Troy Blackford - Journey to Death at Lifespeed

Interviewed by Gwendolyn Kiste

2015-11-04T13:19:00.000-06:00

I've been deliberately interviewed in connection with my involvement in the brilliant 'A Shadow of Autumn' anthology, which you can find in paperback and Kindle form here. The interview is available here. I get real 'in-depth' with a lot of stuff, like pumpkins.

The Story of 'Under the Wall' - How I Came to Write My FOURTH Book About Magic Cats...

2015-09-28T16:16:00.000-05:00

That's right... My new book, 'Under the Wall,' is the fourth book I've written about magic cats. True, out of my available books, Under the Wall is the second book in the so-called 'Leviticus' series. (I say 'so-called' because I had to tell Amazon the series was called something, but I had never really thought about the series having a title and just typed in the name of the main character.) But in terms of my writing, it's the fourth book about these magic kitties. But, even that isn't entirely accurate... the story of how these books came to be written is anything but simple to explain.

Let me back up.

'Under the Wall' picks up exactly where Through the Woods leaves off. But, when 'Under the Wall' was originally conceived, back in 2009, that's not how it was envisioned at all. The book entitled 'Under the Wall' that went on sale last month isn't even the first book by that title that I've written. The original 'Under the Wall,' undertaken very suddenly and with no premeditation on December 3rd, 2009, was the very first novel I ever wrote (but not my first book: I had written both a book of sheer gobbledeegook called 'Unfettered Coincidence,' and a hard-to-classify book that began as a prank, evolved to become a book of short stories, and ended as bizarre form of novel that wove most of the stories together, sanely entitled 'GhostPopulace, Vol. 1,' in 2006, before I began writing in earnest).

I stumbled into being a writer in a pretty unusual way. On December 3rd, 2009, one of my two beloved kitties, the friendly but meow-y Tomo, was sitting on my lap, when out of nowhere he made a strange face. Everything had been normal, but then he startled suddenly, attending to some sound that I couldn't even detect. This bizarre reaction gave me the germ of the idea for a story about a cat with the ability to read the minds of the people and animals around him. What if, I reasoned, he was picking up the thoughts of an insane killer who is coming to murder us? You know, like you do when your cat moves their head.

I ran downstairs, and, instead of calling 911 and warning them about the killer on the loose that my cat had warned me about, I proved that I wasn't entirely mad by merely jotting down notes. Keep in mind, it had been three years since I had written anything, and when I was writing things before, it was nothing so structured as a novel. I jotted away, and when I had finished writing this all down, I thought only about ten minutes had passed, but my wife (then my girlfriend) informed me that it was actually more like an hour and a half. I had two or three pages filled with a rough outline for my first novel, which I ended up calling 'Under the Wall.'

Though many of the core pieces were in place, such as the story being entirely set in the snow-enshrouded world of Saint Paul in the middle of December, and the opening scene of Leviticus lazing under the Christmas tree, soaking in the thoughts of the world around him, the first story of Leviticus wasn't in anything like the form it is in the new book. Leviticus's foe in 2009 was 'John the Faithful,' a serial-killing madman who chose his victims out of the phonebook. The story's structure was entirely different, revolving around a series of veterinarian visits for the increasingly sick Leviticus.

Many of the central ideas and scenes of Leviticus's story as it would ultimately be told in the new book were already in place, but the narrative was much more artificially structured, and, worst of all, antagonist John the Faithful was much more of a 'boogeyman'--a Very Bad Man who wanted to do Very Bad Things, mostly because he needed to be bad to make the story work. A faint glimmer of hope for my future writing self appeared at the end of the story, in a flashback scene that attempted to provide a reason for his Very Bad-iditude, but overall, this first novel was a nascent attempt. A quality that is, however, forgivable in a first attempted at a novel. After all, I learned a lot doing this book and was, at the time, incredibly proud of it.

In fact, I was perhaps too proud. Out of a complete lack of self-awareness, and drunk off the power that the modern self-publishing landscape gives one, I naively rushed this book out in paperback (I hadn't jumped on the Kindle bandwagon just yet) the moment I was done with it. I gleefully, even wantonly, urged total strangers to buy a book I had barely managed to finish, like precisely the kind of madman I had handed a knife to and urged to kill a perfectly innocent fictional family in my magical cat book!

Who did I think I was? I had absolutely no real writing experience. My first 'book' was little more than a collection of middle-and-high school ramblings I managed to type up. My second book, as I mentioned before, began as a prank. A 500 page prank, I say! Like the naive little man I was, I learned nothing from these experiences. Instead of revising, tightening, re-revising, and proofing my tale of Leviticus the cat, I simply rushed his story out, slapped between two glossy pictures of my dear Tomo. That even a few people were interested in reading this unpolished block of text from a total unknown was, frankly, remarkable.

My writing style--if you could call it a 'style'--in this first book, was painfully bloated to the point where I seemed to restate every single thing three times. This was no accident: frankly, having never written a novel before, I wasn't sure if my idea would end up being long enough to constitute a novel. In all honesty, I should have spent years working on short stories, getting better sentence by sentence, before attempting something of this size. But I, heedless of the indignity on language I was about to perpetrate, simply dove in. And, while the experience did prove to be very educational for me, I now feel deep regret for rushing that story out, and I apologize to those readers who, at the time, took a brave and generous chance on the story of Leviticus the housecat.

But I did find, in writing that first novel, that I loved writing. It was what I had always wanted to do, even if I hadn't realized it. (I was super focused on music for most of my childhood and early twenties.) I mean, you're looking at a guy who, up through 2006, wrote two books as a joke. Somewhere, deep down, I was trying to tell myself what I really wanted to do.

I also started to grasp what I should have realized before trying to sell that first incarnation of 'Under the Wall': I needed to get experience. The best way to learn to write is to write a boatload of short stories. That's what I did, and it ended up being very good for me.

I love short stories: I love reading them, I love writing them. I love editing them. I think they're fabulous gifts to readers' and writers' imaginations and I don't understand how they've fallen into such disrepair these days. But that's not really germane to this story.

After coughing up 'Under the Wall' like a furball, I spent the next half a year cranking out many heartfelt but rather badly written short stories. When November 2010 came around, I had just finished a collection of sorts--long-since mercifully out-of-print, but which I'm still mining for decent story ideas that I had originally failed to execute properly. I needed a new task to turn my developing writer's brain to.

And, as many of you writer sorts will know, November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo.

For those who don't know, this is a fun challenge that anybody can participate in. You, along with hundreds of thousands--if not millions of others--try your darndest to write an entire novel (at least 60,000 words) in one month. The pace is extreme, but you feel supported along the way by the community. It's a lot of fun, especially if you are not someone who already writes every day.

Okay, I thought. Let's give this a shot, I thought. I didn't have high hopes for the potential quality of the kind of novel I would be able to churn out in a month after only 11 months of writing seriously. At the time, I didn't have a single published short story to my name. This was before I had any books on Kindle or Amazon, let alone the nine I have now. I didn't know if I even could write a first-draft of a book in a single month. I decided: 'Let's pull one out of our ass!' (I became plural as I thought this, for some reason.)

Turns out, there was a story up there. And man, did it end being crazier than I could have predicted when I started. Once again, my writing skills weren't nearly up to the task of telling it, but that's the whole reason you have to keep writing: to get better. I didn't outline a damn thing--not at the beginning. I like to use outlines once I get a story well under way, to help me stay on track, and don't do any really intense outlining until the very end of a story so I can tie everything together and deliver a satisfying ending. I like the creative freedom of starting with a blank slate. And, as I dug in on this marathon writing experiment, I had only one guiding idea.

In the first incarnation of Under the Wall, I had explored the idea of a loving cat with telekinetic powers, abilities which prove to be the only thing that enables the tiny but valiant feline to save his family from an evil madman. In starting this new novel for NaNoWriMo, my only idea was: what if there was a cat who was the opposite of Leviticus? Just as powerful, but instead of being loving, selfless, and caring, he was just an absolute snot of a critter? What if all he wanted to do was to lash out, to conquer, to win?

I didn't know if that would even make for a good story, and I certainly didn't know if the idea had enough meat on its bones for a novel, but I figured 'eff it,' and started writing. And, it turned out, that this was a rather fruitful vein to mine, to mix some metaphors. I found myself keeping right up with the strict NaNoWriMo time limitations. I learned something about myself: I had all sorts of ideas about how an evil kitty with seemingly boundless powers could go about being a total scumbag.

I quickly chose the name 'Deinonychus' for my anti-hero, after one of the more fearsome dromaeosaurid dinosaurs. What better name could a scary monstercat have? Also, it didn't take long to stumble onto the idea that the furry badass's mystic energies required a semi-vampiric fuel: the more blood of the living the bitchkitty managed to suck down, the more powers he would develop. He guzzled this lifejuice like a crappy old lawnmower with a dirty oil filter burns gasoline. (Note to self: find out if having a dirty oil filter increases gas consumption. This sounds right to me, but...)

Not only was giving my evil kitty the constant thirst for fresh blood just generally kind of cool, but it would perfectly explain why he would have permitted himself to have been trapped in a house, as he is in the beginning of the tale, with a family (the fairly odious Jennifer 'Mommy' Webber and her sweet but Elmyra-from-Tiny-Tunes-like three-year-old) instead of already having simply melted the world down with his mind before the story even started. Inside the house, he could only eat dusty kibble, but once he got outside, he could catch a squirrel or something, and go on a snowballing deathrampage from there.

Unlike 'Under the Wall,' this story was set firmly in the fall, and took place over only two days. But in those two days, one little housecat managed to do a significant amount of damage!

With these ingredients, I powered my way through the composition of a book that I would eventually call 'Out the Door.' I'm not sure if the parallel construction of the title, with its similar 'Preposition the Noun' format to my first magic feline book, occurred to me from the first, but I did eventually seize upon it. But, as I wrote the story, there was no overt link to my older book. Other than, of course, the obvious magical cat element.

