Tag: authors

Dreams in Life

We all have dreams. We have desires and goals we want to achieve. It might be something small or something grand, something that encompasses a single week or a whole lifetime. But we all have something we dream about.

How far do you go to achieve your dream? What are you willing to do? And what are you willing to sacrifice? Do you think about it all day long, but do nothing? Or do you work a little bit towards it every day?

How much do you dedicate to your dream? How much do you sacrifice? And when is the sacrifice too great? When does the dream become a tyrant that destroy your life rather than enrich it?

What place do dreams have in our lives? Do we seek them out at all costs? Or do we know when there are things even more important? Sometimes, we must not sacrifice for the dream, but sacrifice the dream itself. Life goes on. We go on.

But we never stop dreaming.

***

My new book, The Trickster’s Lament, is currently available on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback format.

“Hermes is not having the best time. He walks a fine line, and his duty as messenger of Olympus weighs heavily on him. Being a god in the modern age means living in a world that no longer believes in gods. How much can one deity accomplish when no one respects him anymore? And why do his instincts tell him that he, the son of Zeus, is losing favor with his own family?

Tensions abound. The upstart Young Gods play dangerous games using entire cities as their boards. Formless monsters strike from the nighttime shadows, terrorizing hapless mortals. Agents of rival pantheons scheme to thwart Olympus’ designs. In the thick of it all, Hermes does what he does best: trick, lie, and cheat his way to victory.

He may be disrespected. He may be kicked about. He may even be falling out with his pantheon. But Hermes is a trickster. He knows how to play dirty in a world that doesn’t play fair. But though he can best man, beast, and god, he isn’t prepared for his wiliest opponent yet: his own conscience.”

Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

My New Book is Out on Amazon!

I am very excited to announce that my new book, The Trickster’s Lament, is now available on Amazon for both Kindle and paperback. This is my second ever published book and a sequel to my first, A God Walks Up to the Bar. I hope that my readers enjoy the further modern day adventures of the Greek god Hermes.

Synopsis:

“Hermes is not having the best time. He walks a fine line, and his duty as messenger of Olympus weighs heavily on him. Being a god in the modern age means living in a world that no longer believes in gods. How much can one deity accomplish when no one respects him anymore? And why do his instincts tell him that he, the son of Zeus, is losing favor with his own family?

Tensions abound. The upstart Young Gods play dangerous games using entire cities as their boards. Formless monsters strike from the nighttime shadows, terrorizing hapless mortals. Agents of rival pantheons scheme to thwart Olympus’ designs. In the thick of it all, Hermes does what he does best: trick, lie, and cheat his way to victory.

He may be disrespected. He may be kicked about. He may even be falling out with his pantheon. But Hermes is a trickster. He knows how to play dirty in a world that doesn’t play fair. But though he can best man, beast, and god, he isn’t prepared for his wiliest opponent yet: his own conscience.”

And for those who missed it the first time …

A God Walks Up to the Bar, my first foray into publishing, is also on Amazon.com. Interested in Hermes’s first recorded adventures battling half giants, skinwalkers, vampires, and other foes? Check it out!

As always, thanks for simply visiting my blog and sharing in my writing career and my various musings on life, the universe, and everything. Whether you click that subscribe button or not, I truly appreciate your taking the time to read my ramblings. Cheers.

Cover Art for The Trickster’s Lament

It’s my pleasure and privilege to reveal to you the title and cover of my soon to be published second book, The Trickster’s Lament.

Per the synopsis:

“Hermes is not having the best time. He walks a fine line, and his duty as messenger of Olympus weighs heavily on him. Being a god in the modern age means living in a world that no longer believes in gods. How much can one deity accomplish when no one respects him anymore? And why do his instincts tell him that he, the son of Zeus, is losing favor with his own family?

Tensions abound. The upstart Young Gods play dangerous games using entire cities as their boards. Formless monsters strike from the nighttime shadows, terrorizing hapless mortals. Agents of rival pantheons scheme to thwart Olympus’ designs. In the thick of it all, Hermes does what he does best: trick, lie, and cheat his way to victory.

He may be disrespected. He may be kicked about. He may even be falling out with his pantheon. But Hermes is a trickster. He knows how to play dirty in a world that doesn’t play fair. But though he can best man, beast, and god, he isn’t prepared for his wiliest opponent yet: his own conscience.”

