It is pointless to complain about the publishing industry. At best, people will just think it's sour grapes.

I'm writing something that I think is pretty good. I believe in a fair world it would be considered. As it happens, I actually have someone to send it to who will probably take a look at it.

Lucky, that.

My guess is that I'll have about three tries with this guy before I strike out, and I've already got one strike. But, really, if this book doesn't fit the bill, I'm not sure what will. It's at the higher limits of my capabilities.

The publishing industry as a whole contracted just as the tsunami of new books and authors struck. So the volume of books went elsewhere, to self-publishing, to Amazon, to smaller hybrid publishers. Which would be fine if it wasn't so bloody difficult to get noticed.

Weirdly, its the practical ease of writing and producing and communicating books that is mostly responsible for this in my eyes. When I was writing in the early '80's the physical process of writing a book was intimidating in itself, never mind the usual difficulty of creation. 

Anyway, I think it takes herculean effort, or pure luck, to stand out in this tsunami, but that most of us will just get washed away in the tide. Lots of advice out there on how to break through, in both the traditional and non-traditional avenues, but most of it is pure bullshit.

I just put blinders on and keep on trudging ahead, keep on writing, knowing that at the very least there is the ability to put my books online. Whether I want to try to scale the walls of traditional publishers, or even small indy publishers, is a future question for now. I've got two books coming out from publishers who have made the step into mass distribution. That will be 15 books that I've sold, to 5 different publishers.

Which sounds great, but it's a good thing I still own a bookstore if I want to eat.

I've done my part.

I'll probably publish "The Last Fedora" myself in the spring, and I've still got a couple shots at producing a thriller worth publishing.

If all this strikes out, I'm not going to be too hard on myself. It's just the way this industry has shaken out and it's no one's fault. 

Confederation of Horror

I found immediate acceptance in the horror community. They liked what I was writing. I didn't think I was as extreme as some of them, but I was in the ballpark. I also realized that whatever I wanted to write could usually be adapted to the horror genre with a few tweaks.

Geoff at Cohesion Press is asking his authors to try a little harder social media wise, so I've been making a push. Interestingly, I saw that there were a ton of people who I had 50 people or more in common with, and they were almost all horror fans or writers.

I started adding these folks, and within a day the "mutual" friends list was suddenly more like 100 or more. So I'm adding those.

I'm pretty sure that we are simpatico by that point.

This is just a drop in the bucket, social media wise. I mean, I'm talking about going from about 350 friends or followers to 500 and then maybe to 1000? I don't think you really hit a level that makes a difference until you get to 10K or more. And how do you do that?

You write a breakthrough book.

I don't think it often works the other way around.

However, I'm comfortable with the idea of 5000 followers and friends, for instance, because I'm very quick going through the timelines and roll, and the more interesting stuff the better.

Yes, it's a lot of spam and authors trying to sell to each other, but that's OK. We're all in the same boat.

Genesis of "Tuskers."

I had a friend move down to Arizona, and he started complaining about javelinas knocking over his lawn furniture, digging up his garden, chasing his dog.

I had a vision of him, Conan the Barbarian mode, standing on top of a pile of pigs, swinging a baseball bat as he's besieged from all sides.

A silly thought. But I wrote the first chapter...and then the second. "The Wild Pig Aporkacalpse."

In the second book, "Day of the Long Pig,"  I didn't hold back, I let the ideas flow, even if they did include "zombie" pigs.

Book three, "The Omnivore War" was more or less the beginning of "Planet of the Pigs."

And now, this fourth book, "Rise of the Cloven" is about the synthesis of human and porcine culture.

All along it was written perfectly seriously, though most people thought it was camp. But really, pigs are very intelligent--I didn't see it as that much of a stretch. I mean, as long as we're talking fantastical fiction, right?

It turned into a little world of its own, that to me is perfectly viable and fun.

 

Genesis of "Snaked."

A few years ago there was an article in the paper about venomous sea snakes washing up on the shores of California, thousands of miles from where they should be.

I filed that away.

Then Linda and I went for a weekend on the Oregon Coast and there were Tsunami signs everywhere we turned. It's wasn't hard to imagine the panic, the running for the hills.

Put the two together and it's a book. I start writing the book, and an autistic character pops up who is affected by the venom of the snake, and suddenly the book has slightly more depth.

I wrote this book with the template of "Tuskers" in mind, but of course within a few chapters it went in a different direction. Looking back on it, there's a real "Jaws" element to it, though it wasn't intentional.

I thought when I finished that it was my best book.

