And that's a lie.

Well, actually it's true. But only in the same way that saying, “It sprouted from my head,” is true.

Both are accurate statements, but only provide a fraction of the picture. The full answer is, well, fuller, and takes longer to explain. Maybe that's why so many creators complain about the question, "Where do your ideas come from?"

What I think that question is really getting at is this: “How did you get that stuff in your head?”

For me, that started years earlier, when I was just beginning to take writing seriously.

Way back in the day, when I was only dreaming of submitting fiction, I came across a story by Beth Cato. I don't remember which one --  I've read so many of her stories now -- though I believe it was "The Vulgarity of Flowers" or "Blue Tag Sale". In any case, it was exactly the right story for me on that day: skillfully told, packed with emotion and beautiful prose. And above all else, it was the kind of story I aspired to write. I immediately went to the author's website to see what else she'd written (and this, writer friends, is why it's so important to have a website with links to your work, or to have it collected someplace equally accessible; just a bit of career advice from your good friend Dan).

While on Beth's site, I saw that she was participating in something called Write 1 Sub 1. Curious, I clicked through to that site. It was a community of writers adhering to Ray Bradbury's admonition to write and submit a story a week. It was his contention that it was impossible to write 52 garbage stories in a row. The majority might be disposable, but there'd be one or two gems along the way.

So I took the plunge and started writing a story a week. I enjoyed it, but sometimes struggled to force myself to sit down and put in the hours. Then someone from the on-line group Liberty Hall wrote a guest post on Write 1 Sub 1. Liberty Hall was a weekly flash fiction competition, providing participants with a pair of prompts and giving them 90 minutes to write a story. Excited, I joined that community too, to see what it had to offer.

Friends, Liberty Hall is where I learned how to write.

In those challenges I found friendly support and strict deadlines, a format that pushed me to try new things and gave me no time to dwell on my failures. It forced me to evaluate the work of others and articulate them in critique, which in turn allowed me to recognize those flaws and shortcomings in my own work. The same is true of my in-person group and other on-line critique circles, but Liberty Hall and Write 1 Sub 1 made me turn out volume.

I didn't participate every week, but I was in there far more often than not. And at the end of two years I had almost 100 stories, false starts, and failed brainstorms collected on my hard drive. Some were awful, but others had a spark of life, and a few were full stories, ready to be polished and submitted. The majority of my early sales were Liberty Hall stories. 

More importantly, a handful weren't flash stories at all, but the seeds of much longer stories, with characters, settings, central conflict, the whole works, summarized in a thousand or so words. As I began to understand the essential elements of a story, I learned what to look for and how to identify which of these story sketches would truly stand up to a longer treatment. In the case of Titanshade, I had most of the first chapter, the main characters, and the plot for the first half of the book in that initial 90 minutes. The strength of those elements, combined with the reactions from my critique partners and my overall enthusiasm told me that I had something worth developing. 

But all of that takes a long time to tell. So when asked where the idea for my novel came from, I say it came to me during a flash fiction challenge. And that's accurate, but it's a lie.

Because that novel really originated in those 100 false starts that came before, those stories that were half-formed and abandoned. And it originated from joining communities that challenged me to grow, and from reading a beautiful short story and wanting to write something that good myself. 

That's the full answer, and it's why I keep working at the edges of my craft, pushing myself to fail, and searching out other creative works that inspire me. Because this novel may have required one hundred false starts, but I never know how many the next one will need. I just accept that I'm willing to do the work to get there.

PS: Beth Cato has written a ton of great books. Check out A Thousand Recipes for Revenge for an amazing read. (That’s an affiliate link, because it helps out when I earn a little from purchases.)

I finished up a ton of reading in May. The following books are what I finished in May, even if I started reading in a different month. Also, the descriptions link to Amazon, because affiliate links are fun!

The Name of All Things by Jenn Lyons

The Bomber Mafia by Malcolm Gladwell

The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St. James

Atomic Habits by James Clear

Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

Murder of an MVP is the first game I’ve made with Cryptic Killers, and it was a ton of fun. I love seeing the characters and puzzles come to life, and there’s always something special about dossier-style games where you get to hold the evidence in your hands as you sort out lies from truths.

