this? I was stunned. The main character wakes up to a mauled deer next ot him, blood is on his hands and mouth and my wife wants to know how long this had been going on? To be honest, I had never really given that much consideration, since for me the story starts with the main character waking up next to the deer carcass. Her next question was: why didn’t he call the police? That question I could answer and did: he woke up next to a dead deer and he’s covered in blood. The police are the last thing he needs to worry about.

This brings up a point I would like to reiterate for all of our writers out there – your story doesn’t begin at the inciting incident, or even the first page. What happens before should be a part of your rough draft. Even if it’s in a vague ‘x happened to him’.

For me, this made me reconsider my main character’s history. How long had he been sleep walking? What have his parents done to mitigate this? What’s he doing now? Is it working? To answer the questions in order: since he was five, drugs and stress reduction, more drugs and hell, no – otherwise there would be no story.

I looked up drugs for sleep walkers. One of them is a well known anti-epileptic and anti-psychotic called clonazepam. I was curious about this, and a small idea started. What if the main character, a bona fide werewolf, was taking this drug for sleepwalking, but the sleepwalking was really him trying to turn into a wolf? Do his parents know this? No, when they see him sleepwalking, he’s on all fours, growling and snapping. They think he’s dreaming about something, but in reality, it’s the wolf trying to get out.

Fast forward to him being a grown-up. He takes clonazepam to control his sleep walking, but sometimes he forgets to take a dose. On most nights, nothing happens. When the moon is full, that’s when he changes and goes on a rampage. This is rare enough that Edgar (our MC) doesn’t make the connection to moon cycles and waking up in strange places, but it happens. He just thinks that he’s sleep walking. The deer represents a new level for him.

I looked up what would happen if he went cold turkey, and hoo boy, it is going to be a problem. Hallucinations, depression, anxiety and so much more for our hero. Most of which also happens with serial killers and the post-kill depression.

Now, this is Tribal I’m talking about, so one of the problems I had was that the political message of ‘how can an essentially good person get swept up in this?’ would get buried under an avalanche of ‘well, if he took his meds, none of this would have happened.’ I want to avoid that for obvious reasons.

Well, as it turns out – Edgar’s mentor, Jimmy, finds out that Edgar’s on anti-psychotics and tells him to get off them immediately. The doctor doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but Jimmy knows better because he’s had experience being a werewolf himself. Sound familiar? Turns out I can stay on message with this new wrinkle, after all. This makes me happy for obvious reasons. I just have to finish the second draft. The first one was horrible and I wrote myself into a corner. This one is much better.

That’s all I’ve got for now. I should have the second draft finished by the end of September and I am going to have it released next year. If any of my long suffering blog readers want to volunteer to be a beta reader, drop me a line. Ta-ta for now.