Geoff at Cohesion felt I'd dropped the snakes a little too much in the last third of the book in favor of the tsunami. Without de-emphasizing the tsunami, I was added four snake chapters to the end of the book, and he was right. It was a better story.


AJ and Geoff put me through too more rewrites, each time amping up the danger of the sea snakes and the earthquake/tsunami, and again they were right. It made it a better book. Frankly, this is the first time I've really had an editor ask for substantial changes, and I welcomed it.

I hope people like it as much as I do.

Social Media Push.

I'm going to make a social media push. Add a few people per day on Facebook (or ask, at least). Do some posts every day other than just my blog. I'm not short of opinions.

Try to increase my presence on Twitter. I went from 50 less follows than followers, to one hundred more follows than followers, and I'm going to try to keep it in that range. Somewhere between 100 and 150 more follows than followers. So as I get follows, I can do more. I guess. Maybe I shouldn't be so chary, but that's how I'll start out.

Will not be shy about putting up posts, two or three a day as they occur to me. Hopefully amusing and insightful. Heh. Need to figure out how to post pictures from my phone.

I went to my long moribund website for Duncan McGeary. Last time I posted anything was for Tuskers! (Never mind that Tuskers IV is coming out within days.) According to Wix, I had 95 visits last week. If that's been going on, I've been failing to satisfy thousands of visits a year!

Doh! Obviously, if WWW DuncanMcGeary would get more hits than anything else. Duh!

So I added pictures of the covers to Tuskers IV and Snaked, and I'll slowly try to back fill. Plus, put my blog posts on there everyday. I'll need help trying to get some of the fine tuning, like adding links to my books.

Cleaned out my bookmarks, removing my own book links since I can get to any of them pretty easily.

Moved Twitter to the top of the bookmarks, in-between Facebook and the Best Minimum Wage Job a Middle Aged Guy Ever Had. Also moved my webpage up, and will try to add to it every day as well, if nothing else my BMWJAMAGEH entry.

Jared always said I should try to get people's emails as well, so I can notify them when new books come out. Do contests or something. I don't know.

Anyway, it's probably idiotic I didn't start this five years ago, but I just wasn't ready I guess. Now I am. Not in a spammy way, but hopefully in an interactive way.

I actually really like Facebook. I just need to get used to Twitter as well.

This has been a long fruitful journey. I had no idea. None.

I've written a lot of books. I've always kind of obfuscated this fact, figuring no one would take me seriously if they really knew.

After writing 7 books, the first 3 of which were published, I took 30 years off.

When I came back, I thought maybe I'd finish one more book just to prove I could do it. No expectations that it would get published, but I was encouraged by the thought that I could put it up on Amazon.

Flailed around a little, made some missteps. "Faerylander" was flawed from the beginning. I started with the wrong approach and never really recovered. But I suspect that whatever book I wrote first would have had problems.

I stepped back, tried to analyze where I went wrong and attempted "The Reluctant Wizard." Closer, but still all screwed up. But I got a tingling sense, a teasing memory of how I used to feel when I wrote "Snowcastles" and "Icetowers," both of which came to me easily. ("Star Axe" was hard, and "Bloodstone" and "The Changelings of Ereland" never did quite work.)

I grabbed that feeling and wrote "Freedy Filkins," my cyberpunk Hobbit book. I knew it wasn't the kind of book that was going to get much readership but that was sort of the point: To write the  book for fun and for myself and just do it the way it came to me.

That was the book that freed me up. That was the book to said to me, write whatever comes to you, don't say no.

When the next idea was a vampire book, "Death of an Immortal," part of me said, "Oh, hell no. That trend is over. What new is there to be said?" But I'd just come off of a fun experience with "Freedy Filkins" so I just went ahead and wrote it, and then followed it up immediately with "Rule of Vampire." (Which I still think is probably the most put-together book I've written.)

Then I tried rewriting "Faerylander" and got closer, but it was still flawed. That didn't stop me from writing a sequel, though; "Wolflander."

I set it aside and finally tackled the book I'd had on my mind from the start as my best shot at breaking through: "Led to the Slaughter." I took the time to make it as good as I could, and sure enough, it got published. While I was waiting for an answer,  I finished the vampire trilogy with "Blood of Gold," and then talked the publisher into publishing the trilogy as well.

During that first year, I barely poked my head above ground I was so intent on writing. I had a huge amount of creative energy. Not saying its good or bad, just that I was writing all the time, most of every day.

 I mean, I can't even remember when I was writing what, now.

