The Background Chatter In My Head

Just me mouthing off. May or may not be interesting, distressing or subject to the laws of cause or effect. Watch for the hidden messages.

The Six Hundred and Twelfth Post: The One Where I Do a Late-Stage Gender Reveal For the Main Character in my Novel!

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So, because I have to write something, I’ve started working on the second draft of Serve Me Now. The main character is a woman, but I thought – what if all of this is happening to a guy? What if there was a male influencer? Are there male influencers? According to Google – there are at least twenty-six, so apparently male influencers are a thing.

I think it’s a good idea in that there isn’t a lot done as far as radical weight gain in men. The question is, would this make a good story? I’m looking to create a feeling of Lovecraftian dread, touching a little on madness. I guess the question I need to ask is: would a man gaining weight and being shunned by society be a worthy criticism of that self-same society. I’m not trying to scare people for the sole sake of scaring people. I want to make a statement about the vapidity of celebrity culture. Would a guy make a harder impact with the statement, or would a woman?

I’m writing it with a woman as a main character, but I am still early enough into the manuscript to change it (I’ve only written a chapter and a quarter. I’m outlining as I go). I want to have this finished up by January 1st because I am going to charge ahead to The Changeling’s Crusade and try to get it finished in three to four months. I’m writing Serve Me Now just to get it done and out there. I will be stopping in November to write The Agonizing Alibi Day in one month to have it finished and out the door for the first quarter of 2025.

I think this is a good question: what makes the biggest impact?

I would love to hear feedback on this question. Personally, I am leaning towards a woman because they seem to be more susceptible to the pressures of society to maintain a certain look, and when I think of an influencer or someone who does adult-leaning entertainment, I see a woman doing this more than a guy. I’m willing to hear arguments from others who might say that a man would be suitable for lampooning society.

My birthday week is coming up, so there won’t be a entry for next week. Be sure to grab a copy of my book, or buy the books to the right from other, far better authors. See you all week after next!

The Six Hundred and Eleventh Post: The One Where I Tell My Character To Have A Seat on the Couch and Tell Me How She Feels…

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Can an influencer be sympathetic? That’s the question I am mulling over while I outline the second draft of Serve Me Now – the horror novel I want to get finished by the first quarter of 2025. She’s an “adult” influencer and model, meaning she does a lot of skin-showing and other things for a living. For this to be a good horror novel, I need to make her sympathetic…can we feel sympathy for someone whose only job is to lopok pretty? That’s my question.

I can go the old tried-and-true route of ‘hates her job’. I feel though I come back to this well a little too often with Evan. I could make her cynical of people. After all, her job is just to look pretty. She could hate going to the gym as much as I do, but she needs to go to keep her perfect shape, which leads to the real problem when she starts down the path she does in the book.

Maybe she likes her job for the attention but hates the work. NO\o choice in going to the gym. No choice in really what she can or can’t eat. Sure – she wants that slice of cheesecake, but she knows that that isn’t cheesecake, but an additional twenty minutes on the treadmill. She would like to put on sweats and eat a bag of chips and watch Hallmark movies, but that’s not bringing eyeballs to her OnlyFans site.

I think that’s the route to take. Everyone can find something wrong with their job, right? I mean, the key to having a sympathetic character is having something that the reader can relate to in their life. I’m sure we’ve all had jobs where if it weren’t for one thing, we would actually like it.

Here’s another one for the main character – for all the attention she gets, she’s lonely. I know that the whole ‘intimidated by my beauty’ thing is a little…cliched. All the messages she gets just amount to how much that particular person wants to sleep with her, and what kind of person she is in bed. No one comments on her stance on international affairs, or asks her what her favorite book is. They just want to know if she swallows or not.

What if she were a lot smarter than people think? Not super genius mode, but certainly someone with a good head on their shoulders. What if the person that knows her the best is her boyfriend Ian? I mean – he should know her the best because they’re in a relationship. This makes his inevitable departure even that much more painful because this was her tether to a somewhat normal life. When he’s gone, all she has are the empty platitudes of her fans. Even those begin to trickle away.

Yes. I think this is the route I am going to take. I just need to keep this in mind when I work on the outline. Can I show her loving the attention? Sure. There’s a little bit of narcissism in her to lap up the looks and leers. She could suffer from low self-esteem, which would explain a lot of things with her.

Well – that wasn’t so hard.

Now, I just gotta fold this into all the other things that are going on in the book. I am hoping to get it finished in time for publication by the end of the first quarter of the New Year. I want to have my schedule cleared for all the other books that I need to write. Wish me luck!

The Six Hundred and Tenth Post: The One Where I Get In Another Post Barely On Time!

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Deadlines, amirite?

