In my mind, I can picture hundreds of emails from hundreds
of fans asking this question, so I figured I would share it with all of
you. Now, in reality, there probably
aren’t that many emails from fans in my inbox at the moment (if any), but
having an overactive imagination pretty much goes hand in hand with being a
writer, so fear not. Plus, knowing this
is what is on my mind rather than some of the other things that often occupy it
might be a relief to some.
NIKKI’S SECRET
Have you ever wanted to smash something into the wall over and
over again, then douse it with gasoline and light a match? Most of the time for me it’s people I want to
do this too, but earlier this year I felt this way about this particular novel. I may have even written some posts about it
on here, though I’m not sure. I get
funny about writing about projects I’m currently working on, almost as if I
have to be careful because the idea is so fragile that I might break it even
with a simple whisper. Then again, I
wanted to disembowel this thing and run around swinging its intestines like a
lasso, so why I would hesitate to write about it for fear of breaking it seems a
bit odd. What can I say, we’re a weird
bunch us writers. Or maybe it’s just me?
The reason for my hatred of this novel was simple; it was
hard to write. Now, this isn’t to say
that everything else has been easy, every novel has those moments when nothing
is working, but this one had this happen more times that I want to count – and
more times that I ever want to experience again. Every fifty to seventy pages I would hit a
brick wall, my mind unable to move the story forward. I just didn’t know what to do. It was very odd. Worse, my normal strategies for when this
happened didn’t seem to work, the most useful one being my re-reading of what
was written. In the past this has always
helped me move forward with a story, but not this time. Whenever this one would stop I would
eventually have to set it aside for several weeks and work on something else,
which I really hate doing because it has the tendency to kill the book in
question.
Now, had the novel been crap I would have just given up on
it, which I have done in the past. My
re-reads, however, were positive experiences and ones that always ended with me
being bummed because I wanted to see how the story continued – a very good
sign. So, for nearly a year I would go
through this process of writing fifty to seventy pages, setting it aside when
the wall popped up, write something else for a while, and then go back to the
book. What was frustrating about this
was that the side projects I would distract myself with were good, yet I could
never get into them fully because my mind kept drifting back to NIKKI’S SECRET,
which in turn made it so I was bouncing back and forth between two novels that
were reading well. It was mind
numbing. Persistence did pay off, though,
and in August the book finally started to write itself and before I knew it the
last two hundred pages were complete.
First draft finished, I set it aside for a month so I could
get it out of my head, and now, feeling as if enough time has passed, will
start the editing phase of things.
DARK HARVEST
I’m not sure why, but ever since I was in high school I
wanted to write a story that had a scarecrow element to it. The first time I ever did this was during my
junior year. Naturally, things were a
bit cliché and I had a supernatural killer scarecrow in the story, one that I
ended up sending to Weird Tales magazine.
The rejection was very positive.
They liked my writing and my characters and everything that
happened. They didn’t like the scarecrow
idea, however, since, well, it was cliché.
All the other magazines and anthologies said the same thing. A few years later, I rewrote the story and
gave it a more psychological feel. Once again,
everyone loved the story, yet also felt there was just something slightly not
quite right about it and thus would not be publish it. Honestly, I felt the same way about it, but
wasn’t sure if my thoughts were correct which is why I sent it out. After all, I had been wrong about my short
story “Red Pickup” so maybe I was wrong about that one.
Since those days, the story has always been in my head, yet
I never really knew what to do with it until now, and, once NIKKI’S SECRET was
completed, I jumped right into it.
Seventy pages later and things are going really well. This time around, it will be a short novel
rather than a story, one that will have a heavy psychological element to it. And that is all I will say about that.
ZOMBIE STORIES
At one point, needing a complete change of pace when stuck
on NIKKI’S SECRET I began penning what I thought would be some simple zombie apocalypse
stories. Nothing serious, just fun tales
I could get lost in while writing. Well,
these stories hooked me and now I plan on writing four or five short zombie
apocalypse novels. Not sure what I will
do with them once they are completed, but I will certainly write them during my
free time this month. Chances are, if
some of my early readers like them, I will upload them to Amazon and see what
happens.
SO . . .
There you have it; this is what should be occupying my time
for the next couple of weeks. Obviously,
the most important project is the editing of NIKKI’S SECRET because I would
like to have that novel uploaded on Amazon before the end of the year. Now, normally this would not be possible, editing
takes time, but since I re-read the novel so many times while working on it, much
of the editing work is finished, that being the major rewriting of scenes that
just don’t work as they originally appeared in the first draft. What remains is the proofing and some fine-tuning,
both of which I will do myself and then, for the former, hire out as well. Of course, I will also try to do some book and
movie reviews, though those won’t be a priority (as you’ve probably noticed
with this site lately). And, outside of
my writing, I’m going to keep doing creepy / sexy photos with my various lady
friends whenever we can get together and think up something cool to shoot. When able, I will post those here as well.
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