Rewrote "Faerylander" again, and then again, getting closer each time. Doing another sequel, "Ghostlander," breaking "Faerylander" in half and creating "Zombielander." Writing "Spell Realm," a fantasy in the same world as "Sometimes a Dragon," which I also rewrote. Writing a sequel to my earlier book, "Deviltree" which I called "Deeptower." A short story called, "Burp the Burrow Wight."

The second year was just as productive, because by then I had my process down. Wrote a second Virginia Reed adventure, "The Dead Spend No Gold," wrote a book about succubae (with an uncomfortable level of sex, heh) called "Blood of the Succubus." Wrote my book about a gangster golem, called "The Last Fedora."

Most importantly, writing "Tuskers," the book along with "Led to the Slaughter" that has done the best for me. And a sequel, "Tuskers II."

Meanwhile, I wrote a couple of partial books that I might sometime go back and finish. "The Last Sombrero," and "The Odyssey of Linger Longfellow," and probably half a dozen others that went nowhere.

The third and fourth years I slowed down slightly, but still produced a mountain of words. Writing "Ghostlander" and "The Darkness You Fear" and "Faery Punk" and "Gargoyle Dreams" and "I Live Among You." Some of these might have been written in the second year, but they're all beginning to blur together.

I wrote a business book called "The Small Business Survivalist Guide," which I may throw onto Amazon someday. 

Rewrote "Faerylander" and "Zombielander" again. Still not there.

The fifth year going into the sixth year, slowing down slightly, "Tuskers IV" and "Snaked" and "The Scorching" and "Deadfall Ridge" and now "Takeover." Short pieces like "Free Mars" and"Big Liar, Little Man."  Novellas like "Said the Joker, to the Thief" and "The Toad King."

"Tuskers IV" is supposed to come out in August, and "Snaked" is coming out in September.

I decided early on to act as if I was a "professional." Pay for editing, the best covers I could find. Pretend I was successful, even as I spent more than I was making. 

Then I sold a ghostwritten book to a major publisher for more money than everything else combined, enough to put me well into the black. Someone asked me why I would do such a thing and I said, "It's not like I don't have more books."

I write just about every day. I endeavor to finish what I start. I allow myself to write whatever occurs to me. I feel antsy if I'm not writing.

Millions of words, I figure. Through it all, I'm refining the process, getting more comfortable, loosening up and at the same time asking more of myself, and slowly but surely learning how to write. Millions of words.

I enjoy it immensely. It is very fulfilling. I can't imagine not doing it.

I'm right on track with "Takeover."  Writing each chapter as they come. I'm not sure they are inspired, but they lay down the marker.

As far as being "emotional" is concerned, I'm having some second thoughts. I'm thinking about the thriller writers I read. You've got the world weary detectives (Connelly, Crais, Hammett, Chandler, Macdonald); you've got philosophers (James Lee Burke); you've got techno thrillers; you've got near superhero operatives (Silva, Child), you've got ironic and funny (Leonard, Hiassen),  and so on.

None of them dive deep into "emotion."

So far, I don't believe I've taken any false steps. The beginning of the book is a little messy, but instead of trying to fix it, I'm going to claim the messiness--this is supposed to feel real, after all. I've maintained the real and the authentic, at least I hope so, though these middle chapters are influenced as much by plot as by character, but I think that's all right as long as the plot COMES from the characters.

I've included nothing silly or far-fetched. In a way, this is my first mature book. My first book that I've tried for realism as much as possible.

I'm not saying it's better that way, just that this book needed it. I will probably go right back to writing my fictional stories again and be happy as can be. (However, for some reason I seem to have a knack for taking true events and fictionalizing them, so that will always be part of my repertoire.)

I've got this plotted out to about 50K words or more, and then I just have to create a slambam finish, which I refuse to think about until I get there. But I have total faith it will be there, because so far this book has come to me naturally and without straining. How nice is that?

I'll be 40K words by the end of this weekend, which is more than halfway for a first draft. I just need to keep trucking along.

I've decided against writing drunk for the moment. I'm making too much progress this way, and I don't want to risk derailing it. Get this first draft down, then step back and look it over.

This first draft is about character, above all, followed by plot. The second draft will be about ramping up the action and emotion as much as possible. The third draft will be about trying to layer in depth and research.

This is my best book so far, so I don't want to rush it. I want it to continue to be my best book.

My publisher is starting to gear up for Snaked, due out in September. They just sent me a Facebook cover, which I have gone ahead and plastered on all my Facebook pages.