I am working on the history of my fantasy world, and let me tell you – it’s harder than one would think. I have two discrete time periods that I am trying to join. One of them is typical fantasy – swords, elves and the such. The other period has guns and is patterned after the Wild West. In the later period, there are no elves. They’re stories told to children. My problem is two-fold. One: how to join these two time periods. Two: what happened to the elves?

A lot of times elves are always goodness and light…

Or dark dominatrix.

I really want to go in a different direction with the elves here.

So…why not make them like marauders? Hear me out.

The main continent is home to a race called the rahsaya – clouds of self-organizing, sentient magic. They were there first and lived for centuries before the elves came from their home continent. From there, they discovered two things: a resource rich land, and magic for the taking. Like all good colonizers, they take everything that isn’t nailed down and take a crowbar to what was. When they found the rahsaya, they didn’t see them as sentient beings, but as another resource. The rahsaya had no cities, no written language – barely could be considered living. Trapping them in the rare ore orchilarium, they were turned into batteries of magic. Entire fields and families were sucked into devices to make the lives of the elves easier.

Then a few elves discovered an old work called the Khesu-Kher. In it is the secret of immortality. Yes – elves are long lived, but they will still die. Why should the party stop simply because you do? The only problem is the Khesu-Kher was found incomplete. While many of the formula and spells were complete and useful, the one that was desired was incomplete. The cabal of elves spent time and fortunes to find the rest of the spell. This group came to call themselves Masters, and worked behind the scenes to further their research. When the war between the rahsaya and elves involved some humans called the Kuonradi, and started to go badly the elves fled the continent, finding another place to take root in.

This little snippet of history solves most of my problems. I have the elves, so I can continue with Rhona and Anya (if I ever get a good idea) and continue the story of the Masters and Tyro in the later eras. I’ve got a rough outline so far. There are seven ages with Rhona in the Age of War, and Tyro in the following Age of Man. I’ve even plotted a little further along with the Ages of Exploration, Colonization, Rebellion and Progress. Would the Masters see these ages? I don’t know, but it’s fun to contemplate one of the Masters laboring over a computer and bemoaning the loss of good scribes.

Well, that’s all I have for now. I know I should be working on the outline to Agonizing Alibi Day, and I’ll throw down a couple of bullet points before I head to the gym. Wish me luck in sweating!

The Six Hundred and Ninth Post: The One Where I am Excited About Pre-Writing!

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I’m excited. I am outlining the nest book in the Lucky Evan’s Life series and I have to get it done by the end of October because I am doing the book for my Nanowrimo project, with an eye in getting it out fir first quarter of the year. Tribal was fun in the ‘let’s see where this one will go’ sort of way, but I am getting some better ideas for scenes, so I am putting it in the Vault for now. Maybe I’ll revisit it later, but for now – it’s off to supermax for you, Edgar.

I am also going to invest in some online classes on how to format a book properly. If I am going to do the indie author route – I need to learn how to properly handle all aspects of this job. Formatting is one that is difficult to find. I can never find a step-by-step tutorial that completely covers it. So, I am going to pony up the cash and buy a class held by an indie author and take copious amounts of notes.

Speaking a square one – I am back to that with Tyro’s first novel. I’m not worried about it – I don’t even think I am going to get the outline started until the end of the second or third quarter next year. I’m having issues with motivation. Yes – she wants freedom from her abusive Master, but I am also finding out that she is not a leader sort – but everyone is looking to her for leadership. She’s far happier as an almost submissive rather than an assertive leader. I don’t know/ I think this is going to need some more time in the lab, as it were. I was hoping that this would be book two in the Year of Finally Finishing Fantasy Books, but it looks like book three or four. As long as I get two books finished, edited and published by year’s end I’ll be very happy…and more than likely sleep deprived.

I am working still on the outline the The Changeling’s Crusade when I’m not doing a billion other things. This one is turning out very dark – so I like it. This is definitely one book I want to have finished by next year’s end.

Well – I’ve blabbed on enough, and I need to get to work. If you’re interested in my work, or the work of dear friends…look to your right and follow the links, buy a book or two and have at them. Until next time – ta-ta!

The Six Hundred and Eighth Post: The One Where I Figure Out Something About My Current Project!

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The problem I was having was not only the ending – which would have wrapped everything up in a very neat, but ultimately unsatisfying and bloody bow – but that I had forgotten the the book’s question. I’ll explain below.

I am reading this book, and it breaks down the anatomy of a story this way:

  • “What happens” is the plot
  • “Someone” is the protagonist
  • The “goal” is the story’s question.
  • “How the protagonist changes” is what the whole story is about.

