Week 26 - (no subject)

 

Update – Not really much to talk about this go-round, either here or in the actual blog portion. I’m all caught up on the paid work and have off until Monday (July 8). I fell off on the actual writing again while I dealt with the paid stuff but will get back to typing tomorrow. I took Sunday off and spent the afternoon at my local comic book store, hanging out and keeping the clerk company (he’s an old acquaintance). We had a blast chatting with the customers about upcoming movies and classic trivia. For the record, my favorite Batman is Kevin Conroy, who provided the Caped Crusader’s voice on Batman: The Animated Series, which I mentioned last week. After Conroy passed, Mark Hamill announced he was retiring as the voice of the Joker because it wouldn’t be the same without his longtime castmate. So ends an era. My favorite Bruce Wayne—not Batman—is Ben Affleck. He’s got those classic chiseled features artists have been using for Wayne for decades. I mean, c’mon—did anybody really accept Michael Keaton as millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne? But once he put the costume on—dayum. Keaton was the best part of the recent Flash movie. I’m still imprinted on Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent/Superman, but I accept Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman. She looks like a woman who could beat the snot out of Supes. Female actors weren’t really allowed to be buff back when Lynda Carter had the role.

I made up a list of possible projects I can work on while I type/rewrite the detective story. So of course one not on the list is what decided to nudge me. I’ve found my loose scenes and I’m going to read over them and see if anything sparks. If not, I’ve got plenty of others to fiddle around with. Somehow, someway, something is going to get written by the end of July.

$$$$

I haven’t been reading much lately. Frankly, not for months. My paid job makes it harder, since all I do for that is read. Then I get to the end of the day and the last thing I want to do is stare at even more words. Add in depression and the game addiction and reading for fun kind of fell by the wayside. No wonder I haven’t been able to write. One of the best motivators/idea generators a writer can have is to read a truly horrendous, boring, badly-written book, the type that begs you to throw it across the room. (I recommend you only do this with printed books. Kindles cost money.) Now that I’m working on staying positive and rediscovering my joy in writing—and especially now that I have some time off between paid assignments—I’m going to find a good book and get back into the reading at bedtime habit. This should also help me sleep better at night. That and not eating sugary foods after 6 pm.

What to read? I’m currently reading a magazine interview with Neil Gaiman, which reminded me I’ve never read any of his Sandman work. Some comics fan I am. My local library has a massive graphic novel collection, so I should be able to rectify that easily. If not, I’ll see if any of  Robert Galbraith’s (J. K. Rowling’s pseudonym) Cormoran Strike books are available. I’ve read a couple of those and enjoyed them. Can’t solve the mystery, but I’ve gotten caught up in the not-quite-romance between Strike and his female partner. Or I can catch up on Stephen King’s books. I haven’t read any of his new ones since Covid closed down the library’s used bookstore. That, and King’s gotten boring since he sobered up. The  trouble with library books is that the trend these days is for longer works, 300-500 pages or more, and I’ve only got two weeks. If I decide to switch genres again and need to read current YA books, I’m going to be in deep guano.

If I do get writing something new—and I’d better, that credit card ain’t gonna pay off itself—I’m going to make a semi-change to the schedule and write the new book first thing in the morning, in longhand. That eliminates internet distractions, plus I’m more likely to get up from a notebook to eat than I am from the laptop. My ideal schedule would be to write my stuff in the morning, work on paid stuff in the afternoon, then wind down in the evening and watch TV. Or, better yet, read. Somehow yard work fell off the map. Yeah well. Do that on weekends.

I haven’t had a road trip in a while either. I’ve been too busy and it’s been too damn hot. I’m going to hold off on long trips until later this month, after the car’s inspected and gets a scheduled oil change. Less chance it’ll leave me stranded somewhere miles from home. I may need to wait for September for research trips to Philly. Not as much daylight, but much less humidity. I’m not worried about researching Strasburg, my book’s secondary setting. Strasburg’s about a twenty-minute drive from where I live. I can cruise around there on a Sunday afternoon and get all the info I need.

That’s about all I’ve got in the tank for this week. Enjoy your Fourth of July holiday, try not to blow off any fingers or toes with those illegal fireworks, and I’ll see y’all next week.

Week 25 - Ode to Joy

 

Update – Made it through last week in far better shape than I did the week before. I still had to spend the weekend working in order to make deadline, but I took it easy, paced myself and made it through without stress or screwing off. This whole month has been a series of overlapping assignments with short deadlines. So of course for the last of the batch I get the shortest one with the longest lead time and (so far) nothing upcoming. Monday starts a new month, but that could change. Won’t matter, because I’ll probably have this one done by Monday. I may even get some time off next week. And a nice fat paycheck in July. I’m having pizza and Chinese takeout. Finally, I get to live big!

I was supposed to write a book this month. Due to a lot of paid work (which I really shouldn’t be complaining about) and a slipup into the game playing ( which I was able to get a handle on), the writing didn’t happen. I’m still making progress on the second draft of the detective book, but I really need to get my ass in gear.

So, try, try again. I will attempt to write an entire draft of a book in July. For sure this time. Unless I get a lot of work again. And if I can decide on a genre. Maybe I’d have better luck writing YA romantacy. I hear that’s hot right now. Best excuse ever to put off writing: reading other people’s books instead. My subconscious continues to trip me up in truly insidious ways.

My readership has taken a nosedive since I posted my “diversity” rants. Even the bots don’t like politics. Yeah well. Some of the books I’m planning will be coming out under pen names so nobody’s going to know it’s me anyway.  As for YA romantacy, there’s no point in writing to trends because by the time you ID them and try to hop on the bandwagon the trend is already passé. I’ll just write whatever I want to and see if I can start a trend. Who knows, I could get lucky.

$$$$

Sometimes life is not fair. I felt that way when I learned that Mark Hamill never got an Emmy for his work as the Joker in Batman: The Animated Series. I have no idea how this travesty happened. His voice acting on there was legendary. To a lot of fans (including this one) Hamill is the definitive Joker, even beating out Heath Ledger. If you’ve seen the show, if you’ve heard Hamill’s performance, you know why. Hamill was a comic book fan, and Joker is an icon, the role of a lifetime. He threw himself into that part 210 percent; you can hear his enthusiasm coming out of your TV’s speakers. I was thrilled to learn, through an interview with Kevin Conroy (he voiced Batman), that Hamill was just as animated as his character during recording sessions. While everyone else just sat on the stools in the booth and recorded their parts, Hamill was up on his feet, physically acting out the part, providing the manic energy he felt the Joker would display. It didn’t win him an Emmy, but it earned him the respect and admiration of the fans, and a load of personal satisfaction. He was having a blast, and it showed.

