Eric Wilson's Blog, page 2
November 30, 2022
Sometimes It Falls Flat
How did worldwide cataclsym, my grandma, and Amelia Earhart tie together?
I decided to find out in mid-2012.
With the Mayan Calendar predicting catastrophe at the end of the year, I explored the issue by writing a fun, fast-paced novella set in Guatemala. Alice Goes the Way of the Maya would be my 16th book.
Alice Brimble, a bestselling 70-year-old author, takes center stage as my main character. I based her on my grandma who is so independent, resilient, and lovable underneath a sometimes tough exterior.
Alice's sidekick is a young woman who first made her appearance in my novella about Amelia Earhart, a perfect foil to Alice's bristly character.
The book came out just before Christmas 2012. Turns out I was a little late to the Mayan party and missed the main buzz of the alleged apocalypse, but I had a blast writing the story. I loved the setting, loved the plot, and loved the thought of writing some sequels, Alice Goes the Way of the Eskimo, and Alice Goes the Way of the Celts.
In the end, readers didn't seem as interested in Alice as I was. This is always hard for a writer to accept. It seriously sucks.
Truth is, nobody knows or can predict how the magic of fiction, characters, and books occurs. Sometimes it works, the audience is ready, and it all creates synergy.
Sometimes, despite the quality, effort, and skill, it falls flat. Trying to make sense of it drives us creatives batty.
Alice is out there, though. Her story exists.
My story and your story, they also exist.
Whether or not the magic always happens, we keep moving forward, sharpening our skills, and putting ourselves out there. We do the hard work. We put our hearts into it.
That is life.
At the same time, the apocalypse doesn't always end up happening, the grim predictions prove false, and we get a chance to try again.
So that's what we do.
We try again.
--Eric Wilson
November 17, 2022
Fatal Blows and Fireflies
I was camping in Cades Cove, just me and my dog in a tent in the Great Smoky Mountains.
It was a magical weekend. I was researching Three Fatal Blows, my planned third book in the Number Series, which would feature Aramis Black on the run with a young kid who knows details of a local drug operation. If all went as planned, it would be my 13th book.
It was June, the night was warm, and I unzipped the screen cover in hopes of seeing the stars. Instead, to my amazement, the towering trees and bushes just outside were pulsing and glowing with the light of ten thousand fireflies.
My dog and I sat and watched this natural, neverending fireworks display. Hours later, it was still going, silent and beautiful.
Unfortunately, the magic did not travel home with us.
After my dedicated but small publisher at the time struggled to get my Numbers Series into bookstores, my third book was cancelled before I could move from researching to writing. I still have hopes of reviving it someday through a GoFundMe campaign.
Miracles and magic are wonderful.
They are real. I believe.
I also know life isn't paint-by-numbers, and sometimes the things we think are lining up simply weave and wobble out of view.
Did we go wrong somewhere? Was it ever meant to be? Were the signs just fireflies for the sake of my own awe and wonder?
I don't know. I didn't then and don't now.
But I still believe.
Deep down, I still believe.
November 6, 2022
Tigers, Teamwork, & Tyson
The call came out of the blue in late 2013. With 15 books already under my belt, I was about to write my craziest yet.
A filmmaker friend of mine was on the line, down in Florida, and wondered if I would like to write a book about Mike Tyson and his old boxing team and manager.
"Are you kidding? I grew up watching Ali, Holmes, and Tyson with my dad. You bet I'm interested."
"Then get down here right away," my friend insisted. "These guys are all about relationship. They won't agree to anything till you meet in person."
I arrived by car in Orlando late that same night, and in the spring of 2014 I holed up for a month in a Boca Raton house with four or five members of Team Tyson.
Oh, the stories these guys could tell!
There was the one about Mike's pet tiger clawing open the roof of his car like a tin can. And the time Naomi Campbell climbed between two hotel balconies in high heels, a hundred feet in the air, in the middle of a lover's feud with Mike. There were stories of true friendship and deep love, and of pain, betrayal, and sexual addiction.