The story question is what the protagonist is after. In Edgar’s case, it’s control. He wants control of his bully Carlton (and by extension, his work environment), control of the wolf inside him and ultimately, control of his life. I got so tied up in James and that conflict, I forgot the real conflict, which it the internal one between the wolf inside Edgar and Edgar himself. In the first draft, the relationship was patched up fairly quickly. I think I need to have some more try-fail-try again cycles. Make Edgar work for control of this thing. The only problem to this is that he’s constantly going to James for help, which is eroding control of the other factors of his life. The story question, in the end, is: what is Edgar going to do to gain control of one thing, and how much of his own life and independence is he willing to give up? Ultimately, this book was supposed to be about the dangers of cultish thinking. I’ve got to steer back to that.

So, for that reason – I am going to let this one slide into the slush pile that is the graveyard USB. I’m going to deeply outline this one, but not right now. Right now, I am going to take advantage of the extra few days to outline Agonizing Alibi Day and hopefully get that done ahead of time. I might have it done in time for Christmas…maybe. If not, it’ll definitely come in the New Year.

I am really looking forward to outlining the other novels. I’ve got some better ideas for Tyro’s series based on what I have read so far. I’m still outlining The Changeling’s Crusade, and this might be a one-shot. As much as I would like to write The Changeling’s Second Crusade, I don’t think I’ve got a second one in me for that one. Then again – I’m kind of tired of everything being a trilogy at a minimum, especially in fantasy. Then again – I might be struck with a good idea.

Wow – I’ve really gabbed up this one. I’mma gonna let you go, so I can get to work. Y’all have a good day and ta-ta for now.

The Six Hundred and Seventh Post: The One Where I Can Barely Contain Both My Glee and Horror!

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Honestly, I can’t wait for next year. I’m working on the outline for Changeling’s Crusade and I have so many things I want to add ot it, I can’t wait to write it. I can’t wait to get back to fansty in general. I like writing horror, and I’m finding that some of my fantasy ideas are getting tinged with horror. I should thank this book for making that happen. By the way, I am almost done with it and so far, it is not disappointing. I can’t recommend it enough.

The only thing that I can’t wait to do more than the three fantasy novels I have lined up, is writing the next Lucky Evan’s Life book: The Agonizing Alibi Day. I plan on this one being done in November and out by maybe the end of December, if not the beginning of January. I want to knock this one out in a month. I really need to kinda get back to the goal of getting things published. I’ve got a book that’s been gone through by Nancy, and I need to implement those changes and work on a line edit for it soon. I think it’s had enough time to mellow out for me to edit it. Not a fan of editing, but it is something that needs to be done.

I really need to focus more on output next year. Of course, I am planning on writing three extremely long fantasy novels. Since this year is almost at a close, I might hold back on releasing two books at least for next year. The hesitation is a little understandable – shoving your children out on the street corner and telling them to shake what Mama gave ‘em is a little daunting. I’ve got to get over it if I want to make the next leap and start looking for publishers for the works.

Other than gleeful plans and nerve seizing panic – there is not much else going on. Still going to the gym and still painting minis. I might get the nerve to use more things – like washes and glazes – to improve my painting a little bit. We’ll see how the feathered serpent comes out with instructions.

Ta-ta for now!

The Six Hundred and Sixth Post: The One Where The Moral Quandary Is Over…

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Tribal is going in a drawer after I am finished. It’s not that I think that it’s a bad book, I just think it’s one that should deeply, deeply mellow. Maybe even be published under a pseudonym. At least I have a good ending for it. I’m also in a bit of a rush to get it finished. I have to complete the outlines for The Changeling’s Crusade and The Agonizing Alibi Day by the end of October. November, regardless of where I am at with anything, I’m stopping it and writing Alibi Day for Nanowrimo. I want to end this year on a positive note. I can’t even remember if I’ve published anything this year or not. Maybe year after next, I’ll plant my butt somewhere and write twelve Lucky Evan’s Life novels in a row and space out their publications.

I did submit my books to be reviewed by an Instagram influencer and actress – so we’ll see how that goes. I don’t expect to have then reviewed anytime soon, but at least I am getting it into someone else’s hands. I wish I knew other people to send my books to for reviews. I’m nervous about Kirkus, and I think I have to pay for that.

I really want to get back to fantasy. I’ve been writing horror for the past year, and I’ve been reading Between Two Fires, which I highly recommend if you want cosmic horror in your medieval history novel. I’m about halfway through it, and I can’t really put it down. Give it a shot – I think you’ll like it.

For other books you might like, check out the books to the right of your browser. I know I haven’t updated the list in a while, but I can’t figure out how to do it since WordPress changed their format engine. Well – off to write about werewolves. Ta-Ta for now!