That's not entirely true. I did include one shared item: both cats had a strange gold tag with their names engraved on them, a tag that they each had around their necks before they were adopted, and that their new owners never replaced, simply keeping the names their pets had come with. This seems like a clear link, but might, if anything, have been a reference to my own actual cats' names. Though they came with no spiffy gold tags, my two cats (brothers) were adopted with the tongue-twistery names of 'Capriccio' and 'Tomomichi,' We have shortened them to Pricci and Tomo, but these unique names seemed too great to abandon, and I think that element found its way into my first two cat stories.

The original 'Out the Door' ended Deinonychus's story in a very different way than the new 'Under the Wall.' This is because, as visceral and interesting as my evil kitty's original story was, there was literally no structure to this book. I mean, the plot was entirely dictated by Deinonychus wandering about, trying to do whatever he wanted. It was certainly something dramatic enough to read about, but the book was more like an imaginative petri dish exploring 'What would it be like if a cat could develop increasing telekinetic powers and decided to attack the world?'

It was unusual book in other ways, as well. Most notably, the obvious 'bad guy,' Deinonychus, was the main character. Also, he had no real opposition; some of the situations he found himself in were beyond his control, or at least started out that way. And he did, on occasion, encounter some setbacks. But, overall, there was no concerted effort to stop him. Nobody really even understood what was happening. Obviously, when mayhem starts being unleashed, your average individual isn't going to instantly assume that it 'must be an evil housecat wandering around wreaking havoc with his mind!'

The original tale of Deinonychus suffered from that sense of aimlessness, I think. It had a great character (I don't mean that you should think Deinonychus is great, but of all the characters I have ever made up, I just love writing for Deinonychus. He is such a little shit. His snotty, stuck-up, spiteful attitude is just so easy for me to channel. What does that say about me?), but the 'plot,' such as it was, was more exciting than it was substantial. I guess the best way of putting it would be that this original book was entertaining, and at times thought-provoking, but probably wouldn't be worth a re-read.

So, that was that. I was pleased with myself for succeeding at my first NaNoWriMo marathon. Moreover, the book I had 'pulled out of my ass' had been a lot of fun to write. I could feel myself getting better as I wrote it, and in terms of learning-process and development, it represented a huge deal for me. It may have had a lot of problems, but the composition was a great leap forward from the original 'Under the Wall.'

I had other things on my writing plate, so after this, I moved on to lots of other tasks. During this time, I finished another novel--a scifi doodad that I called 'Formland' which I may rewrite and release someday, and which ended up being my last 'write-but-don't-release' work. I kept at it with the short stories, and started getting a few published in journals, reviews, and small magazines. I was making progress, and was starting to feel pretty good about myself.

In the fall of 2011, I was about 50,000 words into a book that I thought was great, a still-unreleased work that I have plans of revitalizing and attempting to approach the publishing industry about rather than self-publishing, so I won't talk about it more here. But then the month of November, and the next NaNoWriMo, came about, and I wrestled with a decision: should I take a 'break' from my work-in-progress and explore an idea that had been growing in the back of my mind as another NaNoWriMo marathon, or instead ignore NaNoWriMo and soldier on with the half-written book? Well, the 'break' on that work-in-progress has lasted to this day, as I realized the book I was writing needed a higher level of skill than I could have brought to bear on it at the time. When I do finish it up, I will be a very different person as a writer and I think the story requires that from me in order to do it justice.

So, I did take the NaNoWriMo 2011 challenge, and I was able to explore that little idea that had been tickling the back of my brain: what if Leviticus and Deinonyhus knew each other? What if they, like my own two precious kitties, were littermates? If that was the case, then who had given them those sparkly gold tags? Where did these two cats come from?

My idea was, in short, a prequel to the two other books, one that would serve to connect them. This undertaking represented a massive retcon, a novel that would recast the two previously released books in a very different light by providing scads of new information. The challenge was pretty huge: remember, these two books had nothing to do with each other, besides those gold tags and the idea of having a magic cat as protagonists. The only other unifying concept was that both novels were set in the Twin Cities, Minnesota. How could I possibly tie these two novels together coherently?

Early on, before composition started and this idea had just started tugging at the loose strings in the back of my mind, I had a weird mental image of some druid-like cult deep in the woods, handing out tags to a near-feral colony of house cats. The one thing that I felt like I solidly knew about the pasts of both Leviticus and Deinonychus is that they came to the Twin Cities metro from the woods. Ultimately, however, I rejected the cat-druid idea, having no idea where to go with it.

Then I hit on an angle that ended up turning some people off the book that all this ultimately produced: the idea of the National Unexpected Countermeasures and Preparedness Agency: NUCPA, or simply 'the Agency.' A fictional U.S. Federal Intelligence Agency specializing in researching the improbable, the fantastical, or the downright supernatural--unlike anything I had put into a book before. I wasn't sure if I would be able to pull it off believably, but this was NaNoWriMo, after all! I only had a month, and I'd better get writing if I wanted to finish in time. Reasonable idea or not, those pages weren't going to fill out themselves!

The challenges in creating a decent bridging story between both earlier books were many. Unlike 'Out the Door,' where I could easily keep up with my intense daily required word count to beat the NaNoWriMo goal by just having Deinonychus do whatever the hell he wanted, this time, I had to put a lot of thought behind the various story elements in order to make sure everything matched up with what had come before. For example, there was a statement in the beginning of 'Under the Wall,' explaining that the animal shelter workers had found Leviticus abandoned near student housing after the college semester ended--a common-enough fate for many cats adopted without much foresight by otherwise well-meaning students. Stuff like that had to be factored in, along with a spate of other such considerations.

Beyond that, I thought the best way to bridge the two stories would be to give a human window into the unfolding events of this new prequel, rather than a purely feline perspective: enter Ben Chesterton.

I tried to channel my own excitement at my first days of my current job (sure, it's not as dangerous or secretive as his, but I was almost as happy to get my current job as Ben was to secure his slot at NUCPA) when creating his character. In the opening pages of Through the Woods, we see this just-off-center-of-real universe through Ben's eyes, and I hoped people would feel happy for the fresh-faced whippersnapper and share his sense of awe at discovering the innards of the top-secret world he was heading into. I took my time, and had a lot of fun building up to the revelation of the cats, which is funny, because I personally knew all about them from the two books I had written earlier, the events of which happen later than those in this book...

The layers of complication are already starting to thicken up here, aren't they?

One of the elements I had the most fun with was the opportunity to introduce a bunch of littermates with lesser, kooky powers for the two feline stars to play off of. I had already explored 'super powerful evil,' and 'restrained but even more powerful good' as ideas for magic cats, but 'Through the Woods' gave me the chance to make up a lot of off-the-wall ideas for powers, ones that didn't have to support the weight of an entire plot. There was one who could mimic any sound, one who could wrap up victims from afar in sticky webs, like a telekinetic spider. One who drained the color from their victims until they dispersed in a puff of ash. My imagination was 'unleashed' (like most cats!) and it was tremendous fun.

In the rapid-fire course of NaNoWriMo-composition, I had other realizations: like that the cats might not necessarily the weirdest things going on at the top-secret NUCPA facility, for example. It was fun to explore the ideas that stemmed from that. Additionally, I had a lot of laughs writing for Ben's cantankerous boss, Rick, who swore like a sailor and chugged semi-clandestinely on his eCig (which weren't nearly as ubiquitous in 2011 as they have since become). I also enjoyed the ultra-sharp, kind of prickly head of the research team, Elmyra Pettinger.

The element of the story that really took me off-guard, but grew in importance, was the emotional attachment Rick developed towards Leviticus. I thought it was interesting how Ben had much less tender feelings for the little grey cat than his rougher, older boss. But hey, if you want to know more, read the book, right?

Anyway, it took a bit longer than NaNoWriMo gave me to finish this one. I got it done a couple months later. By the end of the book, the task of ensuring that the elements from the two prior books lined up exactly with this one newer one (except, the events of the two earlier ones happened later than the events of this later book, remember?) grew more complicated than one month of speedy composing could contain. Little did I know it at the time, but the first threats of the even more intense plot-aligning difficulty I would one day have to face were peeking out at me. The bottom line is: I got the first draft of my spectacular cat retcon prequel wrapped up, and I promptly put it in a folder, not to be touched for around 9 months.

Then, after my first Kindle release--the highly-strange crime novella 'Critical Incident'--in August of 2012, I turned back to the completed cat manuscript, doing an intensive rewrite before releasing what I decided to title 'Through the Woods' in October 2012. Though the name was not one I was super gaga about, I wanted to keep up the 'Preposition the Noun' theme of the titles, and it seemed to fit. (Then, about a year later, I spent a couple months doing another intensive re-write and re-released the book with a new, much spiffier cover. The name, however, I kept.)

After releasing 'Through the Woods,' I was pretty pleased with myself. By this time, I was getting short stories published pretty frequently, and I had found, to my pleasure, that people were actually buying a satisfying amount of my books on Kindle. I mean, I wasn't and still am not breaking any records, but in a few years I've taken my writing from something I did just to see if I could, to something that I have the honor of sharing with generous people from around the world, and it's a great feeling! But, as the readership for 'Through the Woods' grew, it created a problem that I (in my infinite failure to understand the ramifications of my actions) hadn't anticipated.

You see, 'Through the Woods' left off exactly where the original 'Under the Wall' and 'Out the Door' began. As a retcon, it was perfect. I had managed, by overcoming oodles of seemingly intractable difficulties, to unite these two unrelated novels in a way that seemed reasonably cohesive. I am not saying this to pat myself on the back, but merely to explain how I felt: I had pulled off something I wasn't sure I could, and it seemed to work out great. So gleeful was I at having solved this story problem, I didn't realize the glaringly obvious way I had painted myself into a corner of pure dumbery, especially if my presence in Kindle and in paperback were to expand.

Publishing 'Critical Incident' and 'Through the Woods' on Kindle was, at the start, little more than a hopeful experiment. Prior to that, I had experienced some success in the old book sellin' department. After all, a few people actually had picked up paperbacks of the first version of 'Under the Wall' and 'Out the Door.' Not a huge amount, but encouraging for someone who had just started to write and, frankly, more than these early attempts deserved. Once I decided to start putting stuff on Kindle and had released 'Critical Incident,' I instantly rewrote 'Through the Woods,' which was just tickin' away on my hard drive, and sent it out into the world without much premeditation. I didn't definitely didn't have any sort of career pathway in mind, and failed to provision my hopes enough to grasp there was a chance that more than the handful of people who checked out my first two cat books might eventually read 'Through the Woods.'

