writing

The Six Hundred and Twenty-third Post: The One Where I Address the Digital Monkey on My Back…

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I have to get rid of this thing.

Yes, you…

My phone sucks up more time than a black hole. I have an hour lunch, and I find myself spending more time on my phone rather than putting pen to paper. When I’m at home, I have hours of time I could be using to getting this outline done and moving on to the next project.

Nope – if it’s not YouTube, it’s the social media sites. I am horrible. If any of you thought that I was obsessively hacking away at the Great Works that are struggling in my mind to be loosed upon the world, let me let you in on a little secret: I have a horrible work ethic.

And I can’t just tell myself that I can’t use the phone. Music is an integral part of the writing process for me, and I use my phone to play music. What’s also on the phone? Reddit. Facebook. Instagram. Those old demons tempting me. Not really tempting me, but racing with me on the primrose path of destruction.

I’m also going to admit that I am getting a little impatient to finish this outline. Which doesn’t help with the guilt I feel over flipping through Facebook looking for more film clips from Monument Hobbies. I know what I have to do. I need to do this:

If I want to get anything done, I have to put my foot down. During the hour of lunch, phone is for music only. When I get home, I have another hour of work, and I can listen to music from the computer. I just need the phone in the bedroom getting charged up for the next day. I have to exercise some discipline here.

Does anyone here have that problem? The intrusion of that little hunk of dead dinosaurs and stardust into your life? Any hints or suggestions? I could honestly use some.

Hang on – let me send this cat video to my followers.

The Six Hundred and Twenty-first Post: The One Where I Mumble My Way Through a Plot

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It’s always the same when I have an idea. I grab it in my mouth and take off like a German Sheperd with a hot dog. I have no idea where I am going or what I am doing with it, but I have it and it’s mine now.

I have two interesting ideas:

  1. A slave that doesn’t want to be freed but would rather go back to a life of servitude.
  2. Treating vampires like junkies rather than the sexy but troubled icons that they are now.

I have no idea how to go any further with these ideas, but they are so good, I am not getting rid of them. I really want to develop them past this point, but with one, I need to fill out the middle – the only problem with that one is time. The second one is a lot trickier.

In the rules I have set up, there is little in the way of magic or supernatural aspects. Vampires aren’t super strong or mesmeric creatures. Crosses don’t affect them, nor does any amount of faith. They don’t grow fangs and nibble at your neck to leave two neat little holes. They have to use implements to get to the blood, which doesn’t nourish them as much as give them an incredible high. My problem with this one is simple, but brain-wracking: How do I end this darn book? The fact that it’s called Forever Junkie doesn’t mean it’s going to be solved in three acts and a commercial break.

There are some things I am keeping as far as lore goes – sunlight still burns, they are vulnerable to fire and stakes destroy their body. I wanted to go the Old World of Darkness route and say that stakes merely paralyze them, but I’m trying to stick to the true lore as much as I can while trying to make things new.

The one piece of lore I am struggling over is if the head vampire dies, the ones he or she created are freed from the curse. In the context of the story, it gives me a tidy ending. The main character tracks down the vampire that took his blood, kills him or her and everyone lives happily ever after.

That seems too simple of an ending for me. I like happy endings, but one that comes together a little too pat isn’t my cup of tea. Of course, I can’t make it easy for the main character either. They’re going to earn their happy ending, but the kill-the-master seems a little too mystical for this particular book.

Then again, I am talking about creatures that burst into flame upon being struck with sunlight, no matter the SPF of their suntan lotion. Maybe a twitch of the mystic is needed here.

OK – how about this?  Main Character’s sire (or dam, it’s the 21st century here) is killed, but it doesn’t remove the curse, so the character goes off and finds a Narcotics Anonymous group and the book ends with his introducing himself.  I like that. It’s an ending to his story – it’s upbeat enough for me, and it’s not entirely mystical. It makes sense.

Now I have to outline and write it. Hopefully during this year. Next year, I want to really focus on fantasy and sci-fi…with some elements of horror in it, of course.

Well, thank you for sitting with me while I worked this out. Please check the right hand side for books by me and dear friends – they’re all good, or I wouldn’t have them there. Ta-ta for now.

The Six Hundred and Twentieth Post: The One That Doesn’t Sparkle in the Sunlight!

