Tuskers Cover.

Andy Zeigert has done a preliminary cover for Tuskers.

I'm almost through writing Tuskers II, and have plans for Tuskers III.  They are smaller books, but books nevertheless.

I like the tagline but wonder if we couldn't do better.

"The Pigs Have Had Enough."
"The Pigs Are Pissed."

You guys have any ideas?

I'm undecided about using a pen name.  And I'm undecided whether to go the full edit route or just finish it up myself.  After all, that's the way I always used to do it.

I still have to write the third part and then go back and rewrite and edit.  But I'm still kind of excited to see the cover.

Art versus Entertainment.

I've been watching a lot of documentaries about artists.

I can come away from them feeling kind of insecure.

Am I creating art?  Is my intent to create art?  Should I be trying to create art?

I always come to the same conclusion.  Good entertainment is art, and art is good entertainment.

My intent is to tell a story, to try to tell it well.  For the story to be entertaining, and perhaps have some emotional resonance, and to craft the writing well enough that the reader will fall into the story and feel that he or she is in good hands, that there is a full experience here.

If I do all those things to the best of my abilities, I'm being an artist.  The depth, the message, will come through the story, not the other way around.

Frankly, I've all but stopped reading anything that has a 'literary' tag.  I find them usually boring or pretentious or difficult or all the above.

1984 or Brave New World or Lord of the Flies or Catcher in the Rye or To Kill a Mockingbird or Sometimes a Great Notion or For Whom the Bell Tolls are above all, good reads.  Entertaining.

I can name a whole bunch of modern 'literary' writers who strike me as superficially deep, sentimental rather than emotionally evocative, con artists with words, 'look at me' provocateurs, deliberately vague and ultimately too subtle to be satisfying.

So back to writing as good a stories as I can, with as much craft as I can summon, and the depth and artistry will be part of the whole...or not... but I'm not going to try to throw on the cloak of "artist" and try to be "deep" and fuck with the words until all you see are the words.

True craftsmanship becomes art.  But art without entertainment is boring.

Download.

Watched a documentary called Download, about Napster.

Even though the parallels are obvious to everyone, I've always been a little resistant to the automatically equating music and books.

I still am, to some extent, in the sense that I believe that more people are more likely to stick to physical books longer.  Partly, unlike music, it is because readers tend to be older.

But the way the two industries reacted is very similar.

The publishing industry, despite what they saw in the music industry, did all the wrong things.  They tightened up.  They fought it.  Instead of making it easier for new writers to get on board, and keeping old writers (mid-list) on their rolls, they made it near impossible.  So obviously, writers looked for alternatives.

Once that alternative proved workable, it was only a matter of time before some writers chose to go that route on purpose.  And the more success they have, the more word will get out, and the more writers will chose to skip the whole ungainly, unfair process that traditional publishers put you through.

Like the music industry, the book industry has become completely corporatized.  The focus is on big sellers, franchises.

Anyway, I think it is inevitable that one of the big writers will figure out he can make a lot more money self-publishing rather than giving the bulk of the revenue to a middle-man.  All it will take is several big writers following and the whole thing falls apart.

That's my prediction.  Stephen King or someone like him, will just go out and hire his own editor and cover-artist, etc. and produce his own books.  Bookstores will have the choice of buying his independently published book or going without.

If enough of the big writers do this, the wholesalers and chain-stores will be forced to accept books from self-published authors.

The publishers are vulnerable because they didn't support the small bookstores, and instead encouraged Barnes & Noble and Borders, which when Amazon came along, left them with few options.

They also raised prices on books, and have refused to be more fair in their ebook sharing.  All of which is going to come back and bite them, big time.

My only concern is whether Amazon will prove enduring.  But the technology to do what they did is out there, and even if it turns out Amazon can't turn a profit and the whole thing collapses, others will pop up to take its place.

Unlike musical acts, writers can't earn money by performing.  So it may be that writing will become even harder to make a living at than before -- not because it is so hard to find an agent and a publisher, as it was in the past -- but because it will be harder and harder to get noticed among the millions of books being published each year.