Murder of an MVP - Basketball superstar Benjamin “Big Mack” Mackenzie collapsed and died on live television during a crucial game in 2014. The official cause? A heart attack. But longtime sports reporter Damien Allen think's there's more to it. New evidence could hold the key to the truth. Inside the case file, you'll find 29 pieces of physical evidence, from a ticket stub, to magazine articles, crime scene documents, police reports, and more.

(If you click on the Affiliate Links I’ll get a cut of the sale.)

Five college students perform a ritual to make their crushes reciprocate their feelings, ending in demonic disaster.

Wayne, Mina, Maxton, and Camdyn consider ways to save Blaise, and ultimately receive help from an unexpected source. But will their rescue operation succeed, or will it only expose them all to more danger?

(If you click on these Affiliate links I’ll get a cut of the sale!)

If you’re at all interested in it, I’d love for you to check it out and leave a review!

Here’s the concept:

Tough-as-nails security guard Jacqueline loves her job.
After all, what's the worst that could happen at a blood bank?

But when an armed group invades the building, Jacqueline and a handsome lab tech find themselves isolated and under siege, fighting for their lives.

As the invaders tighten their stranglehold, Jacqueline will need all her strength and street-smarts to survive the night. It seems her once-cushy job couldn't get any worse. Until she discovers the lab tech's shy smile may hide a sinister secret of his own...

Bad Day at the Blood Bank is a single-sitting read perfect for fans of fast-paced supernatural thrillers with a snarky sense of humor.

Sounds fun, right?

Behind the scenes, I’ve been experimenting with self- publishing, getting back to speed on how the system works and what the best ways to get stories into readers’ hands.

I gave it a new title, designed a cover, wrote a blurb, and ran some ads.

This whole process has taught me a lot, and I’m planning on putting it into use on sharing more Carter Archives stories, along with a few books that would be a good fit for self-pub.

In early drafts, it’s easy to filter words or overused terms to creep into your prose.

Filter words distance the reader from the sensation you’re describing.  (“I heard car horns blaring and felt the heat radiating off the blacktop.” vs “Horns blared and heat radiated off the blacktop.”).

Overused terms are the ones that always seem to slip into your writing. Everyone has their own terms… one of my mine is ‘just’. (“I stood just at the brink.” vs “I stood at the brink.”)

It’s easy to miss these problems on an edit pass, and running a Find and Replace is overkill. You don’t need to eliminate every instance, just the ones that weaken your writing. (The use of ‘just’ in that sentence is totally intentional, thank-yoou-very-much.)

A custom Word macro can highlight the words or terms you’re looking for, allowing you to easily find them and decide whether to edit on a case-by-case basis.

Don’t always work in Word? Me either! I often export prose or game scripts from Scrivener and Google Docs into Word, then run the macro. I pull up both docs on dual monitors and make edits directly in my working software.

(Hat tip to Brian Justus, who shared this tip and taught me a bit of Visual Basic years ago!)

Ready to learn more? Here’s a Microsoft tutorial on creating your own macro in the comments.

When you’re hip-deep in worldbuilding, details are your greatest tool and worst enemy. 

Details ground your audience in your world’s reality, but diving too far into details can make them change the channel or put down the controller. Because let’s face it: who really cares about your fantasy world’s aqueduct system?

Inspired by a post from Susan O’Connor, I started thinking about worldbuilding and urban planning, and how to convey details without making players drink from a firehose of exposition.  

One killer trick? Show knock-on effects.

Imagine a sub-plot or side quest about a criminal enterprise stealing water runoff from public fountains. That’s weird, right? You audience wants to know: How can they make money that way? Why is it illegal in the first place?

Now the player WANTS to know about the backstory. We can explain that in our fantasy world homes and public spaces fed by aqueducts were required to have fountains, where the runoff water flowed into the streets. This provided public sources of running water, and the runoff flowed into the streets, cleaning the dirt and dung that built up on a daily basis. A public service so essential that our fantasy city has strict proscriptions against using runoff for personal use.  (I lifted all of that from ancient Roman cities, btw)

Now, imagine walking down the street of our fantasy city. You feel the press of bodies, the rattle of mule-drawn carts, the cries of vendors hawking wares, and under it all… trickling water.

These small details set the stage for the side quest, so that our exposition will feel natural and satisfying, rather route and encyclopedic.