 "Don't go swimming," it says. "The ocean has fangs."

To which I would add, it wriggles and slimes and squeezes and slithers.

Read some long form articles on the Malheur occupation and Wow! The insights, the richness, and the texture are overwhelming. 

I had to take a step back, because it was too much. I love that there is so much there. It gives "Takeover" a solid background.

But my book is a thriller, not a philosophical or political treatise.

For now, I'm not trying to include that new information, except as it informs the book going forward. When I've laid down the first draft, then I'll go back and reread those articles and see what I can use to deepen my story. Most of the time, my stories stand alone--that is, I make it all up without any regard to real events.

The other time I felt this way was with "Led to the Slaughter." As I wrote that book, I realized that the Donner Party drama was so deep that I didn't really need to have any supernatural elements to make it a good story. I was committed by then, and probably would have chosen to do so anyway, but sometimes the real life events are so filled with possibilities and implications, that it's more a matter of choosing what to include or not include, instead of struggling to come up with enough backstory to make what I'm writing feel real.

I will need to be patient. Take each possibility and implication and examine them and decide if they can add anything to the story without being a distraction.

But it's comforting to know all the rich material is out there to layer some meaning.

Walking 2 miles before I write. I've gotten in the habit of walking as deep into the woods or desert as I can get (well, 2 miles) and finding a place to sit and getting lost in my story. I gently nudge myself in the first mile, figuring out which character is talking and what the general thrust is, and then I try to let my subconscious suggest specific detail over the next mile, then I sit down and just got lost.

For as long as it takes.

Sometimes, about halfway through a scene I have to get up and stretch, pace up and down the trail, or break off twigs from trees (yes, that's a thing. It's like popping bubble wrap, very soothing.) I talk to myself if I must, I wait for the next cluster of specific images or words.

By then, the creative juices are flowing and on my walk back I usually can add some detail, or do some minor editing. 

So far in "Takeover" I haven't written anything that I didn't think was authentic. I've taken days off when nothing came, which is unusual for me. Usually I force it, and sure enough I'll get some good stuff, but this time I want everything to feel as natural as possible.

I'm not sure this is the best process. It ties everything to my ability to get out in nature. This winter, for instance, I was stuck in the house for almost 3 months, and this summer I've had to wait until 8:00 at night, when the sun isn't blasting, to go for my walk. Lately, I've been challenging that, going ahead and walking in the full heat of the day, just making sure I've got lemonade with me and letting myself sweat.

I can write at home, but it just seems harder to get going and I can't quite concentrate as deeply.

I've had the idea for some time of driving up into the Ochoco Mountains, thinking I could get there in 45 minutes and thinking it might be cooler up there. I have a 45 minute loop from Bend to Redmond that includes my old path that was most conducive to writing, so 45 minutes seems like a lot but I've done it before. (I've found a bunch of places between 10 and 15 minutes from my house.)

Took an hour to get to the first forest service road. An hour is a long way to go to get some privacy. It was nice--big firs and ponderosa, a different feel from the desert, and a lot more private that if i went west toward Sisters to get into their ponderosa forests. It was just as hot if not hotter, so much for that idea.

The chapter came out well. The scenes work as long as I get into the voice of the character. That's what I'm most concentrating on. Getting that voice down. Everything else follows.

It's nice to have the plot in my head up to the last bit. The last 20% of the book will be mostly action. I'm confident in my ability to work out the plot details of that. So the book between 20K words and 50K words are the real meat and feeling of the book, and the toughest to write, and I'm about halfway through those.

I may actually drink some wine over the next week or two to try to loosen up some emotions for the really dramatic chapters. I'm a little leery of that. But I  think I'll experiment.

I really want these chapters to hit hard. I really want the readers to feel something. I could write those chapters as usual, no problem.

I need to reach for something deeper, if I can.

Willpower, Duncan. Willpower!

The reaction so far to "Takeover" has been the best I've ever gotten. They liked it at writer's group last night. My own appraisal is that it is the best thing I've done. A mature work.

By now, I figure my last effort has probably been rejected by my publisher, but he's just not saying anything yet. So my temptation is to throw the first 100 pages at him and say, "Here's something completely different."

But if there is one thing I've learned it's don't let go of something until you are finished. I just didn't have that patience 38 years ago. Now I have to use my willpower to overrule my impulse.

Now I'm a great believer in impulse. Without impulse nothing gets done. At least for me.

But I do believe there is a good book here, and it's more likely to be a good book if I am patient and write all the way to the end and then go over it again, and then maybe even again.

