Author: Seething With Apathy

The Five Hundred and Sixty-seventh Post: The One Where I Am on a Roll!

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Well, I have good news! I finished The Show Must Go On, at least the first draft. Now it sits aside for a couple of weeks, and then I begin the re-writes on it. I’ve finished two drafts in one year – and the year isn’t over yet! I might be able to get a couple more out. I think I am going to take a bit of a working break from writing for a week or two. I’m still working on the outline for Your Tribe, Our Tribe – my werewolf novel. I should have that done in a couple of weeks and I’ll start on it and try to get the rough draft on that one finished before November and Nanowrimo. I’m still going to do Immigrant Voices for that, and that might be the last horror novel I do for the year.

Next year, I am going to make it the year of fantasy and finish up two projects and try to have them ready: The Marvelous and Malefic Doomsday Medicine Show and The Deadly Barrow to have them done and in the hopper for being reviewed by my writing group after the horror is finished up.

I really feel that things are coming together now. I’ve gotten a cover artist for The Show Must Go On and if things work out well, I might have her do the covers for Serve Me Now and maybe Immigrant Voices if I can afford her. She’s getting $1,000 for the first cover, and I hope this isn’t money misspent.

This is not me…

What I really need to do is churn out something for immediate consumption. Something that doesn’t go through a strigent review process. Maybe go back to Catastrophic Christmas Party? I think I had most of that done, I just needed to pad it. I might do that now and work in the werewolf outline on Sundays, work on re-writes for Serve Me Now on Saturdays and dedicate the weeks for Christmas Party with an eye for December release.

Did I just make a plan? Am I going to follow through with it?

Yes to both of those.

Wish me luck.

Oh, in case you didn’t know – my first novel The Quietest Heart is free for the remainder of the week. So snatch it up before you have to pay for it. Also – I have a couple of other books, ranging from comedy to horror written by me and several dear friends. Check them out and send some love their way.

Stay well.

The Five Hundred and Sixty-sixth Post: The One Where I Feel Messed With and Not in a Friendly Way…

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I’m popular when I’m free, apparently. The Dreaded Day Job is for free this week and I got 12 purchases. Never got a thing when it was full price at $4.00, which is considerably cheaper than a lot of other books out there. I wonder if Amazon puts it up higher on the list when it’s free than when you have to pay full price? That makes no sense to me. What are you doing to my heart, Jeff?

This is really messing with my self-esteem. Am I only getting sales because it’s free this week? Is my writing ‘I’d never actually pay for it’ good? Am I barking up the wrong tree when it comes to things like this? Am I overthinking this?

Why does my breath smell like peanut butter?

I need to take a step back and evaluate this carefully. One: everyone likes free. Yes, I think Amazon does put free stuff higher up on the list to get them in the door, as it were. My book is highly rated, so it’s not bad for something I dashed off in about a month with little in the way of editing. It’s cheap, so price should be no barrier to entry. Unless I should lower the price further? Knock off a dollar? How far down should I go? Maybe I’ll experiment with a temporary price lowering in a few months and see what that does.

Any authors who read this blog: Do you have the same issues when it comes to free versus paid sales through Amazon?

Sorry this is so brief, but this is kinda seriously messing with my head. I’ll have something better for next week. I promise.

The Five Hundred and Sixty-Fifth Post: The One Where I Try to Plan Ahead!

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Well, I am amid killing the final anatagonst in The Show Must Go On, and I am at a quandary as whether bump the main character’s kill count to three and axe the producer, or should I stick with the two? No doubt there are people in the entertainment industry who are not producers screaming their opinions at the screen right now. I might being the main character to the brink of doing just that, and then have the cops come in and arrest him. I don’t want this to turn into a legal drama, so…maybe? I’ll have to think about it for a while. I haven’t gotten a good handle on that part yet.

I’m also trying to figure out which story to write as far as Nanowrimo goes. Yes, I know we’re smack dab in the middle of summer, but I want to do as much pre-writing as possible. For that I have several choices:

  1. Immigrant Voices: A schizophrenic Kenyan discovers that the voices don’t travel well
  2. All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Fangs: a young woman is turned into a vampire. This story is played for horror and humor
  3. A Game of Chinese Whispers: In a world interconnected, madness is the web’s undoing.
  4. Breeder: A woman inherits a haunted house, and the spirit that dwells inside wants out.

