Blog Archives

Writer's Block

7/27/2016

There are some who say that writer's block is a myth. They believe that you can always draw out inspiration if you're truly a writer.

This is a bunch of crap. Writer's block is not only real, but it's as normal and natural as needing your weekends off and a vacation every now and then. The truth is that you burn out on anything you do often, even things you love. Every now and then, you need a break to replenish your energy and your creativity.

It makes sense when you think about it. What inspires creativity? Experience. So if you want to keep creating new things, you have to keep having new experiences to feed the well of ideas. You have to meet and interact with people to create new characters. You have to experience a variety of situations to understand the complexities of life and relationships. In short, you have to have a life; and sometimes you have to experience it just like everybody else in order to find inspiration to create fiction that speaks to the reality your readers are trying to escape.

To me, writer's block is my muse's way of saying that it's time to open my eyes to day to day life for new inspiration. It's not something to fear, but rather a sign that there's more out there that I need to pay attention to for new things. It always passes, and when it does, it usually comes with exciting new ideas and inspiration for new projects. I just need to be rested and ready to act on that inspiration once it arrives.

That's all today. Take care, and have a great rest of the week.

Bye!

I Don't Believe It

7/24/2016

Ok, the first thing I don't believe is that Donald Trump actually got the Republican nomination, and Hillary Clinton is the Democrat nominee. But that's not what this blog is about (thankfully), because my personal policy is to keep political discussions to a minimum in my online presence. Still, it was a good opening to get that one out.

What I don't believe is that the next fad to take effect is this whole dystopian view of the future. Sure, things look bleak these days. I can't deny my entries of the past month expressing shock and disdain at the overall insanity that seems to have taken over. The world is a mess everywhere you look. Now we not only have radical terrorist after us, but we're after one another as racial tensions mount - again. It's not hard to understand why the books and movies coming out these days have such a bleak outlook. If things keep going this way, there's no doubt that humanity has the capacity to wipe itself out.

And yet, we haven't. We've had the nuclear technology to do it for decades, but we haven't done it yet. While it's tempting to think that it's going to go any day now, I can't help but notice that something is keeping us in check. Something is keeping that finger off the trigger. Despite tensions, despite threats and warnings and sanctions and all of the other hullabaloo - we're still standing.

I'd like to think there's something within us that sees past the current situation and holds to hope for a better future. I believe that the power to change really is within us, and hope we're approaching a point where we're ready to make that vision a reality. I can't count out the possible interstellar event that could bring about that dismal future that we see in fiction, but I honestly believe that when it comes right down to it, we aren't going to do ourselves in with radicalization, and that we have sense enough to stop this madness before it comes to radical dictatorship to make it happen. We already saw what happened under Hitler and Heaven help, I hope we've learned our lesson.

Maybe I haven't outgrown the idealism of my youth, and reality will prove me wrong. I hope not. All I can say is that I can promise you that my own writing will not take a dystopian view. The future I see for Earth is one where we learn from our current struggles and come to something better, and that's what I choose to write. I pray it's possible in reality as well. This is a hope within me that just won't die - and I'm glad for that.

That's all today. Take care, and have a great week.

Bye!

What's Going On

7/21/2016

I’d like to open by saying that I’m thankful to the voters of Bird Channel for voting Bubbles as the Bird of the Day for July 21, 2016. Thanks voters! Our whole “flock” is proud of Bubbles, and we’re overjoyed to have her in our home. You can check out her Bird Channel profile here.

July has progressed into an unexpectedly busy month. Not as bad as May and June, but definitely more than I expected. Despite that, I did get the revisions done on my writing as planned. Several people have been asking me about progress on The Earthside Trilogy and other works in progress. I actually had an interesting discussion with a coworker after my meeting at work yesterday that helped me get an idea of where to go from here with my works in progress. The thing that struck me the most was that he told me that he looks for new releases from his favorite authors about once a year. He said it’s easy to keep up with, and it also gives him time to check out their back catalog if he discovers a new writer he likes, or if he discovers that he missed a book by a favorite author. He said a year is just enough time to keep up with their writing without being overwhelmed by too much, or forgetting them because it took them too long to get a follow up book published.

