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.