But as the self-published authors point out -- that is already true.  The average book published by the traditional publisher sells 1000 copies.  They aren't promoted, they aren't cultivated.  It is hit or miss and then you're out.

So the possibility of being discovered isn't all that much greater with the traditional route -- meanwhile, you're giving away most of price of the book, you're getting tied into onerous contracts, you're forced to rewrite to the dictates of editors, you have to wait for very long period for the whole process to proceed.

So in the end, the only thing a traditional publisher offers the average writer is an advance, which most often isn't large enough for most writer's to live on.

Here's the thing.  The advance is basically a loan.  Either you earn back the loan (in which case you would have made the money without the advance.)  Or you don't earn back the loan, in which case you're likely to be dropped by the publisher.

So the more you look at the situation, the more it becomes clear that self-publishing is the future.  

Dangerous thing to say.

"There's no hurry."

That can be a very demotivating statement.  All the pressure to write is self-induced.  No one is clamoring from the outside.  It is all inner directed.

Anyway, I'm going to try to finish Tuskers II this week.

I have decided that I will give it the full treatment.  That is, send Tuskers I and II off to my editor while I write Tuskers III -- if I can find a reasonable way to pay for it.  Each of these books are going to be around 50K words when they are done, so about 2/3rds my smaller books, and half my bigger books.

Why the full treatment?

Because I'm going to be publishing The Dead Spend No Gold in the next month or so, and I think putting out a book more often than every 4 or 5 months is too much.

So I may as well do the job properly.

I was thinking about why these books are smaller than usual.  Mostly, it's because I'm pushing to the end without a lot of intervening chapters.

So, for instance, in Tuskers II, I have them capturing a industrial tycoon who has a formula they want.  They try to befriend him, coax the formula out of him, and then they finally resort to torture.

So all that could be shown, a chapter where they try to befriend him, a chapter where they try persuasion, and then finally the chapter where they resort to torture.

So what I do instead is go straight for the torture scene and simply tell you about the earlier efforts.

Is this the right was to do it?

For this book, I think yes.  The whole point of the effort is to be lean and mean and straight to the point.  Action driven, cliff-hanger, condensed and hopefully evocative in shorter spurts.

By the time I flesh it out, I suspect it will be more developed than it is now.  Which it also probably needs.

I've been diligent so far in releasing only the material that has been fully worked out.  I think I probably should continue doing that.

After all, there is no hurry.

A good summer.

The store is having a good summer.  Nice.  Downtown is booming, my product mix is clicking, and Cameron and Matt are doing a great job.

So it got me to thinking about what it took to make the store successful.

I don't advertise, or promote, in any way.  If a newspaper wants to come interview me, I'm down with that.

I see three things that have worked at the store.

1.) Size and diversity of product.  I just kept trying out product lines until I had a mix that produced enough sales to be self-sustaining.  This changes all the time, and is always in flux.

2.) Longevity and consistency.  I'm always open, I've been in the same location for 30 years, I institute policies and stick to them.

3.) A busy street.  Ironically, for half of the time I've been downtown, that wasn't true.  But at least I was smart enough to see when downtown was recovering and to change my product mix to reflect that.

So...writing.

I can do the first two things myself.

1.)  I can write books, bunches of them, try to make them as consistently good as I can, try diversity.  Create the content until I find the right mix.

2.) I can keep on writing.  Just be steady and persistent.

It's #3 that will be the problem.  Always is.  Kind of luck that I established my store on a street that became busy. 

So what is the publishing equivalent of a busy street?

Well, Amazon, obviously.  And Barnes and Noble, and Apple, and Kobo and all the rest.  But that's like saying you're located in New York -- it doesn't say what part of New York you're in. 

That's the tough part.  How do you maneuver yourself to 5th Avenue?

For now, I'm concentrating on the first two elements of success, and looking for opportunities on #3.

Most people's answer to #3 is to promote, but for me that probably isn't the answer.  One thing I learned in my store is that you build on your strengths, not expend efforts on your weaknesses.  I'm pretty opportunistic -- when I see opportunities, I try to take advantage of them.  What I don't seem to be good at is creating those opportunities from whole cloth.

Well, it's still early.  I'll be hitting the two year mark on September 1, of a five year plan, that I can see easily extending to a ten year plan. 