The problem was that, over time, my readership did grow. Not that that's a problem. Also, it's not like I sell thousands of books a month. I'd need to sell roughly 20 times more books than I currently do, each month, in order to make a similar amount of money from my books as I do at my job. I'm not a professional author in that sense (only about 5% of authors can afford to do nothing but write, anyway. I'd love to be in that boat, but I'm happy with my life!). But, I did get to a point where many, many more people had read 'Through the Woods' than had read either of the first two books.

What had seemed at the time like an awesome ending for a prequel--an ending that left off directly into the beginning of the first two, unrelated books--well, to these new readers, it seemed like a major cliffhanger, a lead-in to two books that these people would never, ever see. These two earlier books were, after all, of dreadful quality compared to what I was then releasing on Kindle.

Worse than being just a major cliffhanger, I came to realize, this ending seemed like a slap in the face. Taken as a prequel, the ending is satisfying, saying, in effect, 'The stage is now set!' To the average reader upon its release, however, 'Through the Woods' wasn't a prequel. It was, for all intents and purposes, a standalone novel, one with an ending that was simultaneously wimpy, and provoking of the thought 'Well? Then what happens?'

It wasn't fair.

I was, without meaning to, straight up cheating my readers. My guilt grew. I had done my rewrite of 'Woods' in the fall of 2013, and re-released it with a much better cover on the one year anniversary of its release. I then turned to my metaphysical-duck novella 'First There Wasn't, Then There Was' and also launched the first installment my bi-annual dark fiction anthology 'Robbed of Sleep.' Once I sent 'First There Wasn't, Then There Was' out into the world in early 2014, I decided that the time had come to solve the Leviticus/Deinonychus problem for all the patient, perplexed people who wanted to know the answer to 'Then what happens?,' to find out what would 'go down' once those mystic kitties wound up getting adopted by their respective families.

Up until this point, I had been releasing things on Kindle and Paperback pretty steadily from August 2012, when 'Critical Incident' "dropped," through February 2014, when I released 'First There Wasn't.' I had a release in August, October, and December of 2012, two in May, one in August, and one in October of 2013, and one in February of 2014. Most of these were novellas, of course, but my readers were accustomed to me releasing something every few months. Of the many projects I had in various states of completion, I evaluated which I should handle next, and figured 'Well, I have to get the cat thing taken care of. Might as well handle that next.'

'How long could it possibly take?' I reasoned. After all, I had the two source books finished already. True, they were my very first two actual novels, and, as such, they would require massive revision. I mean, I am still far from a genius writer, but very little that I wrote in 2009 would pass muster by my current-day standards. And by 'very little,' I mean on a parts of a sentence basis. The ideas were often sound, but the actual writing (which is what writers, ahem, do) was just not there. This would be a lot of work, more like restoring an old film than simply copying it to DVD.

In my favor, though, I had the advantage of having the newest book to draw from. That is, though the events of 'Through the Woods' took place first in the series, chronologically, it was, at this point, the last of the cat books to be written. Just to be, you know, clear. The events of that prequel, though, gave me all sorts of great ideas for how to unite the first two books.

So,in my infinite wisdom I figured that, all told, I would spend maybe three or four months rewriting the earlier two books, do a month or so of revisions, and then deliver a new 'Under the Wall,' a version which would be a sequel to a book that was originally a retconned prequel of two formerly unrelated books, and then this new book would now be a proper sequel to the originally retconned prequel, rendering that retconned prequel both un-retconned and un-prequeled.

Following me so far?

That one sentence might be the single best insight into how absolutely insane and brutally convoluted writing the new Under the Wall ended up being.

The original two books had problems that I might be able to solve by combining them and forging them into a true sequel to 'Through the Woods.' For one, Deinonychus's destructive wanderings in 'Out the Door' were unfocused, with little at narrative stake beyond the burning desire of Deinonychus to break as many things as possible. Whereas now, as part of the broader story, he could be given both real opposition and an actual goal. Meanwhile, the insane madman menacing Leviticus's family in the first incarnation of 'Under the Wall' could now be fleshed out, given a true purpose, and have his insanity developed from a mere 'aren't killers scarier when they're insane?' conceit, into a more veridical, deep-seated, and life-long mental issue that would simultaneously humanize him and render him more disturbing. The rather forced story device of Leviticus's vet visits and his increasing physical repercussions from using his powers to save his family could be 'taken off the hook' of having to bear the weight of the plot, with the vet visits (repeated multiple times in the first incarnation) taken out completely.

But even before I started, I could see a few issues. I wouldn't be able to simply 'rewrite' the two books into one and release it. For one, Ben, Rick, and all the rest of NUCPA didn't even factor into the first two books as originally written, because [drumroll] I hadn't invented them yet. Those story elements didn't join the series until 'Through the Woods,' but they would of course be centrally important to the storyline of the sequel. And, of course, everything involving these guys would have to be written afresh, and then seamlessly integrated into the plots of the other books in such a way that they wouldn't feel tacked-on.

Furthermore, the two source books took place at dramatically different times of the year. Deinonychus starting his two day adventure in the Fall in 'Out the Door' is pretty important to what happens in the beginning of his tale, but, more significantly, the fact that Leviticus's story takes place in Winter is essential to the entire tone of his tale. I had to find a way to bridge the time between these two stories in a manner that didn't seem forced, or ruin the narrative pace. And 'how to put a four month launch pad-style holding time into a story naturally without ruining the plot' isn't something they teach you to do in 'writer school,' that I didn't go to anyway. So heck, maybe they do, but I still didn't hear about it.

Yet, against such drastic odds, I believe I managed to accomplish this in the finished book. In fact, the story elements I employed for this purpose wound up being so central to the story of the new 'Under the Wall' that you might not even realize what I'm talking about unless you think about it. Think about it really, really hard. I'm obviously not going to just say, because you might not have read the book yet! But it took a lot of hard thinking to work my way through these obstacles.

Like always, I didn't outline until I had most of the book in the bag. But I did write out timelines of everything that had happened, just to ensure things were keeping on the right track. Trust me when I say, it was a logistical nightmare!

And, frankly, there were long stretches, sometimes lasting weeks at a time, where I was progressing so slowly, so bowed by the weight of all these disparate ideas that required unification, that I despaired of even being able to pull it off. Each of two prior books I was spinning into a new one were lean: about 300 pages for the original 'Under the Wall,' and a very sprightly 220 or thereabouts for 'Out the Door.' I had been working on this new book for about six months when it became clear that it would be much longer than either of those. The finished product is, in fact, even a little longer than both of them added together.

But this length didn't come about from using everything in both of the books. Indeed, I saw very quickly that only a small bit of the original 'Under the Wall' would be work in then new book, even with major rewriting. Some of the old 'UtW' scenes have been polished and honed, but huge swaths of the book were just not compatible with the new storyline. A larger proportion of the first half of 'Out the Door' survived, in altered form, but the ending of that book didn't fit at all with the new plot. Much more of the new 'Under the Wall' had to be entirely written from scratch than I initially anticipated. But, to my pleasant surprise, these new bits were some of the most satisfying writing I have had the pleasure of participating in so far.

One of the main elements I wanted to address in this book stemmed from one of the best pieces of criticism I had ever received in an Amazon review - in 'Through the Woods,' someone thoughtfully pointed out that, though they enjoyed the book, the fact that the animal enclosures are on the roof of the NUCPA facility seems like a major oversight that basically allows the plot to happen. It just seemed very hard to believe, this person wrote, that the people planning this highly-restricted experiment would allow that situation, which seemed like such an insecure setup. Well, I was very pleased to have the opportunity to retcon the problem my now un-retconned retcon had created in this new 'Under the Wall.' (Do you follow?) Now, I can proudly say that this former plot oversight has been rendered into a plot element, and a key plot element, at that!

Less happily, I had many false starts in terms of announcing the release date for the new 'Under the Wall,' something I still feel deeply ashamed about. I have often used the tactic of announcing 'aspirational' release dates, selected to give me ample room to do a good job and announced for self-motivational purposes. Once I've announced a reasonable release date, I have no choice but to spring into action. It has always worked wonders for me before. But...

This time, frankly, I simply didn't grasp the scope of the unprecedented challenge I had forced myself into facing. When I write, I am usually boundlessly free to explore any sort of plot situation I want. That's part of the fun. But this writing project was different, and the structural confines I was working within were far beyond anything that I have ever faced before. When I finally finished, I was exhausted. This book was one of the most cognitively difficult tasks I have ever undertaken in my entire life, and, clocking in at a year and a half, was one of the most sustained single projects I've ever devoted myself to. Sure, it was hard, but I've learned so much, and I really feel like this has been one of the most important turning points in my short writing life to date.

So, as I mercifully approach the closing of this unexpectedly gargantuan recounting of my fictional cat experience, I would like to summarize: if I had known, when I decided to take this book on, just how difficult it would end up being, I sincerely doubt I would have started. And I'm so glad I didn't know, because this book was hard beyond anything I could have predicted, but it was an incredible experience. I have learned so much as a writer, and I feel like I have produced a very exciting, satisfying, moving, and freaky-feline horror experience, one that goes far beyond my original intention of simply answering the 'Then what happens?' question. True, a 540-page book about psychic cats is not exactly everybody's cup of tea. But if you do want to read something like this, I have created the only thing exactly 'like this' you are going to be able to find, anywhere.

And that's certainly something that, after the year and a half I put into uniting the two previous novels, along with the half a year I spent writing the two earlier books, not to mention the more than half a year I spent writing and revising 'Through the Woods,' that I can be proud of. From that funny look Tomo gave me, almost six years ago, in the bedroom of a house I no longer live in, to my recent completion of the final tale, I have finally done justice to the story that trotted into my imagination like a stray cat. I can now go on with my freaking life, returning to my ability to create from scratch--ahh, scratch! That unfettered, unconstrained place of narrative freedom, which is, coincidentally, a place from which I feel much more comfortable producing.

