FREE DOWNLOAD FRIDAY!

Today, my supernatural thriller, Devil's Creek, is available for free download from Amazon. It will only be free until midnight (PST) tonight (January 13, 2012).

Devil's Creek has gotten consistent 5-star ratings on Amazon and Smashwords. Bibliobabes.ca called it a "f***in' clever story". If you're curious, and own a Kindle (or a Kindle app), check it out -- what have you got to lose? After all, it's FREE!

You can reach the ebook's Amazon page HERE

Feedback and reviews are always appreciated!

Live Like You Were Dying

Wow . . . it's 2012 already. In only a matter of months, the world as we know it is gonna turn into a cheesy John Cusack movie.

For those who might not catch sarcasm as quickly as others, no, I don't believe that the world is going to dramatically end on December 21st. However, the concept can be utilized to give a person to thought.

As an example: As a writer, what would I do with my writing if I knew for a fact that the world was on the verge of termination? Would I write something more meaningful, more philosophical, something that might help people enrich their lives before the end came crashing in? Or would I just give up, saying, "What's the point if we're all doomed to perish in a global cataclysm?"

Honestly, I don't know for certain, but it's something I've pondered on and off.

On a more personal note, what if I knew I was going to die soon (not the whole world -- just me)? In that case I know exactly what I'd do. I'd compose letters to my kids, for them to read when they got older. I'd write about things I've learned about life and the world in general, trying to pass on what I know. I wouldn't be there for them as they grew up, so I'd do the next best thing -- leave notes and letters.

If I were making a significant living writing fiction, I'd hurry to finish composing my current pieces in progress, publish them, and market like crazy. I'd probably show my wife how to market them as well. That way I would be leaving a modest income to help them get through.

But then I think about this: We never know when our time is going to come. I could slip on ice and crack my skull tomorrow. Or I could go on to beat the record as the oldest person in modern history. I like the philosophy of "live like you were dying". Live each day like it's your last, leave as much value and love and goodness behind as you possibly can.

I think writers are better equipped for this task than most. Let's use it.

Don't Worry, Be Happy (If Humanly Possible)

One of my biggest hindrances to writing regularly and prolifically is not the age-old nemesis known lovingly as "Writer's Block", but rather my mindset. Usually family issues, such as an argument with my wife or a run-in with the in-laws, completely stalls the production of writing juices.

What's interesting is that other stress-inducing factors -- finances, kids, deadlines for anything -- usually don't slow me down. In fact, somehow they spur me. The only thing that really, truly bogs me down is tension within the family unit.

I guess that's a good thing. I want to write. I want to be productive in string sentences together and packaging them into works (I hope) other people will read. I want to churn out fiction faster than a politician. Thus, I want to keep my relationships good.

Of course, that's not my only reason for working to maintain an emotionally healthy family life. I just like to get along with people. And I love my family. And shoot, I gotta keep my wife happy simply because I gotta LIVE with the woman (you know I love you, babe)!

But if writing for a living is my great dream, then I can only hope to achieve it by keeping my home happy, loving, and secure.

If I pull it off, everybody wins.

Marketing And Volume

There are so many people out there who make their living exclusively by writing fiction. Man, would I love to be one of those people!

The trick with this is surmounting the fact that fiction pays peanuts in comparison to nonfiction (unless you're Stephen King, which I'm not). How is that possible? Two factors: Marketing and volume.

Marketing is a given no matter what you write. In this era, some of the lousiest works make it to the bestseller lists due to marketing, despite being nigh unreadable. Quality is not the biggest factor in determining success, though I do believe that it is essential if one wants to snag more discerning readers and appeal to a wider audience. Books don't sell themselves. They need marketing, and I'm talking unabashed, hardcore, persistent marketing. J. A. Konrath and Christopher Paolini, among others, are testaments to this. Too many writers write a book, publish it, and then sit back to let the dough roll in. That's not the way it works. Writing is the easy part.

Which brings us to volume. As I said before, fiction pays next to nothing in comparison to nonfiction. Which means if one is to make a living writing fiction, they need to churn out A LOT of it. Louis L'Amour, R. L. Stine, Issac Asimov, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and others are examples of guys who kept their fiction mills working constantly. And it paid off. They got to do what they loved AND make a decent living doing it.