I'll just keep writing, and trying to get better, and producing books.

A.K.A. Redshirts -- Action fodder.

If you're going to write action novels, there have to be casualties, you know?

So you have to have fall guys.  You can't kill off the main characters, usually, unless you're George R.R. Martin.  Or, if you do, it has to be a major plot point, usually toward the end of a book.

Meanwhile, if you're having battles and bullets are flying, well -- someone has to get it.

So you have to assemble a cast of characters that include a few Redshirts, here and there.

I find that I often have to go back and inserts scenes to introduce characters that I can later kill off...

Very cold blooded.  All writers are psycho's.

Submitted The Dead Spend No Gold: Bigfoot and the California Gold Rush.

I sent The Dead Spend No Gold to the publisher of Led to the Slaughter, Books of the Dead Press.

This is the sequel, starring young Virginia Reed.

I wrote a rough synopsis, which will need to be refined (the publisher is good at this).

But very roughly, this is it:

Virginia Reed survived the Donner Party (in Led to the Slaughter: The Donner Party Werewolves) only to once again find herself in a life and death struggle with a creature out of nightmares.  With gold discovered in the same mountains where she had fought to survive the winter before, California is flooded with gold miners, who are pushing the Indian tribes off their lands, or killing them if they won't leave.  But there is a creature in those mountains that won't be so easily removed, who reacts to the invasion of his territory by killing everyone who trespasses.  Virginia finds that it is her destiny to confront such creatures.  The Indians call her the Canowiki, the Hunter, and with the help of her friend, Jean Baptise (who survived the Donner Party but was transformed) and the Miwok girl, Feather, she confronts the Skoocoom, a monstrous creature that has always lived, hidden, beside us.

Finally able to say it's good.

I've never just been able to out and out say about my books,  "This is good."

 

Always the doubts, plus what do I know?

 

I usually say something like, "It's as good as I can make it."

 

But I put the work in on The Dead Spend No Gold: Bigfoot and the California Gold Rush.   I kept working on it until I thought it was good.  It was edited thoroughly twice, and I responded to every criticism.  I didn't cop out with "it's good enough" and I wasn't intellectually lazy, as I have a tendency to be.  I polished it until it clicked.

 

Lara gave it a final edit, and yes, I pay her, but this is what she had to say.

"I love the way it turned out! This iteration is more rounded, better developed and has lots more detail and description. It's definitely on a par with Led to the Slaughter now."

 

To which I say, I think so too.  

 

What's happened is that I've made sure that I'm proud of each book before I release it.  As inconvenient as that is, and as little as it probably matters on how they ultimately do, I plan to continue this policy.

 

I told myself to be patient when I started this, and I've stuck to that so far, and I think the quality of the writing shows it.

 

Most of my beta-readers see early drafts.  The quality really seems to jump in the last draft, as if everything pulls together. 

 

Good for me.  Heh.

Quickest route to the ending.

The goal I set for myself on the Tuskers books is to get to the ending the quickest, shortest route possible.  Not fluff, no sidetrips.  No worries about length.  Tuskers I is rapidly approaching 50K which is 10K more than I thought.  There are always things I do in second drafts that increase the size of a book, mostly more description, more back story, more characterization.

H. Bruce didn't think my Tuskers were scary enough, so I'm concentrating on that in the second draft, as well has turning my first person chapters into 3rd person to match the rest of the chapters.

I'm undecided about whether to pay for editing on this.  I'm undecided about whether to use a pen name.

On one hand, I feel like I need an avenue which isn't quite so expensive and time-consuming and where I can publish works that either won't benefit from more work or can't be made better by more work.  So I probably should do those under a pen name.

On the other hand, I want everything I write to be up to snuff, and if I end up doing that, I may as well publish them under my own name.

Truth is, any book I simply throw out there under my own name, published by myself, with no promotion by me or a publisher, probably won't do anything anyway.  These books will be sacrificial lambs to my urge to write.  I shall cast them upon the waters -- and hope for the best, but not expect anything.

The second goal was to have fun.  To be as outrageous as possible. 