Now that I have survived--let alone met--this considerable challenge, I have a much better sense of what I'm capable of. I hope to never again put myself into a position where I have to juggle so many cognitive demands when creating a story, but at least I feel much more fearless than before, now that I know that, should a story ever require this kind of effort from me, I'm capable of responding with everything I have. And that is a good feeling.

So, whether you like cats, hate them, are indifferent, or, for whatever reason, don't know what they are (maybe you have lived in a catless bunker for your whole life? Quit reading this blog and e-mail someone for help!), I would be honored if you stepped into a little place I've carved out in the mind, an imaginary version of the Twin Cities where a man in striped suit trudges through the snow, muttering about car batteries, a place where a cat's tail swishes, his green eyes blink, and birds fall out of the sky. A place where love can transcend the boundaries between species, where friends don't always have to speak the same language, and where the only really important thing is family.

It was a struggle, it was a challenge, but, above all, it was a privilege. And now you know why it took me so goshdarn long to write it! Please, if you haven't yet, give me a chance and read my new book, 'Under the Wall.' If you really like it, you can go back and read 'Through the Woods' later. Or, heck, you can read it first if you want--although it really is almost a different genre from its sequel.

All I can say is that I've made the best book I possibly can at my present state of abilities, and I would love to share it with you. Thank you for your time, your generosity in reading this long piece, and, above all, your imagination: the best tool all of us have for getting through this crazy thing we think of as life.

UNDER THE WALL Synopsis

2015-06-19T13:22:00.003-05:00

Where 'Through the Woods' ended, the real story begins...

Out of an entire litter of dangerously telekinetic felines, two cats alone remain. Deinonychus, bent on domination, has been adopted by an apathetic mother and her overly-enthusiastic little girl. Without the live food or freedom to wield his power, he is going slowly mad with boredom and is furious at how useless he feels. His powers might be dried up until he can bathe them in blood once more, but his cunning and ruthlessness have not deserted him, and he waits and watches for his chance to slip out the door.

Leviticus, the runt of the litter but with a deep and sleeping power coveted by his malicious brother, feels at peace with his new adoptive family, the Redcliffes, and feels that, for the first time, his life makes sense. Unfortunately, the calm isn't permitted to last long.

Fresh NUCPA agent Ben Chesterton, a former supply clerk promoted after proving himself resourceful in the events of THROUGH THE WOODS, teams up once more with his old boss Rick Hathaway to track down the escaped felines. Unfortunately for the team, the NUCPA group aren't the only people aware of what's at stake.

Navigating a web of treachery and violence, the team try to track down the cats before the rivalry erupts into unrestrained mayhem, but with the fate of the Twin Cities-and perhaps beyond-in the balance, when is exactly has it become 'too late?'

The circle of influence for each cat expands as they gain control of their own powers, but will Leviticus find the inner strength to withstand the trials ahead?

A murderous lunatic, a bloodthirsty cat of demonic abilities, and a ruthless espionage organization converge on the unsuspecting Redcliffe family, the gentle but nearly omnipotent Leviticus, and the in-over-their-heads team of Ben and Rick in a battle against time, power, and fate.

Preorder Here

A Mild Delay, A Slight Recompensement

2014-12-03T13:36:00.001-06:00

Today marks five years since I began writing in earnest. It's been crazy. It's also 49 years since 'Rubber Soul' came out, and boy are my arms tired.

I had intended to release 'Under the Wall' today, but the book has been pushed back until the summer. I'll be putting together a pre-order page for the book soon, so you can at least get your copy reserved. This book has been a much bigger undertaking than I envisioned at pretty much every step along the way, and I am hopeful that your patience will be rewarded by something you will enjoy.

To help tide you over, I'm pleased to share the first two chapters of the book as a sneak teaser. I do think 'sneak teaser' would make a good band name.

I hope you enjoy the excerpt, and I can't wait to share this bad boy with all of you. Thanks for making the last five years so engaging and surprising. I hope we can have a bunch more years just as great.

OUTSIDE THE CONFINES

Place: The Outside

Time: Everywhen

Life is a dance between pain and pleasure, hunger and gluttony--an accidental spark in the darkness that stings and illuminates all of nothing for as long as it accidentally can. Life hisses like water thrown on hot coals, squeals like a mouse speared on the tip of a curved claw.

Life is dangerous. Life is cruel. Life is the weight of a tower of stone slowly burying itself alive.

The dizzying potential life waves only occasionally in our faces can’t be even fractionally realized save through an endless chain of exhaustive effort, scarred flesh, and blood sacrifices. The idea that permanence is an illusion is advanced solely to mask the horrific truth that even the most ephemeral concept of continuity is, itself, illusory.

Life is nothing but change--and therefore resists any less transient definition.

There can be only one certainty: wherever you find blood and pain dancing briefly together, like cold sparks in a dark room, you will find life.

THROUGH THE GLASS

Place: Redcliffe Household

Time: December 24^th, 2014

Leviticus dozed beneath the Christmas tree, drifting in and out of consciousness. He wanted to postpone his inevitable waking as long as possible. The peacefulness of the falling snow glimpsed through the windows suited his sleepy frame of mind. Content under the pine branches, he relaxed himself by letting the faint, fleeting moods of passersby wash over him like rain. He found the sensation soothing, these other minds that drifted by like leaves on the wind.

Yet every now and then he would catch a discordant thought from the driver of a passing car—a feeling of anger accompanied by a flash of some social crime or wounding phrase that Leviticus couldn’t and didn't understand. The cat had grown used to these flaring, lightning-like intrusions over the years. They no longer held much power to distract him.

He yawned luxuriously, looking as regal and proud as any nine-pound creature had any right to. After a quick stretch, he leapt deftly up onto the back of the couch. Swishing his head beneath the curtain in a practiced motion, Leviticus gazed out the window at the snow swirling in the streetlight, marveling at how perfect the world looked when wreathed in the pure and purifying whiteness

He marked a passing rabbit, which trudged rather than hopped through the freshly fallen crust, leaving what could more appropriately be called 'rabbit marks' than footprints in the fluffy, deepening layer of cold white powder. He stared intensely at the rabbit as it jounced and sniffed, jounced and sniffed. Moments like these were why he had taken up staring out of windows in the first place.

As he watched the long-eared creature make its foraging way across the snow-covered lawn, an array of mental images from the human minds in neighboring houses simmered incoherently in his mind—the constant background noise to his daily life. The thoughts that came to him were, at worst, dull. Most made absolutely no sense to his feline brain whatsoever. A flash of an ironing board in a downstairs closet, and a book of photos splayed open on a high shelf were the only thoughts coming through that seemed to the cat to represent actual things.

The rest of what he sensed was abstracted to the point of meaninglessness, mere concepts that lost all their shape and significance when passing from the mind of man to that of a cat. The most puzzling of these, just then, was the desire ‘to watch a TV show at eight o' clock.’ He felt the feeling in his head, but the meaning of the yearning was utterly lost on him. He wondered at it, like a small boy gazing upon his collection of special rocks, but he had experienced enough of these puzzling feelings in his life to know that he couldn't understand everything about the Namers—the Speaking Ones. He had come to understand that they and he were fundamentally unlike.

Just as his Namer family couldn't grasp why Leviticus's feline instincts led him to stare at things that didn't seem to be there, or to start meowing loudly at five in the morning even though he had plenty of food and water, the cat himself couldn't understand why his people would want to ride around in their metal beasts: hulking, shiny monsters that usually slept but would roar to smoky life when a Namer climbed inside and touched them in a certain, secret spot.

These sorts of differences no longer even confused him. There came a point at which he just accepted the wall between his understanding of the world and his family’s. He had hit up against that insurmountable wall between the species many, many times, and though he could never go over it, it wasn't enough to stop him and his people from understanding each other in the ways that mattered. When incomprehensible elements of human life such as ironing boards, photo albums, and unfathomable abstractions like 'wanting to watch TV’ blossomed in his mind like ethereal flowers, he had learned to let them slide through, rather than fixating on them like an oyster working over a grain of sand.

The rabbit was gone from sight now, leaving a trail that was itself becoming lost under the falling snow, and the slow filling in of the tracks held Leviticus's attention no less raptly than the rabbit itself had. Falling snow, drifting thoughts, purple sky. Images bounced in and out of his mind, mimicking the gentle pattering of rain, a quality the frozen air robbed from the falling snow. It was one of the most peaceful moments Leviticus had ever experienced.

In the midst of these calm thoughts, a sudden crash of rage exploded like a crack of thunder. He saw his family bound to chairs. Visions of his mother, brother, and father with their mouths duct taped shut flared in his mind like the burst of a strobe light. In the harsh mental glare, Leviticus saw a rivulet of blood dripping down Shirley's forehead. Tears streamed down Stephen’s face. Peter, the Redcliffe’s three-year old son, looked to be unconscious. The bleak sight vanished a moment later, but its clarity—formed with a vigor seldom mustered by Namer imaginations—left a burning mark on the cat’s heart.

Before Leviticus could recover, the images declared themselves anew, the way a hammer declares itself to a pounded nail. Faster, louder, stronger. With each flash of mental lightning, the vision bloomed with increased clarity. This time, the cat saw a shadowy figure hunched in the darkness of their living room, snaking out a menacing hand towards Stephen's face. Its gloved fingers gripped a shining blade. A pounding red spray of hate suffused the mind which spawned this image, a mind lit it from within by a sort of rage the cat had never before tasted.

The strobe blasts came faster, their unwanted illumination penetrating through to the darkest corners of the cat’s mind. Pure and crimson loathing pulsed over the scene’s every feature: the sweat pouring down Peter’s face; the wild, helpless look in Stephen’s eyes; the taut tendons in Shirley’s neck, stretching and contracting as she fought against her bonds—and all the while the knife came closer and closer to the Leviticus’s father.

The red light washed over his captive family for an instant before darkness plunged the sight back into oblivion. As the crimson glow swept over the scene once more, the cat saw that, while the dark figure remained in shadow, the shadow itself pulsed with a glowing network of tracers that twisted out from its center to weave about the hateful penumbra like the imprinted pattern of a circuit board. The pathways thrummed and pulsed with the dark light of anger, points of light that streamed through strange causeways.

