writing

The Five Hundred and Seventy-sixth Post: The One Where I Actually Open Up About Something That’s Bothering Me…

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Can I get real for a minute?

I’m getting ready to write the outline for my next, and last horror book of the year.

I’m going to write about a native Kenyan schizophrenic coming over to America and losing his mind. I’m a pasty white boy from Virginia who’s never crossed the Rockies, much less been overseas. I’m no schizophrenic. I’m not sane either (heh). The only thing I have going for me is that I have done a lot of research into schizophrenia – in fact, this book is based on a study I happened to have stumbled across while looking for something else entirely.

I don’t have the background for this.

I don’t even think this is my book.

I’ll just quietly retreat from all of this and go back to comedy…

Now, I have written about murder, without having committed a murder. I’ve written about elves without having pointed ears and a six-hundred-year outlook on life. I’ve written about cannibalism without having so much as biting someone in anger. Why do I feel so nervous about this particular book?

Is it the climate that this book is being written in? The fact that I have put in the kind of work that I have, and my whole career can be killed even before it gets off the ground by someone calling a racist? Even if I take the time to defend my position, would anyone bother to hear it? The pessimist in me (a loud, old man to be sure) says that no one is going to care. The label will be slapped on me and that will be that.

If only that many people *read* the book…

Should I write this book, though? I could easily hand it off to someone else. Someone who has more experience than me in certain matters. I can finish the outline, drop off photocopies of everything and say “Good luck! Remember me in the author’s dedication list!”. Being a ghost writer is an honorable profession. So is using a pseudonym. We can ask Anne Rampling how that worked out for her.

I would hand it off to someone, even offer to write it for them and give them credit…but my ego would never allow it. I could not stay quiet if I gave this away and it became a success. The bitterness would overtake me so fast, it’d make your head spin. The rest of my life would be chasing that success to reclaim it.

What should I do, then? Write it and then quietly smother the baby in the crib? Set all my research aside and hope to find someone willing to be the front face of this particular book? The pressure behind the sunk-cost fallacy is real.

The Five Hundred and Seventy-Third Post: The One Where I Need Two Matches for One Candle…

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I am so ready to end this current project. It’s not boring, it’s that I am ready to start my Nanowrimo project, even though I am not anywhere near finished with the research. I’m going to finish the current one first, obviously, because I can see the finish line – I think I have to write two more chapters and touch up at least one – and the other one is really interesting to me. I don’t think I’m going to finish it in a month. I’m aiming for 90,000 words, and I don’t think I can get that done in a month, even if I go into ‘burning candles on all three ends’ mode.

Shown: November

This is why it’s so hard for me to finish projects. I get so entranced with the next one, I abandon the unfinished one. I’m a dog on a highway – there are so many tires to choose from! I’m honestly surprised I finished two books this year and I am very close to finishing a third one. I have to focus. I have to hunt down that one car before I take off after that eighteen-wheeler.

Shown: Next Project

I’m also trying to look it as this: the fact that I finished two books is a sign that I am learning and growing as a writer. I also see it as divine influence, and I really need to get back to other projects. Next year is definitely the year of Fantasy with finishing The Deadly Barrow and The Marvelous and Malefic Doomsday Medicine Show and working on something else if I get those two done before the end of the year. Don’t know what – might be Unbound…might be something new. I might rob a bank. I might get ice cream. I’ll decide in the car.

I think that’s it for now. I just have to put the screws to my thumbs and get finished with this disastrous Christmas party so I can torment people with schizophrenia. The joys of being a writer!

The Five Hundred and Seventy-second Post: The One Where…am I Getting Stuff Done?

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I’m getting close to finishing The Catastrophic Christmas Party. I’ve hit the main scene I’ve been wanting to write ever since I came up with the idea. If things work out, I should have it done before the end of this month. Nancy can read and edit it September and October, edit it out in November and put it up for sale in December. I am considering making this a Kindle only offering. I say that because getting it formatted to paperback is a pain in the butt.

I’m having some fun researching for my Nanowrimo project. I had no idea that the voices schizophrenics hear are natured by the culture of the afflicted. Voices in America and Europe tend to be horrifying, while India and Africa tend to be gentler. I took this off of a single study I read about, but it’s nice to see that this study has been replicated. The problematic nature of this book has been solved for me, at least. I can continue forward with some confidence.

If I can finish these two works, I would have written four rough drafts in a year. This is unprecedented for me! One book is a minor miracle for me. Possibly having four rough drafts? Inconceivable!  And that I’m getting one book edited to be put out next year (I am being optimistic for this)! Things are looking up for me writing wise.

My Agent agrees with me

Next year, I am going to switch to fantasy – which means I probably won’t get to the werewolf story any time soon. The first thing is going to be to finish The Deadly Barrow and get it edited, then work on Medicine Show and get that edited. I’m slowing down a little, or it’s going to look like, but these books are huge. The Deadly Barrow is the first book in the series and that’s going to be a minimum of 80,000 words. Medicine Show is going to be over 100,000 words. If I have some time, I might work on the sequel to The Deadly Barrow…which I can’t remember the title to right now.

For the immediate future, I’m going to throw myself into outlining and researching my schizophrenic book project once Christmas Party is over, which should take me through the latter half of September and through October. November is going to be writing and maybe the first half of December. Editing won’t be for a while, but it will be done.

Good news on the weight front! I am down to 252 pounds! This new medicine is working great for me with no side effects. It’s just a single injection that I have to do once a week, which is better than two pills twice a day. Did I mention I have no more embarrassing side effects? I couldn’t have comfortably gone to GenCon without this shot. I am so thankful for it!