Thing is, I still try to write a book that makes sense, so I need not worry about jumping the shark -- unless you consider a wild pig apocalypse already jumping the shark.

Ironically, what makes the plot is trying to make the wild premise plausible.  By the time I end up exploring that, I've written a book.

My goal is to keep writing books, whether they are 'commercial' or not, and publish them, and not worry about results.

Except for a few select books, where I take more time and effort and promotional attempts.  My Virginia Reed Adventure books, and probably my Lander books. 

It's a steep hill.  I don't have the social media skills to make much headway. 

But I can keep creating the content and keep the faith that eventually the content will be discovered.

Linda is a Utopian.

I've decided that the overriding theme of Linda's books is a desire for Utopia.

She's always liked those kinds of books best.  Under Plum Lake, The Green Kingdom, Islandia.

She also always been attracted to hidden worlds.  Hollow Earths, and Kingdoms behind Great Barriers, and Moons.

She yearns so much for people to be Kind to each other and Just to each other and it come through in her writing.

Her basic decency and sweetness overlays everything else. 

She also has a Hero thing; her dreams are usually about her saving someone.  So many of the things she's told me she's dreamed about over the years are finding their way into her writing, in one form or another.

It gives you a very satisfying feeling, like everything will be all right, everything will work out.

She's learned to put danger and threat into her stories.  When I first met her, she couldn't bear to have anything bad happen, or if they did, it was quickly resolved.  But now she puts in threats, even bad things, and yet...you know they are only temporary.

Because her sense of right and wrong is just too strong to let evil win for long.

I'm happy to live in her world.

Sometimes you just have to ask the right questions.

I was about a third of the way through Tuskers II before I had to break off to finish the final draft of The Dead Spend No Gold.  Then I needed to read Linda's book, Once on a Blue Moon.

Just as well.  I'd kind of run out of ideas for the book.  I'd started seeing problems.

But when I started thinking about it last night, it was those very problems that gave me the rest of the book.  That is, in trying to resolve the inconsistencies and illogical developments, the rest of the plot came to me. 

Very satisfying.

Sometimes you just have to ask the right questions.

So now it's a matter of entering into the Tuskers world, which is like and unlike my own world.  It has a flavor all its own.  If I can get back to the frame of mind, the rest of the book should be easy.

Plus, nothing is in the way.  I can get to work on it.  I think I'll have clear sailing for Tuskers III too.

Reading Linda's book on an iPad.

So I'm reading Linda's book, Once on a Blue Moon, on an iPad and I'm thoroughly enjoying it.

I read Telling Tree   (http://www.amazon.com/Telling-Tree-Linda-McGeary-ebook/dp/B00HCZ66FY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1408208013&sr=8-1&keywords=telling+tree)   on my computer, which wasn't ideal, but I don't remember it bothering me that much.  (Hell, I read so much on the computer that my eyes are having adjustment problems.  I literally have to lay down for five or ten minutes with my eyes closed after a session so my eyes revert.)

Anyway, for some reason, Once on a Blue Moon   (http://www.amazon.com/Once-Blue-Moon-Trillium-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B00LLVESQO/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1408207891&sr=8-5&keywords=once+on+a+blue+moon)   didn't show up on my computer in a readable from, so I borrowed her iPad.

This morning she asked how I was liking the experience.

Maybe I had preconceptions, but it is pretty much the way I thought it would be.

1.)  I'm conscious of the screen.  Harder to get lost in the story.

2.)  It's awkward to hold, for some reason.  Not soft and fuzzy friendly somehow.

3.)  I like leafing back and forth in a book to check out details and such.  Can't do that as easy.

Problems one and two would probably go away the more I use the pad.


Compare this to audio books.

I'm also kind of opposed to audio books.  I feel like instead of me interpreting the book, the narrator is interpreting the book, and I don't like that.

However, the one book I did listen to on a trip, I thoroughly enjoyed.  I mean, I really liked it.

So why am I denying myself the pleasure?

I'm not totally sure.  But reading has always been a solid part of my life, almost an alternate life (which has been replaced by writing lately).  Somehow, these two ways of reading (or listening) are a separate experience.