A voice-acting Emmy was awarded to Eartha Kitt for her role as Yzma in The Emperor’s New School Disney TV show, a spinoff from The Emperor’s New Groove. The shows ran in different decades so they were never in competition, which is just as well. Kitt was a pro who gave her all and then some to the role, and clearly enjoyed the hell out of it. Like the Joker, Yzma was an over-the-top character she could just go wild with, and she rose to the challenge with gusto. Come to think of it, she brought that same energy to her role of Catwoman on the old Adam West Batman TV show. Eartha Kitt was a force of nature, a legend and deservedly so. Watch the show, or the movie, listen to how she delivers her dialogue, and you can tell she’s having a grand old time.

When you love what you’re doing, it shows in the finished product. On a TV show or movie, you can hear it. In a book, it comes through on the page. I’ve read otherwise well-written books that bored the hell out of me. They probably bored the writer too. Some books read like the author was cranking them out for the bucks, or contractual obligation. I think that’s what happened to Frank Herbert. Go check out Dune and its immediate sequel, Dune Messiah. Dune is an unquestioned classic of science fiction that draws you into its world and its characters and holds you spellbound for (in my edition) almost 500 pages and brings the story to a satisfying conclusion. Dune Messiah is…a sequel. It’s a competently-told story and all, but that’s it. That magic something that permeates the first book is absent from the second. I suspect Herbert was driven to write Dune due to some inner compulsion and poured his heart and all his skill as a writer into it. The drive to write Dune Messiah probably came from either publisher insistence, clamoring fans or the chance for another huge paycheck, something no writer with a functioning brain will ever turn down. You can’t blame writers for revisiting a well that’s flowing so freely. But after that first satisfying drink, the water doesn’t taste quite the same. The joy of discovery, of creating something new and exciting, simply isn’t there.

When it is present, though, you can tell. Those are the books you can’t put down. Those are the books that grab you by the throat and drag you into their world and won’t let you go until you reach the last page. For me, that was Lonesome Dove. That book ran over 1000 pages and kept me enthralled for every one of them. My only complaint was that it ended. Even after 1000 pages I still wanted more.

Or—and I’m being totally serious here—Twilight. It wasn’t my cup of hot chocolate, but I could understand why its target audience—and others—not only loved it but were rabid about it. Stephenie Meyer knew what she was doing when she created Bella and her dead boyfriend. She tapped a vein, so to speak, and the readers responded. The writing may not have been stellar, but the magic was there. It’s the magic, the writer’s joy in writing, that makes the difference.

Maybe that’s why I’m stuck and unable to work on my romance series. I did write one of them, but it was Book 3. I wanted to start with Book 1, like a normal person, but Book 3 called out to me. The characters demanded I tell their story first. So I did, and I had a blast. There were no real blocks while writing that book. I churned out pages like nobody’s business and got it done in record time. The detective book was the same way. I couldn’t wait to get up in the morning, grab my pen and notebook and go to town, even when I had no clear idea of what was coming next. Figuring that out was half the fun.

Series Book 1, on the other hand, just sat there. I had all the events in order, but the prose was flat. Devoid of magic. Even I couldn’t get myself interested in these people. If I can’t drum up interest in my own story, why should anyone else give a rat’s patoot?

This is why my career as a romance writer petered out. I can’t crank out a book a month, which is pretty much a requirement in epublishing. Not unless I’m feeling it. Sure, I could write something and call it a book. It might even be readable. People might like it and it might even sell. But I wouldn’t be happy. I want the books I write to have that magic in them. I want to feel joy in the story I’m writing, so I can share it with the readers. You guys will, hopefully, be forking over hard-earned cash for this. You deserve the best I can give you.

For July…let’s see what happens. One of my other romance series has started to nudge me again. Or maybe I need to switch genres, which is how the detective story happened. I’ll look through some notes, read through some pages, and see where the magic is hiding. If and when I find it, that’s the book that will get written. Though I may have to crank out the series on the side, because I’ve got bills to pay. That had magic in it at one time; it may stir once again. I’ll never know unless I explore. I’m off to hunt for happiness! See y’all next week.

 

  

Week 17 - The Trouble with Goals

 

Update – other than subbing to a publisher’s open call, last week was pretty slow. I spent most of my time doing paid work and worrying about a scheduled tooth extraction, more over the cost than over the operation itself. Everything went well, by the way. By next week I’ll be able to eat crunchy junk food again. In the meantime, I’ve been surviving mainly on bananas and apple sauce and probably losing weight. There’s an upside to everything.

I started going through my old files for flashes and snippets I can use to either write stories for subbing or collect as is for a self-published humor anthology. The one file dates back ten years. So far, I haven’t found anything useful in it. All the entries pretty much all suck. I picked up one of my more recent longhand flash notebooks and I’m having much better luck. There’s the start of a whole novel in there that I began and may go back to, along with a bit that would fit the anthology. And that’s just in the first five pages. I might have considered the flash bit for expansion, except Stephen King used a similar idea for one of his earlier stories, so probably not. Even though mine would be totally different—I can even think of a romance angle—somebody on the internet would be bound to complain because the internet complains about everything. This is why I avoid social media.

My goal for this month is to get off my butt and get serious. I managed to make a sub in April; I need to do a lot more of that if I want to pay off my bills. I’ll be skimming those notebooks for story prompts on a nightly basis, and hopefully longhand some future subs. I also want to get this blog back on schedule. This update is supposed to cover April 21-27, and here we are in May already, a full week behind. So I’m going to aim to post again on Monday or Tuesday, then settle into my original post day of Sunday once I’m caught up. Hopefully that will get me back on track.

$$$$

So here we are at the start of May, almost halfway through the year. So far, not so good. I have yet to write a book (first draft) in a month. I have yet to finish either of the two books I started the year with. At least I had enough of the one book in good enough shape that I was able to make up a submission package for that publisher. Now I just have to finish the second draft, do some hands-on research to make sure everything’s good, do a spot-check third draft to iron out the wrinkles and I’ll be prepped and ready for a possible acceptance call. I’ve got a year to do all this. Can I make it? I dunno. See the opening lines of this paragraph.

