The Know vs Feelings

This week, Wicked Writers asks the question: Do you write what you know or what you feel?

At face value, it doesn’t seem to be the deepest of questions; however, there really is a lot to digest, if you give it some time to consider. Obviously, if one doesn’t know much about a certain subject, it most likely will prove extremely difficult to write about it with any quality or level of convincing whatsoever. On the other hand, writing only what one knows could prove to be rather limiting as well. Who among us has been chased by a deranged killer, launched into space or swept off our feet by the five foot, eight-inch Amazonian goddess with the long auburn hair and proportioned so perfect that she could induce an old man into cardiac arrest with but a look… I’m sorry, what were we talking about again? Perhaps I have been hanging out with Greg too much.

Personally, I have been known to write with some strong emotions at times. These can be very powerful, especially when I am writing about love that has been lost, anger or jealousy. I don’t know about you, but I have done quite well harnessing those emotions in some of my writing, especially jealousy and feelings of loneliness. I was a late bloomer when it came to all things romantic, so I had all too many hours listening to sad songs bunkered down in the bedroom of my adolescence.

I would submit to you that we write with a combination of both. Just because a painter has never been to the mountains, does not preclude him or her from painting a mountain vista. Just because someone has been single their entire life or, conversely, married for forty years to their high school sweetheart, does not mean that such a writer couldn’t craft the most heart wrenching and captivating of romance stories, such as An Affair To Remember. Or even one after another. My first two novels are about vampire. Now, I’ve been bitten by lots of people*, but never a vampire: does that mean I should know nothing about crafting such a scene?


Wouldn’t everyone agree that good fiction should simply captivate and transport the reader to another place? Whether that is outer space, the old west, along White Chapel joining the hunt for Jack the Ripper or the boudoir of a lover, depends solely upon the tastes of the reader. I don’t know that we care whether the author has experienced any of these examples or is exceptionally qualified in one subject or another, so much as we hope that he or she is extremely skilled at making us believe that we are there with the action. It might take a ton of research or a healthy dose of emotion; just please take us there. There’s nothing worse than a ticked off reader.



* Author’s Note: I was just kidding about the bitten thing. My wife was the only one to ever bite me, and I assure you that I deserved it. ;)

One Joy of Writing is Learning

Welcome to another week full of topics that make J.D. think harder than normal: Do you write what you know or what you feel?

Well gosh, the only answer for that is YES.

One cannot write well about that which one does not know. One can try, but one would fail miserably.

But J.D., you said you do both! Um, yeah. That’s because I’m capable of doing research and learning about the subject I want to write about. For instance, my first novel begins in Chicago, a city I frequent every summer, and ends in Lapland, Finland, a place I have never been but would love to visit.

Writing about the setting in Chicago – something I know well – is a breeze for me, and is often the setting of choice for most my stories. Writing the setting in Finland, on the other hand, would have been impossible if not for the extensive research I did on the area, the geography, the climate, the customs, the language, etc. I researched until every detail was solid in my mind and the image held in my imagination became second nature. Only then could I write the setting as well as I do for Chicago. But I have to be careful. I have to remember that I have not actually been to Finland and what I imagine it to be like might not be the truth. So I often check and recheck my notes to make sure I’m not filling too many holes with randomness.

Another example: My MC from my newest WIP is a body guard – a field I know absolutely nothing about. I’ve researched it and still need to research it further because I’m not quite comfortable with it yet. Now I bet most of you shiver when I mention the R word (research!), but the thing is there are certain habits and traits we, as humans, pick up after years on the job.

For example, I’m a grooming assistant by day (author by night), my job is to hold the dog/cat still so the groomer can cut the animals hair evenly. Well, after doing this for 2 years, I’ve developed a habit of fearlessly touching dogs that don’t like to be petted. After all, I know how to contain them without being bitten. This is a trait I’ve picked up.

Characters need to have traits like this, traits they learned on the job, especially if you are writing about a body guard. I need the shifty eyes, the self-assured stance, the kick-butt moves, the savvy speaking-into-the-mini-microphone thing …. See what I mean? I obviously don’t know enough about this field yet. But that’s where research comes in.

So, yes, I write about what I feel AND what I know. And if I don’t know it, I learn it.

Research: the write stuff – a tale of big words?

OK, a free blog topic! So, is it really true? I really don’t have to write more about horror, Halloween, and other ghouly stuff? (At least not for another year!)