Leviticus didn’t think, for he didn’t know what to think. He didn’t run; he could think of no place where he might be safe. Instead, he did something so foreign to his experience—but immediate to his instincts—that at first, even he did not understand what had happened. Still perched on the back of the couch, the small gray cat lowered his head, narrowed his eyes, and then, with an effort of will that was like taking a mental leap across a wide chasm, performed an act which he had never before needed to do.

The thundering images grew to an unbearable roar within the cat’s mind, a bubble of Otherness that rapidly expanded inside his own feline consciousness. He dug his claws into the couch cushions and flung some vast power from within himself out into the night, sending it flying towards the mysterious source of these foul images with all the force of a plate hurled murderously in a homicidal quarrel. Leviticus vanished from his body, briefly existing in no place or time. A moment later, he resurfaced inside his own bubble, growing within the mind of a man he did not know—a man who even now walked through the freezing snow with the determination of the insane, on an errand so heavily weighted with purpose it could only be called a mission.

That mission: to destroy everything Leviticus loved.

A Life of Song

2014-07-23T00:25:00.001-05:00

A lot of people write songs. It might be the first creative act of every child. It was undoubtedly one of the major occupations of our species centuries before pigment ever met cave walls. You can step outside in most populated regions of the Earth and hear any number of birds engaging in the same habit. It is a craft that seems instinctive not only to humanity, but to intelligence, awareness. To instinct itself.

Yet it is a craft. A life spent striving to perfect the impulse that comes instinctively lies behind it. When pure instinct meets hard-earned discernment, we pay respect. And that respect is due to a man who ranks among the greatest living composers, Mr. Martin L. Gore. Today marks his birthday, and it is as good a day as any other to honor the work of this man.

The fact that Mr. Gore needed to be thrust into the responsibility of songwriter before his immense talents could truly flourish seems typical of his personality. That he began working at his craft at such an early age reveals the grip his musical instincts have held on his life. That he took this responsibility so seriously speaks to the discernment he has demonstrated even at the initial undertaking of his life's work. And that he managed, once that work got underway, to startle himself again and again with the truths he uncovered reveals, in itself, another deep truth: instinct and craft are only things we lay at the altar of the Universe, the Voice with a capital V that deigns to speak only to those few favored to hear it.

Mr. Gore is one of those men. Today is his birthday. We ought to honor him.

The universe clearly already has.

'Breaking News' by Troy Blackford

2014-07-13T19:26:00.001-05:00

'Breaking News' by Troy Blackford

A murderer was invaded by Cuba this morning, scoring five goals.

"He seemed so happy," reported the perpetrator's father, who wasn't expected to recover ahead of prepared remarks. "We're very proud of him."

"Or her," according to the mother of the patient, though opinions as to the proper usage vary.

"Regular flossing is key," insisted several eyewitnesses, citing growing tensions and unexpected barometric indicators.

"Or her," agreed several others, declining comment. The case remains satisfactorily closed.

A panel of judges previously predicted analysts to wane over time, but were proven unfounded when preliminary reports suggested millions of recipients had tuned in for the latest installment before it could even be aired, prompting grumblings from some quarters that results had been rigged by a random sample of likely voters both before and after the findings were alleged to have occurred.

"We don't comment on rumors or speculation at this time," the victim's family announced Friday, pointing to tepid sales and an unusually warm referee.

More details are expected at the group's annual conference, which defied expectations by being the coldest on record, flying in the face of the ongoing negotiations of many longtime detractors.

"Not as good as their last one," reported a fan lined up since the previous Tuesday, shortly before invasion by guerrilla forces.

The church refused to issue a statement, putting years of opposition speculation to rest with a surprise upset.

"Today we can announce that this will be going live for our users over the next four to ten business days," a practice specific to hundreds of uploads in the late 1950's and seventies.

In advance of this news, throngs of worshipers gathered respectfully together last August to christen a lecture dating back to the Pleistocene epoch, typically reported to be on decline.

There were no survivors. though an infection has been targeted by experts for completion during the next available showing, set for wide release in the Spring and then rapidly awaiting a compatible donor, to be administered by an accredited defendant and followed by strenuous brushing, a development skeptics allege has already occurred behind closed doors.

"He didn't seem that happy," pundits sniffed, shortly before market close.

Comments have been disabled for this species.

Signed Copies of 'Robbed of Sleep' (and 'Critical Incident,' AND 'Strange Way Out,' and more)

2014-07-02T14:01:00.001-05:00

It's time to put some neat signed copies back up on the block. Do we hear a 'Gimme, gimme, gimme?!'

First up is the newest paperback, the 9-author, 18-story anthology I edited (and contributed two stories to), the aptly titled 'ROBBED OF SLEEP: STORIES TO STAY UP FOR.' I have six of these beauties available on hand and can get more within a week. This offering is, unfortunately, only signed by me and not the other eight contributors.

SIGNED ROBBED OF SLEEP PAPERBACKS

But it doesn't end there. I have the following on hand:

2 New Edition copies of 'Critical Incident'
1 Old Edition of 'Critical Incident' - You can't get this anywhere else! Laugh at how bad the first ed. was!
8 copies of 'Strange Way Out'
2 First Edition
4 copies of 'For Those With Eyes to See'

All of these will be personally signed to you, by me. To make things easy, I'm just going to be charging a flat rate of $8.99 for each book, plus shipping. Type in the name of the book or books that you want, and then set the quantity on the next page to match that number of books.

SIGNED BOOK BLOWOUT

Writin' Lessonz - Part III: Don't Gameify Your Work

2014-06-26T12:34:00.001-05:00

In this episode of 'Writin' Lessonz,' I'm going to inadvertently ruffle some feathers. Not my intention, but I am concerned about it. Please note: I mean everything I'm about to say constructively.

I was prompted to write this because I just noticed that my Facebook Fan Page (here, if you wish to snoop) is at 997 'likes.' (Oh, how I loath the quotes around the word 'like' when it comes to Facebook. I'm so glad it never caught on with Twitter follows.) The nearness of this figure to the nice round number of 1,000 didn't escape me - how could it with Facebook plastering a giant box onto my admin page saying 'You're close to your next milestone of 1,000 likes!'

But is it, really? A milestone, I mean. It's certainly a large, even number. And that's nice and all.

Expanding your social media presence is helpful if you are not yet an established author. If you're a self-published author on the prowl for new readers, it's actually pretty important. But hitting specific 'milestones' in terms of fan/follower metrics? I feel these are false goals.

Nothing is going to change for me when that number is reached. And I worry that calling '1,000' a milestone is simply encouraging you to think of it as a number, and not as the number of actual, flesh-and-blood human beings who have decided to show support or interest in your work by liking your Facebook page.

Numbers don't read books. People do.

More importantly, you can't be friends with a number. You can't find out what part of a movie you both love was the number's favorite. You'll never see a hilarious joke or an awesome Photoshop or an interesting link from a number. It's important to never forget that every upward tick in that metric is a separate, fully conscious human being.

I always feel a bit frustrated when I see not-yet-super-established authors, like myself, focusing on these metrics in their posts. This is the least fun kind of content to read. And providing content that resonates with each of our precious connections is of vital importance during the early phase of our writing careers, where we are essentially 'Ms. or Mr. Let's-Give-This-Writing-Schmuck-a-Chance.' If a relative stranger opens the door to give you an opportunity to interact with them, and the first post they see you making is 'Bill Whickerson is my 400 follower!' they have every reason to be disappointed they gave you a chance to be in their timeline or feed.

One thing I saw recently was "Once I get to the next large even number, I'll show the cover to my new book!" This is a fun way to drive Facebook likes, but if we break down what is happening behind the scenes, it might not be the most sensible course.

1) As an author, you want people to see your new book cover. Them seeing it is doing you a favor. Framing the situation as 'If I find a few more people to promote my work to, I will promote my work to you all!' is a mildly effective new way to get a few new likes in the short-term (more on this in the next bullet) but it creates a gentle-but-present cognitive dissonance: "I just need three more people to turn on the radio to this station, and then I'll play my new ad!"

Audience building is something you should be doing at a measured, even pace at all times if you are an author trying to break into the mainstream. One place you shouldn't be doing it is in the same place you are trying to get new audience members. By all means, invite people on your Twitter feed to like your Facebook page now and again, and vice versa. But don't ask for more follows in your Twitter stream. Because:

2) These posts about getting more likes generally go out to the very people who have already liked your page. This is probably the more important aspect of what I'm talking about here. I imagine the hope in this tactic is that these people will share your request on their own page and thus you can pull, from their pool of friends, a few more people to join your group. A decent idea, except for one thing: instead of delivering information or content or connection to the people who were already generous enough to opt-in to your page, you are sending them the message that 'Glad you're here: but you aren't enough for me. I want you to find me more people to fuel my ever-growing number! You are but a log burning on the fire of my insatiable need for increasing notability!'

This second point is essential. If you are posting a lot of 'Just need a few more followers!' or 'I am just sixty people away from 6,000!' you have completely squandered your opportunity to connect with the 5,940 people who already are opting in to hearing from you. You could be sharing something great with those 5,940 people, something you know they would be interested in: instead you are expressing dissatisfaction with the 'mere' five-thousand nine-hundred and forty flesh-and-blood human beings with interests every bit as important to them as yours are to you, and telling them that just a few more logs on the fire would make you feel more important.

Our goal as writers isn't to be more important than other people. It's for our stories to be as important to others as they are to us. And why do we want to do that? Because other people's stories are important to us. It's a giant web of importance, with nobody sitting like a fat spider in the middle. It's the nodes of the web that matter, and the strength of the bonds.

By all means, attempt to increase the number of your social network connections. Just make sure you post about something other than the number of those connections more often than not.

Which leads me to the next topic: burlap sacks. Just kidding. The next topic is the related (to the above topic, not to burlap) trend of 'psyching yourself up' or 'patting yourself on the back' by announcing either a) Word Count for the Day! Hooray! or b) Intention to Write. Or, even worse, c) Desire to Write Thwarted by Minor Issue. These kinds of posts have a detrimental effect on the writer for several reasons.

One, and it's an important one, is that 'studies have shown™' that serotonin is released in your brain when you announce your intention to do something. It's almost as though part of your brain gives you credit for a thing you haven't done yet, just because you posted on FB: "I'm going to climb Mount Everest." Then, you see likes and comments start to flood in.