Because details are like spices -- you need to have enough to trigger tase buds, but not so much that the core flavors are drowned out. 

I’m delighted to say that the first issue of Love Spell has hit multiple Amazon’s Best Seller lists. As of this writing, we hit the top on both the Mystery, Thriller, & Suspense as well as the Supernatural lists for Graphic Novels. (And we’re #2 on Horror!)

Bestseller lists are weird things, and that’s even truer on the rapidly cycling algorithms of Amazon. But for all of that, I’m very proud to see this book with an orange Bestseller banner.

Issue 2 is coming together with gorgeous artwork, and Issue 3 is already being scripted.

If you want to ride along for a tale of weird horror it’s the perfect time to join us!

So, one of my favorite podcasts crawled back out of the grave a few years ago.

During its original run, Horror, Etc. cast long shadow cast across the horror landscape. Over the years, Anthony Mann and Kingstown Ted impacted the way horror was discussed on podcasts and influenced countless horror fans. Horror, Etc. introduced us to lesser-known work and re-contextualized classics in ways we’d never thought of before. (I’ll never forget the mind-blowing moment when I heard them describe And Then There Were None as a proto-slasher.)

I’ve written before about the show’s impact, and how many of their listeners turned out to create genre work, including me. Honestly, Horror Etc. is like the Velvet Underground of horror podcasting — not everyone knows who they are, but everyone who listened started creating on their own podcasts, novels, comics, Etc.

And again, this influential podcast came back from the dead three years ago. Yet somehow, I’ve never given them a proper shout-out on this site.

If you’re at all interested in checking out the show, the revival is a patreon-supported effort. For me, the mix of recommendations, insightful commentary, laughter, and nostalgia I get from the show is well worth the monthly fee.

Don’t want to pay? Check out the iTunes page from the original run. That’ll give you a feel for the vibe, and let you decide if you want to join in the creepy fun or not.

As for why it’s taking me so long to put together this post, I can only say to Anthony and Ted… “I learned it by watching you, okay?”

*(Seriously, I have no idea why it takes me so long to do some simple things.)

I’m massively excited to announce my latest project: LOVE SPELL a horror comic made with visionary artist Jonathan Luna.

Dark, hilarious, and creepy as hell, Love Spell is the story of five college students who perform a ritual to make their crushes reciprocate their feelings, ending in demonic disaster.

I love comics. I even worked with a crew of friends to self-pub a line of comics way back in the 90s.

This is an opportunity to collaborate with an extraordinary artist on a fun (and wild) storyline. Jonathan is a visionary creator, with a distinct style backed up by over twenty years in the comic book industry. (Check out his work on titles like Alex + Ada, Girls, and Marvel’s Spider-Woman.)

If you’d like to give us a push, there are two things you can do, and they only cost a few minutes of your time:

1. Tell a friend!

   If you know someone who’d dig a book like this, let them know about it. Share on social media, and spread the word in general.

2. Register for notifications.

   This one is so cool. Love Spell is in “pre-launch” right now. If you go to the page (at this link) you’ll see a banner, a bit of text, and a button that says, “Notify me on launch”

   
   Clicking notify will simply drop you a notification when the campaign goes live — this costs absolutely nothing, but it’s shockingly helpful!

   
   Because here’s the thing… Kickstarter uses that “Notify” button to determine which projects get featured on the front page. If we get enough clicks on that button, we’ll get a MAJOR boost in attention. (Because, of course, we all live and die by the algorithm these days.)
   
   Now, heads-up: you’ll need to have (or sign up for) a Kickstarter account to do this. Kickstarter accounts are free, and I think it’s a great way to connect with creators, but I wanted to let you know in advance!

https://www.amazon.com/Titanshade-Dan.../dp/B07DT3HZFZ/

(*) or maybe they're sexy face mandibles. I'm not judging. You do you, my friend.

I took part in Adventure Jam 2023 — hundreds of small teams worked for two weeks to produce the best possible adventure game they could.

I was in a team of two — myself and the artist ILikeThePixies — and we produced an illustrated text game about a cat on a spaceship facing down an invasive fungus. It’s called What Sprouts in the Dark, and it’s completely free to play in your browser.

Check it out here!

