Thought-Drive

No sketch today, though I did write. I wrote in at a write in, whatever that means. Local meet up I joined recently had a gathering at a coffee shop. Going in, I didn't know how it would work exactly, but then again, I also didn't know it would rain. So basically, I was enthused to get in and out still fully clothed. I sat on a couch in a corner, trying not to think too hard about my seating position and what it communicated, or how upwards to 16 people would cram themselves in a near enough vicinity to write in as a cohesive group. The place is an L-shaped building filled with an obstacle course of tables, chairs (both tall and short), and couches. As it turned out, less than the number that RSVP'd were there, and other people encouraged by our herd status joined up during the meeting. I finished a draft of the prologue for the last Where Shadows Lie book, wedged into the couch, pecking away at my laptop, distracted only occasionally by the odd smell that seemed to be...

                The man couldn’t remember who had proclaimed it, but he regretted confirming it with his own eye. War is hell. Even more, he regretted discovering that war is not the only hell there is.                 Working for the government, even as a teacher, he could see that change was coming. Still, he tried to keep his head down and work, for the children’s sake. They knew nothing of economic systems and cold war hangovers, political gerrymandering and social unrest. One day, perhaps, but not then. As if he alone could have stopped the fragile globes of their worlds from shattering.                 When the war broke out, others in his neighborhood came to him like they went to every other man. He was no soldier or tactician. He wasn’t even brave, but very soon he discovered his optio...

                Lil Ray knew people in the neighborhood stared, just like he knew his family was different. He just couldn’t say why. His first inkling came when he compared the outside of people’s apartments to their insides. Lil Ray’s place had the same cramped little porch, with the same cracked street beside it. Everyone used the same creaking stairs with the same rusted handrails. Inside though, their place was different from others, and eventually he thought people were the same as project tenements. Lil Ray’s dad had suits in all different colors, shoes made from serpents. His mom had a box just for her jewelry, and it was made from wood, strong perfume that came in beautiful bottles. When he would visit his friends, the insides of their apartments lacked those things. And he was never allowed to bring anyone over, not even to eat dinner.                 As ...

The editing is done. The fourth book is due out next month, and will complete what I have begun called Cycle I. The first book, Where Shadows Lie: Bay City , is followed by Hunting Grounds , Steeler's Mill , and Campaign Trails, respectively following the stories of Nickolas Hughes, Jarvis, and David Cruz. Readers who read the first, and liked the first, will all have their opportunity to follow their favorite character, or them all, deeper into the greater story and world. I feel a wee bit accomplished, and that's mostly not a lie. However I also think it's time to take a step back. These past few years in publishing found me making a lot of mistakes, most of which I will not enumerate here. Suffice to say, I might be farther along my way if I had tried to published less, and attempted to network more, or at least advertise my first publication more. I still spend time trying to get people to start the series, and I get questions from people about where the story begins...

The ghost writing project feels done. And not just because I got snippy with the client over when she could and could not call me and why. It feels done, even, for reasons she wasn't quite in a place to understand. It feels done because we had finally come to that place where she read the manuscript, and wanted a word changed here, or a sentence changed there. Then she read it again and wanted to call this person by a different name, or change the adjective used to describe this event. It was time to seal it up, format it, and see if it could fly on its own. All in all, it was an interesting project, one that I learned a lot from, and learned a lot about myself through doing. Career wise, I might not be anywhere near where I'd like to be, but by teaching someone else about the process of writing long fiction, and knowing something about how to navigate the peaks and valleys, I have come to believe I've traveled a far stretch myself. Somewhere in there, towards the end, I c...

Ups and downs. Yesterday, I sat down and attempted to write on the short story I've "had in the works" for months. It wasn't the best day, and wasn't the best time. I didn't finish it. A month or so back came the climax of the story's prepatory life. I should've done it then. Every day since fed a little more doubt into the system. I knew that, and still thought I could handle it. At about 10:47 I hit a wall; I wasn't prepared at all for how much all the naysaying would multiply. When I shut the door to my own head, when I went inside to pull the story out, I was frightened by all the negativity. "This story is stupid," I said to myself. That, and other things an author would be best served not saying to themselves. Acknowledge that you will right bad stories, sure, but if you're going to admit it, then admit it after you've finished it, after you've edited it. Right before publishing it. I saved what I did put down. I didn...

Be careful what you wish for. That's a good one. Succinct, curious, insidious. How getting a wish granted could possibly be bad I believe is the entire premise of several, really-terrible, horror movie franchises. A more mundane example is my Facebook page 's recent status update, my ascension to 30 likes. That had been a goal of mine for months, because it had been advertised that if one's page earned 30 likes or more, then one could view their marketing data: how many people were viewing the page, how often, how many times had it been shared, or talked about, etc. Before I hit 30, I could dream about what might be happening. Now? Well. Ignorance is bliss. Another good one. This very morning I received the first mock up for the cover art for what looks to be the August release of my fourth book in the Where Shadows Lie series (a tiny, tiny goal of mine is to say that enough so that when I start abbreviating it to WSL, people will understand what I mean). It's going ...