I have quite a few ideas, and I hope to get through two of them by the time the year is up. I’d like to do the first two. The first one is an idea I’ve had for a while, and I think it’s ready to be put to paper. The second one kinda tickles my funny bone. At first it was going to be super serious and a deep dive into the horror of being a vampire, but my natural sense of humor kept creeping up in scenes I would write in my head.

The last two are certainly good ideas, but they’re still a little half formed, with the last one needing to interview some women about child birthing and how society views that. So, those two might be held back for a while longer to get them ready. These are the four ideas that are coming to mind right now, and if I have some better ideas, I will certainly expand on them a little bit.

Right now, as far as reading goes, I am in the middle of Maeve Fly and I am liking it. It’s got an American Psycho feel to it, which is always good for me. My current break from fantasy is complete for the year. Not reading any, not writing any until next year, when I hope to finish Medicine Show and begin the editing process for that piece of work.

Well – less than a month out from GenCon. I can’t wait for the vacation! Four days of gaming and relaxing. I really can use it. I have some rules, which are going to go up the day GenCon starts, which is a Thursday. With any luck, there won’t be any gaps in posting, since I’ve been fairly good about it up to this point.

Please take some time to peruse the offerings on the right side of the blog – both from me and very talented writers. Have a good day and stay safe.

The Five Hundred and Sixty-Fourth Post: The One Where I Talk Murder, Mayhem and Priorities!

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I’ve been getting better and better with writing now that I have a goal: to kill another character. Now, all I have to do is get to that point and cut loose. Next chapter, I tell myself. The next chapter I am going to kill the other major character.

Muahahahahaaa…

Before you all think I am some blood crazed sociopath, let me say this: I am not a sociopath, because sociopaths have time. I do not. My day is packed from when I get up to when I go to sleep. I can’t go on a killing spree because my schedule is full. Sorry. Not sorry.

I haven’t touched my other project in a while because of time. I’m not really upset or concerned about it. I’ve still got a bunch of other things to keep me going. It’s just an outline, and I can still work on it after The Show Must Go On is finished. I’m still having Serve Me Now looked over by my writing group (I need to work on chapter two, while I’m thinking about it), so I am having no shortage of things to do. My ultimate goal is to get a table at GenCon year after next to try to sell my stuff there. So, this year I need to clear four horror books and maybe try to finish up a fantasy series – either The Deadly Barrows or The Marvelous and Malefic Doomsday Medicine Show. Leaning towards the last one just because it isn’t standard fantasy fare.

Also, to my credit, I haven’t played any Borderlands 2 since I started this horror kick. Yes, it is one of my favorite games, given how old it is by current gamer standards. It’s an odd thing, when I’m writing horror – I don’t think about the video games I’m not playing. I had this to a lesser extend when I was writing fantasy, but I would use the game as a reward for getting to a word count. Now – it’s more of a ‘meh: it’s a game I’ve beaten before’. Is this me maturing as a writer and as a person?

I miss you, too, little buddy…

Say it isn’t so!

Before anyone brings up Borderlands 3, let me just say that is someone wants to know my opinion of that game, drop a comment in my email and I will bring it up before GenCon just as a way of branching out from writer’s updates on my end. Sometimes I come to the blog page without a topic in mind other than how or what I’m writing. I’d love to have some feedback on what would interest you – the reader of this blog.

Well, I do have to venture to bed because I gotta get up ridiculously early in the morning. Be safe, be careful and watch out for the rat men.

The Five Hundred and Sixty-Third Post: The One Where I Am Dancing on This Keyboard!

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Wow, I have had the best writing week ever! Everything was coming out of my fingertips with hardly a hiccup. I got to work on one of the scenes that inspired the book The Show Must Go On, but I am not happy with the dialogue that Lin says before the end. Well, that’s what re-writes are for.