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Sorry that I missed last Thursday. My dreaded day job had me working overtime and waking up early, which messed with everything. I have emerged from that week with all of my vices intact. I will try to fall back into a regular schedule.

Speaking of vices – do you hate sparkling, sexy vampires as much as I do? Want them to go back to being something dangerous? Then I have news for you. I am working on a new novel – outlining – about vampires called Forever Junkie. I wanted to write a vampire novel, but I wanted a new direction to it. I know that people far smarter than me say that vampires are an allegory for sexuality, particularly in Victorian England. I wanted to turn it into a new allegory, so I thought about something that is touched on very briefly in the lore, but is never examined.

Vampires can also be an allegory for addiction. Modern vampires have turned feeding into a sexual act – not just procreation, but the feeding of a desire. What if we ramped that up to eleven? What if that unkempt guy shuffling down the sidewalk a few steps ahead (or behind…) with the bad odor and dark stains on his shirt was one of the undead?

Clearly a junkie

I wanted to write this as a more grounded version of vampires, something akin to the movie Martin. No fangs, no mesmerism, not even turning into a bat. This is going to be a little more realistic. Which means I get to do research into drug addiction. This is not a complaint! Researching is one of my favorite parts of writing. Now, I don’t know how this story is going to play out. I got the idea a couple of days ago. I just hope I can get it out in a reasonable time frame – which is code for ‘before I die’.

That’s it for the week – living on little sleep and a lot of caffeine. I’ll try to get a little better about updates, with the overtime done, that should be a little more consistent. I’m off to pen the outline. Have fun!

The Six Hundred and Nineteenth Post: The One Where I Go Back to Scribbling…

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I’m feeling a lot better – who knew that rest and medicine would work? I’m still a little cough-y, but I am continuing to outline Tribal. I am going to finish the outline before I continue writing it. I am trying to plan better things better and wing it less. I think this is going to make me more productive in the long run.

I did go to the doctor today, and I’ve lost three pounds in three weeks! I am going back to the gym now (and then), and I am feeling a lot better now. I am hoping to keep this going, even though I took a day off today to catch Opening Day (if MLB.tv would LET ME). I am going to head out in the evening. Normally, I go early in the morning, but today I had a doctor’s appointment and the aforementioned Opening Day.

While I am writing the outline for the current novel, I am trying to work on the literary novel. I’m torn as far as endings go. Should I make it depressing or uplifting? I don’t really know because both of the endings appeal to me. This book is my criticisms of society and how they treat creatives, and the nature of celebrity in this day and age – so the depressing ending fits. However, I would like to have an upbeat ending for the main character just because I am going to put him through so much crap. It’s still in the embryonic stage. I don’t even have a good title for it. Right now – I’m referring to it as Crab Bucket Society. It’s not my best title, but it works for now. I am going to write this as if I could put this in the running for the Pulitzer. After that, I might work on something I’ve hung on the line for way too long.

I’ve really got to get on the stick and revise something. Is till have to get Agonizing Alibi Day edited down a little bit, not to mention Alien Voices. Actually, I need to get the cover art for these two books done first. I need to get a lot done. I just need more time. Then again, don’t we all? Anyway – I need to get back to work.

Thanks for sticking this out with me thus far. I am still trying to figure out how to get new books on my right bar. It’s not easy, but I can wrestle this to the ground. Hope you all have a good day.

The Six Hundred and Seventeenth Post: The One Where I Investigate That Rustling Noise…

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Thursdays sneak up on me. One minute, it’s Monday and I am wishing I were back in bed, the next minute it’s Thursday and I’m thinking: ‘don’t I have something I need to do?’

There’s a Thursday right there!

There is very little going on in the writing world. Once again I am juggling three projects: writing Dirt Elf, re-outlining Tribal (Got the idea for the MC to lose the first big fight he’s in to subvert expectations) and working out an idea I had about a slave who wants to return to their master – thinking about calling this one My Gilded Cage. I’m also reading two books: Victorian Psycho, which answers the question: What if Jane Austen wrote American Psycho? I’m also reading (or trying to…) an updated translation of The Man Who Laughs called Eternal Smile for a more literate project. Yes, I’m a genre whore, but I hope one day to get off the street corners and become a high-priced literary escort.

This weekend, I am going to finally (finally!) edit down The Agonizing Alibi Day and get it ready for selling before the end of March. It’s been sitting on my hobby table in the living room for way too long. I have to remember that the name of the game is getting books out the door.