So...much as I wish I could get some reassurance that my publisher will still be willing to look at the finished product, I'm going to hold off until I'm done.

Willpower, Duncan. Willpower!

Writing from my head not my heart.

Once I transitioned into plot, I realized that I also transitioned into my head. These next 10 chapters are the meat of the book, where everything spirals out of control. It needs to be dramatic and emotional.

That isn't easy for me. How do I access those feelings? If I don't feel strongly about what's happening, how can I expect others to?

I've given myself plenty of time to write this book, so I'm willing to try to access that feeling, to not write further until something strikes me hard.

The danger in that is that the longer I take to write something, the harder that will be. So a bit of a Catch-22. I'll give it a week or so. Go for my walks and see if my subconscious insists on something. As I've said, there is outer directed and inner directed and often by this point in a book, (roughly halfway through) the outer directed becomes more prominent. It's unavoidable, I think, because the demands of the plot I have to craft the elements.

I figure I can go over the top on feeling and drama and can always scale back later. But the opposite isn't true. So instead of intellectually accessing story ideas, I need to tap into the emotions.

Today I'm going to work on the concept of being a "method" writer. That is, try to tap into something in my own life that is a parallel to the events in the book, try to act out those feelings on the page.

It may not work at all. It may be that I'll just have to go with my head, and hopefully my heart will follow. But I'm going to give it some time, see what develops. In every book there are a few scenes where I fully feel the emotion of the moment. I'd like to up the odds of that happening. 

Like I said, the longer I don't write, the harder it becomes, so it's a tradeoff.

I really think what I've written so far is the best I've done, by quite a bit. But I need to fulfill the expectation I've set up. It's ready from something a little deeper and more emotional than I've attempted in the past.

So here goes.

Advancement by Addition.

Someone said about "Game of Thrones" that George R.R. Martin's plots consist of advancement by addition. He doesn't really resolve things so much as add a new wrinkle. (One of the reasons the latter seasons of the show are so startling. Things happen.)

Anyway, for the first third of "Takeover" I was doing something similar. I was going into multiple character's heads, first person, giving each of them a little slice of the story. No real plot, just development of the situation and characters.

At that point, I realized I could keep doing that, but it would be difficult to resolve anything. Similar to real life, which is more a jumbled mess of conflicting viewpoints and events.

Or I could transition into a good old-fashioned plot. Trying to keep it real, but fictionalizing events for maximum dramatic effect.

I sent my writer friend, Dave, one of these later chapters and he instantly noticed the change in tone.

I don't think he liked it.

It did remind me to keep up the 'witness statements.' Wrote three right away and they were refreshing and real. So yeah, for every standard Jon narrative chapter, I think I need two or three of the WS's.

But I'm damned if I can see how to have a plot with that method alone. As evocative as the WS's are, they are sideways or additions or character development, but not advancement in plot.

I'm now 27K words into the story, and it's good enough that I'm worried about blowing it. I have to remind myself that no one really cares that much if I write another book. It's my thing and I need to do it the way I think it needs to be done.

So I'm just writing it one day at a time. I have the book plotted, pretty much, at least to the final third. I'd thought the "murder" was going to happen around 25K words, but it will be closer to 30K words. I thought the murder would be resolved by 30K words, but it will be more like 40K words. That's all to the good.

This book can be as long as I want it to be. Adding witness statements is a pretty flexible device. I seem to be really good at these short little inserts.

I did the same thing with Tuskers IV, putting in a little insert with each chapter, sort of like "Dune." Easy to write, usually very nice stylistically, a great way to include flavor and info outside the narrative. 

In this book, it's a great way to develop character.

But like I said, the subtlety of doing an entire plot that way is beyond me, I think.

Freedom of the whim.

It's amazing how often my stories, and some of my better stories at that, start out in jest, a whim, a response to something I just heard or read.

"Tuskers" came from a friend moving to Arizona and having javilinas tear up his yard and chase his dog and other shenanigans. I visualized a retired guy standing on a pile of pig bodies swinging a baseball bat like Conan the Barbarian.

"FREE MARS!"came from reading about child slave colonies on Mars. If ever there was a Heinleinesque science fiction adventure story...

What usually happens is that I write a quick little story, but the story just keeps going and going and before I know it, it's become a thing.

Because they start as throwaways, not really serious, I'm pretty much free to write what I want, and because of that idea that nothing is going to come of it, I think the writing is actually better than when I try to be serious and bare down.

