Editing Schmediting

The differences between working on my first novel (the still unpublished and seemingly never to be published Shadow Of A Doubt) and my latest work in progress (Summer) continue through the editing process.  I think it’s intriguing to note how much things have changed. When I finished SOAD, it was a hot freaking mess.  It…

Battlefield Earth, The Audio File

I love audiobooks, I really do.  They have totally transformed my commute into a – if not enjoyable – much more tolerable way of spending 2 to 2.5 hours of my life every day while boxed up like a sardine in my four cylinder economy bread box.  I’ve enjoyed everything from classics like Mark Twain’s…

2017

A new year has arrived.  Normally this is a cause for pausing and reflecting on everything that came the year before, the good and the bad, and setting goals for the next one to come.  But after watching the world lurch hard to the right, watching thinly masked racists gain power as they threaten to…

Short Story – John 4:14

A little short something I wrote for this month’s Reddit /r/fantasywriter contest. John 4:14 It wasn’t a normal smash and grab; I could see that from the moment I arrived in the late hours of a cold night, Yuletide only a few days gone.  The motif usually began with a brick through a shop window,…

Giving Thanks

We’ve nearly made it.  We’ve past the marker for the beginning of the holiday season, that season of joy and family, love and friendship.  Thanksgiving 2016 has passed us by, and we spent it with the kids and had a wonderful meal that Jennifer and I spent the day working on.  She did more than…

Putting the Baby to Bed

It topped out at 135,000 words.  But on Saturday morning I wrote the final words of my latest WIP, the novel Summer, and put it to rest.  It’s cooling its heels in a folder on my drive now, and I will do my best not to revisit it until the holidays are over and 2017…

350,000

Yesterday was Halloween.  At our house, we are on the wrong side of a very busy road where the speed limit increases to 55 mph, so we don’t get trick or treaters.  That means we really don’t bother with the holiday since the funnest part of it isn’t something we get to enjoy.  I do…

Horror

Just in time for one of our favorite holidays, I bring you my thoughts on horror.  I know, you’re sitting on the edge of your seats already and breathing through your mouths in shallow little gasps to keep from fainting with excitement.  I feel the same way! I was – and to some degree still…

South Central Rain

Sitting here tonight with my babe listening to Pandora radio.  Right now it’s an old R.E.M. tune, South Central Rain.  The poor woman has to read some Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx for her upcoming next class, so I put on some classy 80’s alternative music to keep her happy.  Ok… it was totally for…

September NaNoWriMo

I took part in my first National Novel Writing Month in November of 2011 (it may have been 2012, but the years blur together now and I’m unsure).  At the time I had a first chapter and some rough ideas for a noir fantasy novel featuring a character named Ben Templeton, set in the 1930’s…