Apologies for not getting anything posted lately but… I’m a busy guy! Much has happened in the last couple weeks though the news is actually all good.
So WTF have I been up to… read on!
So WTF have I been up to… read on!
Welcome back or welcome for the first time, whichever, my apologies for taking so long to post anything new but life happens and my “free” time is limited. I’ve had a few life changes since I came to you last with updates but luckily nothing bad. Since I posted last I was able to reconnect/reconcile with an old friend, I’ve been happily reunited with my son and I received notice of a promotion at the day job which will begin shortly. Also though I haven’t posted anything here I have been busy working on things so just what the heck have I been up to over the last few weeks? Read on…
Sometimes it’s easy to sit around as a writer and convince yourself that you’ve accomplished nothing. I tend to do this until I write down or make a list of what I’ve done and then I’m like, “Damn! I guess I’m not a lazy sumbitch afterall!” Trying to balance a personal life, work life and writing career can be like trying to walk on a tightrope of razor wire while attempting to carry two 55 gallon drums of water held in outstretched arms without spilling a drop or cutting yourself in half. What I’m saying is… it can be difficult. I think I do pretty well but when something needs to be sacrificed it’s usually time spent writing not because anyone prevents me from doing it but because I feel like I’m alienating my lovely lady if I work when I’m not alone. She doesn’t make me feel guilty in the slightest but I make me feel guilty. That’s the battle that rages in my head when the choice is to write/edit or simply spend time with the person I most enjoy spending time with. As that great sage, Dave Mustaine, once wrote, “If the war inside my head don’t take a day off I’ll be dead.” Okay so Dave is more douche than sage and I’m not going to die but you get the damn point!
Moving on… I’ve slowly been trying to find homes for the plethora of homeless stories I have. So for the last month-ish I’ve been working on that along with another project which I’ll get to in a moment. Over the last few weeks I’ve submitted 5 of these stories with a few more I’m trying to decide whether to give a quick edit and rewrite or write something new entirely. It’ll take some time to get back acceptances/rejections since some of these are still open, in other words for any non-writers - the publishers are still accepting stories for some of these. Since I’m a list maker here’s a little preview for what I’ve put out there so far…
First, I submitted “The Forgiven Ghost In Me” to Death’s Head Press for an anthology of Revenge tales they are putting together. DHP is a fairly new press started by a couple of fellow writing comrades and I’ve hoped to be able to work with them since first seeing what they were doing. The story I sent in is one I wrote in, I think, 2014 or 2015 originally posted to the old site which no longer exists. I edited it up to my current standards and sent it with fingers crossed. It is about a man who wakes into a nightmare sealed inside a box while an unknown madman tests his ability to simply remain calm. If you don’t like creepy crawlies then this is probably not a story for you.
Second, I submitted my story “Sovereign” to Dark Regions Press for their psychological horror contest. I entered the DRP contest last year and lost but the prize money is too good not to try - $1000 for 1st place! While last year’s contest was a flash fic contest this year you could enter any story up to 10,000 words. I originally wrote Sovereign about 4 years ago for an anthology that never ended up happening, then I submitted it to a larger publisher but ultimately it was a runner-up to another story making it homeless once again. So perhaps the 3rd times the charm. The story is about a real “disease” (some doctors believe it is merely a psychological condition) that is isolated among members of a particular South American tribe but essentially drives people delusional and insane. My tale is about a woman who becomes infected and the CDC operatives trying to find her before an epidemic is unleashed on the world.
Third, I submitted my story “Fathom Infinite Depth” to Hellbound Books for an anthology they are calling The Toilet Zone. It sounds funny but the stories are serious – the idea is a collection of short stories that can be read whilst sitting on the throne taking care of bizniz. This tale is another I recently recovered from the old website so it’s no longer available. Fathom Infinite Depth is about a space crew speeding toward the edge of the known universe to see what they can find. Told through the Captain’s Log the crew succumbs to madness in the infinite nothing.
Fourth, I submitted “Purity of Perversion” to Hellbound Books for an anthology called simply Anthology of Bizarro being put together by the awesome David Owain Hughes. If you haven’t heard of him you should! My story was one that once again I had written a couple years ago for an anthology that didn’t end up happening thus becoming homeless. It is a story about a man who goes looking for answers about a night he can’t seem to remember following the mystery all the way to a mad scientist looking to create purity from the perverse.
And lastly… I just finished re-editing and rewriting the ending to my tale Everything Dies then submitted it to Hellbound Books for the anthology The Devil’s Hour. Everything Dies is another story I had written two or three years ago as part of a Halloween project on the old website which again is no longer available to read. The antho had no hard and fast theme, HBB was just looking for good horror stories involving any manner of creature, monster, demon, etc that you wouldn’t want to come across in the middle of the night. Everything Dies is about a writer who decides to play a Halloween prank on his nosy old neighbor only to find out that witches don’t really take kindly to pranks… among other things. The writer may get all he ever dreamed of or end up living his worst nightmare.
Second, I submitted my story “Sovereign” to Dark Regions Press for their psychological horror contest. I entered the DRP contest last year and lost but the prize money is too good not to try - $1000 for 1st place! While last year’s contest was a flash fic contest this year you could enter any story up to 10,000 words. I originally wrote Sovereign about 4 years ago for an anthology that never ended up happening, then I submitted it to a larger publisher but ultimately it was a runner-up to another story making it homeless once again. So perhaps the 3rd times the charm. The story is about a real “disease” (some doctors believe it is merely a psychological condition) that is isolated among members of a particular South American tribe but essentially drives people delusional and insane. My tale is about a woman who becomes infected and the CDC operatives trying to find her before an epidemic is unleashed on the world.