The purity of it, the telling the story just to tell the story, is what makes it good. Which is pretty ironic, you know. Because most often they aren't commercial ideas, and so it don't matter in the least whether they are any good in their own right.

I never really understood the idea of "sell-out" but I'm kind of running into real world examples of it. Personally, I think its a silly idea. Writing to sell just means you're writing things people want to read and there is nothing wrong with that.

But sometimes I just want to write what I want to write, and that doesn't mean it will be something anyone else is interested in.

It hurts my brain to think about whether an idea is commercially viable.

Basically, it isn't relevant.

Floundered around yesterday, just couldn't get going.

Part of it was that the chapter I wanted to write was going to be difficult and I wanted to be sure that I had some of it written in my head before I put it on paper. Part of it was the heat and the distraction. Anyway, I wasted most of the day.

Then, around 6:00, I forced myself to go into the bedroom and Write Something. I got something started, not great, but a start.

Then around 8:00 I went for my walk along the canal, and that's when the ideas started flowing. Filled in the earlier material and wrote new material and got back to the house at 9:30 and went out onto the patio and kept writing, then inside to type it up and add even more. Finally finished around 11:30.

Read it to Linda and she said it was really good. She really seems to like this story.

Substantial chapter, 1800 words, and it wasn't too shabby.

I'm proud of myself for not giving up on the day.

Over my head?

There have been several times when I've felt the subject matter I wanted to write was above my skill level. A couple of times, I chose not to write it.

This time, I decided to do it, as a challenge. I've written so many books that I don't need to prove that to myself anymore. I can risk a few failures by overreaching.

This idea was so strong that even though I didn't know if I had the chops, I thought I'd try. After all, it's my book. It's not like I'm affecting anyone else.

I'm now 25K words into "Takeover," which is over a third of the first draft. I'd say so far that I've done some of my best writing, characterization, and plotting. But I still feel like it needs more. A little more depth and sophistication, intelligence and subtlety. I feel like I've got a feel for it--maybe because I'm a native central Oregonian, a desert rat, and I've soaked up these attitudes and feelings naturally. I think I've got an advantage there.

I've always said--you can't write a book more intelligent or deep than you actually are. But you can try to probe the limits of your abilities--take the time and thought to improve it, if only incrementally, and then improve it again.

And maybe, just maybe, I can get to the book that I know is there -- if only I was smarter, more experienced, and more skilled.

Don't get me wrong. I think it will be a worthy read, and probably the best thing I've done. It's just that I can also see the potentialities gleaming within the story and don't quite have what it takes to fully flesh them out. As always, I feel like just a little push and I'm there. Maybe a little help. So close, and yet so far away.

Then again, I'm not done.

Found a broken lawn chair on my walk. Sat comfortably. Score! Hid the chair behind trees and bushes. Will use again. For once the garbage people throw away in the woods was a good thing. Heh.


Went out the next day and was chased (actually I was off road and they didn't see me...) by a family of four-wheelers. I try to restrain my resentment. (The mother was in the last vehicle, covered in dust, heh.)


The more I write, the more I realize how much I don't know.


What the hell. Is everything effort? Can't anything be effortless?


"Takeover" feels real and authentic to me. Probably the first time I've pulled that off--not going into "fictional" feel. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but for this book I'm trying to keep it real all the way through. Every chapter is a challenge and so far I think I've pulled it off. I doubt I could have written this book until now. I don't think I could have even come close in the first few years. It's an unusual format--first person, multiple characters, epistolary style and I think it works. I like the jumping around but coming back together with an overall feeling and theme. 


Writing is both easier than you'd think and much, much harder. I'm facile, I can write something decent. Writing something good is exponentially harder.


My Australian publisher's last Facebook post of the day is my first, and their first post is my last--and vice verse. 


Yea, apes! Strange to be rooting for the demise of humanity.


Not commenting on politics has saved me no end of wear and tear.


I wish there was a Netflix for classic or even ordinary older films. There probably is.


Dropping by Big Fun (the bookstore that replaced Linda's store) every week, and picking up classic SF from my youth. Andre Norton's Witchworld, Harry Harrison's Deathworld, Jack Vance's anything world. Loved that stuff. Filling my library, the older the edition the better.


Why don't I like Twitter? Apparently, mass market distributors judge an author's worth by how much Twitter activity they have. WTF? So authors really have to be social media present as well as being writers, which is the new reality. (I remember when I realized that the pretty singers were also incredibly talented, which meant...logically...that you not only had to be incredibly talented but pretty.)