I have been slacking off for a couple of days, and I blame that on my exercise routine. I’m back to mornings in which I was going every morning – but that’s not working out because I am dead tired by the time lunch comes and I end up taking a nap. I skipped today, which is why I am writing and not snoring (if I snored, which I don’t – Nancy, I’m looking at you). I need to get back on the stick with this if I am going to finish it by my self-imposed deadline.

When I write, I feel like a dog chasing cars sometimes. There’s so many targets out there, and I don’t know what I would do if I actually caught one.

Well, I need to get to running, I guess. Check out the books on the right side of my blog – even buy one! I’ll try to be a bit more regular with my blog. See you all soon!

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 Five Hundred and Eightieth Post: The One Where I am Ready To Write 50,000 Words!

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I can’t wait for tomorrow – I’m writing this on October 31st, Nanowrimo eve. I haven’t finished the outline for the novel, but I am confident that by the time I get to the last chapter I have outlined, I will have an idea where to thake the story. I think when it comes to me outlining…as much as I hate this saying: less is more. My outline for Voices Abroad is enough so that I could hand it to anyone and they could write the text based off of my notes. Sadly, I have come to a point in the outline where I don’t really feel like putting anything down. I want to get the outline finished, but I’m just daunted? Is that the right feeling? I’m chomping at the bit to get going for the main book. The outline? Not so much.

I’m also working on the Gothic horror story’s notes and outlines – speaking of chomping at the bit. I might end up starting it on January and push back the hardcore fantasy for a few months. I’m not really motivated to take up those other two novels right now. I’m not despairing right now, I have the whole year to work on them, and this Gothic novel really is hitting the right spot for me. It’s not going to be a Kellas Donovan novel – so sex and violence will be at a minimum. I’m even buying a couple of books that are literary analysis of Gothic literature just to make sure I have all my I’s dotted and T’s crossed. I’m taking my time with this one because I really want to get this one right. I can feel the fire in my bones. This is going to be a good one. I might even try to get this one published through traditional means.

I had a good birthday – got “The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires” and a new t-shirt for the gym. It was a good Sunday. I am hoping that the rest of the week and the next that I have off will be just as productive. Slept in a little…meaning I got up at seven in the morning rather than four-thirty. Working when I feel up to it, and playing some Baldur’s Gate 3 when so moved. It’s been a fun time so far.

That’s it for now. This time tomorrow, I am going to have my little ‘writer’s moment’ and plop myself down in front of my writing laptop and write away. I can barely wait. Might even take a nap and wake up at midnight to get going. Probably not.

The Five Hundred and Seventy-eighth Post: The One Where I Grow Impatient About Several Things at Once!

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I don’t really think I am going to finish the outline by the end of the month like I had hoped. It’s over halfway through the month and I am on Chapter Six – not even up to the first killing. This might end up being one of those ‘work on the book during the morning and evening and outline during lunch’…which had never happened to me. Then again – I don’t usually outline this extensively. We’ll see if I can still make my overarching deadline of a manuscript finished by the end of December. Don’t look for this book to come out any time soon. I am taking my time with this one.

The Writing Process in a nutshell…

Speaking of not getting jack done – I am finally getting Baldur’s Gate 3 today! I’ve been waiting for this game since I saw the cinematic opening (which I have linked for you – enjoy!). I have never completed the first two games – came close with the second one, which remains my favorite, but I can’t wait to get home and try it out. I am going to measure out the time I spend with it. I do have other priorities after all.

Even though it is October, and I still have two months left in the Year of Horror – I am looking forward to the Year of Fantasy next year, and I think I am going to work on The Deadly Barrow first, because one – that’s a on-going series and two, I can monetize that fairly quickly. I just need to get back to it and get it finished before releasing it as a serial. I really want to get back to something that’s a little more grimbright than what I have been writing. I like writing about people fighting the status quo, even if they fail. I don’t know if my merry cast of characters will fail, but it will be nice to see how they do.

Well, that’s all for now. Just me counting down the hours until I can get the game I’ve been waiting for what feels like decades. I promise to maintain this blog, but there are going to be times when I blather on about the game, and like I’ve told my wife ‘just nod your head and pretend to pay attention and I’ll be fine’. Ta-ta for now.