Really, I love days like this. When two thousand words just come out in about under two hours. When I’m itching to get to the next scene while I’m at my dreaded day job is when I feel really alive and useful. Wonderful times for everyone!

I’m also still outlining Your Tribe, Our Tribe, but I’m only doing that when I don’t have anything for the current project, which means I haven’t been doing it very often. I’m working through a couple of scenes that are getting a little too “isn’t that just convenient…” for me. I wonder if anyone has ever done a second draft to an outline?

Another thing that’s been occupying my mind is GenCon. A little over a month away, I’m still socking away money, so I’m sure that Amazon and Goulet Pens are concerned for my health. I have no doubt that I’m going to get an e-mail from these companies asking me if I’m okay. I’m looking forward to the games, which are going to keep me up past my bedtime for a couple of days – reminding me of my college days. I’m looking froward to the shopping as well, which is why I’ve been saving up some money. There are going to be a lot of stands and booths wishing they worked on commission when I am done.

There’s not much else going on. I’ve got a meeting with my writing group today, so I’m taking my lunch to get this blog done. I hope to get another good writing streak going and maybe get another two thousand words down. I’m at the body disposal scene, and I am going to ramp up the weirdness for the book here on out. I really need to turn this into a ghost story for the res tof the novel, and I might have to bring the word count up to 80K. I’m three-quarters of the way through the word count, but I just got to the climax. I think I’m not going to pay attention to the total word count while I’m writing. I need to write the full scenes, and not cheat the reader out of things because I was concerned more about keeping it under 80K. I can always cut.

Well – have fun, be safe and maybe I’ll bump into you at GenCon?

The Five Hundred and Sixty-Second Post: The One Where I Can’t Get It Together and It’s Really Irritating at Times…

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Here’s a question to all those who read this blog and happen to write: do you ever have days in which you want to write, but none of your projects seem to catch your attention? I’m feeling that today. I wanted to write something, I felt that burn in my heart to put words to paper, but when I thought about any of the myriad of projects I have, I kept telling myself ‘nah’. Nothing caught my eye, not even writing the outline for Your Tribe, Our Tribe and I love using my fountain pens.

Yesss…

I don’t know what it is. Am I just (as the kids says) ‘not feeling it’? This distresses me because I am haunted by the words of Jim Butcher: ‘I don’t have a muse, I have a mortgage.’ This is the one thing that worries me about getting to that professional level. At that point, I can’t have bad days. I have to be cranking out my best every day. I know me. I know that I am going to have off days, down days and I-don’t-wanna days. While I am at my day job, I can crank out work even when I was deep into my depression. My count wasn’t off, and my productivity wasn’t lower than usual. Then again – there’s nothing creative about what I do to earn a paycheck.

Writing is so much more to me. I can tell when I am not on my best game when I read what I wrote that day. I don’t hit my word count, or I struggle to get to my word count for that day. I’m not excited about what I am putting down on paper, as it were, and it shows. I can’t put out bad material, which makes me anxious, which blocks me from putting out my best work, which means I’m not professional and on and on and on…

See the problem I have?

I want to be professional. I want to do this for a living. I just need to get around this particular mental block. Another question to my professional writer audience: How do you do it? How do you write on days when your heart isn’t in it? There must be something more to it than just ‘nut up or shut up’.

Or should I be less irritated about taking a day off? Is that just as important as being on task? Did Stephen King take days off? Is that something I should build into my writing schedule? Have a day that’s a guilt free day off, just a day to watch a movie (which is what I did today) and relax a little. I don’t go to the gym on Sunday, so maybe I should make it a complete day of rest. Have some fun. Maybe I should look at it like that. Just try to maintain a work flow Monday through Saturday, and let Sunday be optional. Don’t stress over it. Well, don’t try to stress over it.

The Five Hundred and Sixty-First Post: The One Where I Just Shuffle Around in My Pajamas…

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I didn’t do anything Sunday and I feel bad about it. I’m sure I’ve spoken about it earlier, but I had no energy to do anything. I didn’t even watch YouTube. I don’t know if I was shagged out after a big gaming day yesterday (two hour road trip! Whoo!) or I was just *bleh*. I hated it because I wanted to write, but when I looked at my expectant laptop, I just felt turned off by the idea.

