Chapter 1: Entering We’re talking about nothing again when someone asks if I know what terror feels like. A familiar voice, an echo, reaches through the smoke. Behind the guitar assault grinding and growling though a blown speaker, I know someone is talking to me. I summon the effort to focus my attention on the voice’s face. “So, do you?” One of the twins, the one who parts his hair to the left, passes me the joint. He looks like one of those guys from A-ha. His twin brother, who parts his hair to the right, looks like the other A-ha. Holding the joint out to me, he tosses his head back, shaking hair out of his eyes. “I don’t mean a little bit startled. I mean stark terror. Unable to scream. Shit your pants scared.” I take the joint from him without answering. “I know what that feels like,” Dom says, twisting the cap off a bottle of beer. “When they brought my...
I was selling some of my books at a local book fair when a cheerful woman walked over, scanned my table, waved her hand over my display then asked, "But do you self-publish these stories or did someone else publish them?""Both."With a squint and a head tilt, she asked me to elaborate. I explained that I publish some small books on my own, and they're a mix of things that have been published in various places and some that haven't.She nodded. "That's good."She clearly wasn't keen on self-published books. That's cool. I'm all for self-publishing, obviously, but don't disagree with her. Stories need to go through a gauntlet. So do their writers. I want control over everything, but I also crave the validation that comes from having my stories go through a gatekeeper. I like to mix it up. I don't want people telling me what to do. But I do want them to validate me. I want criticism and...
I've always had a complicated relationship with writing desks. It seems absurd to say such a thing, because a writing desk is an inanimate object and therefore indifferent, which should make having a relationship with it anything but complicated.But, for writers, or anyone who spends several hours creating at a desk every day, that relationship is important. You have to be able to live together in harmony. Perhaps it's this way with a musician and their instrument. Maybe even more so for them, as they tend to travel with the inanimate object they're having a relationship with, and I generally do not lug my desk along when I travel. Sure, I'm bogged down with pens, notebooks, and tablet, but that's another story altogether.Where I get my real writing done, my final drafts, submissions, blogging, publishing, all happens here, at my very small, very cheap, and very reliable little desk. But it wasn't always this way.My first desk was a thing...
Here's a scenario I've lived through more than once and will likely experience again one day: I'm having dinner with a small group of people, chiming in only occasionally because I prefer to focus on my food and listen to everyone else. Without warning, someone says my name and proceeds to ask me questions about writing. Have I been writing? What have I been writing? Tell us about it what's it about and when can they read it and oh for fuck's sake Brenda why can't you just leave me alone with this goddamn chicken leg?I know, I know. Brenda is only making conversation and is trying to include me. She doesn't mean any harm. She is a person with a fairly developed set of social skills. But, for me, this scenario, and variations of it, are painful. Not physically, of course, but in a way that makes me want roll up like a pill bug and disappear under the...
How are we doing these days? Holding up? Hanging in there? I hope so. If you're reading this, I hope you're doing so during a brief pause from doing nice things for yourself like reading books, making art, drinking beers, and eating some really incredible food. Tiny blissful moments are a big deal. Everything that's going on in the world constantly draws me in and I feel compelled to read the news and dive into my Twitter feed, but lately, I'm suffering from information fatigue. Mostly, it's Trump fatigue. I don't need to experience a daily bombardment of voices each day telling me that he said an awful thing. Both sides harbor their own set of obsessions that tend to weigh heavy on everyone. Too much of that shit and I start to morph into Rust Cohle from the first season of True Detective.There's a lot of scared people. Angry people. And people who think none of this matters, or...
A few years ago, after I published Human Detritus, I began to notice how many authors were giving away Kindle versions of their books for free on Amazon. It seemed crazy to me at the time, because writing a book is a lot of work. It's also a hell of a lot of time, sweat, ink and puking up your soul into a word processor. Self-publishing is even more work, because self-publishing means wearing more than one hat, which is a lot more weight on your skull and shoulders.It seemed insane to me to just give all of that away for free. However, it seemed like it was at least worth looking into. So, I did.What I learned was that a free promotion through Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing could increase sales in the long run. Better yet, it could greatly increase the audience. Okay, so I'd have to remove my book from all other electronic markets to give Amazon exclusive...
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