Third, I submitted my story “Fathom Infinite Depth” to Hellbound Books for an anthology they are calling The Toilet Zone. It sounds funny but the stories are serious – the idea is a collection of short stories that can be read whilst sitting on the throne taking care of bizniz. This tale is another I recently recovered from the old website so it’s no longer available. Fathom Infinite Depth is about a space crew speeding toward the edge of the known universe to see what they can find. Told through the Captain’s Log the crew succumbs to madness in the infinite nothing.
Fourth, I submitted “Purity of Perversion” to Hellbound Books for an anthology called simply Anthology of Bizarro being put together by the awesome David Owain Hughes. If you haven’t heard of him you should! My story was one that once again I had written a couple years ago for an anthology that didn’t end up happening thus becoming homeless. It is a story about a man who goes looking for answers about a night he can’t seem to remember following the mystery all the way to a mad scientist looking to create purity from the perverse.
And lastly… I just finished re-editing and rewriting the ending to my tale Everything Dies then submitted it to Hellbound Books for the anthology The Devil’s Hour. Everything Dies is another story I had written two or three years ago as part of a Halloween project on the old website which again is no longer available to read. The antho had no hard and fast theme, HBB was just looking for good horror stories involving any manner of creature, monster, demon, etc that you wouldn’t want to come across in the middle of the night. Everything Dies is about a writer who decides to play a Halloween prank on his nosy old neighbor only to find out that witches don’t really take kindly to pranks… among other things. The writer may get all he ever dreamed of or end up living his worst nightmare.
Finally the last big thing I cleared off my plate over the last couple weeks was my portion of editing on the anthology, Blood From A Tombstone. This will be my first credit as editor along with Don Smith Jr whose idea it was to put this together. Back in October we participated in a contest at The Bold Mom (run by the lovely and talented Mar Garcia) then when it was over Don put forth the idea of putting together a collection for those who wanted to do so. After a few conversations he asked me to help edit. I’m always willing to help fellow writers when and where I can, if I can, so I agreed looking at it as a good opportunity for me to add a little something to the resume. While I’m still thankful for the opportunity I will not be volunteering to do something like this again. I mean no offense to anyone but I found out I am way too much of a perfectionist to do this at random with stories I did not choose. This is a problem with me not with the stories themselves so I should explain…
Soon after I began to edit my half of the stories for this antho I realized I must be absolutely insane to do this, especially for free. Don’s idea was to do just a simple, quick proofread and try to get this out there to the public rather quickly. However, I found it impossible to do just a proofread, which for those who aren’t familiar is simply correcting spelling & grammar errors, making sure punctuation is correct and making sure words are capitalized properly – very simple stuff really that doesn’t take me very long at all. Instead of doing something that simple I couldn’t stop myself from going a little more in depth because the perfectionist in me wouldn’t allow me to put my name on something that wasn’t up to snuff, so to speak. This wasn’t anything I would call difficult but was a touch more time consuming than originally anticipated. All of the stories I worked on (seven stories I believe) were perfectly fine stories, I’m not talking content issues but structural ones like proper paragraphs, breaking up dialogue properly and things of that nature. I’m glad I did it. I’m proud of the work I did and now that I’ve had some time away from it I’m not nearly as frustrated as I was in the moment.
Also as part of the Blood From A Tombstone project I offered any of the writers whose stories I worked on a full critique of their work. I had two takers, one a partial critique and the other a full critique I wrote up. Fortunately or unfortunately the full critique that was requested was for a story that hadn’t needed really any editing (only to find out the writer had outsourced the editing to a fellow writer, lol). So I merely gave some thoughts on how I thought the story could have been even better not so this writer (also a friend) would start over from scratch and rewrite his story but just as suggestions to keep in mind for future work. Luckily it was received well and a rather pleasant conversation ensued. You see, not all writers (or artists of any ilk) can take an honest critique so you never really know who you’re going to piss off for life when offering to do something like that. It isn’t just being brutally honest with someone but if you’re doing a critique it has to be constructive. You can’t say “This sucks because I say it sucks.” That’s about as helpful is walking up to the artist and kicking them in the crotch. You have to say “Okay in this part you wrote X which is alright but if you added Y or kicked it up a notch with Z then it would be even better.” That’s being helpful, that’s constructive. There are those who can’t take even the mildest criticism and for those people I feel sorry because you’ll never improve if everyone around you tells you how good your work is while inside they think it’s terrible. In the end I didn’t lose a friend with this critique and for that I am thankful.
Alright now I need to get back on editing the novel so y’all can read it sometime this damn century! I have a few more of my homeless stories I plan to edit for different “open calls” and I’m thinking of maybe self-pub’ing some of the longer ones perhaps later this year or next year simply to get them in the hands of readers but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. I will definitely consider doing more editing in the future but, unfortunately, it will not be free next time and I will have control over the content. I don’t mean that in a bad way it’s just that I’m way to particular to do it at random and for free. In fact I have a project in mind that I may pitch to a publishing friend in the future but I need to clear my plate a bit more first. Time will tell but I’ve had an idea swirling in my head for a good long time (about 4 years) that I’ll need to do at some point before I go insane with it. I guarantee this… I’ve only just begun. Hopefully one day people will get sick of seeing my name, I just hope it’s not anytime soon. Until next time…
Feind Gottes
Teller of tales, Toucher of yo'mama!
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