No, I don’t vacation very well, either.

I ended up moping around the house, just trying to get something done, but I ended up on the couch reading and listening to music. Not the high paced world of authoring fiction to be sure. Monday, I felt a little better and managed to get some writing done in the afternoon and evening after going to the gym.

Sundays are just bleh for me, I guess.

I’m going to chalk up Sunday to a day of fitful rest and move on. Tuesday wasn’t any better, but today I have a good feeling about it because I am going to be in a writer’s group meeting and we’re going to do nothing but write. I should hit my daily word count today with little problem. I’m also going to be around friends who are going to keep me honest about such things as well. It’ll be fun.

When I do write, it’s coming along pretty good. I’m about to get to the point where Chip is starting to piece things together with Lin and Joe. I can’t tart to write those scenes, because it means I’m finally getting to the heart of the story – which makes me wonder if I should cut some of these scenes to make the story tighter. As far as word count goes, I’m halfway through the book. Story-wise, I am maybe…a third? Yeah, I should consider cutting some scenes. I’ll bring that up with the writing group when this story hits their eager paws in a few months. First, I have to finish bringing around Serve Me Now. My wife finished it, and she has brought up some salient points – yes, I did rush the ending and left some dangling threads. No, the story kept her entertained even though she admitted she wasn’t the target audience. Maybe, the ending could be tweaked a little with the wrapping up of those loose threads. I trust her judgment and will fix those and others for the second draft.

I’m still outlining Your Tribe, Our Tribe and there are some changes happening from my initial concept. The antagonist Bobby is actually going to have a job with Edgar, this is how they meet now. Originally, Bobby was going to be the type of person that always seemed to have money but no job. Changing that now so that Bobby can work on him for a lot longer. I’ve outlined the first act and I am working on the second act. Maybe I’ll have the outline done by the end of the month and the novel I am working on now done by the middle of August. We’ll see.

Hope you all stay well and safe.

The Five Hundred and Sixtieth Post: The One Where I Say ‘John, I’m Only Outlining…”

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Double extra internet points if you get the reference.

I’m still juggling two projects, but that’s honestly nothing new for me. What’s new for me right now is that I am not ditching the first project to completely throwing myself into the second one and making that empty promise that I’ll get back to it someday. Someday is the graveyard of promises.

Maybe I’m maturing as a writer? Stop laughing.

I’m only writing the outline for this next novel, Your Tribe, Our Tribe, with the notion that is something happens, I can hand off all the notes to someone else and they can pick up and follow through. I also tend to forget scenes and I have to scramble to add them in when I do the re-writing. With the outline, I hope to have all the scene there and noted. No more forgotten scene!

I am still writing The Show Must Go On, and I am getting to the big reveal for the main character that he’s being cheating on. I’ve been waiting to write that scene for a while, but I couldn’t figure out how to make it subtle enough so that the reader could think that Chip is making a mountain out of a molehill. I think I have the idea – just a simple hip bump from Lin onto Joe. It looks innocuous enough, but it definitely clues Chip into what’s going on.

I’m not really sure what to do after the werewolf book is done. The haunted house story can’t really do forward until I do a little more research. I also want to dig into the vampire story I have – this one bringing gore and horror back to vampires – and it’s a little more formulated in my head. I might just do that one after the werewolf story. I am still trying to get four novels out of this year of horror. Next year is going to be fantasy and finishing up a couple of novels abandoned to the land of Someday.

This month also has a lot of good movies opening up. The Flash, Spider-Man across the Spiderverse, Asteroid City (never seen a Wes Anderson film before, so this looks like a good introduction), No Hard Feelings (can Jennifer Lawrence do comedy? We’ll see), and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. All of them look like great films, and it looks like my pace will slow down a little this month, but it will be worth it if these are good films.

Well, that’s all for now, speaking of pacing. I should try to get back to work and get some more of this chapter down before Chip realizes he’s being done wrong.

Ta-ta and stay safe.