I'm a boring person.  I like doing the same things everyday.  I like my habits.  It gives me a sense of security and continuity that I seem to need.  So I don't go out seeking new things all that much.  Instead, I tend to dig deeper into whatever I'm doing.

That and doing nothing.  I like doing nothing at all.  

On the other hand, I've always tried to keep up with the superficial news and culture of by continually browsing information sites, both paper and digital.

I'm ready to give that up.  I just am running into too many situations where I see a Huffington Post article about someone I've never heard of, and I click it, and it turns out to be some woman that was on "Housewives..." of whatever on the "third season" and who the fuck cares?  I'm pissed that they suckered me and made me waste my precious few brain cells on complete pablum.

So I seem to be going to opposite direction as everyone else.  No apps.  No texting.  Just books, and movies and T.V.  Have no friggen clue about music anymore. (Meanwhile, ironically, my two twenty-something employees seem to almost exclusively listen to music from my youth;  Guardians of the Galaxy mixtape kind of music.)

Simplify, simplify. 

I wish I had the courage to throw in the towel completely, but I hate not knowing things.  I hate not being up to date.  It really bothers me.  I have a dozen sites I go to.  I try to weed out the essential from the useless.

So I'm trying to find a middle ground.

So I'll be sticking to paper books for the foreseeable future.  Just because I'm comfortable.  Just because it's comforting. 

The future is barreling in anyway, no matter what I decide.

A best-seller in my own store.

I sold all six copies of Led to the Slaughter I had in the store within 2 hours yesterday.

Like, Wow.

I've figured out the most effective phrasing, the combination of words that best sells the book, which goes something like this:

"I wrote this book..." I say in a mild voice.  I lean over and touch it.  Sometimes, I'll put it in their hands.

"Oh?"  Either zero interest (about 50%) or tiny interest (about 25%) or actual interest.

So if they evince actual interest, we go on.  Otherwise, I shut up.

"How cool!" they might say.  "You're Duncan McGeary?  What's it about?"

"Do you know what the Donner Party was?"

Most people say yes, otherwise I explain.  Then I point to the sub-title, the Donner Part Werewolves.

Some customers nearly throw the book back on the shelf, but others are unfazed, so I continue.

"Well, I wrote it as if I discovered the original journals of the Donner Party.  You know, they all wrote in journals in those days.  So I try to keep is as real as possibly, the real people, the real sequence of events...except, at certain important points, I put in the werewolves (which I treat as natural creatures.)

Customer either 1.) put its back.  2.) starts leafing through it.  3.) Carries on the conversation.

I then offer to sign it.

And then, I stay silent.  Waiting.  And amazingly, a certain number will put it in front of me and say, "I'll buy it."

So the paradox is -- I can sell my own books when I'm in the store. 

But I can't write my books when I'm in the store...

Starting up Tuskers II again.

I'm halfway through Tuskers II.

It may take me a few days to pick up the threads of where I left off, but the whole point of this exercise is to power through the book, no side trips.  Straight to the end.  Action all the way.

Tuskers was 45K words, which is a decent size for ebooks these days.

So far, I've always considered a novel to be at least 65K words, 80K would be better, and 100K is a nice solid chunk.

Here's the thing.  Keep the price moderate, and the story moving, and 45K seems like the proper number for Tuskers.  Especially if I do Tuskers II and Tuskers III at about the same size.

Someday, this may be a 130K saga, again at a moderate price.

I'm hoping to find a picture of a Tusker for the front of the book, and jigger the background colors and such to be able to use the same picture for Tuskers II and Tuskers III.

Mostly, I just want to have fun.

What? Snake again?

When I wake up in the morning, I'm as groggy as hell.

Linda is a bright, shining face, smiling and cheerful, always ready to tell me a long story about the dream she had.  (Her dreams are like movies, long and eventful.)  Or to present me with a complex problem she's been thinking about.

I've forbidden her to speak to me.

Anyway, I woke this morning and she came to me and looked up and said brightly, "I've cooked you a snake!"

"A...snake?"

"Wait, I mean..."

"Oh, honey.  Thank you so much.  It's what every man longs to hear when he wakes up..."

"This Too Shall Pass." Depression.