Setting goals is the easy part. Seeing them through takes determination, hard work and faith in your own abilities, plus rock-solid belief that yes, things will come out in your favor. I’ve been falling short in all of these, all at once and in various combinations. A lifetime of bad luck and bad job experiences will do that to your confidence. Also, being fast and prolific helps the modern writer, and I’m neither. That’s something else that’ll have to be fixed if I’m going to succeed at this.

Because that’s the trouble with goals. They don’t achieve themselves; you have to work your ass off on a number of levels just to give yourself a fighting chance. Yes, luck helps, but you can’t count on that. Luck only works if you do. Like that open call. I’d been thinking of subbing to that publisher after the book was done, but the opportunity arose and I was ready. I had three edited opening chapters. I had a completed manuscript so I could do a detailed synopsis. I’m a member on a writing site where I learned about the open call and the fact they were taking partials and not complete manuscripts. All that is opportunity. None of it would have meant squat if I hadn’t taken action and sent my entry in.

But it’s not over yet. Now I’m on the clock. I have roughly a year to complete and polish the book. If I’m lucky, it’ll land on the right editor’s desk at the right time. If I did my job right with the partial, crafted an interesting story with original characters and just enough hook to snag attention and make Marketing think, “We can sell this,” then there should be several “right” editors.

And while I’m waiting, I can continue to work on other projects, like short stories and self-publishing and churning out romance novels. The romance books I’m 95% sure will be accepted. But how will they sell? Depends on how hard I work to meet my goals—not just in writing, but in research and sales techniques. The harder I work at the right things, the better my odds become. Then when the sales happen and the money starts trickling (pouring would be better, but I’m staying cautious) in, I can brag to everybody about how “lucky” I was.

None of which will happen if I don’t send things out. I won’t have anything to sub unless I write it first. Maybe my first goal of the month should be, “Establish a viable work schedule and stick to it.” Wait, I tried that last month. The only reason it didn’t work was because I didn’t. Back to my original goal for May: “Get off your lazy ass.” After all, I’ve got hundreds of Asian bots relying on me for weekly content, not to mention the viewer in Switzerland. I can’t just let them down. See y’all next week.

Week 12 - Homework Assignment

Update - I'm still having issues with the gaming addiction, but I'm slowly getting it under control. I'm also back on the detective story, and making substantial progress. I'll be busy this weekend with paid work, but I'll have a couple of days off before the first of two April assignments comes in. I've found if I go straight to the writing first thing in the morning I can get it out of the way, even if I'm typing on the laptop. Longhand is for when I really get stuck.

I was going to post the first chapter of the detective book on my Reading Room page, but for some reason Blogger won't let me add a new post, and it's been so long I've forgotten how to access Edit to make changes. It could be the page is now "static" and I can't add anything to it. So screw that. Here's my first chapter, where I tried to make use of narrative hooks and chapter-ending cliffhangers, which we discussed in passing last week. The two flash scenes that inspired this novel were posted on the October 8, 2022 entry, if you want to do a comparison. The one character's complaints about retcons not only made it into the book, it ended up being a clue. That's the fun of being a pantser: surprises at every turn.

Oh, the picture? That's the novel version of what became Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It's the only book I can think of that mine is similar to. Maybe Inkheart, but I only saw the movie version of that, and it didn't have detectives in it. I tend to think of mine as a Twilight Zone episode, with bits of humor thrown in. I still haven't decided what genre I want it to be yet.

$$$

Chapter 1

Rain hit the pavement with a sound like a million despondent souls shattering into shards of eternal gloom. The city bore it all with steely stoicism. It had been raining just long enough for humanity to forget there’d ever been a sun in the sky, that hope was an actual thing. I tipped the bottle of Scotch up to my lips and downed a swig of liquid motivation. Alcohol. Buoys the soul.

That’s how your average hard-boiled private eye story opens, with frills and variations according to the author’s skills. It’s all BS, of course. Here in the real world the sun was out, cars were honking in the street, and it was a coffee mug, not a bottle, I held to my lips. I never drink during business hours, unless it involves caffeine. I hardly ever drink, period. Having grown up with an alcoholic dad, I never developed a taste for it.

As far as the hard-boiled aspect goes, I was feeling more scrambled at the moment, as I was dealing with the paperwork for a couple of recent cases. I hate paperwork, hence the caffeine.

Couldn’t be helped, though. I needed to get paid. And drum up some extra work. The jobs I had in front of me were standard background checks—simple and quick, but not lucrative. After self-employment taxes, I’d be lucky if I could buy fresh coffee, never mind a bottle of Scotch. I don’t know how the private dicks in those old pulpy novels got by.

Hell, I do know. They were fictional characters. They could afford to sit in their squalid offices with their feet up on their desks, drowning their boredom in whiskey. I had bills to pay.

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Rollin Stone. Go ahead, laugh. I’ll wait. Let’s just get it out of the way right now. I’m thirty-two, former Army intelligence, former researcher and leg man for a midsized detective agency, now making a living of sorts as a private investigator in the grande dame of American history, the city of Philadelphia. My specialty is finding missing persons, tracking down runaway wives and teens, and running background checks on potential corporate hires. I carry a gun, but it’s mostly for self-defense. Considering the places my quarry hides out, I’m more likely to run afoul of drunks, junkies, and homeless folks with mental health issues. Not once have I ever shot it out with a hit man or been hauled in front of a mob boss by a pair of baboonish thugs. If you were hoping for a Spenser or Philip Marlow, sorry to disappoint.

Although…I wouldn’t  mind having a curvy, long-legged blonde in a blood-red dress with a slit up to here and a neckline plunging right down to there sashay into my office. Especially today. I don’t know why, but this morning I woke up and got socked in the head with memories of Ellise. I’d found and lost her two years ago, but for some reason it had decided to hit me all over again just now. Hence my sudden obsession with mind-numbing paperwork. Sometimes tedium can work better than booze, but I was starting to think neither could help me.

I hefted my mug again and sipped air. Out of coffee. I eyeballed the pot on the hotplate on the counter. There was probably enough left for maybe half a cup. It looked as dark and sullen as a thug in handcuffs standing before a judge. Did I really just think that? Yeesh. I definitely needed to lay off the hard-boiled detective cliches.