We were expecting a casually slapped together, barely coherent CGI mush. Instead, it's a well-executed film that fully embraces the silly concept and is a fun watch from beginning to end.

The production values are surprisingly high, with sound, cinematography, and lighting all better than expected for a film with this kind of budget. The plot has holes but we were having too much fun to care about them.

Now, this film *definitely* benefited from us coming in with low expectations. I don't want to over-hype it or you'll be disappointed.

But it's one of those films where a talented director and crew made the most of what they had to work with. And that alone is kind of a Christmas Miracle, right?

Now I think universes are merging, and I don’t understand why the internet isn’t talking about this.

Man, I loved Scooby and the gang.

Still do, really.

Scooby-Doo was massively influential on most kids of the 70s and 80s, and I was no exception. The original series (Scooby-Doo, Where are You?) was filled with gorgeous backgrounds and fantastically creepy character design, making it a gateway to other tales of ghosts and ghouls.

I was hooked on Scooby as soon as I saw the show, and my mom fed my Scooby-mania the same way she always did: with books.

We had a few Scooby-related books, but the one that I read the most was Favorite Scooby-Doo Adventures. This oversized book was a collection of short stories, with a number of different writers and illustrators.

And that blew my tiny little mind.

All of the stories are fun, and they touched on some of my other early favorites, like prehistoric animals and the headless horseman.

But the thing that pushes it from being a beloved collection of stories to a book that shaped me as a person and a storyteller was that it was an anthology. The collection of styles was one of the first times I realized that multiple artists could interpret the same characters in multiple ways. (The other thing that opened my eyes to this were the Tolkien wall calendars.)

In addition, the range of art styles challenged me — I had a very distinct mental image of Mystery Incorporated, and seeing them represented in a different art style was a little confusing and, if I’m being honest, scary.

But that same disquiet is also what drew me back to the book, even as a very small kid. The original show had safe scares that drew me in, and Favorite Scooby-Doo Stories was scary in a meta way. It pushed my earliest concepts of narrative, and got me thinking about how different storytellers could approach the same material.

Plus, you know, it had ghosts.

Lit Scares is run by a group of comedians and horror aficionados in the U.K. They put on an annual festival filled with film screenings, stand-up comedy, music, and I’m happy to have my screenplay in their mix of awesome material.

I won’t be there for the festival in person, but I’m guessing it will consist of very serious people discussing my screenplay very seriously. Also, fart jokes.

Anyway, as promised: Laurels!

You can find the article here: The best books set in a modern fantasy world

Shepherd is a new site built from the ground-up for book lovers. Their goal is to create a site that feels like you’re wandering around a bookstore, talking with other readers and booksellers. They’re sort of establishing themselves as an alternative to Goodreads, and I’m looking forward to seeing where they head next!

I first saw the words “Sin Titulo” in the 1990s, printed in italics at the top of an art gallery wall tag-- one of those small, white cards hung next to the art we’re theoretically there to see. A Spanish illiterate, I was left to imagine their meaning on my own.

Sin Titulo
Acrylic on Lead
1991

Wall tags tell us what the art is, though not what it means. And of course, “Sin Titulo” simply means “Untitled.” A relatable state, as I’m firmly of the belief that and sooner or later we all feel untitled.

For some of us it’s awkward adolescence. For others it’s early adulthood, when the unlimited potential of every choice overwhelms any single definite step we can take. We wrap ourselves in uniforms of clothing and attitude, labels or tattoos. At one point or another, everyone feels as if they’re seated at a table, trying to figure out the rules of a game that everyone else has already mastered.

Sin Titulo
Ink on Flesh
1998

Many of the names and images of this story are pulled from my own life. A high school friend had a younger brother named Egan. Another friend was named Kulwicki. And like the fictional Egan, I had a small cache of metal figures I’d dabbed with paint, tiny soldiers in a game for which I’d bought the rules, but too shy to invite anyone to play.

In time, the luckiest among us find friends and partners to join our games and share in our lives. We learn that we’re defined by how we treat the ones we love and, even more, by how we treat the ones we don’t. We may go through life wrapped in labels and uniforms, declaring who we want to be, but it doesn’t matter what we say;  it’s our relationships that show what life really means.