44 years ago, in my senior year in high school, I fell into a deep clinical depression.  I didn't really come out of it for another 10 years.

Just as it can be hard to remember when you're depressed how it felt when you weren't depressed, it can  be hard when you are healthy to remember what it was like not to be.

But...well, if I wanted to delve back into that, I'm sure I could summon a sense of it.

I'd prefer not to, thank you very much.

"This too will pass," my shrink at the time said, when I asked in for one piece of advice.

I don't know that I was ready to hear then, but even so I always tried to remember (even if it was an intellectual impression) that there was a life outside the bottom of the well.  That even though I couldn't see it or feel it myself, there was sunlight.

I've been thankful and grateful that my depression hasn't returned over the last 35 years.  I kind of expected it to, because that's how this disease works, apparently.

But not so far.  Knock wood.  A whole bunch of wood.

I think my depression was somewhat situationally induced -- but there is little doubt that I have a genetic predisposition.

It runs in the family.

I've made a couple of vows to myself.  That I would immediately seek help if I felt it coming on.  I'd take whatever pills they gave me, no matter how unpleasant. It took over 2 years the first time it happened to me to seek help. 

Anyway, it was ten years of my life.  The depression, and in some ways worse, the wreckage in the aftermath.

I was never suicidal, even at my worse.  For some reason, I had a faith that I would come out of it.

I also just buried myself in books and media, and I for some reason kept a intellectual curiosity, which I don't think happens to most people.

In many ways, I have a great life.  A truly wonderful wife, and great kids, a successful business, a writing career, financial security, good health.  I'm a bit of a loner and that always concerns me.  During those ten years, I was often completely alone and isolated.  That's what happens to me.  I get completely isolated and weird and the the weirder I get, the more isolated.  Kind of downward spiral.

But part of the health is recognizing and forgiving myself for my weirdness.

 But I'm not daring fate.

 I'm just counting each day as a bonus.

Finishing touches to The Dead Spend No Gold and done.

So I've written 3 full drafts of The Dead Spend No Gold.  I've had editors go over 2 of them.  I've read the entire manuscript to Linda (bless her), and I've read the whole book to writer's group.

So yesterday I sit down to do a final read, and...

I start changing things.  A lot of things, especially in the first two chapters.

Even as I'm doing it, I'm amazed and slightly concerned that I'm messing with it.  I call this doing my "sloppy" version, but that sounds bad, and isn't really what is happening.  I mean, that's the way I remember thinking about it when I did it to Star Axe.  That's the term I used.

So I'll try to explain what I mean by "sloppy."

First of all, this has happened to every book I've had published.  (And revealingly, not to the books I haven't published, because they have never gotten to the point where I can do it.)

I do one final light go through, changing things.  Basically, what happens is that I "loosen" up a little.  Everything to that point has been to get the writing as "tight" as possible.  Now I let my instinct take over, adding here, cutting there.  Like I can visualize the final version, now that all the content is in front of me, fully edited.  So a little flourish there, a little daring cutting there.

This version is the one people are going to read.  So I lighten up a little, put in little touches, just try to individualize it more.   Small personalizations and quirks, dare I say, put in some "art"into it.

Just making it all my own.

For some reason I don't quite understand, it always reads better when I'm done.  But I can't do it until it's done, if that makes sense.

Anyway, I took the first two chapters to writer's group last night -- for the third time, bless their little hearts -- and they seemed to like it.

What was especially cool is the parts they liked best were the parts I had put in a few hours before.

It's a mystery.

Sent it off to Lara yesterday for a last clean copy-edit, then on to my publisher around the 20th.

I finally have some free time to read Linda's book, Once on a Blue Moon, on her iPad. 

Oh, Amazon.

Oh, Amazon.

So, I'm worried about the fact they don't make profits.  And that my books depend Amazon to sell.

I'm puzzled as to why Indy writer's are up in arms about traditional publishers wanting high prices for their books.

I say, let them.  They'll be put on sale anyway.  Or you can buy them used.  Whatever.

It all seems to be much ado about nothing.

Jesus, brain, leave me alone!

Woke up at 5:00 this morning with an incredibly cool idea for a book.