Lacking alcohol, I made the best of things, poured the sludge into my cup and optimistically gulped it down, trying my damnedest to ignore the taste. It didn’t work, but I did feel a lot more awake now. After getting a fresh pot going, I tromped back to my desk, but before I could sit I was stopped by a knock on the office door. A possible client? I’d take it. Anything’s better than paperwork, or sad memories, or my coffee.

“Excuse me?” the possible payday said. “Are you the detective?”

“Like it says on the door,” I quipped. Even before I looked I knew I was going to be disappointed. The voice was deep but nowhere near sultry, and unmistakably male. No classy dame in a red dress and stiletto heels to drag me out of my misery. Instead…

Being a good PI often requires one to have an exceptional poker face, and I had to make mine earn its keep here. The guy wasn’t ugly, exactly, but… Holy Mother of God. I’ve seen sheepdogs with less hair. This guy was sporting a full-body rug. Head, face, chest, forearms, knuckles, feet. Which were bare, by the way. The legs were probably hairy too, but I couldn’t see them due to the baggy, size XXX sweat pants he had on. He was also wearing a Hawaiian shirt, open to reveal all the body hair carpeting what looked like rolling mounds of muscle. Once I got over my initial shock I started noticing details. The hair was coarse, like a gorilla’s, but with a reddish-brown tinge. On second look I decided he had a pretty okay set of cheekbones after all, along with a chin you could break a cinderblock on and a pair of piercing blue eyes. If there was a low forehead and a beetle brow, it was well concealed by the mop up top. He was maybe about five-seven, several inches shorter than me. He had me beat in the bulk department, too; I tend to lean toward lean. Side by side, we must have looked like Tarzan and one of the apes. I wondered if Tarzan getting too close to an ape might account for his Neanderthalish appearance.

Still, a job’s a job, and anything beats paperwork. As long as he didn’t try to pay me in bananas.

“C’mon in,” I invited. I noticed him sniffing, either me or the room. Thank God I’d started a fresh pot of coffee. “That’ll be ready in a sec,” I said. “Have a seat.”

I put my desk between us and carefully sat in the well-worn swivel chair behind it. I did not put my feet up. I wanted to be ready to leap into action at a moment’s notice in case Barney Rubble pulled out a club or something. I did clear my unfinished paperwork out of the way. The ape-man walked over—just like a regular guy, no dragging knuckles involved—and settled onto one of the two wooden, non-swiveling chairs set before my desk for clients. His butt just barely fit. He didn’t put his feet up either, which, considering his lack of footwear and the state of a lot of Philly’s sidewalks, was probably best.

“So,” I said. Such scintillating wit. “How can I help you, Mr….?”

He blinked at me and pursed thick, apish lips. “Treelore.”

“Mr. Treelore. I’m Rollin Stone. Go on, take your best shot.” He stared at me blankly. The silence started to stretch. “My name,” I invited. “No comment?”

“Stone,” he said, and nodded. “Strong. Sturdy. Powerful. A positive omen. I’ve been told you search for missing persons?”

“Yes,” I said, hoping my private-eye poker face was still as strong as my name. Because behind it, I was as puzzled as hell. “It’s my specialty.”

“Perfect,” he said, and bared a set of large, heavy and scarily healthy-looking teeth at me. “I was definitely sent to the right man. I need a person of your caliber to help me find my creator.”

Mmmmkay. “That sounds a bit outside my balliwick, Mr. Treelore.” So much for paying the bills. “Sounds more like you need a priest. We’ve got tons of churches here in Philly. Pick your favorite denomination. I think there’s even a Druidic cult that holds meetings in Fairmount Park. They may still have their web page—”

“Not that kind of creator,” my erstwhile client hastily interrupted. “I’m not looking for any deity. I’m looking for the man who created me.”

“Your father?” Not that that was any improvement. I’d have a better chance of finding Jesus than I would Bigfoot, especially in the city. One of them, at least, may have actually existed at some point.

“I suppose he could be, in a broad sense of the word. This gets a little tricky.” Before I could loose yet another witty rejoinder, he finished, “He’s a writer.”

“Your father was a writer.”

Son of Kong sighed and rubbed his forehead with two thick, stubby fingers in a very modern human gesture. Turned out there was a beetle brow under all that hair, though it wasn’t as pronounced as I’d expected. “I’m not sure how best to put it. Maybe this will help.”

He reached under the Hawaiian shirt, dug his fingers into the tight band of his sweat pants and pulled out an object which he laid on the desk before me. I’d automatically tensed when he did the reach but relaxed again when I saw what he’d come up with: a paperback book.

And not just any paperback. This was the type of book that helped to give “pulp fiction” its moniker. Earth B.C. was plastered across the top, overshadowing a secondary title, Realm of the Troglodyte King. The cover painting showed a creature even more simian than my would-be client with its trollish mitts on a struggling redheaded co-ed type in a fur bikini that was more afterthought than garment. A second, slightly-more-human-looking brute with a long black mane and chest hair to match charged at them with club upraised, perhaps rushing to the co-ed’s defense. The background showed a bare plain and a smoking mountain, with a couple prehistoric-looking birds gliding overhead. If “lurid” had a mug shot, this would be it.

“That’s him.” My maybe-client reached across the desk and tapped his finger at the bottom of the cover. “This is the man I’m looking for.”

I tore my eyes away from the woman’s fur-clad, heaving bosom—hey, I’m as human as the next private eye, and the artist had given her one hell of a rack—and looked where Captain Caveman was pointing. Sure enough, there was a name down there, near the troll’s huge, ugly tootsies: Jack MacAron. Given the subject matter, it was probably a pseudonym. My name’s no prizewinner, but I still wouldn’t want it tied to anything like this.

“Did you try contacting the publisher?” I asked.

He shook his head. “They went out of business years ago. They had a building in Radnor, but it’s an office complex now.” He sniffed the air. “What’s that delightful smell?”

“Coffee,” I told him, though he was the first and only of my clients to call its aroma “delightful.” I got up, careful to keep the desk between myself and him. He watched me avidly, but didn’t budge. I gave my mug a quick rinse and pulled a fresh one out of the cupboard for my client. There was some powdered creamer in there too, hopefully not too petrified. The sugar was fresher; there are days, and cases, where a sugar rush to top off the caffeine came in handy. This could possibly be one of those cases. “How do you take your coffee? Black?”