That’s all for now, hope you all are doing well. Catch you on the next one.

The Five Hundred and Seventieth Post: The One Where I Listen for the Whoosh of a Possibly Blown Deadline…

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My confidence that I am going to complete the novel The Catastrophic Christmas Party by the end of August is waning rapidly. I have only myself to blame: I took on overtime which does cut into my writing time at home, but I need that money for next summer’s vacation. I am certain I can still get it done and published before the beginning of December. This one is not going before the writing group. My wife will read it and give advice, but this one’s going straight to Amazon like The Dreaded Day Job.

The novel itself is coming along in fits. The first part of the current chapter was a bit of a slog to get through, and the second part is coming along a lot better. I might want to consider coming back to that first part and tightening it up a bit when I begin the revisions. Having the whole conceit of the book ultimately being Evan at Christmas parties and various things going (hopefully) hilariously wrong does limit the scope, but I am having fun introducing the future love interest Sunny. It might not end up being a full 50,000 words, but closer to 40,000.

What else is going on? I got back the proof for the cover for The Show Must Go On and I am delighted with it. Next up is finish raising the capital to pay off the artist, who I will use definitely in the future. I do have tog et things together for the photoshoot for Christmas Party. I just wonder if my wife has a Santa’s cookie tray she doesn’t mind having a drill hole in it. Or maybe I’ll just buy one and sacrifice it for art. Also, need to buy an obnoxious Christmas sweater. For art, I swear.

Something less classy than this…

On the writing front there is not a lot going on beyond trying to finish this project and getting started on another (what it’s going to be is based on when I finish this current one). I haven’t even finished the outline for the werewolf book. It just slipped under the radar in the rush to get Christmas Party started. I might start it since I have quite a few chapters outlined, and just write the rest of the outline while I’m writing the first part of the book. Try to kill two birds with one stone as it were. Or hit two werewolves with one silver bullet.

I guess that’s all for now. Wish me luck in finishing up this slight interruption to the Year of Horror. I’ll see y’all later.

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-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 Fifty-Seventh Post: The One Where I Give Away The Plot!

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So, I have an idea for a vampire novel that is going to address one of the complaints I have about vampires and how they’re currently viewed in pop culture.

I am personally exhausted with the notion of vampires being avatars for raw sex. Vampires as lovers, or objects of desire for me has been played out. I want to go back to the idea of being a vampire being something horrific in the short term.

So, I thought just how bad is it to be a vampire, but not know what to do. No sire, no instruction – just wham-bam-fanged-you-ma’am and left on the side of the road. Sure – vampire lore is everywhere, and the main character isn’t completely ignorant, but everything else the main character needs to learn is going to be on their own (haven’t decided if the main character is going to be male or female). It’s a good idea, and I am going to work on it closer to the end of the year. When I finish The Show Must Go On, and the werewolf book Your Tribe, Our Tribe, I’ll work on the vampire book tentatively titled Fang Baby.

I amazingly got up on time this morning, and not hitting the snooze button three or four times. I got a lot of work done today. The only change I had to my evening routine was I went to the gym shortly before I went to bed. Didn’t write, but I did walk a few miles. This morning, when I woke this morning, I was fully awake – not bleary minded or anything like that. I felt good. I even wrote 850 words in about an hour. I’m going to try to repeat this and see if I can develop a habit. It was just weird to wake up and get right to the shower and breakfast, If I try to repeat what I did this morning for the next morning, then I need to figure out when to go to the gym since today is laundry day and that takes a good chunk of my time.

Is there anything else going on? Not really. Still focusing on getting the current novel done in a month and a half, then moving on to the next one. I want to have at least four novels first draft finished by the end of the year with one ready for publication. Whether it’s going to be picked up by a publisher or not – who knows? Still mulling that over in my head.

Take care, and stay safe.

The Five Hundred and Fifty-Sixth Post: The One Where I Change Antagonists in Mid-Stream!

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I’m going to work on Your Tribe, Our Tribe after I finish the current work. I’ve noticed that my last few works featured female protagonists, and I should take a break from that. Well…that and Breeder isn’t coming together like I want it to, but YourTribe, Our Tribe is bubbling along quite nicely. Given the themes of identity and groups vs. individuals are really salient today, I should strike while the iron is hot for a change.

The Show Must Go On is coming along very well, even though my writing habits are becoming spotty again. I’m about to declare one of the secondary characters dead and really kick off the strangeness. I’m excited to do this, because we’re getting into the horror of the story, and I’ve been itching to get into that real deep. I am still looking forward to having this done by the middle of next month, but for my own mental health, I’m calling that a soft finish line. I guess the schedule will be that I write in the morning, afternoon and evening, but on the weekend, carve out an hour or two for re-writes for ServeMe Now. Now that the text is finished, I am getting better ideas on what I should have included. Working them in is going to be a task, but it has to get done and get done soon before I can try submitting this book to a traditional publisher.

Yes, I decided, and I am going to try to get this book out there for a small to medium sized press. I am going to try to get it published that way for a year. If nothing happens by the end of the year, I will self-publish again. I have a good feeling about this book. I can feel things coming together with it. Maybe horror is my genre? Who knows? Comedy and fantasy haven’t really worked out well for me.

Well, having said all of this, I do need to get to work. Thanks for stopping by, check out my books to the right of screen, and feel free to donate a cup of coffee to the cause.