But I have gotten so used to this place… writing about stuff I haven’t really a clue about! What am I to do now? Go back to mundane thrillers and financial crime? And, me being so late with this post… What will you readers be looking for now?

If in doubt… write from experience! Write what you know and can feel!

Yes, all well and good, I say… but there is an existential paradox here (big words #1 & #2) Oooo! I love it when I get philosophical! (Big word #3) Again I digress…

The Existential Paradox of Fiction


[caption id="attachment_3794" align="alignright" width="144" caption="A paradox..."][/caption]

Write what you know and can feel? But I write fiction. Fiction is not real. I cannot KNOW it; neither can I actually FEEL it! I cannot therefore write fiction based on what I know and feel. I cannot write what I cannot know. QED!

Existentially, if in doubt… what the h*** do I do now? How can I effectively write fiction if writing is best based on knowledge and experience and I have neither?

Research, I hear you say. (Well I might, if I could get the hang of this auto-suggestion malarkey!)

Research is a search for knowledge – perhaps the knowledge I need to write the fiction I am planning. But research implies a systematic investigation to establish facts and it usually also implies a scientific (not existential) method. What good is research to me? I am trying to write about stuff that does not exist – it is FICTION!

I repeat: F I C T I O N ! ! !

What about applied research, though? Surely that is different?

Oh, yes! Discovery and interpretation – all designed to advance human knowledge. But, knowledge as the basis of the unreal – of fiction? The paradox again. There are no facts concerning what is not real.

Now here’s one! Artistic research… Debatable! Art as an alternative in the search for knowledge and truth? Dubious, surely… but we are still digressing from the paradox! There are no facts concerning what is not real.

The existential paradox suggests: “why should we bother to develop our individual knowledge-bases as an aid to writing fiction – developing untrue narratives for the purpose of entertainment, not the advancement of human knowledge – why?

Why bother with research? We can just make stuff up, surely!

[caption id="attachment_3791" align="alignright" width="114" caption="A tricky place..."][/caption]

Case in point! A short time ago, I posted the opening chapter of my work in progress – the sequel to River of Judgement – in which I set the villain of the peace in a tricky situation in Libya. What do I know of Libya, or what an encounter with a criminal master-mind would be like? I know nothing. It’s fiction. I just made it up!

I created a social situation in a country that I have never visited, in a world (of crime) that I have never witnessed, about people that are wholly fictitious! If I was to gather facts – research, if you like – to develop the knowledge to write that scene on the basis of what I knew to be the case, I could end up in a pretty dicey situation myself. That is, assuming that such a reality actually existed somewhere, and didn’t mind being exposed in a real narrative. But then, that would not be fiction… ;)

I have missed a point here (deliberately so, in the hope that I could find enough to write about, lol)

The paradox of the unreal real is simply solved.

The answer lies in counterfactual analysis (big word #4). Assume the fiction is real, as we write about it. We research for facts that would support our fictional reality (if it was real). We research to support the narrative, not to provide it.

We want our readers to believe in the worlds we create. But the great thing is, these worlds we create don’t actually have to BE real. The world of our fictional narrative merely has to give the impression of a reality, long enough to engage our readers.

Fictional worlds, the places and characters that exist within them and the lives and actions we portray as fiction writers, form what can be described as socio-cultural contexts of systems of meaning, action, and/or beliefs.

These contexts of systems are basic to the world they describe. They are “plausibility structures”, and are a dialectic (given up counting big words now). Our fictional world should comprise a plausible structure, one that supports the fictional narrative. It does not replace it. And the fictional narrative, drawing on the plausible structure, in turn, suggests that structure is wholly real! The narrative acts to make the fictional world self-evident.

So research becomes a necessity if we do not have the knowledge to create and write about plausible structures.

And where does that leave the opening of my sequel set in Libya? Is my reality plausible? (Not factual.) Well, lucky me, this weekend I am about to set foot on Libyan soil for the first time in my life. I shall take full advantage of gaining experiences that will help me develop the structure of my fictional world – but I shall not worry a jot about the narrative! :)

Quelle horreur?

A time for confessions? Indeedy!

But, not only have I not read any Stephen King (not even his book on writing, Sharon), I have also not read Dean Koontz, James Herbert and that chap called Poe! (I have been warned off Shaun Hutson and Clive Barker – but, strangely enough, I had never heard of them in the first place. No loss there, then.)