I heard this from others, but having an avid reader verify it was helpful. You’re limited to publication timetables when you go through a publisher, but indie authors that self publish can do a lot to work with timeframes, and to release their books on a schedule that works for them and their readers. Of course, I pondered what this means for my current works in progress, and now I have a more definite answer for the “when is book 2 coming out?” question that’s been asked since Progenitor published in late April. Here’s an update on my writing:

Progenitor, Move, and Obsidian are on a $0.99 sale through July 31. This was at the urging of Smashwords, who has a huge sale on their website during the month of July. I figured I might as well put all three of my full-length published novels on the sale through all outlets (even Amazon). If you’ve been waiting for sale on these, go and get it now.

Metamorphosis, Book Two of The Earthside Trilogy is progressing well, and I believe it will be ready for publication next summer. I’m finally happy with this book, but I do want to go through it a few more times before releasing it. I made major changes to it in January, and I think it needs a few more drafts to tighten it up before going to the beta/proofreader. I anticipate doing that in the spring, and hope to have it out in the June-August 2017 timeframe.

Emergence, Book Three of The Earthside Trilogy is actually ahead of book two, since I made less intensive changes to it. It’s an awkward thing to have Book 3 ahead of Book 2, but alas, that’s where it’s at. I’m going to have to hold back on this one for a while to keep the timetable of releases right. I plan to complete this one next year, send it to the beta/proofreader in early 2018, and have a March –April 2018 release for it.

Joy on the Journey. I believe this long-deferred follow up to Battleground Earth – Living by Faith in a Pagan World has merit, and I want to pursue publication for it. The only problem is that it only has a little over 30,000 words, so it’s too short to be a full length book. I need to add at least 20,000 more words before it’s long enough to publish. I prayed and meditated on this book, and I feel that it’s a great project, but I’m not at a place to do it now. My head is still too much in science fiction, and I’ve had some random ideas for a possible mystery novel rattling around in my head recently. I also need to do more research, because I haven’t read much inspirational/non-fiction lately. I decided to shelve this project for now, so I can focus on getting The Earthside Trilogy completed and published, and to see where this mystery story idea is going. Non-fiction is a different kind of writing, and I need to focus exclusively on this project without being distracted by all of my other worlds. I’m disappointed because I want write this book, but I’m too immersed in fiction writing to do it to the best of my ability now. The work I’ve done is saved and I’m happy with it, so it’s there to build on when I’m ready to focus exclusively on non-fiction again.

Short stories. I wrote a couple of stories before I started on my revisions this month, but discovered that they aren’t “publishable.” I save them in case I want to use them as scenes or chapters for future fiction projects. I also queried a couple of my older stories last month, but I haven’t heard back on either of them yet. I’d like to do more in this area, so we’ll see if any ideas come that have enough merit to submit for publication.

So that’s where it’s at with my writing. I really would like for this mystery idea to pan out, but I also realize that the best ideas can’t be rushed and you have to give your subconscious time to develop it. Bits and pieces are coming, so we’ll see what comes together from it.

That’s all today. Take care. Have a Happy Friday tomorrow (I’m off work – yay!), and have a wonderful weekend.

Bye!

How to Save the World

7/14/2016

It seems that we’re all of the consensus that the world’s gone crazy. Between last week’s shootings and the rising circus that is the election campaign, I’ve heard a lot of people say they’re losing hope. Heck, even the wildlife is being jerks. I’ve caught feral cats fighting in the back yard several times in the past few days, and I got stung by a yellow jacket a couple of days ago while watering the plants. Obviously, that bug doesn’t realize who pays the property taxes around there.

The question is, how do you turn the tide? I’ve had a few ideas, but as with all things, there are downsides. Here are a few things that might save the world as we know it:

Giant asteroid. I’ve seen the bumper stickers, and that would certainly stop people from being jerks. The problem is that everything would be dead, along with the planet. The same is true for any interstellar object or event affecting the planet – meteors, comets, rouge planets, gravitational irregularities, and massive solar flares clean house too thoroughly. Heck, the solar flares can actually cause increases in anxiety and aggression if they’re big enough, and nobody’s got time (or patience) for any more of that crap. I believe that’s what they mean when they talk about throwing out the baby with the bath water.