Look forward to The Trickster’s Lament release on Amazon.com later this month!

Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

What Writing My Second Book Has Taught Me

I’ve heard that writing your second book is harder than writing the first. Your first book may be a hit, but it may also be a fluke, a one and done deal. But moving on to the second? Ah, that’s when you find out if you really have the chops to be a writer.

Well, crafting my second book has gone mostly smoothly. The story came together much more easily, I’ve gained a better understanding of the characters and their motivations and personalities, and it’s been a fun ride. Heck, I got it finished in much less time than the first: about a year and a half from beginning to final draft. But I also made mistakes that I didn’t with my first project.

Now, why is that? Why did I order a paperback cover when I didn’t have my final page count ready? Why did I make silly oversights in editing that I only noticed after sending the book in for formatting?

The only answer I have thus far is that I was rushing. I jumped the gun, I got a little too lax, I was so fixed on the end goal that I didn’t pay attention to all the hurdles. I was impatient, and I didn’t even realize it.

Fortunately, I spotted these errors in time and fixed them. Lesson learned.

I thought I’d share my insights here for any other budding authors to read. Impatience is a bane of writers. Maybe you have just the one novel to write in your lifetime. You’ve spent years on it and are eager to finally see it published. Or maybe you have a series in mind, a long-running story told over several books, and you’re ready to move on to the next leg in the journey.

Either way, the temptation to push through and stop paying attention to details is strong. Resist it! A good novel takes time. You have plenty of it to perfect your story, and the copyright page, and the title, and the word count, and so forth. Don’t publish until you know that your book is exactly the way you want it.

Sweat the details. It saves so much trouble in the long run if you do.

Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

Writers, Don’t Go It Alone

Writing is by and large a solitary activity. It isn’t something generally done in a group save for perhaps writing jams and community workshops. However, when writing your novel, short story, poetry, or any other project, you’re probably going to spend the lion’s share of your time by yourself, with only your ideas and thoughts to keep you company on the journey.

However, writing is not an isolated activity, as I have discovered. While writing a novel draft may be done in private, what comes afterward needs other people: submitting drafts to beta readers, finding editors to review your work, maybe even sharing passages with a local writers’ group. Why? Well, partly because we all need a few extra pairs of eyes to see the good and bad in our work that we can’t see ourselves. But we also need a smidgeon of encouragement from time to time.

I don’t say this out of selfishness or self-pity. All writers must build confidence in their work if they intend to publish. But let’s face facts. We all feel discouraged at some point or another. Perhaps we’ve hit writer’s block or we look back on our recent work and want to gag. Or maybe, even though everything is going swimmingly and we’re hitting all our deadlines, we still can’t shake off the inexplicable doldrums we’re feeling. And we need someone to talk to, someone we can trust and confide in.

As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, writers are not cut off from the world. We need other people, and we need encouragement. Being left alone with only our own thoughts to keep us company – well, I don’t know about you, but as a writer I tend to be a very harsh critic of my own work, always asking if it’s really any good.

Writing can become a lonely journey. Find someone, or a couple someones, willing to stick with you through it all, give honest feedback, be supportive, and most of all, be a friend. Writers shouldn’t live in a vacuum. It’s not healthy (or even really possible), and after all, half the fun of writing is to see people’s reactions to the things we create.

Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

Quotes Courtesy of Charles Dickens

In honor of of one of the greatest writers of our, and any time, here are some choice quotes from the works of Charles Dickens. Some advice, some funny observations, maybe even a little wisdom.

The most important thing in life is to stop saying, ‘I wish’ and start saying, ‘I will’. Consider nothing impossible, then treat possibilities as probabilities.”

David Copperfield

“There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.”

Oliver Twist

“Trifles make the sum of life.”

Great Expectations

“There are very few moments in a man’s existence when he experiences so much ludicrous distress, or meets with so little charitable commiseration, as when he is in pursuit of his own hat.”

The Pickwick Papers

 “Love, though said to be afflicted with blindness, is a vigilant watchman.”

Our Mutual Friend

Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

The Trickster’s Lament preview #2

Another glimpse of my novel-in-progress.