So here I am, one of many, many dreamers who would give anything to be a full-time writer, working on increasing daily word count and jotting down story ideas despite jobs, kids, and daily demands, and studying marketing strategies in hopes of one day nailing the art.

Someday, I'll be writing a blog post or article about how I overcame all odds and became a career storyteller.

At least, so I hope. 

Cheap Date

I'll admit it up front: I'm a man of simple pleasures.

I get a kick out of things to which most folks probably can't relate. Part of it may be that, aside from going to work, I don't get out a whole lot these days, thanks to having two kids under the age of three and a pregnant wife who (this time around) is constantly exhausted, in pain, and/or nauseated. So when I do get to enjoy something, it's usually pretty low-key stuff.

Like yesterday. I wrote over 2700 words on my most recent literary endeavor while waiting to punch in at work, on my breaks, and when I got home. That's despite having a little boy who's gotten into "crashing", which is his term for spinning around the room, flopping against me as hard as he can, bouncing off, and taking it personally if he hurts himself.

2700 words. 2711, to be exact. I think it's a pretty big deal. My wife and my brother, when I bragged to them, nodded and smiled and gave me a "Wow, that's awesome" -- the same way you praise and agree with an insane person so he won't go ballistic and hurt somebody.

Some folks just can't relate.

It's a good feeling though, when you're writing fiction and you surpass the 1000-word mark. Typically, writing more than a couple hundred words can be a massive labor. So when you nail 2700, you feel like you've been flying. It means the story is coming together. The characters are working out their kinks. The dialogue is flowing better. Plot lines are evolving and moving forward without any major issues. And you're that much closer to typing "THE END".

It's great. Time to celebrate . . . Maybe treat myself to a little down time with closed eyes, music, and a pair of headphones.

But only for a little bit. When the story is flowing like that, a writer needs to ride the wave as long as possible.

Kowabunga!

Spin City

19th century humorist Henry Wheeler Shaw once said, "About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment."

Ain't that a fact.

Even Hollywood, with an army of writers and directors and creators and producers, can't seem to come up with anything original anymore. All the really, truly, genuinely unique plots and concepts have apparently been exhausted. I have no idea what they're gonna do once they run the superhero genre into the ground like an overworked racehorse.

But I digress . . .

Writers of fiction sit in a whirlwind of ideas. We can pluck any one of them out of the air, and one can bet, dollars to donuts, that someone, somewhere, at some point, has beaten us to the punch and used that idea already. All we can do is take that idea and put a whole new twist to it. The fiction art has been reduced to producing twists rather than new ideas.

A World War II novel? Already been done. But what if mutant turnips took over Nazi Germany and threatened to destroy humanity altogether, and mankind's only hope was to put aside their differences and band together? Hmm . . . The turnip part may be a bit over the top, but the rest of it? It could go somewhere.

But I still think there's hope. Reality is not restricted by the limitations of our feeble mortal minds. Reality is an unending source of events we could never dream up on our own. It's packed with idea sources for storytellers. The one catch is that the adage, "Truth is stranger than fiction" holds true. Sometimes things happen in real life that would never work in fiction because it just isn't believable. Life is full of coincidences. Fiction has little or no tolerance for coincidences.

So is it worth the pain to sweat and agonize over what is ultimately a different spin on a hackneyed plot? I think so. More often than not, people will recognize that they've read or watched this story somewhere before and bemoan the lack of originality these days. But when we writers manage to disguise the story in twist and spin and angle until the reader sees a rare gem rather than old clothes, the sense of accomplishment outweighs the disappointment.

So, failing originality, I'll settle for spin.

Concerning Dragons

My two-(nearly three)-year-old son, Justin, has a penchant for creating fiction. I'm actually quite proud of him. He'll declare all sorts of amazing and impossible happenings, and of course, my wife and I play along.

His latest fetish has been dragons. He'll come running into the room, an expression of alarm on his face. "A dragon's coming! A dragon's coming!"

We then all cover our eyes, because, as Daddy taught him, the best way to hide is to cover your own eyes -- if you can't see them, they can't see you. (For some reason it works only with dragons. Mama and Daddy can find him right away. It's a parental superpower.) After a while, he'll inform us that the dragons are gone. We uncover our eyes and life returns to normal until the next dragon attack.