The Six Hundred and Fifth Post: The One Where I Have a Moral Quandary About My Work…

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I am almost done with the book Tribal, but I am not sure I really want it published. There’s a lot of language in it that is what the kids would call ‘problematic’, but it’s in the context of the story. I can see someone reading this book and trying to cancel me – not that it would be hard to do something like that. I’m worried that people are going to miss the message (cults are dangerous things) for the medium…if that’s being said right.

Honestly – should I toss the book aside or not. I am going to finish it, but past that….

I’d really like some input from other people. Maybe someone can read it and let me know how far I’ve gone? I mean, when it’s finished, of course. Which should be (and don’t hold me to it if you know my track record concerning this) by the end of the month. I’ve got to whip up an outline for the next Lucky Evan’s Life story called The Agonizing Alibi Day to be done in November for Nanowrimo. Which means I need to have Tribal done at the ned of this month to give me a month to plan the outline. In December, I think I will get back to outlining Medicine Show and starting that the first of the year in hopes of getting three epic style fantasies finished…and maybe squeeze in another Evan book somewhere.

But this thing with Tribal’s language has me tied up in mental knots. It’s an important message, but I don’t want it taken out of context by someone because they feel offended. Actually – come to think of it, you should feel offended. If you’re siding with the main antagonist of the story…them this book isn’t for you, really. I just don’t want some ne’er-do-well Karen mucking things up because I made her clutch her pearls at the language and completely bypassing the grotesque violence.

Yes, I can see someone beging so offended by the language and missing the point of it, and completely ignoring the gruesome imagery I’m using on purpose. What’s worse – the violence, I feel, while far more horrific, can be easily more justified than the language.

I’m on a limb here. Should I publish it or should I keep it to myself? I don’t know.

The Six Hundred and Fourth Post: Here Comes That Whooshing Sound Again…

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I don’t think that I am going to hit my end of August deadline, nor am I going to keep it to under 70,000 words. Am I worried? Not any more. Since Nancy reads a couple of chapters at a time, I am getting some editing done, I might still hit my Election Day deadline. I just thought of a couple of other things to torment poor Edgar with, that’s all. Still don’t have the punchy ending I want, yet. I guess Stephen King and I have something in common, after all.

I don’t have any good ideas for next year beyond Marvelous and Malefic Doomsday Medicine Show, The Changeling’s Crusade and Unbound. All of these are epic fantasy ideas, so they should carry me through next year easily, but I don’t like it when I open my idea notebook and I have nothing to put into it. The last decent I idea I had was for a Gothic Horror/Romance and I know I’m not going to get to that for a year at least (the fantasy novels I am going to work on have been bouncing around in my head for too long a time).

On a bit of a personal note, I am beginning to get over my hang-up of typing with glasses on…not by choice mind you. Take my advice – getting old sucks. Don’t do it.

I think for November I am going to re-do Agonizing Alibi Day. There are some mistakes I made in writing that I can’t really undo without scrapping the whole thing. I also need a novel to work on for Nanowrimo, so why not throw something up that I can have self-published by later December? I should come up with something, right? It’s been way too long since I published anything, much less something that’s supposed to be a continuing series. To quote Jim Butcher: “I don’t have a muse, I have a mortgage.” I need to get back on that stick if I want to get some sort of progress done.

There’s little else going on writing wise – just me tap dancing as fast as I can. Check out the books to the right – written by me and some good friends. I should get back to work. Ta-ta for now.

The Six Hundred and Third Post: The One Where I Wrap Up GenCon and Shoot At Werewolves!

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Well, having braved both con crud and con drop – I am here to say that GenCon was a partial success? Wyrmwood Gaming was not selling dice at the location on the merchant’s floor. That was one of the big reasons I went to GenCon in the first place! I did get to play some great games. I finally got to try my hand at both the new iterations of Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf the Apocalypse. I love them both! I am going to see if there are any games for them in my area. The day did not go without some shopping, either. I did get some very nice-looking glass dice from Norse Foundry and got the latest edition of Call of Cthulu which I might run at my local game shop once I get the rules down. Overall – it was a good experience for everyone involved.

Now that vacation is out of the way, I have to get back to work and work quickly. The end of the month is fast approaching, and I need to have this rough draft done. Nancy has been good enough to read each chapter as it’s finished, so I am getting some light editing done. I’m at another set piece – the invasion of the gang strong hold, but I’m fuzzy on what should happen there and what the aftermath should be. I might have to consult my writer’s block cards for that.

Well, sadly – my laptop is dying in a dramatic fashion, so I will have to cut this very short.

*cough* *cough*

Go to GenCon if you have the chance while I deliberate on how to get through the climax of my werewolf political allegory horror novel.

Have Fun!