My 16th book, Taming the Beast: the Untold Story of Team Tyson, was R-rated and far grittier than anything I had written before.
It was also beautiful, raw, and redemptive.
It painted a story of friendship, devotion, and courage in the midst of harrowing circumstances. It revealed the hollow rewards of money, sex, excess, and drugs, and pointed to something deeper and longer lasting.
I had a lot to learn from these guys and we had a blast working together. I later visited some of their homes and churches in Queens, Brownsville, and Manhattan. We took a trip together to Catskill, where Mike first got started as a boxer under trainer Cus D'Amato. We laughed, cried, smoked cigars, and drank sake. We even prayed together.
Taming the Beast is a book I'm very proud of, though it's not for the faint of heart. The best part is, I made new friends for life.
Sometimes writing a book isn't just about writing a book. You can't always judge a book by its cover.
--Eric Wilson
[image error]October 23, 2022
What Happened to Amelia?
My sister has logged hours in the air toward a pilot's license. My wife once took the controls of a small aircraft as we flew from Catalina Island back over the Pacific to Los Angeles.
Women flyers intrigue me, so it's no wonder I wanted to write a historical mystery based around the 75th anniversary of Amelia Earhart's disappearance. It would be my 15th book.
Unfortunately, a year before the anniversary, no publishers seemed to share my vision for this idea's potential audience.
Refusing to accept their apathy as an answer, I settled on writing a novella instead and released it as a paperback and e-book on Amazon.
A popular e-zine caught wind of the story and featured it front and center, for just one day, near that 75th anniversary date.
The sales took off!
Amelia's Last Secret became one of my fastest selling stories, and I still have a soft spot for this one, told by three different narrators, including a Navajo code talker--whom I would love to use in a future novel.
Believe it or not, almost every part of Amelia's narrative in the book is accurate, combining recent discoveries, hidden mysteries, and a few conspiracy theories.
Where do I believe she ended up?
Let's just say, a few years later, the man who discovered the resting place of the Titanic went to investigate the same area with a topnotch team.
We may never know the full truth of Amelia's disappearance, but through Amelia's Last Secret you'll learn a whole heck of a lot in the midst of a fun, short, and fast-paced story.
Hint: The stamps are real. And they have yet to be found.
--Eric Wilson
October 7, 2022
Life is Beautiful
I was a bastard child. My wife was too.
My mom, at age 16, conceived me out of wedlock, and by old definitions this made me illegitimate, unworthy, unclean. My wife's mom conceived her at age 18.
With my mom's Catholic upbringing, she would never have considered aborting me, but she paid a heavy price by keeping me. Her own father cut her off and didn't speak to her again for decades. I didn't meet my grandpa till I was 20 years old.
In 2012, I was asked to adapt a screenplay into a novel. This would be my 14th published book and my third bestseller. The story was inspired by the true-life account of an abortion survivor. I never even knew there was such a thing.
As I wrote October Baby, I was so moved by the journey of Hannah from being an adoptee to having blackouts to discovering the truth of her origins. I laughed, because of course this drama-filled story needed some lighthearted moments. And I cried, because I love my two daughters so much and value every moment of their precious lives.
I also felt deeply for the mother who had aborted her child, because life is full of pressures and circumstances which are difficult and no woman makes such a choice lightly. They need our compassion. And if we're going to encourage women to keep a child, we better damn well be willing to stand alongside them when things get rough instead of pointing fingers at them.
Life is sometimes ugly and hard. Despite our circumstances, we get to choose each day how we value ourselves, friends, family, and especially those we don't always agree with or understand.
In that way, I am pro-choice.
I am also pro-life.
I choose to celebrate and defend others, even when we don't always see eye to eye. Why? Because life is beautiful.
--Eric Wilson
September 26, 2022
When God Pulls Teeth
It was one of the most pain-filled nights of my life.