He squinted at the pot. “It’s black already.”

I had my answer. Abandoning the creamer to its cupboard tomb, I poured myself a double, then filled the second mug and returned to my desk with them, along with the box of sugar cubes tucked under my arm. I set the mugs on the desk along with the box of sugar. After a second’s consideration, I shook a couple of cubes into my palm and dumped them into my java. Every little bit helps.

“How about Google?” I asked, resuming our conversation. “Did you try looking him up?”

The ape man was still sniffing his coffee. He dipped the tip of his tongue into it, and made a face. I relaxed a little. That’s the reaction I expect in regards to my coffee. “Sure you don’t want some cream or sugar?” I nodded toward the box.

He took the box. Shook it. Sniffed it. Okay, this was getting weird. Weirder.

Then a thought hit me and my own nose twitched. That whiff of phantom ashes drifting up my nostrils was the scent of a paycheck going up in smoke. Nobody, not even a Philadelphian, would dress and act like this unless they were totally wackadoo. Or cosplaying.

I had an interest in science fiction and comic books back when I was a kid. It was part of the reason I went for intelligence training and info gathering during my stint in the Army—homage to my childhood inspiration of Batman, the world’s greatest detective. My enthusiasm shifted away from such things when puberty hit, but I knew it hadn’t for a lot of others. These others read books, went to movies, held conventions, sometimes even found ways to make a living based on their childhood hobbies, then bitched about it all on the internet. It’s one of the reasons I stay off social media except when I’m tracking somebody.

Some of them—more than used to be, I’m afraid sometimes—never quite make the jump from kid to grownup, even with puberty’s help. My Stone Age guest looked like he might be in his twenties. Hard to tell under all that hair. Even so, a little old for dress-up. Yet here he was, in my office, made up to look like a caveman and pretending not to know what coffee and sugar were. And he was looking for somebody. A writer whose oeuvre included books about cavemen. Maybe he was just an overenthusiastic fan. Like the one who shot John Lennon. Or Mr. Hinkley, Jodie Foster enthusiast.

I edged closer to my desk, and the drawer with my gun in it. “So,” I said, “Mister…Treelore. I’m guessing you’re not from around here. Why start your search in Philadelphia?”

“Mmphggff?” he responded around a mouthful of sugar cubes. He had another half dozen in his big simian mitt.

“The sugar’s supposed to go in the coffee,” I offered helpfully.

True to character, Mr. Treelore grunted, shrugged, and slurped down a big gulp of coffee. It must have met with his personal standards, because he smiled with all those big teeth showing again. “Much better. Rather refreshing, once you adjust to the bitterness. We’ve got something like this back where I’m from, but you have boil tree bark to get it. You had a question?” He popped several extra sugar cube chasers into his mouth.

I moved the box to my side of the desk, out of reach. “What led you to think your writer friend might be found in Philadelphia?”

“That’s the city outside, right? Well, I…I didn’t exactly come here. This is going to sound rather strange.”

“I think I can take it.”

“I certainly hope so. Last night I was home. I went to sleep. This morning I woke up here, in your Filladelfya. I was confused at first. I wasn’t the only one. You should have seen the faces on the people around me. I know I don’t exactly fit in.”

“I can imagine.”

“I’m sure. At any rate, as I sat there I began to…know things. Like remembering, but more organic. Who I am, what I am, why I needed to find this particular author.” He eyed the paperback, then the box of sugar cubes. I tensed for a lunge, but he sighed and slumped in his chair. “That’s not completely accurate. I’m not entirely sure just why I need to find the writer, only that I do. Perhaps he’ll be able to tell me why I was brought to this world.”

Oh yeah. Serious psychotic break in progress here. “I thought you said he was your father.”

“My creator. An entirely different thing. He wasn’t my father, per se. This is my father.” He pointed to the Neanderthal on the book cover. “And my mother. This is the world that I came from. I’m not really real, not as I’m sure you know it. I’m a fictional character.”

Oh-kay. Time to go for the gun.

“I know what you must be thinking. ‘He’s nuttier than a squirrel in an oak tree.’ If I may?” He reached—slowly, I’ll give him that—for the letter opener on my desk. His steady stare remained fixed to my face. I didn’t dare make a grab for the drawer. The slightest twitch was liable to set him off.

Only he didn’t try to cut me. He cut himself instead. A quick, shallow slice across the meat of his forearm. Blood welled up almost at once. Or something did. Whatever it was, it was liquid, glistening and black.  He smeared some on his fingers, then transferred some smear to one of the unfinished forms on my desk. He laid the letter opener carefully next to it. The air hovering around both form and letter opener took on the smell of a newspaper.

Captain Caveman plucked a tissue from the box on the other side of my desk and blotted his arm with it. Then he set about wiping his fingers. “Go ahead,” he invited, with a chin jab at the paper. “Check it out.”

I did, starting with the letter opener. A few streaks of black still clung to the metal. I dabbed a cautious fingertip at it. It was warm, though not blood warm. More like room-temp water. When I wiped my finger carefully along the blade, it left a dark stain on my skin.

All of a sudden I realized what the scent was. Why my finger suddenly smelled like a David Baldacci tome hot off the press, with a slight undercurrent of sweat. “This is—”

“Ink,” my mysterious client said. “Printer’s ink.”

$$$

Hey, at least I'm writing. See you all next week.

Week 6 - Inspiration Overload

 

                (Image copyright Walt Disney productions. I'm too small a fish to take chances.)

Week 6 Update – doing well, although things tailed off towards the end of the week. I found another library close to home that has printouts for ten cents a page (the standard these days is 25 cents). I’m still having issues with procrastination; that’s something I’ll need to work on. Even with that, I only had to write flash one day this week. I got the first of two assignments this morning, so I’m now booked for work through the first week of March. The part of me that has to pay expenses is thrilled at the thought of substantial income. The writer is sighing and mentally working out schedules. Fortunately I typed a bit early this morning before the assignment came in, so I can write and post this blog with a clear conscience. And now, on to the blog in question…

$$$$

This isn’t the blog I was going to write. It exists thanks to this past weekend, when I had time to write but kept fiddling around. I still got some work done on Saturday; Sunday was the day I wrote flash. In between Saturday evening and Sunday morning something unexpected happened.