"Wow, Mount Everest! You're brave!"

"Hell yes, I freaking am!" coos your amygdala, and then you are swimming in a sea of unearned serotonin.

"I think I might actually just sort of chill in my comfy chair, come to think of it. I feel pretty good."

Well, the same thing can happen when you say: "Going to sit down and work on that old WIP today! Got my nice cup of bourbon, my burlap sack..." Okay, how'd that get in there?

But, besides the worrisome concern of serotonin seepage, we have to wonder: isn't a writer's job to write? By making it a special occasion, especially in the public manner of announcing it, you subtly reassure yourself that it is somehow special that you are making time to do this.

If you want to write, you should be writing as often as possible. Take Stephen King, for example. He writes for about five hours a day, all but two days of the year. Every year. For something like forty years. And before he had a couple of successful novels under his belt and could write full-time, when he was still an overworked and underpaid school teacher and industrial laundry worker, he only managed to write about, I don't know, fifty short stories and five or six novels (at least).

He didn't tell friends 'Oh, I love to write, but I have all these papers to grade.' He sat in a crappy little laundry room where the only space for his typewriter was on his lap and cranked those suckers out well into the middle of the night.

He writes more than you. He writes more than me. And, though he's had a Twitter account for about half a year, he has never mentioned anything to do with writing on it once. He's mentioned that his book Mr. Mercedes was about to come out, and he seemed nervous about how it would be received. He's talked extensively about the books he's been reading and enjoyed. But he's never posted 'Well, just wrapped up a long day of writing. Bringing characters to life is so fulfilling,' or 'I love killing people... in my writing!' or anything remotely similar.

That's not to say that you should be flogged within an inch of your life if you feel like sharing things like that from time to time. But keep in mind, readers and even other authors don't leap out of their chair, clasps their hands together, shake them above their heads, and go 'Yes! An author on the internet got another 1,500 words down on paper! This is a great day!' And a daily post from a garbage man saying "Chucked another 700 plastic bins right into the truck. Life is good," or "I got my thick gloves on, I'm on the back of the truck: let's get dumping," would get old fast.

The important thing is the work, and the routine, and making a point to carve out the space in your daily life for that work. Not just a physical and temporal space, but a mental space. If you can set yourself a daily writing routine, and stick to it even when you feel at first like you'd rather just frown at the wall, you'll already be doing better than 98% of the writers out there. Never, on a day when I didn't feel like getting started with my writing, did I still feel that way even ten minutes later. Sometimes a little push is all you need to start falling: gravity will do the rest. The more you open yourself up to the process, the more the process will open itself up to you.

What you don't have to do, however, is open up to the rest of the world about what you are about to do. Let them find out how much work you've done when it is done. Let the work speak for itself. Nothing makes it more clear that you have been writing your little heart out than the finished product: a beating heart of words right there on the page.

That's all for now. Stay tuned for future installments of 'Writin' Lessonz,' where I will fail to bring up burlap sacks.

'Angling for Meaning'

2014-06-11T16:21:00.001-05:00

First off, numinous. Good work. That’s a good one, right there. How’d you arrive at that?

Not by trying. Because people who try don’t come up with things like ‘numinous’ right off the bat. That’s somewhere you get to by earning your way into it. But what I want to know is how did you mean it?

You can fill pages with words. We've got plenty of those books. They’re called ‘dictionaries.’ But it takes people to supply the meanings.

You build a thing with the right angles, the right scanlines of thought, and off it goes. People fill it in themselves, with their own lights and their own shadows. And the afterimages always reveal a little more than you put into it.

Which is why we do the work. The work of angles. So, again, I have to ask: what did you mean by it?

Writin' Lessonz - Part II: Peeling Through Layers of Abstraction

2014-05-09T14:16:00.002-05:00

Whenever I write, I sit down, flip my computer screen open, and start typing. But I could, just as easily, describe it thus:

I go to sit down in a chair, take my computer screen and move it up so that the computer is open, and then I would start to type.

In fact, I realized not that long ago that I had a pernicious tendency to describe things in precisely that manner. Which is a big ol' no-no to a writer. Why? Because it introduces needless layers of abstraction into your writing. Let's examine this idea.

You see, your writing is fake. This isn't an insult. And it's true even for non-fiction writers. But especially for spinners of tales.

Writing is a recorded impression of thoughts. Writers hope to arrange these thoughts so that they create similar impressions and thoughts in the reader's mind. Even someone reporting on a true life event is hoping to capture a fictional version of those events that approximates what they have perceived first hand.

Not because they are liars, but because you can't shove events into a spatially and temporally distant person's head using written symbols. I've tried it, and not only didn't it work, but I am still working off the last few hours of community service.

So, no matter what, we are trying to use 'fake' thoughts to inspire very real sensations in a reader. No matter what you do, you're going to be battling against this buffer in the human mind. The best writing circumvents this buffer so that the reader is so caught up in what they are reading - more accurately, in the substance of thought being presented - that they ignore the fact that they are perceiving this alternate reality or 'fiction' through the medium of words, and perceive it directly as imagery, emotion, and thought.

Remember: the reader is the writer's true instrument, not the words. You aren't showing off your prowess with writing, you're using the writing as a tool to show off the reader's powers of imagination to themselves.

Therefore, the best thing you can do is get out of your own way. In terms of the language, take as much stuff out as you can. I'm not talking about cutting whole sentences, at least not now. What I'm talking about in this article is just pulling the fluff out of those sentences, the meaningless garble-dee-goop that we tend to toss in unthinkingly.

"But then I started to notice that it had begun to rain, so I thought that I should go get my hat."

"I noticed it started raining, so I decided to get my hat."

There are ten less words in the second sentence, making it almost half the length. What did we lose? What would a grammatically correct sentence consisting of all the deleted contents of that first example read like?

"I then started to, noting that it had begun, so I thought that I should go."

This isn't a perfect process, since I had to keep some of the verbs that I retained in the shortened version to preserve grammatical soundness. And besides, it couldn't possibly be perfect because it makes no sense. I couldn't possibly visualize someone doing that. A reader can't empathize with someone who 'started to, noting it, and who then thought they should.' I mean...

"I then started to, noting that it had begun, so I thought that I should go."

That's what we cut out of the sentence? Dear lord! And just think what you'd get if you go through a page of your writing, cutting out all this bulking fluff. Through a chapter? Through an entire manuscript?

When I re-wrote my first release, August 2012's 'Critical Incident,' last summer, it was ridiculous. I cut out almost 200 examples of the word "had" and dozens of "was"-es. I mean "All that he had was his dog" is a fine sentence, though "His dog was all he had" gets us away from that pesky "that," but some of the things I rewrote were pure dreck. Certainly, searching through a manuscript for "has," "that," and "was" and rephrasing most of the more clunky occurrences isn't the worst way to start a re-write process.

And, beyond that level, there's a lot more you can do to eliminate this problem. Note the first example about sitting in a chair. You should only say 'sitting in a chair' if you're describing the chair. If someone is sitting, we'll assume it's on a seat. Only if they are sitting on a nail, a moldy log, or something else of interest should you bother describing it. Or if it's a chair made of skulls, squirrels, or ice. Or if sitting on a chair is against the cultural norms of the society in the story, such that sitting on a chair instead of a moldy log is a bold statement.

I think you get the picture.

So, I hope that by now you would begin to see that you should start to ponder exactly this sort of thing when you have a chance to get working on your next...

Ha! Had you going there for a minute, didn't I?

I hope you agree that thinking about this when writing (or, at the very least, re-writing) will help your reader think about what you're writing about. And that's what we all want, right?

Talk to you next time, kids.

A Reader's Response to an Anti-Kindle Web Comic

2014-03-10T14:01:00.001-05:00

A well-meaning former High School teacher posted a webcomic in which a Kindle 'threatens' to burn a book and explains how much better the Kindle is than mere paper. The book then 'taps' the Kindle's off switch, thus 'proving' that paper is better.

I see this sort of thing a lot: people unwilling to give up the delightful 'smell' of their paper books acting as though eBooks wish to pull a Fahrenheit 451 on their beloved hard-and-soft covers. I don't understand this mindset at all. One of the follow up comments pointed out how 'I prefer paper because you can actually lend your books to friends.'

This is the response (probably inappropriately heated) I posted:

I have books and Kindle books and I find the animosity of people who refuse to entertain the notion of electronic books towards the new technology off-putting. Nobody is trying to burn down books. The idea that electronic books are trying to destroy traditional books is inaccurate. You can loan Kindle books, by the way.

I love my shelves and shelves and shelves of books too. I also love carrying around that many books on my phone, able to read at a moment's notice if I am stuck in an unexpectedly long line, or wherever I happen to be. I like knowing that the authors are getting a larger percentage of the money than if I bought a nice-smelling paper book, and I like knowing that I can choose to buy a book in whatever format best suits my needs as a reader. I usually buy new favorites in both paper and Kindle format.

I have done most of my reading on electronic formats in the last few years, though, and as someone who read over 200 books last year and already 43 since Jan first, (not counting the five giant books I have re-read in that time) I can easily say that I enjoy the act of actual reading in whatever form I can get it.

Finally, the 'sacredness' of text being on paper ignores the fact that 9 times out of 10, a book to be released since the 80s was 'on a screen' when the author composed it.

I also never see readers of eBooks posting inflammatory and misguided diatribes against paper books. Which is fine. I wish 'enthusiasts' of paper books would extend the same courtesy to their more open-minded reading brethren.

Writin' Lessonz - Part I: Question and Answer Time

2014-01-17T14:41:00.003-06:00

If you listen to advice most authors give, 95% of the world's suckiest books suck because the author was an idiot about dialog attribution. Half of this suckage is for using adverbs, like "Die in a fire," Esmerelda said smoulderingly, and the other - and by far the more correctable - half was for being an idiot and using words other than 'said.'

Not flashy words like "Get your damn hands off me, Pumperholden!" I gnashed (vexedly) - though doing so is the writing equivalent of stuffing a piglet in a blender and setting it to 'liquify' - but far more innocuous seeming words like "What the hell is this frog doing here, Johnson?" asked Richard.