Don’t you just hate it when a plan falls apart? A simple museum heist has gone completely off the rails for Hermes. The trickster god better think fast.

—

I didn’t wait for more gunfire and sprinted out of their line of sight into a nearby gift shop. I vaulted the cashier’s desk and winded through the shelves of merchandise. As I did so, I felt a sudden and intense accumulation of magic behind me, a growing pressure that was followed by a violent rush of wind. The sensation swiftly changed from that of a strong gust to the feeling of barbed-wire digging into me. I dropped to the floor.

The clamor of the spell demolished the shop. Books, toys, mugs, and pens were caught up and eviscerated by a wind storm condensed into a narrow room-wide blade of fast-moving air. Metal shrieked as the spell sliced apart shelving. It traveled to the end of the room before it dissipated, leaving a deep gash in the wall.

Wind magic is hard. Controlling it with any degree of precision, let alone focusing it into a cutting edge, is notorious among mages for its difficulty. Most would-be practitioners either give up or lose limbs. These mercenaries were no amateurs. They also obviously had no interest in witnesses.

After the spell ran its course, I pushed myself to my feet and leapt up and over the pile of shredded debris. My foot caught on a piece of ripped cardboard, and I tripped. Four pops of a gun sounded behind me. One of the bullets caught me in the shin. As I regained my footing, centuries of discipline helped me to force the shock of pain to the fringes of my awareness. Another bullet did the proverbial whistle past my ear and kicked up a bit of plaster a few feet away.

Exiting the shop, I reached the second-floor rotunda overlooking the lobby. Speed was essential, so, without stopping, I rolled forward, defying the pain in my leg. I shapeshifted as I came out of the roll, landing as a tortoise whose inertia and smooth underside skidded me along the tile floor like a misshapen hockey puck. Shots aimed at human head height whizzed over me.

I came to a rest and peeked out of my shell. Three men exited the gift shop and proceeded cautiously, two of them with guns raised. Before they could spot me, I changed into a fly and circled behind them. Strong hands swiftly grabbed the pair of gunmen by the napes of their neck and slammed their heads together.

The mage spun around at the sound of my attack. He was dressed like the others – black body armor and balaclava, night vision goggles – but he carried no gun except a sidearm at his hip. His hands were stretched out with palms forward. He was furiously chanting to focus his magic. Not fast enough.

I swung one of the unconscious mercs into a wide arc. At the apex of the throw, I let go. The merc flew gracelessly into the mage. The man saw it and nimbly hopped aside, dodging entirely.

But I followed through the toss and kept spinning. I gripped the second merc with both hands and hurled him as hard as I could. It was a beautiful hit. Both bodies were lifted off the floor and traveled a perfectly horizontal trajectory into a wall.

With luck and medical attention, they would keep all their ribs intact.

More footsteps echoed in the museum’s open space. This was becoming annoying. I didn’t have the inclination to play soldier, and I was running out of time. I had to find Bast. She was still somewhere in the museum, and she had my prize in her hands. Catching up with her was my one and only priority. These thugs were a distraction, at best.

I gritted my teeth. She had better still be here.

—

Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

The Curious Art of NOT Writing the Story

I’m always thinking about writing and how to describe it to people who don’t write. It’s something that is both simple and complex to describe, because like most kinds of art, writing refuses to be boxed into simple definitions. Putting words on paper is what writing involves, but it is not what writing is.

One thing that writing is is the art of cutting away the unnecessary. Putting in too many or too few words is easy; adding just enough is hard. Authors spend their whole lives perfecting that technique.

And then my brain shifts gears and starts thinking: Can the same be said of stories in general? Everyone has at least one good story in them, but then there are those who have dozens, even hundreds of stories. Which ones do we tell, and which do we leave unsaid? In other words, which are the ones worth telling the world?

There are stories published that perhaps should not have been. On the other hand, there are also books written that will never see the light of day, maybe first attempts that authors are content to let sit in their drawer undisturbed (I’m not one of them. I published my first book, for better or for worse. You be the judge).

Some stories are complete in themselves, but get sequels that no one asked for. And some … This may be a strange thing to say, but I think that some stories can stay cozily confined within our own thoughts or just typed out on our computers and taken no further. Not every story needs to be told. But writers do need to write. It’s a hobby as well as a career.