Lately my war with insomnia seems to have reached a cease-fire. I only had one instance this week, and it was self-inflicted. After I went to bed Saturday night, I slept okay but had weird dreams. I woke up with an idea for a short story. I looked at the clock—3:17 a.m. Normally I’d just go back to sleep and jot it all down in the morning, but this was a goodie, or at least felt like one. You can’t always trust ideas that hit in the middle of the night.  This time, though, just to play it safe, I went ahead and turned on the bedside lamp, got my glasses and one of the umpteen notebooks I keep by the bedside and scribbled down the basics. Then I shut down and tried to fall back to sleep, knowing it would be difficult.

I certainly got that right. That dream reminded me of another story I’d started and abandoned a while ago. That story reminded me of a flash I’d written that might just serve as the opening to another novel. So much for falling asleep. Which I did, towards morning, and this time had a disturbing dream that threw off both my sleep schedule and my attitude. No wonder I didn’t work on anything worthwhile on Sunday. But that’s a whole other therapy session.

Now, I haven’t written a short story in literally decades. Short stories used to be how SFF writers honed their chops before they tackled a novel. I was reading, and writing, SFF back then. There were plenty of markets back then too—magazines, paperback anthologies, printed fanzines. That’s how Stephen King got started. I’ll be dropping his name again shortly. I got maybe a dozen or so stories published throughout the 1980s and ’90s but couldn’t crack the book market in spite of two attempts. Just as well; those books massively sucked. Meanwhile, I had to support myself, so my output dwindled while I dealt with finding and keeping a job that paid a living wage in a rapidly-shifting economy. Also dwindling were the magazine and paperback short-story markets, most of which weren’t paying much better than they had in the ’60s and ’70s. The money was in novels, and breaking in had gotten even tougher.

Then the Internet happened and digital erotic romance came on the scene (if you’ll pardon the pun) and took the world by spicy, sexy, sizzling storm. And that’s how I found myself writing paranormal erotica, and eventually editing same.

Even that went bust eventually, as everybody hopped on the bandwagon and the market soon became saturated. But the door was open now. If the regular markets—those still around—don’t want your work, you can put it up on Amazon or other venues at whatever length you prefer and for however much you want to charge. Just keep in mind that your success may be long in coming, or may never arrive. There are tens of thousands of writers out there, releasing millions of words into the wild with no publisher’s editorial staff to stop them. That’s some tough competition. However, there’s still Sturgeon’s Law: “Ninety percent of everything is crap.” Don’t write crap and you’ll be fine.

For me, though, this isn’t really about publishing. It’s about my subconscious getting scared I might start making actual progress on my current chosen projects, so it’s throwing bright and shiny new ideas in my path to trip me up. I’ve had this problem before. I end up piling too much on my plate, then get discouraged and end up not doing any of them. That could be how the weekend happened.

Well, suck it up, Mr. Subconscious. I know just how I can turn all those ideas to my advantage.

Remember Stephen King? I mentioned him a little bit ago. At one point in time I considered taking a stab at becoming a horror writer. I had ideas and everything, including a pen name to keep the horror writer separate from the romance and SFF writers. The theory was that, as he aged, Mr. King was no longer writing the type of horror stories that had made him famous. Well, he was older now, and sober. Styles and interests change. Good writers do mature. This left a gaping, King-sized hole (if you’ll pardon another pun) in the horror market, just  waiting for a new writer to come in and fill the void.

I did try. I started a couple of books using my own weird ideas. Nothing ever came of them. Mostly I learned that I am not and will not ever be Stephen King. But I hung on to the pen name, and I finally found a use for it. This particular alter ego is currently second-drafting my fantasy/detective novel, when Other Me isn’t working on the romance book, or doing the dishes or something.

And those short stories? If you’ll remember, last week I bemoaned my lack of presence on the internet, and how that could hinder me when I went to market my books. This could be the answer. I can sub those stories to online markets, under the pen name’s byline. If that doesn’t work, I’ll self-publish. Those stories might get my pen name noticed—in a positive way, I would hope—and smooth the way when I start looking to publish the fantasy detective novel. Also, I did some checking around and Humorous Horror is a legitimate sub-genre. It’s small and niche but that just means less competition. If I can make some cash with this side hustle, so much the better.

On to this week now. I’m going to try for the basic work schedule: work on the romance in the morning (that’s got a publisher lined up already), the paid work in the afternoon, and the other novel in the evening if I have any gas left in the tank. That one’s on second draft right now, and will require a trip to Philadelphia in the spring for some hands-on research anyway, so I’m not that concerned about it. If/when I get either of those two done, I’ll head back to the series. I’ll leave the stories for my experiment of writing in libraries and elsewhere away from the house. Those will be longhand in a five-subject notebook. I’ve got a ton of those lying around.

And once again the schedule leaves no time for doing housework. Oh darn. Well, something’s gotta give somewhere. See you next week.

Week 5 - Antisocial Media

 

Week 5 update: Did much better. I’m over whatever illness I had, got all bills covered, wrapped up and returned a paid assignment, and made some progress on both my current projects. I’d gotten stuck on the detective story, so I switched over to the romance, which prompted Mr. Subconscious to blast some inspiration my way and got the detective story going again. Type one, do the other longhand, I can handle that. Except when I took both drafts to the library to type and get printouts of the detective story (for better editing), Mr. Subconscious suddenly decided he wanted me to type up and print out the romance draft instead. So now my focus is back on that. With the paid work done and nothing else in the queue right now, I should be able to ease myself back into doing both. As long as I’m writing something that may eventually see publication. That’s the important thing.

Now that I’ve got more time and the weather’s cleared up, I’ve started an experiment of writing in public. My goal is to take at least one day a week and write in each of the county’s public libraries. Even if I don’t get much work done, it still gets me out of the house and moving around. And I get to run the car, which is also finally working again. I’m keeping to the libraries closest to home for the time being. The ones on the fringes I’ll save for spring and summer, when the weather’s better and there’s more daylight to drive in.