He heard snarling, inhuman voices cutting through the ghostly blackness in front suddenly ... a man was beating a dog with a stick… [He] strained helplessly not to see or hear ... A small crowd watched. A squat woman stepped out and asked [the man] please to stop. "Mind your own business," the man barked gruffly, lifting his stick as though he might beat her too ...

Ooops…. Now where did that come from?

When researching for this post… “Research,” I hear you exclaim. Yes, research…

When researching for this post I recalled the one (horror) story that I read that must have appealed to me. Well, I recalled it, didn’t I?

When I was young, I had a collection of short stories – the only collection of short stories I had ever attempted to read, until I acquired a collection of Anton Chekov only last year… There I go, digressing again…

[He] quickened his pace to get away, almost ran ... At the next corner a man was beating a small boy brutally in the midst of an immobile crowd ... [He] recoiled with sickening recognition. He was certain he had witnessed that same horrible scene sometime before. Déjà vu?

Some digression! Now, where was I?

Ah, yes… a short horror story… Well, despite recalling it, I have no idea of who wrote it or what its title was; but its themes have stuck with me. If someone tries to engage me in a conversation about horror stories and writers, then this short story is about the only thing I can talk of… then I try and change the subject because I truly cannot recall the detail.

I do know that the story in question featured three inns on a desolate moor, three inn-keepers, copious quantities of darkness and fog, a traveller and various body parts – including some rather ornately carved “ivory-like” utensils, chair legs and some rather tasty soup… Just what a tired traveller on the desolate moor would look forward to! I believe one of the inns was called the Rest of the Traveller!
[caption id="attachment_3715" align="aligncenter" width="150" caption="I could just do with a drink..."][/caption]

The yawning wound — was that a tube of slimy bone he saw running deep inside the gory scarlet flowed behind the twitching, startling fibres of weird muscle? — was dripping blood in several trickles, like snow melting on eaves, but viscous and red, already thickening as it dropped.

Urggghhhhhhhhhh……… too, much detail! Is that why I don’t read horror stories? My mother was a nurse, my sister is a nurse, and my step sister too… I’ve been in and out of hospitals (as patient and visitor) and I viewed the effects of knife wounds and gunshot… Do I really want to read about more of the gory stuff?

[His] undershorts… were soaking up blotches of blood on one side as though in thirst. [He] was stunned at how waxen and ghastly his friend’s bare leg looked, how loathsome, how lifeless and esoteric the downy, fine curled blond hairs on his odd, white shin and calf. The wound… [was] as long and wide as his hand, and too raw and deep to see into clearly. The raw muscles inside twitched like live hamburger meat.

I said… “DO I REALLY WANT TO READ MORE OF THE GORY STUFF?” It’s a good job I’m not a regular at MacD’s or (perish the thought) BK… (Live oysters are much more fun… they don’t twitch so much… well, maybe, if the lemon is particularly sharp! But that’s another subject entirely.)

Then he saw a sickening, gigantic hole in his friend’s ribs and watched helplessly as the man died before him, his insides spilled out all over him, revealing a secret.

“Look, this is beyond a joke…”
“What?”
“This…”
“This what?
“This interrupting my blog post with your constant glimpses of stuff I’m not interested in...”
“Ah! That STUFF! You mean you don’t like glimpses into…”
“Into what?”
“Stop interrupting”
“Pardon,” I exclaim, “you’re interrupting me! I thought? Now you’re getting me confused…”
“I should say!”

His teeth were chattering in horror. He forced himself to look again. Here was God’s plenty, all right, he thought bitterly as he stared — liver, lungs, kidneys, ribs, stomach and bits of...

“Look…”
“There you go again.”
“Where?”
“There. Interrupting me when I’m about to tell you what I’m up to.”
“You’re up to something?” I ask, sarcastically. “What do you know of horror?”
“More than you, it would appear!”
“If that’s horror, I’m not sure I’m going to change genres…”
“But…”
“But what?” I snap.
“But didn’t you say… now let me think… last post, wasn’t it? Didn’t you say something about horror being found in reality?
“Well, yes I did, I guess. But this?
“Yes, this…”

"It was easy to read the message in his entrails. Man was matter; that was [his] secret. Drop him out a window and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was [his] secret. Ripeness was all"

“Where did you find this?”
“Don’t you know? I am surprised, David… it’s one of your all time favourite books, by one of your all time favourite authors.
“Pardon?”
“Really!”
[caption id="attachment_3710" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Tasty, this soup..."][/caption]“I just played with your mind a bit and changed the context.”
“Go on then, tell me.”
“No. Now sit there and eat your soup...” ;)
"What did you say the name of this inn was?
"I didn't..."