Decay in my left top molar drove spikes into my gum and directly into the nerve. I moaned in bed, no medicine or balm seeming to help. Curled in a fetal position, my body quivered for hours, that agony hammering with each heartbeat into my skull and down through my limbs.
It was 2012. I was late on a book deadline, my 12th novel, titledTwo Seconds Late. Guilt and depression were setting in. My publisher was waiting on me.
And now I was wracked with pain.
My wife took me to a nearby dentist the next morning, but as a writer I had no medical insurance--which was common for self-employed writers before Obamacare. And we were waiting on my next check--which for writers come 6 to 12 months apart. We didn't have the $75 to apply for a payment plan, so we drove home and I waited until the nerve went numb and the pain subsided.
A year later, after frequent bouts with pain and with paranoia about my breath, I got the bugger pulled.
The relief was instant.
In the meantime, I merged real life into that 12th novel and turned it in a week late. The tooth-pulling scene, wow, it caused me to wince and also moved me with deep emotion.
Here's how it went: Without her knowledge, Natalie has had a poison-filled, remote-triggered implant put into her molar. A killer hundreds of miles away is ready to end her life. Only one man, Mr. Shofokey, understands the peril she faces and has moments to convince her that he must pull her tooth with pliers, with no painkiller, or she will die a most gruesome death.
It is a moment of blind faith. A moment like I had recently faced in my relationship with God, while wrestling with relational and financial woes. Did I trust Him even when things hurt, even when He seemed to cause me pain for no good reason? Would I surrender myself to His deeper knowledge and love?
As I typed out the rest of the scene, as Natalie spread open her jaws and felt the pliers take hold, I wanted to scream along with her. I wanted to yell at God for all the shit He lets go on in our lives, all the agony He seems to ignore. I wanted to fall on my knees and apologize for my arrogance, thinking I had a freakin' clue about what was best for me.
With tears and blood streaming down her face, Natalie watched her tooth fall to the floor. Two seconds later, it cracked and hissed, spewing deadly acid across the cement.
It is one of my favorite and most personal scenes I've ever written. It flipped a switch in my own heart and mind to start trusting again. To trust Mr. Shofokey.
In the final pages of the book, Mr. Shofokey's true identity is revealed.
Go read it, if you haven't already.
Either way, don't wait till the final pages to surrender. For me, life and peace and joy came in the pulling of a tooth.
--Eric Wilson
September 12, 2022
Evil, Love, & Money
How hard is it for a couple to keep their love alive when money runs low? Is it easier, because they bond together and focus on what really matters? Or is harder, because they have less time together and increased stress?
My wife and I faced many financial woes--no health insurance, no savings, a bankruptcy--as I wrote my first 6 books. My next 4 books led to some much easier financial moments, including an Alaska cruise and a trip to Israel to scatter my mom's ashes. We were also able to pay off debts.
By book 11, though, money was getting tight again as the repercussions of the 2008 nationwide financial crisis spread ever wider. Some predicted capitalism would die out completely. Many lost their homes, fortunes, even families. Banks got bailed out by the government--and, not surprisingly, many of those banks never paid back those loans. The rich got rich and the poor got poorer. Many suffered.
I thought of the biblical story of Job, where Satan receives permission to destroy everything Job holds dear as a test of Job's devotion to God.
What if this script was flipped?
What if Satan was given permission to bless a family who was suffering?
Would sudden riches solve all their problems, or simply magnify their growing rifts and moral compromises?
Thus, One Step Away was written. It is one of my favorite stories, because it takes an age-old tale, gives it a modern spin, and feels eerily familiar to my wife, daughters, and me.
We have been through these highs and lows. We know all too well that both have their challenges.
Plus, One Step Away is set in Nashville--and I could personally show you every location in the book on a citywide tour. Note: the Cancun sidetrip would cost extra.
I still get nervous everytime I see a black Dodge Charger.
I still think Magnus Maggart is a fantastic, if not over-the-top name for a villain.