Sin Titulo
Words on Screen
2018

As a frequent library writer, I made it a habit to check out the writing section on every visit. I’d pick up the latest acquisitions and check out whatever looked most interesting. That way I always had at least one book on writing near my desk.

I’ve kept a list of all the books that helped me, along with notes, quotes, and excerpts. Since I get asked for it a lot, I figured I’d save a little time by dumping them all into one spot. Here are the titles, in no particular order. The ones in Bold are books that were particularly helpful to me when I read them. That doesn’t mean that they’ll be helpful to you, but I like to give credit to all the smart people who influence me.

Remember, most of these books say the same things — it’s just a matter of hearing them repeated until it clicks with you at that moment in your life.

Note: I’m gonna drop some affiliate links in here, so I’ll get some kickback if you buy them.

• The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield

• Writing the Breakout Novel, by Donald Maas

• Writing the Blockbuster Novel, by Albert Zuckerman

• Art & Fear, by David Bayles & Ted Orland

• Characters & Viewpoint, by Orson Scott Card

• Writing Down the Bones, by Natalie Goldberg

• Don't Sabotage Your Submission, by Chris Roerden

• Advertising Secrets of the Written Word, by Joseph Sugarman

• Danse Macabre, by Stephen King

• On Writing, by Stephen King

• Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamont,

• The Story Grid, by Shawn Coyne

• On Writing Horror, ed by Mort Castle

• Daily Meditations: Writer Tips for 100 Days, by David Farland

• Million Dollar Outlines, by David Farland

• Starve Better, by Nick Mamatas

• Shooting Yourself in the Head for Fun and Profit, by Lucy Snyder

• How to Write a Damn Good Thriller, by James Frey

• Story, by Robert McKee

• Zen in the Art of Writing, by Ray Bradbury

• Wired for Story, by Lisa Cron

• You're not Fooling Anyone When you Take Your Laptop to the Coffee Shop, John Scalzi

• Beginnings, Middles, and Ends, by Nancy Kress

• Dynamic Characters, by Nancy Kress

• Poetics, by Aristotle

• Conflict and Suspense, James Scott Bell

• The Writing Warrior, by Laraine Herring

• The Writer's Journey, by Christopher Vogler

• Nobody Wants to Read Your Shit!, by Steven Pressfield

• Save the Cat! by Blake Snyder

• Hooked, by Les Edgerton

• From 2 to 10 K, by Rachel Aaron

• Write to Market, by Chris Fox

• Writing the Fiction Series by Karen S. Wiesner

• The Art of Time in Fiction, by Joan Silber

• Story Engineering, Larry Brooks

• Story Trumps Structure, by Steven James

• The First 50 Pages, by Jeff Gerke

• Wonderbook, by Jeff VanderMeer

• Steering the Craft, by Ursula K. LeGuin

• The Emotional Craft of Writing, by Donald Maas

• Story Genius, by Lisa Cron

• On Writing Romance, by Leigh Michaels

• Save the Cat Strikes Back! by Blake Snyder

• Save the Cat Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody

• Comics Experience Guide to Writing Comics, by Andy Schmidt

• DIY MFA, by Gabriela Pereira

• Writing & Selling Your Mystery Novel, by Hallie Ephron

• Romancing the Beat, by Gwen Hayes

• The Emotion Thesaurus, by Becca Puglisi and Angela Ackerman

• Making Comics, by Scott McCloud

• Making Comics, by Linda Barry

• Comics & Sequential Art, by Will Eisner

• Graphic Storytelling, by Will Eisner

• The Art of Game Design, by Jesse Schell

• Slay the Dragon, by Robert Denton Bryant & Keith Gigilo

• Acting for Animators, by Ed Hooks

• The Advanced Game Narrative Toolbox, ed by Tobias Heussner

• Becoming a Writer, Staying a Writer, by J. Michael Staczynski

• Impro - Improvisation and the Theatre, by Keith Johnstone

The artwork is by the amazing Carlos Trigo. As you can see, it hits on a few of my favorite themes.

I’m making these available at cost to anyone who wants one — so if you want to grab one of these beauties, hop over to my Ko-fi shop. They’re available with signature only or with a personalized message.

And yeah... it's the only thing at that shop, but someday I'll get more stuff in there!

(Again, thanks to Carlos and Bookplate Ink!)