VERBAL REASONING… Improvisation on-line, 101

Not the usual suspects…

[caption id="attachment_2811" align="alignright" width="104" caption="I said "Not"!"][/caption]

I said NOT the usual suspects… but, then again, have you ever been Keyser Sözed? Do you ever wish to do (or have you ever done) a Keyser Söze in your story line?

Take a look around you… you are a writer, or a reader, or both. What can you see that will add credence to the realities you write, or read into?

Well, after two great posts from Greg and George on our blog this week, about favourite on-line writing resources, what else is there to write about? Clearly I have to come at this from another angle.

It is, oh, sooooooooo difficult following others on a chosen subject!

Pass me my foundation, darling…

[caption id="attachment_2814" align="alignleft" width="118" caption="That's a cover up, then?"][/caption]

I, too, am a fan of on-line tools such as dictionaries and a good thesaurus. And, as for Wikipedia? Well, I find it a brilliant tool, despite the limitations of knowledge validation (which are, frankly, and in my humble opinion, in some cases not without foundation).

Foundationless knowledge… ouch!

I sense my doctoral supervisors cringe at the very idea of according Wikipedia articles the status of knowledge… But, and it is a big BUT! …we are talking fiction here, and who gives a darn about the status of knowledge in fiction?

All knowledge – I have commented before – starts in life as fiction. It takes a process of communication and understanding (often coupled with demonstration) for a group of people (call it a society, if you like) to come to know something as knowledge.

So, someone writes something (not quite true – shall we say) in Wikipedia; some budding novelist picks up on the idea and works it into a crime novel (perhaps); some Holywood/Bollywood producer turns the novel into a film and it is seen by millions, including a budding criminal who thinks the “idea” is perfect for his (or her) next crime caper! And he (or she!) enacts the idea to commit the crime of the century. What was fiction has become truth! And a factual article is written about the “real” crime! Fiction becomes fact!

Anyway, again I digress. Greg has covered Wikipedia. :)

Keyser, who?

[caption id="attachment_2815" align="alignright" width="137" caption="What's in a name?"][/caption]

It is not until the end of the film, The Usual Suspects that we realize the narrative that Kevin Spacey has been spinning to the detectives has been based on simple “real” things that he has observed around him: the “strung-together” details taken from an office notice board, and the KOBAYASHI logo on the bottom of a coffee cup!

Imagine yourself, Roger "Verbal" Kint, famous author! You are sat there – no interrogators this time – but the pressure is on! You have your computer on and a blank page to fill. At this point you have an idea, but no details. The idea? A crime!

The greatest on-line resource I have found is the world-wide-web itself! Why stop at dictionaries? Why limit yourself to a certain thesaurus? Why stop at Wikipedia or Google. The same phrase entered into Google and Ask and Yahoo and… well, whatever… the same phrase will often return different results! Go on, be brave, pick and chose! Start stringing things together! This is where the fun starts… be your own Verbal reasoner.

The internet (I would argue!) is the definitive resource. All the other tools are just windows on the mass of data. We chose a window to look out of, just as we might pick a favourite window to look out of a house onto the yard outside. But we sometimes forget there are other windows. Our views become restrained, we forget that when the light moves, the view changes.

As a writer, I am thankful for all those people in the world out there who have given me so much material to pick and mix from. In River of Judgement, I wanted a board of directors as characters in my plot… Do you realize how many companies, world-wide, post brief bios of their directors? No?

[caption id="attachment_2813" align="alignleft" width="143" caption="Clearly not "usual" anymore!"][/caption]

So many, in fact, that when you string things together, add new names, new locations, plot ideas etc, fact becomes embedded in new fiction and nobody is any the wiser.

Fact becomes fiction!

One might wonder where other characters in my writing come from? Well, keep wondering. That might be the subject of another post!

Happy reading and writing, y’all! :)

Influence? Quelle influence?

A personal problem…?

OK, so here I am, trying to conceptualise my approach for this article on how my various hobbies and pastimes might influence my writing and… well, not for the first time on this Blog, I am struggling!

I do things. I don’t have hobbies and pastimes and work. I just DO stuff. Some stuff I get paid for, most I don’t, but all I generally enjoy doing!