I’ve made another significant change which should help increase my productivity. That’s the subject of this week’s blog.

$$$$

I had to think about how I wanted to present this. It involves a business owner I’ve been following on YouTube. I’ve mentioned his name before on this blog, admittedly as clickbait to hopefully get views. However, this particular story is about me and my own personal journey, and I don’t want to distract from that. So no names this time around. If I decide to write a blog specifically about the overall situation from an observer’s viewpoint, then I’ll name names and include a label for “clickbait.” Blogs of that nature should be left for closer to a book’s release date so I can take advantage of the borrowed attention. That’s how we roll in the 2000s.

Anyway, the business owner in question was doing a livestream, with a chat for us viewers to comment. He’s currently under attack from others in his industry, apparently for having too much initial success. Hey, it’s the Internet. Anyway, he announced for the New Year that he’s not going to participate in any online feuds or drama, but focus instead on his business and serving his customers. Which is one of my reasons for tuning in. I need to learn how to market my writing, and this guy is one hell of a marketer. And yeah, I like his product, and his vision, and his obvious enthusiasm.

His followers, not so much.

I’ve left comments on his posts before, and made comments on the live chat. This most recent time, I posted a remark. It was meant as a joke. I even added a smiley face to indicate that. I forgot that humor and having a sense thereof were among the first casualties of the online culture wars.

I got two reactions from my fellow fans. One of them laughed along with me. The other…got triggered. Violently. He Internet-screamed at me in all caps: “WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT EVEN MEAN???? DO YOU PEOPLE EVEN THINK BEFORE YOU SAY SOMETHING????” Seriously. Full meltdown mode. I shrugged him off as a nutjob and didn’t respond.

Others did. The overall gist was to soothe poor Mr. McTriggered and his offended sensibilities. “Don’t worry about them, they’re just a troll using buzzwords and looking for attention.” The poster who’d laughed along with me was also labeled a troll.

Are you kidding me? I made a joke and this wackadoo was ready to lynch me, and others in the chat were backing him up. I stopped commenting, hung back and observed. Mr. McTriggered later picked a fight with another commentator who made the mistake of criticizing someone Mr. McTriggered supported. They both got mild warnings from the mods.

And I let all this upset me. I don’t even remember what the business owner talked about. I’d just been virtually punched in the face for making a joke and the general consensus from the other participants was that my assailant was justified.

I brooded over this for at least a day, and finally had a breakthrough: How is any of this helping me get my work done? I’ve got books to write so I can deal with the bills I’ve got to pay. I don’t need this shit.

Especially not from people like Mr. McTriggered. If I knew he was a teenager or even college age I could handle it. But in this particular industry and its fandom there’s a better than average chance he’s a white male over 30. Or 40. Or older. Screaming at a total stranger for (in his estimation) attacking the business owner. Who, I also realized, doesn’t give a rat’s ass about either of us personally, just the money in our wallets. Which is as it should be. He’s got his own bills to pay, including salaries for the crew he’s employing. His focus needs to be on himself and how to keep his business going, otherwise he’s up the creek.

Which is where I could be soon if I don’t get off my ass and focus on my own chosen goals, and stop wasting time getting butthurt over loonies hiding behind a screen.

I’ve never been on Facebook or Twitter. I won’t be joining either. I’m still signed up with a writers’ forum, though I stepped away for a while for personal reasons. I had a troll on there too at one point. I have no idea why they targeted me. I ignored them and eventually they left, both me and the site in general. I was on a group fiction blog for about five years, which was great until one of the other members started bullying others and wrecked it. My only presence online is currently this blog, which has no followers. That’s okay. I have no books to market…yet. Besides, it’s cheaper than therapy.

Also, as of this week, I’m done following the business owner. I’m not withdrawing my financial support, because I do like what he puts out. But I don’t need to watch a two-hour livestream about his personal opinions or commercials for his upcoming products. That’s time I can better put to use fulfilling my own goals. He does occasional videos with business advice and interviews with professional writers and other creative people. Those I’ll tune in for because I can learn from them. I won’t be participating in any more chats. I learned that lesson too.

As I said earlier, the business owner started this year by removing himself from Internet drama. I’m going to follow his example and concentrate on more important things, like being successful. Then I can attract my own following of fanatics and trolls. That’s fine; I don’t mind if they fight among themselves. I’ll just go on working, telling the stories I want to tell and trying to grow as a writer and a person. Though I will need to figure out how to market my books without any Internet presence. Eh. Cross that bridge when I get there. See you next week.

 

 

 

 

If at First...

 

Welp, here we are.

It’s been just short of a year since I announced I was going to write a romance series (eight books total) at the pace of roughly one book a month over the course of the coming year. Checking back over my posts, that was September 21, 2022.

As you can tell, the writing didn’t happen.

However, a lot of other stuff did. I got punched in the wallet by an unexpected tax bill, followed by quarterly tax payments. Then there was the tooth infection, which turned into an expensive root canal. In between receiving the tax bill and getting the tooth fixed, I began bleeding from my lady parts. That can be scary when you’re a decade past menopause. I’m getting surgery done later this month. Even scarier, my freelance job, which has been covering expenses for me since 2015, began to dry up. Over the last several months the assignments have slowed to a trickle, and I can’t in good conscience look for other employment until the issue with my lady parts has been resolved. Be hell to land a new job only to have to tell the boss, “Sorry, I can’t start on Monday. The bulb burned out on my Easy Bake Oven and it has to go into the shop. How about I start next month? Is that good for you?”

Then there’s that issue with my right eye, the one the optometrist told me has developed a cataract, which began acting up around the same time as the tooth, and I only had funds to deal with one. I never did get the eye looked at.

Definitely should have put more effort into completing the book-a-month challenge last year. Or the year before that. I might have had a bit more disposable income to dispense to the doctors and dentists. Yeah well. You know what they say. Life’s a bitch.

They also say try, try again.

Which brings us to the here and now. At the moment my publisher’s still in business, I still get assignments here and there and there’s absolutely nothing on TV. Between that and all the extra free time, I don’t see why I can’t churn out a 45K-50K sex book every four-five weeks or so. I can also go prospecting through all my old notebooks for straw to spin into gold. Gotta do something on the weekends.

Now all I need is a kick in the pants. Oh wait, my utility bill almost doubled this summer due to me running the AC during the various heat waves. And winter heating season’s coming up. And the annual homeowners and car insurance bills. Reminds me of a tale once told by mystery writer Mickey Spillane. Heavily paraphrased, he said, “I used to take walks on the beach, waiting for inspiration. Then my accountant called and told me the bank account was running low. Man, did I get inspired.” Preach, Brother Mickey, preach.