"We get," cry these writers, "that they are asking a question. That's what is denoted by the presence of the interrogative typographic marking!" You know, one of these bad boys: ?

Indeed. Why number any but the first chapter in a book? Your idiotic readers ought to know it's the fifteenth chapter because there's been fourteen of the bastards since the first one.

But still, let's see if these guys and gals are right. In order of decreasing offensiveness to this common writer caveat, let's explore the effect of using less and less blatant means of expressing question and answer phrases, starting with the supposed suckiest:

"Excuse me," I asked nervously, staring the clerk in the eye, "but do you have my room key?"
"Room key?" responded the clerk tartly. "What do I look like, a desk clerk?"

This is the point where a common reader would fling the book into a metal bucket, pour kerosene on it, and light it on fire. Then, the reader would grab a dining room chair, jump up on it, and turn off his smoke alarm. And, I dunno, open a few windows. But definitely stop reading.

Because, writers tell us knowingly, writing things like that is worse than having your intestinal bacteria replaced by having a hose stuffed up your nose and down your throat and being pumped full of someone else's shit (an actual medical practice, believe it or not).

Okay, let's progress to the median level: level 2. This is less offensive to the seasoned writer, but still purported to be pretty damn stinky.

"Do you have my room ready?" I said.
"Yes," said the clerk.

Oh god! Oh yes! Oh god yes! Is this a block of prose or an Herbal Essences commercial? Because I think I may have just soiled my shorts. This is so crisp. This is so fresh. This is so much less offensive to my sensitive artist's eye than that schlock a few paragraphs above. I need a moment to recover.

(Breathes heavily into a paper bag.)

Okay, I'm back. Thanks for sticking with me through that transcendent moment.

This type of dialog, compared to that above, makes your average reader lower the book, raise his eyes to the ceiling, and silently mouth the word 'YES!'

According to our beautiful writer friends, however, this snapping scene can be improved. I know: How the Hell are you going to do that?!?!, you ask with a double interrobang. (Hey, you're very worked up. I understand.) Well, I'll endeavor to show you.

This is the level 3. The pinnacle of conversational exchange. The optimal way to have your characters ask and find out infos according to the writer gods who line the hallowed halls of the Celestial Realm of Story. Note, ye mortal:

"Room ready?"
"Room? Oh, right. Yeah."
The clerk handed over my keys.

Oh, sweet rapture. My pants just tied themselves into a bow. I am tap dancing on the ceiling right now. Don't mind me, but I think I may have just broken the laws of space and time to inwardly express my fundamental appreciation of this extremely superior means of expression.

So, we can now plainly see, those know-it-all writer folk are absolutely right. I mean, when it comes right down to it, what is the good of expressing perfectly obvious questions, I ask you?

Oh, wait: sorry. I just mean 'What's the point of expressing perfectly obvious questions?'

No! Still wrong! One more try.

Expressing questions? Why bother?

RELEASE: 'Booster & Reeves: The Night of the Revenants'

2013-09-13T08:35:00.005-05:00

A novella that skirts a strange line between horror and comedy, while planting both feet firmly in the 'most peculiar, sir' camp:

I say, all is not gas and gaiters in the old metrop. Young Broderick Booster - that would be Brodie to his friends, mind you - is sitting down for a nice evening of video games and vodka when in ankles his manservant Reeves to spout a lot of rot about the shuffling undead and the end of the world. It's a dashed bother, dealing with all these brain-munching revenants, what?

After a visit from his dead Aunt Gertie, a quick trip to a hardware store, and a harrowing trek across town, Booster and Reeves confront the source of the confounded nuisance and try to put a stop to the bebothersome zombies once and for all. Perhaps they even meet a new friend along the way, though I wouldn't bally well count on it. Not everyone is all that friendly, after all.

Click here to go to your country's Amazon Store

The Kindle release is available now, with the paperback release scheduled to go live by Monday. Stay tuned for a reminder on when that goes up. In the meantime, if you would like to pre-order a signed paperback, signed with a personalized message, you can get one here:

Signed, Personalized

'Booster & Reeves: The Night of the Revenants'

Paperback

The September Situation

2013-09-01T13:31:00.003-05:00

For the month of September, we have what is referred to in the industry as a 'deelio' going.

It's quite simple: one out of every ten people to purchase either 'For Those With Eyes to See' or 'Critical Incident' during this lovely month will receive a free signed paperback of 'Strange Way Out.' All you have to do is tweet the purchase, or post it on Facebook (or, as a last resort, as a blog comment on this entry). That way I know you aren't some strange 'auto-prize winning algorithm' designed in secret by a cabal of book-loving scientists.

But wait! There is, as the saying goes, more. For every fifty people to get 'Strange Way Out' this month, I'll be giving away a $20 gift card to the store of the winner's choice. (To one of the people who got the book, obviously. Not just to some random person, or my dear auntie, or the like.)

Multiple ways to win, so to speak.

All you have to do is get and read books which have been read for pleasure by many without the hopes of compensation of any kind. That, my friends, is what 'awesomenessologists' call 'Win/Win.'

For Those With Eyes to See - Global Link (Available in Kindle or Paperback)

Critical Incident - Global Link (Available in Kindle or Paperback)

Strange Way Out - Global Link (Available in Kindle or Paperback)

Stay tuned throughout the month of September for new announcements, as well. You might want to sign up for my mailing list. You might not want to, also - but you should.

'Author Updates' Mailing List for Big News Only

2013-08-30T18:52:00.000-05:00

Please consider joining the 'major announcement only' mailing list of Author Announcements!

Signed, Personalized Paperback Copies of 'Strange Way Out' Now Available

2013-08-14T18:21:00.003-05:00

Pick up your own paperback copy of my 50-page novelette 'Strange Way Out,' signed with a personal message upon order.

ANNOUNCEMENT: New Edition of 'Critical Incident' Now Available on Kindle

2013-08-13T22:40:00.000-05:00

I'll be honest. Nearly one year ago exactly, when I launched my first Kindle title, 'Critical Incident,' I hadn't yet developed very exemplary self-editing skills as a writer. (Read: 'I really had no business selling people the things I had written.') I've worked very hard since then, and it increasingly bothered me how sloppy that first book was. So much so, in fact, that I decided to do something about it.

For over a month now I've been revising the book in secret, spending nearly as much time revising as I spent writing the thing. In fact, my Word program's 'Compare Documents' feature highlights over three-thousand and three hundred changes made to the book.

I intend to explore some of these changes in at least one future blog post about the rewriting process. Suffice to say, I cut down on the numbers of hads, was-es, weres, and thats by an order of magnitude. I reworded virtually every paragraph. I cut ridiculous lines and added improvements. I expanded a few bits of the story, enlivened some description, de-moron-ified some characters and sliced the crap out of a lot of repetitious nonsense.

The story seemed decent enough, as the book currently has a 4.2 out of 5 star rating based on 37 reviews on Amazon.com, but for every few people who liked it, there were some who were disturbed by the large number of mistakes, poorly worded sentences, and the like. I can't blame these people at all.

All I could do was hunker down and try to apply some of the new skills I've developed in the last eight months towards improving the quality of the writing. I believe I have done that.

If you already own Critical Incident on Kindle, please remove the book from your device and redownload. It won't cost you a thing, but it will supply you with the brand new edition. I hope you enjoy it!

If you have the paperback, you have my most sincere apologies. The paperback will become available once more tomorrow, when the files have been processed, and I assure you it will be greatly improved - featuring page numbers for the first time, among other small enhancements in addition to the new version of the text.

And if you haven't checked Critical Incident out yet, I hope you give it a try! You may have noticed how I haven't been bringing it up lately, opting instead to mention my newer works 'Strange Way Out' and 'For Those With Eyes to See,' where I have been more satisfied with the finished product. No more.

Critical Incident now joins its brethren as books I can honestly say I'm proud to have written.

When Strunk & White 'Strunk' Out

2013-07-31T22:40:00.003-05:00

The seminal and ubiquitous style handbook 'The Elements of Style' by Strunk & White (often referred to simply as 'Strunk & White') is an incredibly useful and worthwhile resource for anybody who wants to better their understanding of English or improve their ability to compose English sentences.

But it isn't the infallible word from on high it has been made into over the years. I would discourage an unthinking acceptance of all the advice inside the book, along with blind deference to any source of guidance on writing - no matter how authoritative. In fact, I suspect that the sheer tone of absolute authority commanded by this book has led more than one poor soul to take it as the indisputable word of the literary lords rather than a collection of good but oftentimes subjective advice given by two intelligent, knowledgeable human beings.

I will demonstrate with two examples. On the subject of simile and metaphor, Strunk and White have this to say:

"The simile is a common device and a useful one, but similes coming in rapid fire, one right on top of another, are more distracting than illuminating. Readers need time to catch their breath; they can't be expected to compare everything with something else, and no relief in sight."

Is this so? Are similes, when ballistically fired at a high rate of speed out of a gun barrel ('coming in rapid fire') to the point where they are stacked on the page like pancakes ('one on top of the other') more likely to distract than to cause one to light up, i.e. be 'illuminating?' Do readers literally 'need time to catch their breath' when reading them, as though they were at the twenty-five mile marker at a marathon?

I realize these are examples of metaphors, not similes, but it's not like I need to be as specific about the images as a surgeon does about his stitches. (See what I did there?)

All I'm trying to point out is that metaphorical and simile-based expressions are 'baked in' to our language. Things like 'I get what you're saying,' 'You made me feel like a horse doctor in there,' and 'We are sending you good thoughts' are all formed out of this way of thinking. In their attempt to suggest limiting use of this type of language, Strunk & White unthinkingly employed at least four metaphorical images in two sentences.

The second example is more widely celebrated. This truth was first brought to my attention in a lecture by the great linguist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker. People who are interested in a deeper understanding of language and the mind could do much worse than read his books. I highly recommend them.

Anyway, one of the best things to remember in general when composing sentences is to generally avoid the passive voice unless you are using it intentionally for effect. If you do not understand what this effect would be, then definitely avoid it for now. The passive voice is, to my mind, best summed by by Stephen King in his example from his amazing work 'On Writing' as the kind of sentence that sounds like this: "My first kiss will always be recalled by me as how my romance with Shana was begun." The active voiced version of this sentence could be 'My romance with Shana began with our first kiss: I'll never forget it,' or even 'I'll never forget how my romance with Shana began with our first kiss.'