[caption id="attachment_2773" align="alignright" width="150" caption="A Volvo? A Hobby?"][/caption]

Do I collect stuff? Am I creative: do I paint? Draw pictures? Write poetry? Play a musical instrument? Do I make stuff? Or do I merely enjoy tinkering with the engine of my car? (Car? …oops, Volvo …does that count? I mean... a Volvo, right? Still…)

OMG! I have a problem – it’s my problem, mind you; a personal problem! I do all of these things.

[caption id="attachment_2774" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Stading Ovation?"][/caption]

How can I possibly have hobbies? Surely a hobby implies some level of commitment to a particular pastime. But, me? Well, I do so much stuff I cannot possibly have an intimate knowledge of so many things (just listen – if you dare – to my guitar playing.)

So, that might well be considered a problem to some. But, surely, if I don’t have an intimate knowledge of certain activities that might qualify as hobbies, can there ever be a sense in which such activities can be said to “influence” anything else, such as my writing?

Not a problem… an opportunity!

So, I thought, what does influence my writing? In general?

And can I then sort out hobby from work, from life experience, from fictional idea? (There may be a few who would like to know the answer to that one! What, for example, are the real influences in my novel River of Judgement?)



I have this theory: that everything (at least all knowledge) starts out as a fictional idea! Now where does such a theory take me?

Well, as an individual, everything I do is potentially a new idea for something else.

When I do something today at work, it will give me an idea about what I might need to do tomorrow.

When I read a book (if I ever get to the end of it), it is not the book, the writer, or the genre that influences me. It is that some sentence, some phrase, some aspect of the story has become the seed of an idea. I stop reading, I develop the idea. I have started SO many books!!!

When I try to play piece of music on the guitar, I don’t tend to learn a piece by someone else. I do try… honest! But, before long, some phrase in the music has caught me and I go off on a tangent and try and develop something else out of it.

[caption id="attachment_2776" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Questions, questions..."][/caption]

When I am writing, I start with an idea and think around that idea. Before long, fiction and reality blend into a new potential reality that raises questions. Who is this? Where is this? Can this be like this? These questions require answers. So I research. And research mixes with experiences or creates new ideas and new questions and before long there is a new potential reality that bears no resemblance to anything current.

It only takes one idea to start with… but because of a rich and varied life and an eclectic and fertile imagination… I cannot stop that idea from mutating. A magazine article here, a news flash on radio there; the conclusions in a report on the future of British Policing mix with a discussion about the life and times of a great person and a chance encounter with the Prime Minister of a West African state. All of these things “influence”.

One thing I think is a surety in writing. A rich and fertile imagination, coupled with a diverse range of life experiences and a carefully honed ability to research, can only lead to a rich and fertile ground for the development of fiction. And, in that development, the seeds of new realities are created.

What, in the final analysis, influences my writing, are ideas. And ideas come from just doing stuff. The more stuff I do, the more ideas I can get… and ideas favour neither gainful employment nor passionate, unstinting devotion to hobbies and craft. What will toll the bell on ideas, however, is inactivity, apathy and indifference.

The trick, I suppose, is in coming to know when to stop filling-in the ideas; incoming to know when to stop answering questions. As my post on The Interconnectedness of Nothing suggests, the critical skill is to make my own writing act as trigger for ideas in the mind of the reader. Although I would hope my readers reach the end of the story first!!!

Happy reading and writing :)

Castner's Cutthroats to Frozen Windmills

Recently, I cyber-met a new writing acquaintance and I'm thrilled to report she's from Alaska. We've exchanged a few emails so far and she's free with sharing experiences with me about Alaska. Yay! She also pointed out to me that the residents make fun of actors and movies that poorly portray the state.  Such as Steven Segal in a movie where he rode a snow mobile across the state (or from Canada to Alaska, something like that). Yikes, would my book be hated by Alaskans as well?

This is where research comes in, the topic we're all blogging about this week. If you do the work well the first time around you won't have readers who live in your setting ready to lynch you. I started to write and then as I got really into the world I was creating, I wanted to clarify details to make things pop and to maintain consistency throughout the story. If I waited til the end to do all the research I could miss small references throughout the piece or could have to re-write a scene because the plausibility went way down with incorrect information.

I started watching a super-cool cable show called Alaskan Territories. It taught me more about Haul Road and the Alaskan pipeline then I ever cared to know, but it was truly fascinating. Having this information made me switch the timeline in my story. The Inn couldn't have opened in 1970 like I had planned, but closer to 1990.

