writing

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.

The Four Hundred and Fifty-fourth Post: The One Where The Cat in the Box is Reading My Novel…

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I can haz review?

Apologies for the lateness, but I had finished the book as far as word count goes – wrote 60,000 words in about 22 days – but as far as the story goes, I need to finish one chapter and then I am completely done. It’s turning into quite the Schrödinger’s Novel – both done and undone. There are a couple of chapters that I might pad, but there is definitely one chapter I need to finish. I don’t know if I want to pad them or not. I might bring them it up to the writer’s group. So far, it looks like the whole novel is going to end up with a fist draft of 62-63,ooo words. After that I need to trim off 10% and then bring it to another group (if it’s still there). I am leaning towards getting trying tradpublishing this so I really want to get the word count down to something that is appealing.

On other news, I think I have a werewolf story to round out the four for the year. I was

going to do something along the lines of “My 300-lb Conjoined Twin” to throw in some body horror and a light poking fun of reality shows. However, this werewolf idea is too good to pass up. The title (taken from lyrics to a Soulfly song called “Tribe”) is Your Tribe, My Tribe. I hope I’m breaking some sort of new ground…because I am bored with shifter romance. I want to bring some sense of madness back to werewolves. We’ll see what happens.

There’s not a whole lot going on here to be honest. I’m just trying to finish this book before the end of the month, and me being the procrastinating type will probably not get it done until 11:59:59.99 PM April 30th. Here’s to writing while one’s hair is on fire!

The Four Hundred and Fifty-third Post: The One Where I Looks Like I Might Finish Something For A Change…

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I am so close to finishing the novel. I just need to pad the final chapter and write a couple that I skipped over (Candy Coated Freakout and Serve Me Now, respectively) while writing the first draft. After that – I am done with the first draft and I can begin the re-writes and the edits. Hopefully, I can keep this a still tight 60K words. Once all of that is done – I get to do the thing I like the least (even less than re-writes and editing) is trying to design the cover, but I am going to worry about that later.

It feels so good to be near the end of this. The next project is going to be The Show Must Go On. This one is going to be a total re-write from what I had initially started. This one is going to be a first-person, which is my weakest P.O.V. writing. I haven’t written that many, so I am looking forward to the challenge. While I am writing that, I am going to brainstorm for my third horror book called Breeder and it’s my first haunted house story. I have another idea that definitely needs to be fleshed out a little bit more called The Golden Ticket, and we’ll see what happens from there.

I’m hoping that some of my other books will get picked up from these four horror books. I just need to find the genre that I can profit from. I’m going to get back to The Marvelous and Malefic Doomsday Medicine Show since it has both a horror and fantasy vibe to it, but I want to spend 2023 getting a better platform put together.

And that’s all that this year is for me – trying on horror since that’s a genre I love nd have read plenty of. The other one is fantasy…even though I never read Lord of the Rings. Yes, yes – please feel free to clutch your pearls and swoon. I’m just not a fan of the writing. Worldbuilding? Holy crap – I wish I could get to that level of detail. Besides, I’ve seen the movie dozens of times and it’s a source of inspiration for me.

Mostly, I am ready for this book to be done. I’m ready to move on to the next project and start that over again. I have a better feel for the beats, and I’ve been watching enough ghost hunting shows that I think I can fake a good one. I just have to get this one finished. Three chapter, I should get that done by the end of the month. I hope I didn’t jinx myself.

Not helping…

The Four Hundred and Forty-Eighth Post: The One Where the War is Without and Within…

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I have a problem.

I love games with deep lore and in-game history. I’m not into the mechanics of the games so much as I am with the history and the personalities that make up the game’s atmosphere. One of the games I like with a super-deep lore is Mechwarrior/Battlemech. I played it as a table-top game, and as a video game when they came out. I have the latest iteration of the game: Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries. I love it because it takes place at the same time frame I’ve played the table top game. I like watching what’s going on and knowing that there is a deeper story unfolding that I can’t wait to see happen.

Also being a writer, I have a premium on time. There are only twenty-four hours in a day and a lot of them are allocated to every other thing that gets in the way like work and sleeping.

Look at him. Lazy.

At some point, I have to write.

Writing takes discipline. Discipline that I really don’t have with the omnipresent Mechwarrior 5 begging and pleading for attention. Before you say, “Just play an hour.” This isn’t a game that you can settle up in a session or two. This is a looong game – as long as Borderlands 2 (another favrotie game). You can see my problem.

Get thee behind me…

As much as I love writing, even when it’s a struggle to get something out – I love the distraction of the game. That’s what it is, is a distraction. I need a better way to deal with it. Right now, I write during lunch and that’s it. When I get home, it’s the game before and after dinner before I go to bed. I should be writing. If I do my 850 twice a day, I can finish this book in a month and a half.

But Mechwarrior…

Trying to find something to inspire me, I watched the movie Creed and there was this line from Stallone:

ROCKY

[pointing toward Adonis’ reflection in the mirror]

That’s the toughest opponent

you’re ever going to have to face.

This is the mindset I need to cultivate. It’s me against me – the creative me that wants to do this for a living against the lazy, game obsessed me. It’s going to the gym me against the junk food and TV watching me.

ROCKY

It’s you against you,

and he’s in the way.

Get him out of the way.

I need to get Mechwarrior out of the way. I need to get TV out of the way. I need to get junk food out of the way. Will it be easy? Nope. Will I stumble? You bet. But I’m only going to fail if I quit.