Avoidance of the passive voice is stressed in Strunk & White. They provide four examples of sentences in the passive voice, and then go on to list four re-written versions of the same sentences that are, quite clearly, improvements. The problem is that only one of the four sentences they provide as examples of the passive is a definitive example of such a sentence.

Here they are:

There were a great number of dead leaves lying on the ground.

At dawn the crowing of a rooster could be heard.

The reason that he left college was that his health became impaired.

It was not long before she was very sorry that she had said what she had.

Sentences that feature 'There is,' 'There are,' 'There was,' or 'There were' are examples of 'expletive sentences.' (Not that kind of expletive. For more information, check out what Grammar Girl has to say.) You could improve number three by saying 'because' instead of 'was,' but for this to truly be a passive construction, it would need to have an active form something like 'His health impaired him into leaving college,' which isn't grammatical.

This sentence is simply a weak use of the copula as a form of explanation. Same with number four - you could change it to 'became very sorry,' or 'felt very sorry,' but not 'In no time flat, what she had said sorried her,' or 'She rapidly sorried about what she had said.' Or similar gobbledeegook.

Passive voice is when the grammatical subject of the verb is the recipient, not the source, of the action of the verb. Saying 'The boy was sixteen,' is not a passive sentence. 'The boy was listed as sixteen in the ledger,' however, is. 'The ledger listed the boy as sixteen' would be an active form of that example.

I'm not arguing that I'm a better grammarian than these two. I'm most certainly not. I just want to stress the importance of looking to a variety of sources for guidance and instruction and not getting too bogged down with what any one person has to say on the subject of writing. Though it might be tempting to make one or two guidebooks your 'absolute gospel,' true dedication to the craft of writing will see you pouring through many, many instructional tomes on your quest for a well-rounded corpus of knowledge on the topic.

Enjoy your reading, and happy writing!

Published StorySpotlight: 'Part-Time Job' - July 2013 issue of the 'Over My Dead Body!' Mystery Magazine

2013-07-31T16:48:00.002-05:00

Is there a section on Angie's List for 'Gullable Saps?' This story examines the situation of two sisters working as hired help for a very old-fashioned old lady with a fiery personality and a heck of a strong idea about how she wants the two young women to clean her house.

Like 'Hanging Weight,' this story is featured in the 'Over My Dead Body!' Mystery Magazine.

Read it now.

Reviews for 'Strange Way Out'

2013-07-13T13:12:00.002-05:00

20 Reviews: 13 Five-Star & 7 Four-Star

Amazon US / Amazon UK / Amazon DE / Amazon CA

Amazon FR / Amazon IT / Amazon ES

Today marks one and a half months since the release of my Kindle exclusive 'long' short story 'Strange Way Out.' I'm pleasantly surprised to find that it is receiving positive reviews at a faster rate than anything I've ever written before. Here's just a smattering of what people are saying.

"Intense," "crazy awesome," "strange and fantastic," and even plain old "good," people felt this story had a "fast pace," a "sense of urgency," and let "you into the mind" of its characters. What kind of mind? "Strange," agreed several people.

'Strange Way Out' is the story of Sammy, a man 'having a really bad day. He's been arrested, chased by `Men in Black' with chainsaws, locked in a bunker,' but is it because the world is closing in on him, or because of choices he has made himself? As he attempts to make sense of his situation, he meets 'a girl who could kick ass,' goes through 'an explosive jail-break, a mad chase by chainsaw-wielding maniacs,' and even, after 'an outlandish flight... finally finds himself.'

It might not be what you usually read, or what you expected - but it's edgy, fresh, and appealing in addition to having a 'deliriously satisfying Hitchcockian ending.' It 'takes you from one corner to the other and pile drives you at the end,' with 'characters that come to vivid life,' 'many standout lines,' and 'wide eyed wonder' along the way.

So do what you know to be right: read 'Strange Way Out' today!

Amazon US / Amazon UK / Amazon DE / Amazon CA

Amazon FR / Amazon IT / Amazon ES

Published StorySpotlight: 'Hanging Weight' - June 2013 issue of the 'Over My Dead Body!' Mystery Magazine

2013-06-14T07:35:00.002-05:00

This is my latest story to be published, though it was written a little over a year ago. I'll let Chuck explain his behavior in his own words. As 'they' are so fond of saying, "you be the judge."

It has been printed in the Over My Dead Body! Mystery Magazine, which features book and movie reviews and interviews in addition to fiction. Please check it out.

So here is 'Hanging Weight,' an opportunistic tale of frozen cows and vehicular damage.

RELEASE: 'Strange Way Out'

2013-05-31T10:11:00.000-05:00

The wait some of you were aware of is over! My new Kindle 'long' short story, 'Strange Way Out,' is now available.

Amazon US / Amazon UK / Amazon DE / Amazon CA

Amazon FR / Amazon IT / Amazon ES

Only .99 cents, .77 pence, or similar smattering of whatever the smallest unit of currency in your home country might be called, this 'novelette' is too long to be a short story, too short to be a novella, and too tempting a read for you to pass up.

From the description:

Sammy is a man with problems. Most of the time, he doesn't remember what day it is, what town he lives in, or even what he's doing on a day-to-day basis.

Sammy's worst problem is that all his other problems are his own fault. He's twenty-six, has no job, and lives with his mom - and he spends all his efforts trying to hide his dark secrets from the world... and from himself.

One day, during a routine trip to commit mail fraud, his life takes a turn for the weird. What is for him a normal morning becomes the strangest situation he has ever faced: and it only snowballs from there.

But is his day merely strange, or is it a 'Strange Way Out?'

Along the way, he meets a new friend, is forced to confront his darkest secrets, and faced with a choice: keep his secrets inside, to rot him from the inside out, or expose his truth for the world to see and judge.

A fight for survival in every sense - physical, emotional, and spiritual - 'Strange Way Out' is a story of one young man's dawning realization that he has a part to play in his own life, and his struggle to find the courage to play that part as best he can, for better or worse, in the face of seemingly unnatural terrors and all too human threats to his existence.

Read 'Strange Way Out' today - or tomorrow. Or this weekend. But buy it today, no matter when you read it. The fate of the universe probably doesn't depend on it - but if it does, you can feel good knowing you saved all life on Earth.

Signed Paperback Copies of 'For Those With Eyes to See'

2013-05-28T09:54:00.002-05:00

If you're like a typical mountain goat, you can't read. If you're like a typical person who comes to this site, you love reading. Either way, you'll want a signed copy of 'For Those With Eyes to See,' my new short story collection.

If you're a literate human, you'll want to feast your brain on the delicious mindscapes of otherworldly insanity that fill its pages. If you're a goat, you'll want to ruminate its fiber-filled goodness in your multi-chambered stomach. It's win-win, whether you be cloven of hoof or wiggly of toe.

So, make your purchase below and avail yourself of one of the many fine uses for this attractive, well-laid out, and above all scrumptious new short story collection. Is right thing to do. And so do.

Reviews for 'For Those With Eyes to See'

2013-05-17T12:24:00.003-05:00

I'm going to collect all the blog reviews about my new short story collection 'For Those With Eyes to See' right here in this post.

First up, Tasha of 'Thirty, Nerdy, and Fabulous' fame has seen fit to give the collection four and a half out of five stars. Check out what she has to say right here.

Next, Mark of 'From the Couch... Musings of the Sports Doofus' has written a review at this link.

The first customer review is in, from Amazon US. Read it here. The second customer review is right here.

More reviews to be added as they come in.

Published StorySpotlight: 'Good Dreams Can't Last For Long' - a May 2013 'Story of the Week' in the Missing Slate

2013-05-17T09:33:00.001-05:00

The stories just keep coming! May has seen the release of my first audiobook, my first published poem, a lengthily-titled dystopian tale, my first short story collection, and now this.

'Good Dreams Can't Last for Long' is a horrific story of regret, magic folding chairs, deep, dank caves, and an unseen presence of ultimate evil known only as 'the Seritz.' It's simultaneously introspective and metaphysical, delving into the darkest recesses of human misery and making a nest there.

This was the first story I wrote this year, and I put a lot more effort into it than I had put into past stories. It marked the beginning of a new era in my writing, and now I'm privileged to share it with you, via the incredible international journal The Missing Slate. I'm honored to be a part of this publication, and I'm really excited to share this story with you.

You can read it by clicking here.

Troy Blackford - Journey to Death at Lifespeed

Interviewed by Gwendolyn Kiste

The Story of 'Under the Wall' - How I Came to Write My FOURTH Book About Magic Cats...

UNDER THE WALL Synopsis

A Mild Delay, A Slight Recompensement

A Life of Song

'Breaking News' by Troy Blackford

Signed Copies of 'Robbed of Sleep' (and 'Critical Incident,' AND 'Strange Way Out,' and more)

Writin' Lessonz - Part III: Don't Gameify Your Work

'Angling for Meaning'

Writin' Lessonz - Part II: Peeling Through Layers of Abstraction

A Reader's Response to an Anti-Kindle Web Comic

Writin' Lessonz - Part I: Question and Answer Time

RELEASE: 'Booster & Reeves: The Night of the Revenants'

The September Situation

'Author Updates' Mailing List for Big News Only

Please join my mailing list, for major announcements only - you don't have to worry about a constant stream of e-mails. Only when I have a book or story coming out!

Signed, Personalized Paperback Copies of 'Strange Way Out' Now Available

ANNOUNCEMENT: New Edition of 'Critical Incident' Now Available on Kindle

When Strunk & White 'Strunk' Out

Published StorySpotlight: 'Part-Time Job' - July 2013 issue of the 'Over My Dead Body!' Mystery Magazine

Reviews for 'Strange Way Out'

Published StorySpotlight: 'Hanging Weight' - June 2013 issue of the 'Over My Dead Body!' Mystery Magazine

RELEASE: 'Strange Way Out'

Signed Paperback Copies of 'For Those With Eyes to See'

Reviews for 'For Those With Eyes to See'

Published StorySpotlight: 'Good Dreams Can't Last For Long' - a May 2013 'Story of the Week' in the Missing Slate