I mean, maybe because I've just thought it, I'm overestimating it.  But...really, an awesome idea.

Just popped into my brain, like the force of it was enough to jam me awake.

I lay there, trying to go back to sleep, as the first paragraph formed in my head.  So I get up and unplug my computer from the bedroom and take it down to the office, where I am now.  At 5:00 in the fucking morning, with the coffee pot empty. (Yes, I'll drink day old coffee if I'm desperate enough.)

I've just written a couple of pages.

Jesus, brain, leave me alone!

25 years of nuthin' , then idea after idea after idea, more than I can probably ever write. 

Lots of guys my age are just now coming to a kind of relaxed approach to their writing career.  Jaded, even.

Not me. 

I feel like a teenager who's so full of bullshit he can't get it all out.  And now it's starting to eat into my life in a way that is disruptive.  I mean, I can't keep having these 4 hours sleep nights, either because I'm still so jazzed from the day's writing that I can't fall asleep at night, or because my brain insists on writing in its sleep and waking me up early in the morning with an insistent buzz.

I feel almost disconnected.  I'll be sorting books in Linda's store, and someone will ask me a question and I'll go, "Huh?" like the words don't make any sense. 

When I work at my own store, I feel like I've been away forever and don't understand what's happening.  It is a pretty steep learning curve that first hour while I get back into the rhythm of it.

This is the same thing that happened to me 25 years ago when I more or less stopped writing.  I couldn't fit running a store and having a marriage and being a stepdad with the disruptions of writing.

Now I can.  I think.  I hope.

This isn't mania, I don't think.  I mean, it doesn't have that flavor.  It just feels like a creative excitement, like I've been let loose.

There is no way all these ideas can be done.  Or if done, that they'll all get proper publishing treatment. 

I've already decided I'll need to resort to a penname, and have a couple of different tracks.  For instance, the books that come spilling out, fully formed, and the books that I go back to rewrite again and again. 

One thing is for sure.  I can't afford to have every one of these tomes edited by a paid editor.  Some of them are going to have to be edited by me.  Which really isn't so bad.  My grammar and spelling suffice, I think.

At first, the ideas came in a stately procession.  "Ah, yes.  That is a book."  Then I'd write it, and set it aside.  There might be a month between ideas, or longer.

Now, the ideas seem to be speeding up.  The process is getting messy as I'm hurrying to get them all down on paper (or computer.)

Who knew?  I mean, I was writing stuff in those 25 years, but I don't remember having great ideas.  I had a zombie story going, and a mystery, and a couple of fantasy type stories, but they weren't exactly inspired.

I think it's because I've made this transition over the last couple of years, without completely meaning to, of being "the writer." 

Allowed myself, if you will, to devote a lot of my brain space to generating ideas. 

In some ways, it's the same energy I brought to my business.  The same letting loose of strictures.  Being my own boss and doing it my own way.

Writing is even easier, though not completely cost free.  I'm going to have to buy a new laptop, for instance.  (The one I bought at Christmas last year was a dud.  Should have stuck to Apple.)

Well, I want to finish Tuskers first, so this new book will have to wait.

If it will let me.

Problem chapter.

I've been happy with the final rewrite of The Dead Spend No Gold so far.

The last version is the one where I finally let go of some things that I've suspected are unnecessary.

Bren's been on me about the way romances play out, and I think I finally got what she was saying.  So I trimmed some of the earlier scenes, made them more subtle.  Several others cuts where the point is implicit and doesn't need to be spelled out.

I'm getting to the point where every scene is the way I want it, and they all fit together to create a satisfying story. 

The writing has been sharpened.

But I did finally run into a problem chapter late in the book.

The final confrontation between the good guys and the bad werewolves, in the middle of which Bigfoot's (Grendel's) mother stomps into.

Complicated action that I didn't fully think through.

So I'm going to block out the action today, and then rewrite the scene to make it better.

I should still be able to finish the whole book by the end of tomorrow to send off to Lara for a clean edit.

I think all the work has paid off, and the book holds together very well.  I'm hoping that everyone who liked Led to the Slaughter will like this book too.

Virginia Reed is a pleasure to write.