When I wrote to my Alaskan contact and told her about the underground tunnels on my resort and how they were built, the windmills I had planned, and the insulated greenhouse, I wasn't sure what her reaction would be. Turns out, she had lived in Barrow for a bit, where the town had underground tunnels for utilities and gave tours to the public because it was considered a building marvel. And she told me that the military up there has the best vegetables (possibly from a greenhouse) and the town shops at the dump for fresh veggies because the military has to throw them out by a certain date whether or not the food appears spoiled. My new contact even mentioned windmills had been tried because of the terrific resource of severe wind across the tundra, but they froze up. A problem I solve in my book through imagining heat coils within the windmills, powered by the windmill itself.

Learning about the unique state, through books and TV shows, really helped to pull me into the world I was dreaming about. Picking a spot for my made up town was exciting once the topography of the land came into play. The extreme weather and learning to survive in such harsh conditions has produced some extraordinary individuals.

If you're a history buff or have an interest in World War II, then I recommend you check out Castner's Cutthroats. An elite group of Army soldiers recruited from the local Alaskans when the Japanese started to land in the Aleutian Islands. These sixty brave, experienced men single-handedly saved the 2,000 troops our government deployed without the correct outerwear or equipment to survive the night, let only the "two to three days" they were expected to be there. Which by the way, turned into weeks. Scattering these sixty Alaskan men among the unprepared troops to teach them how to live off the land and stay alive was the smartest thing ever done during that whole skirmish.

Their skills proved invaluable not only for surviving but for eventually eradicating the Japanese from their foothold on the remote islands as well. I was so fascinated by this human aspect of the war that I gave one of my characters a father who was one of these brave men. A father who passed his skills on to his eager son.

Speaking to someone via email who currently lives in the remote state my book is set was great. She unknowingly validated parts of my work with her casual comments and sharing of experiences. It is my sincere hope that one day I'm lucky enough to go and visit this state extensively. Now, do I want my first trip to be in the winter above the Arctic circle, just like in the setting of my book? Well, maybe not my first trip! ;-)

Have any of you been to Alaska?  I'd love to hear any stories you'd care to share!

Write Faster!

I found Greg’s post interesting yesterday, in that the advice fairies are forever spewing out generic advice, thinking they know what's best for us fiction writers. And I'm here, not listening to most of what they're saying, like a teenager, learning my lessons the hard way.

There’s no way I could write just one book in The Courier series at a time. In fact, there’s no way I could write just two of the books at a time. Technically, I’m writing all five at once.

The Courier was originally a short story idea. Guy down on his luck, desperate for a job, starts working for a courier service owned by Satan, finds out he’s transporting a substance used to hasten the opening of the Gates of Hell… Reading the idea back, it’s pretty open ended and not at all unique. But, sometimes characters gets in my face and beg me to write their stories. In Barry’s case, the story's protagonist, he’s probably been the most nagging character I’ve had the pleasure of working with. So, I caved to his pressure and originally agreed to write a short Twitter novel. Well, Barry disagreed and continued to nag like a three year old until I acquiesced to an additional four novels. Incidentally, I’ve had to tell Barry that if he wants a longer life, he’ll have to jump into another novel and play a different role, like an actor.

Where am I in regards to transitioning from one novel to the next? I have started writing book two while completing major edits of book one. Oh, and I’m still releasing book one through Twitter and the story’s website. Am also outlining book three, working through the plot for book four and settling on the idea for book five. Seem kinda chaotic? No biggie. It’s how my brain works.

What challenges am I facing? I need to write faster. Reflecting on my past writing positions, I used to handle multiple projects with unrealistic deadlines. Just the nature of the business. Today, I write fiction at home, between loads of laundry. If I had a publisher breathing down my neck, I could pump out novels just as quickly as Nora Roberts. Don't give me no crap about quality of the story. Her novels are bestseller, aren't they? And, I'm certainly not aspiring to be another Hemingway or Steinbeck with my version of comedic horror.

Researching the origin of evil and modernizing it are also time consuming. Basically, my challenge has been remaining faithful to the folklore of western religions, yet creating a good vs. evil that evolves with modern times. I mean, really, who can believe Satan and his gang have been hanging around, doing the same old thing, with the same old goals for the past umpteen years. This is proving to be much more involved in book two than in book one, and don’t even get me started on where book three is headed with the introduction of a few dark and mischievous fallen angels’ apprentices.

I'm trying to keep my challenges down to two hurdles at a time, so stay tuned, folks. I'm sure I'll be bitching about something else in a couple weeks. ;-)

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