I've learned a lot about dragons in the past weeks. Dragons subsist exclusively on fish and pizza. They don't like hot dogs. They come through holes in the wall. They live in the water.

I encourage this safari of the imagination. When his TV consumption is limited to about 30 minutes or so a day, it blossoms. He's learning his letters and their sounds very well, and his vocabulary expands daily. All these factors could culminate in the creation of a great storyteller. Daddy would be proud.

Of course, that's all assuming he restricts his storytelling abilities to telling admitted pieces of fiction. Lately he's discovered another use for his newfound ability.

"Justin . . . do you need to go potty?"

"No."

Thy smell betrays thee, kiddo.

Nothin' Personal -- Jus' Good Bidness

I really fall in love with my characters, even the bad ones. I love getting together with them. They tell me what to do; they take me on a wild and wonderful trip.  -- Jackie Collins

I feel sorry for my characters.

That old saying that a writer becomes attached to his or her characters is true. The imaginary person takes on dimensions and traits and personalities that evolve over the course of the story, and by the time you get done you've come to appreciate the character as if he or she is a living, breathing person. As you type the last words of the manuscript, you experience an odd combination of regret that the story-journey is over and sadness that you may not ever get to work with this character again.

Unless the story becomes a series . . . but let's think realistically here.

But here's why I feel sorry for my characters.

I create them, sort of like God. I conceive them in my mind. I mold them out of the clay of my imagination. I set their life course with character sketches and plot lines. And then I set them free to follow their lives, to grow and develop.

But I'm also a cruel god to my characters. Without conflict, there is no story. And my characters encounter lots of conflict. I bash them around, frighten them, destroy their lives, send them into danger, maim them, make them fight each other, freeze them, cook them, starve them . . . and eventually (at least, in the case of many) kill them off. Only a few come through to see a happy ending, but not without going through a lot of misery beforehand.

I should actually feel guilt that I've been so mean. Relief that the ordeal is over for those who survived. Pity for the characters in my next work of fiction.

And sometimes, such as now, I do feel a certain amount of sympathy for what they go through.

I love them -- but I certainly have a funny way of showing it.

Conflict of Interests

By and large, I tend to read nonfiction far more often than fiction, especially in recent years. When I was a boy (and on through my early twenties), I devoured fiction of nearly every kind, mostly thrillers and fantasy, with a smattering of mysteries. I was up on most classic fiction -- heck, I even read War and Peace three times. But now that I'm older and my priorities have shifted, I'm far more apt to read nonfiction.

This in itself isn't strange. What's strange is that, while consistently reading nonfiction of late, I continue to write fiction. They say you're supposed to read what you write. If you write scifi, read scifi. If you write chicklit, read chicklit. If you write about cosmic marshmallow unicorns jumping through holes in the universe, read about cosmic marshmallow unicorns jumping through holes in the universe.

I have ignored this cardinal rule.

Well then, why don't I write nonfiction?

Here's the trick with nonfiction: In order to market and sell most nonfiction, the writer should have what is known as a "platform". For example, if I were to write about tumors in parakeets, I would be able to sell the book if I were a vet or ornithologist who lived with the parakeets in the spirit of Jane Goodall and made their tumors my object of study for ten years or so.

But I haven't, so I couldn't sell a book like that.

The nonfiction books I want to write would require a career in politics, a degree in history, and/or a position of theological eminence. I have none of these. I am not Sarah Palin, Stephen Ambrose, or Joel Osteen. Thus, were I to write such books, I would be unable to market them with much credibility.

So fiction remains.

Not that I resent being relegated by circumstance to the creation and sale of fiction. While I may not spend much time reading it of late, I do enjoy writing it. It's an escape from the real world that, to be honest, nonfiction does not provide.

I like escaping reality on occasion.

Making a career out of it wouldn't be so bad.

Cover Design For "WARD" -- Fresh From The Artist!

After a great deal of back-and-forth with the designer, a great cover design for my adventure novella, Ward, has been released. Many kudos to David Bowman of Bluewood Publishing!

Once the editorial process has been completed, a release date will be determined. Stay tuned!