***

It’s not quite as bad as it sounds up there. I did write a book last year, the one I used as a side project to keep words hitting paper when I kept stalling out on the series. I even finished it. I’m on the second draft now, and it’s going great guns. Now that I know the story and the characters better, I can spot and fix all the problems. It’ll probably mean almost totally rewriting the entire first half, but I’m getting all sorts of great ideas and fresh inspirations. I didn’t even have to walk on the beach. The third draft should be golden. Any time I get stuck on the series books I’ll just hop back to this one, and vice versa. If all else fails, I’ve got another possible series waiting in the wings. It’s still in the nebulous stages, though, so I’ll let it simmer for a while.

So once more into the breach. I will write a book a month this year. I don’t have much of a choice. I’ve never had to live with credit card debt and I don’t aim to start. To keep myself on track, and accountable, I’m throwing myself back into the habit of posting a blog once a week. I promise you, every Monday something will appear in this space. Might be an update, might be a rant, might be an excerpt or even a flash scene. Maybe I’ll post redacted copies of my hospital bills. Let them serve as a warning to others. You might have a good job now and be healthy as a horse, but that can change in the blink of an eye. Trust in Allah, but tie up your camel. Happy writing!

Not So Simple Math

(Note: I meant to post this yesterday. There will be an update at the end.)

The other week, while browsing the Reference section at the local Barnes and Noble, I came across a tome entitled Write a Book in a Month. I flipped through it briefly and put it back. I already know how to write a book in a month. An e-book, yeah, those only run about 30K-50K words on average, but it’s labeled a book so it counts.

Besides, I’m betting the book I put back relies heavily on the plotting aspects. If you spend the first two weeks thoroughly developing your characters and plotting out your story, then all you have to do for the second two weeks is write. Everything’s already been taken care of.

Unfortunately, I’m a pantser. Plotting doesn’t always work for me. I’ll start a story with no idea what’s going to happen or who the characters are. I fill all that in as I go. Finding it out is what makes writing fun, as well as a pain in the ass.

Whichever plan you use, there’s a mathematical formula for writing a book in a month. 1000w X 30d = 30,000b. One thousand words a day written every day for thirty days equals a complete 30,000-word story. That amounts to a book, if you stretch the definition a bit. Your book will be longer or shorter if you write more or less per day, but 1000 words makes a good standard. It only takes about an hour or two, depending on how fast you type. It helps if you know what you want to write, but that’s a pantser problem.

In theory, it should work. I’m sure it does work, for most people. The reason it doesn’t work for me is because I don’t do it. I screw off. I procrastinate. Life keeps throwing distractions at me. I sit down to type and the words dry up. I have to stop and make dinner. I just don’t have time. Well, that excuse I can shoot down pretty quick. I was (and probably still am; just had a little setback over the weekend) addicted to video games. I can sit and play games nonstop for anywhere from five to ten hours at a shot. I most certainly do have time, so we can strike that from the list.

What I don’t appear to have is discipline or motivation. I’m the fly in my own ointment.

I did take a shot at it recently. About halfway through August I resolved to write a minimum of 1000 words a day for 30 days in a row. Didn’t work out. No idea why. I couldn’t sit down and write for an hour, and I’ve got three to four things I know I could work on. I just didn’t. I’d end up doing other things.

I decided to hit the reset button and make September my 30 days. I wrote about 700 words on September 1, pretty good for me. On September 2 I discovered I had freelance work, a paying assignment with a short deadline. This was after I’d already planned on mowing the lawn and getting the ironing out of the way. That plus the paid work ate up my time. I spent the Labor Day weekend … well, laboring.

All that was out of the way by Wednesday, though. Did I write? ‘Fraid not. All of a sudden I’m blogging again. That’s what I’ve been writing instead of my thousand words. My subconscious mind is a bugger when it comes to doubling down.

The formula does work. You can write a book in a month. The key word is “write.” If you don’t write those thousand words, or any words at all, that book just ain’t gonna happen. Maybe I should have bought that book at B&N and paid attention to it. There may be more to this plotting stuff than I thought.

So I’m going public. I’m going to try it again. Write 1000 words a day and see where I am after 30 days. I’m putting that intention right here in the open for everyone to see and sneer at. I’m hoping the fear of failure and public humiliation will provide the kick in the ass I need to get said ass in gear.

To the basic formula I’m adding a couple of twists to help me along. Like I said, I’ve got maybe three or four stories already started, that I could be working on. Ideally, I should pick one project to concentrate on so it’ll get done in a month. That doesn’t seem to be working. Let’s try something else: pick one main project and use the other three as backups. If the main one fizzles, or I go on a block or something, I’ll hop over to one of the others. If the 1000 words ends up getting split between three stories on a given day, so what? It’s still 1000 words. Sooner or later something will get finished. Math’s absolute like that.

It also gives me blogging topics, as I report my ongoing success and/or failure. I could even use the 1000 words as a post. This is my page and I can do what I want with it. I’ve thought about returning to Shapeshifter Seductions, which has lain fallow of late, and finally finishing that serial story I abandoned when the writer’s block hit. Those chapters run roughly 1000 words and they’re fiction, so it counts. That’ll be my emergency plan.

As I sit here typing this, it’s Wednesday, September 20. That’s my start date, regardless of when this gets posted. Today and for the 29 days that follow, I will be writing a minimum of 1000 words of fiction, come hell, high water (been a lot of that lately, especially in the south), house- and yardwork, or writer’s block. Or even paid assignments. I used to put even those aside while caught up in the gaming addiction. If I can waste an hour or ten playing Spider Solitaire, I can damn well find the time to write 1000 words.

If nothing else, it’ll be excellent training for the upcoming NaNoWriMo, something else I’ve attempted several times in the past, only to crash and burn within a week. This year when I aim, I might just hit the target. Let’s find out together, shall we?

UPDATE: I got a late start yesterday due to lawn mowing, grocery shopping, and a set of edits that had to go out. And I still wrote 700 words. So there. I might have got all 1000 down, but Supernatural came on. Today should be easier: I wrote about 200-300 words this morning, and Project: Runway has long commercial breaks. Time to whip out the pen and notebook. To be continued ...