Shifting through all the possibilities, the tons of tales that we think up, and deciding which we will commit our time to writing and which we must pass up on. That’s an art unto itself.

Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

Tips on Draft Writing

Drafts are a vital part of any writing project. Very, very, very rarely is any book released on its first draft. You need to pour over your work many times to make sure it’s ready for publication. But, the question often arises: How many drafts should you write? Three? Four? Eleven? How many is enough?

There’s no hard and fast answer. It depends on the author. Different strokes for different writers.

Even so, I’ve come across a few general tips that can help you decide how long to spend in the drafting stage.

  1. Set yourself goals for each draft. Pick one specific thing to improve for each draft you write. Your first draft -the vomit draft, as I like to call it – is just getting your story onto paper. Your second draft, perhaps, can center around developing story and characterization. For the next one, pay attention to grammar and sentence structure. Whatever you choose, each draft sees definite and specific improvement, and you may find yourself not needing to go through as many as you expected.
  2. Don’t expect perfection. You’ll never get there. Drafting is about improvement, not reaching an ideal but unattainable state of “perfection.” Even the greatest writers make mistakes. Focus on refining and polishing. Every time you go through your story, you’re making it better. Each draft builds on the previous one.
  3. Pace yourself. Sometimes, wrapping up one draft and jumping straight into the next isn’t a good idea. Give yourself a few days to let your subconscious mull over things. A little break can be great for your writing as you begin anew rested and with a fresh perspective. You find yourself more easily spotting errors and opportunities.
  4. You have to publish eventually. If you want to release your book to the public, you will have to stop drafting at some point. You have to tell yourself that your story is ready. Remember: Refining and editing is all well and good, but if you never stop, then you will reach a point where you’re doing more harm than good. You lose sight of the whole and get buried in nitpicks that add nothing. A sculptor who never stops chiseling the marble ends up with nothing but gravel in the end.

Some people love the drafting stage, other people don’t. I find it a useful and interesting process. I not only clean up the chaos of my first draft, but also discover new things about my characters, new storytelling techniques, and just plain mature as a writer. However many you find necessary, remember the most important tip of all: Have fun with it!

Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

A Story’s Skin: Setting Limits for Yourself as a Writer

We as human beings don’t like to hear about “limits.” We want to do our own thing without anything holding us back. But consider the breadth of human imagination and all the choices you have as a writer and ask yourself, “How do I even know where to start with my story? Where do I go with it? How do I keep it organized?”

The truth is, stories need boundaries. That’s the difference between a story and rambling. Stories have a point, and they stick to that point. Telling a story about shopping at the grocery store is not going to include what your kids did at school that day. And a story about grocery shopping isn’t going to take as long to tell as, say, the history of Great Britain. Different stories have different limits. But they do need limits.

Some of us like to meander. We have so many ideas and we want to shove them all in. It’s fun to type away at your computer and watch the words flow. But knowing when to stop – ah, there’s the rub.

Here’s a metaphor for you: Imagine your story is like the human body. It’s made of many different complex parts. But all those parts are able to stay together and function properly because of the skin. Skin covers the body and keeps it in place. If we didn’t have skin, we’d just sort of … ooze all over. And who wants that?

It’s the same with writing. You have an idea, or two or three. Great! Now stop. Organize those ideas, don’t add to them. Stories have a beginning, middle, and end. A triggering event, rising action, climax, and epilogue. In other words, stories have structure. And structure, by its very nature, is defined by boundaries and restrictions. They aren’t bad things. They’re necessary for anything to make sense and have form.

Outlining your story ahead of time is a great way to know what your story is about, to know what to put in and what to hold back. Yes, things will shift and change as you go through drafts. But don’t keep adding and adding and adding. Know when to stop and refine what you already have. Put a skin on your story.

If overwriting is a major problem for you, then put a limit on your word count. Something miraculous occurs when you suddenly have a ceiling you can bump your head on.

When we are deprived of the freedom to do everything, we discover a new well of creativity. We choose our words more carefully. We find focus. Words matter more, so we experiment until we find the right ones. We cut away cumbersome paragraphs and sentences. Knowing there’s a cap on our writing makes us pay extra special attention to dialogue, plotting, pacing, and everything else.

Limits are good. They force us to be better writers.

Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.