Quarantine. We could lock everybody up until cooler heads prevailed. The plus is that it would remove the distractions that keep people from concentrating what’s important. It’s also a dream for introverts who are sick of being bothered by tempers blowing up all over the place. The problem is that isolation breeds instability (as if it’s not bad enough already). People would “lose it” and break the quarantine, resulting in a state of anarchy that would be chaos followed by the heavy hand of dictatorship to restore order. Not a pretty chain of events.

Space colonization. I can vouch for the fact that the population in my area has exploded during my lifetime. Traffic like I sat in yesterday on the way home from work didn’t exist when I was a kid, because we didn’t have that many people living around here. Urban sprawl will do that, added to the fact that the population is growing. Many scifi writers believe that overpopulation will indeed be our “big problem” of future centuries, and propose solutions of moving people off of Earth to give us more space to live and for the planet to rebound from the damage we’ve done. I’ll agree that the thought of setting up the government on Mars and shipping all of the politicians off world has merit. The problem is that all things still have to come back through Earth. You can’t be completely independent in space, and would have to resupply from here from time to time, which really wouldn’t reduce the burden on the planet. Plus, it’s dangerous. One mistake, and everybody dies.

Terraforming. Using science to drop the temperature twenty degrees in June – August would cool tempers by making the environment more agreeable. The problem is that it’s a permanent solution to a temporary problem. If our summers go from 90-100 degrees to 70-80 in the south, it’s nice for a season, but what happens in the fall, when it starts snowing in September? And how does that affect everyplace else? The fact is that all things are connected, so messing with one thing throws it all off balance. A cooler summer could mean an ice age that drives a lot (perhaps even humanity) into extinction. It goes back to that “butterfly effect” that philosophers love to debate.

Alien attack. Aliens would certainly force us to put aside our differences, and shelve our pride and aggression toward one another. The problem is that if aliens come, that means they’re smarter than us because they have technology beyond our scope of comprehension, leaving us at their mercy. Maybe they would help to make this a better world and us better people – but how likely would that be if they were out and about searching space for other places out of curiosity of benevolence? If they’re like humans, then some desperate need probably drove them to the skies. Desperate doesn’t bring out the best, and if they have the same self-serving instincts that we do, then we’re toast – especially if their first glimpse of humanity is at Walmart.

The rapture and apocalypse. For Christians, this is a best case scenario. The true believers escape without having to go through the inconvenience of death, and this world isn’t their problem anymore. The bad news is that Satan rules the world for seven years, and those left behind have to live through the world being destroyed, which will lead to the worst days this planet has ever known.

*Sigh* All of my ideas to save the world lead to it’s destruction. Are there any solutions that don’t? Oh well. I guess all we can do is pray that cooler heads prevail despite it all, and keep doing our best regardless of the circumstances. Humility and discernment are more critical now than ever.

That’s all today. Take care. Have a Happy Friday tomorrow and a wonderful weekend.

Bye!

Choices

7/6/2016

I don't know about you, but people have been a high drama, hot mess lately. Fourth of July always brings out the insanity, but it's been above and beyond this time. Whether it's the holiday, the heat, or whatever doesn't matter: I'm done with it. I learned long ago that people don't want advice from me, so I won't give it. These are responsible adults that know better, but choose not to do it. Well, I choose different. I can get frustrated over other people, whom I can't control, or I can focus on things that bring joy and make me a better person. Forget the drama - I choose joy.

Actually, there is some good in drama. It's more entertaining, safer, and insightful in fiction. Therefore, that's where I'm going. I'm back to my writing and just in time, because reality is getting stupid, and I have my own worlds that badly need my attention. I welcome you to escape with me, if you're also done with the insanity and ready to embrace joy. Progenitor, Move, and Obsidian are all on a $0.99 sale this month, and Progenitor just got a five star review. Not bad. It beats getting pecked to death by the OMG's of life.

The choice is yours. I've made mine, and I've come too far on the path to joy to abandon it now. You're welcome to join me. Just charge up that Kindle - or the laptop if you're a writer - and go.

That's all today. Take care, and have a great week.

Bye!

Writer's Block

I Don't Believe It

What's Going On

How to Save the World

Choices

Escape Reality

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