My publishers are all ambitious. I've seen one pretty much crash and burn, a second who has struggled, and a third who is in a very ambitious phase. I want to tell them to be careful, to slow down, but I know from experience that a business person in the throes of success is almost impossible to talk down.


Our house in Bend is finally on the market. Got lucky and rented a U-Haul the night before we needed it, loaded up what was in the garage. (Read in paper next day that most U-Hauls are rented through to Sept.) We went a little high on price, maybe, but intend to stick to it. My thinking is, when we looked for our house 13 years ago, it was head and shoulders above the other houses in our price range. What will be, will be.


Whatever anyone can imagine they can do in a movie. So many classic SF books would make great movies, instead of the next damn Transformers or whatever.


Linda is happy as a clam. It's easy to take the air-conditioning for granted. I write at the kitchen table instead of in my office.  I've kept up with the lawn and weeds so far, fresh start. Quiet neighborhood, more blue collar than our last, lots of boats and cars and trailers, but quiet. Vacant lots around us probably still have a few years to fill in.


Have increased my effort on new books and toys and card games. Cameron was already doing a good job on comics and graphic novels and games, but I'd dropped the ball a little on my part. Can already see an increase in interest. Sometimes you just have to spend money to make money.


Listening to "Luxury Liner" by Emmylou Harris in the car, one of my favorite albums, and realizing that the pace and tone of country western just seems to "fit" better in Redmond than in Bend, and wondered if there is something to that overall. That the rural pace of life is attuned to a different rhythm in music.

"Made to order."

I wrote a "made to order" chapter for "Takeover" yesterday, and I think it turned out fine. By "made to order" I mean a chapter that was dictated by the needs of the plot. I have about three chapters I need to fill in storyline that way, backdating them.

Then I move forward with the plot. It's all plot now.

But I spent the first 15K words just following the characters, setting the scene. Probably 15K words too many, in the modern parlance. All of it came spilling out without prompting. But it wasn't necessarily plot driven, or dictated by the needs to have action.

I'm sort of perturbed by the Michael Bay-zation of storytelling. Everything has to start with a bang now, even if artificially induced. Sometimes that works, but it needs to feel natural.

This seems to be the advice that everyone is following, demanding. Yet...if you really look at the good books, the successful books, many of them don't really do that. Because a good book is an original book, not a formulaic one.

In a recent book, I felt I needed to do that start with a bang thing ("write me 100 kickass pages!" says the bigly time agent) and it turned out terrible. Months later, I replaced that first chapter--with another action chapter, only this one worked.

I also seemed to be trapped by my walking process. I can't seem to write anything until I've walk a couple of miles into the middle of nowhere, sit down on a stump or a rock, and just lose myself. Inconvenient. I mean, sometimes I can get going at home, at the table or outside on the patio, but mostly it's like my subconscious won't produce unless I'm walking.

I'm up to 20K words in "Takeover." The Murder will happen around 25K words. The solving of the murder and the ending of the first takeover will happen around 35 to 40K words, then the real bad guys come in and I haven't gotten that far with the plot except to know that it will probably be all action after that. Try to get to 65 to 70K first draft, add my usual 15% with description, research tidbits, character development, and making things clearer.

This is the first book where I've tried to be completely serious all the way through. I can't help a little humor here and there, which is weird that I feel that compunction because I never set out to be funny, which is probably good because when I try to be funny, I ain't.

But nothing silly like a bulletproof Bigfoot costume and a Queen Snake. (And these were my previous "serious" books.)

And I've had the realization that I'm kidding myself about writing something "literary." I just don't have that in me, I think. I'm better off sticking to pure entertainment. That is a worthy goal and not easy to accomplish.

"Keep it Real."

I think I need to back off a little from yesterday's post. All the "good" book talk. I'm setting myself up for failure, for writer's block, for disappointment.

I'm going with the plot, which means taking each plot development and writing a chapter, whether it is inspired or not. It just has to be done.

I've been sort of drifting for several days now, waiting for inspiration, and it doesn't seem to be happening. Or, rather, the inspiration is in other directions which are just more set up, more neutral, not advancing the story.

So it's time to switch to normal writing mode. I think it will be fine, and it will be done, which is the most important. I don't think it's possible to write an entire book inspired, nor that it would necessarily be better.

I told Linda about my two tracks, realistic and grounded all the way through, or going into heightened thriller plot oriented, and she definitely came down on the side of the latter. In truth, it was 80/20 where I was leaning, too.

But most of all, there are things that need to be written, and I just need to do it. Whether it's a "good" book in the end remains to be seen. But first it has to be written, and there is no realistic way I'm going to diverge from the plot that I've come up with. It feel very solid to me, this plot, no plot holes so far, which almost always seems to happen with me, and then I have to paper them over. I like the plot and the theme and the general thrust, and I'm still going to try to be realistic in approach. In fact, I've written a little note over my desk.

"Keep it Real."

I have about five chapters fleshed out in my head, another five chapters more loosely diagrammed, and then another ten chapters with general outline, and the last third of the book denoted. "Action: chickens come home to roost." Heh.

Just need to get on it.

"Takeover" is the "good" book. I need to keep it that way. Make sure that every piece works, that I don't compromise, that I don't get sidetracked. This estimation of a "good" book is strictly mine, and may bear no relation to how others will see it. It could very well be rejected and it wouldn't change my opinion of it. It could get few readers, bad reviews, and it won't change my opinion.

I've always wanted to write the "good" book, the book I can point to and say,  "Here. I've left this."

I could make this a reality-based book all the way through. It would probably get to 30 or 40K words and could be embellished, I suppose, to 60K words. Maybe lots of philosophizing and politicizing and interior dialoguing and I  could get it to 80K words. That's a real option. I've been debating with myself. To do that book I'd need to do more research.

I'd need to drop the plot, basically. The murder. Drop the second murderous group. End the book with the capture of the leaders and the death of Jules.

If I was a literary author and could bring some depth and pathos to that, it might be the way to go. How ambitious am I in that direction?

I have my doubts that I could really nail that book. I do think, however, that I could nail a thriller. 

So keeping to real events would just be my interpretation of what really happened. That might be critically more palatable, but it wouldn't be a thriller, per se. And I'm not sure that I can pull it off. I also don't think it would be as fun and satisfying personally.

Like I said, this has to please me.

So, by the time I write some fill-in chapters, I'm going to be at 20K words.

Then the murder. Then the plot happens. From that point, it will be more plot oriented, like a thriller.

That doesn't mean I have to drop the reality "feel" of it, it just means I move away from what really happened.

I came into this book with only two plot ideas. That there would be a murder, and that a more extreme and violent group would come in and the original group and hostages have to work together to beat them.

The first 20K words have paralleled real events. With the murder, I go into new territory.

In every book, there is that part where the story drives me and there is the part where I drive the story. I always prefer the former, but always bow to the necessity of the latter. The crafted parts of the books aren't worse, they just aren't quite as personally satisfying. Sometimes, actually, they are better because the inspired parts often are more predictable, the parts I have to think about I can try to veer away from predictability.

I liken inspiration to a well. Sometimes the well is overflowing and it spills out on the page. Sometimes I have to dip into it. Sometimes I have to dip the bucket to the bottom of the well. But the water, the inspiration, is the same no matter how I access it.

But...at the same time...the overflow water always seems to have a big more fizz to it. It always tastes just a little better.

I've gotten as far as 3/4th the way through a story with the story directing me. But I've never made it all the way through a book before inspiration peters out and I have to direct the story. I think I have the luxury with this book to make sure I get all the way through being driven by the story. Even if it takes twice as long as normal. I don't want to mess with the "good" book.

I've tried to let the characters direct the story so far, but I've reached the logical conclusion of that unless I intend to leave out the plot. If I bring in the plot, then I have to have the characters directed by the plot.

I'm waiting for inspiration, really. Waiting for my subconscious to tell me what comes next.

The funny thing is, this is exactly the opposite of what I thought would happen. This was the book that I was going to fully plot out, every little detail, with character sketches and tons of research.

So I did some research, as much as I could force myself to do, and then I started writing the character sketches and those seemed to take on a life of their own and were telling the story better than a fictional narrative, and I kept that approach.

I've used up most of the research in the first 20K words, which is fine because this is where the fiction takes over. So far, everything I've written has paralleled real events. If I decide to keep it real, I'll need to do a lot more research. I'll need to figure out how to explain the thinking and motives of the characters. If I go with the plot, then I need to make it satisfying in an action way, without so much literary interior dialogue.

I'm going to keep waiting for the characters to pop up and tell me it's their turn. I have the plot pretty much formed. I've written the book in my head, so to speak. Which is always alarming and reassuring at the same time. Alarming because I'd much rather keep discovering (but of course I do) and reassuring because there is always the danger that I can't come up with an ending. Heh.

Anyway, I'm incredibly excited by this book, and I'm hoping to keep the head of steam all the way through.