When it comes down to it, I'll take love over money every time. My wife makes even the rough days seem liveable.
And--insert sigh here--our hearts are always just One Step Away.
Eric Wilson
August 28, 2022
Melancholy Milestone
Sometimes life's greatest milestones occur while dealing with life's deepest tragedies. Wish it didn't work that way, but it often does. For me, anyway.
In 2010, I was still grieving my mother's passing when my 10th book was released. Valley of Bones was not only the conclusion to my Jerusalem's Undead Trilogy. It was, also the tying together of threads from my Senses series and my Aramis Black series, both of which I had intended to continue but were cancelled due to middling sales.
I was grieving my mom. Grieving the end of all my book series. Grieving for a daughter who struggled with opioid addiction. Grieving family members and their personal struggles.
Then, despite my new status as a NY Times bestselling author, my publisher rejected my proposed Numbers series for being "too dark and supernatural." They wanted me to crank out more Fireproof-type stories, to become, in their words, "the Christian Nicholas Sparks."
Were they kidding me? That was not even close to my goals as a writer and storyteller.
My 10th book had been such a milestone, a point of celebration, with over a million words in print, and now I was battling chronic depression--something I have dealt with most of my life, off and on.
How could I break out of this?
Where was the door out of this black room in my head?
I took long walks. Poured out my feelings to God. I looked for his fingerprints in the clouds, in the leaves, in the whorl of the hickory bark along quiet Tennessee trails.
I hung in there, day by day by day ...
And the light crept back in. I signed a contract with a small publisher for my Numbers series. I started writing again.
I realized I had a choice. I could stay stuck in my melancholy as the cold world passed me by. Or get off my self-pitying ass, be grateful for the milestones, and press ahead.
I pressed ahead.
Eric Wilson
August 14, 2022
My Hardest Book to Write
Some say it's not really work if you love what you do. What do you think?
I have always loved the satisfaction of a job well done. My parents instilled in me the idea I should do my work as unto the Lord, whether I was splitting wood, washing dishes, or doing a college paper. For me, work has never been something to avoid or grit my teeth through, but a way of serving and finding fulfillment.
In 2008, though, I dragged my feet as I faced the challenge of writing my 8th book.
Why was this one so hard?
It had a weak setting, and as they say in real estate: location, location, location.
I was supposed to take a Kendrick Brothers screenplay and turn it into a full-length novel. This one was dear to their hearts, being the first feature film they had ever shot. It was also low-budget, all set in a trailer on a smalltown used-car lot.
Having lived in Europe and Asia as a kid and having traveled in over 40 countries, the setting for this story sounded mind-numbingly boring. The thought of dredging up a full-length novel from this thin script sounded, well, like work.
But I had a deadline, so I got to it.
Everything as unto the Lord, right?
Instead of giving a physical location center stage, I allowed an antique car and its war-veteran mechanic to step up as major players in the story. Soon, this story of a dishonest salesman coming to terms with his faith, his community, and his son was making me laugh, warming my heart, even bringing me to tears.
I finished on schedule. The Kendricks were happy. Flywheel was a perfect read for my Light readers, and a good reprieve before I dove into writing more Dark stories, specifically the concluding books of my Jerusalem's Undead Trilogy.
I had learned a valuable lesson: My own attitude can create a location, whether parched and arid or rich and fruitful, for the words which pour from my mind and through my fingers.
At that point, Flywheel was as satisfying as any of the previous seven books I had completed.
That sweet little book will always be precious to me.
Eric Wilson
July 31, 2022
Tackling the Thorny Subjects
As a teenager I devoured The Screwtape Letters, by C. S. Lewis. I loved the idea of reading the enemy's mail, just as intrepid spies tried to do during World War II.
In 2007, I aimed to do the same thing, taking on the historical and biblical origins of vampires and their desire for blood, even the Nazarene Blood on a Roman cross. My Jerusalem's Undead Trilogy kicked off with my 6th novel, Field of Blood, a deeply researched, dark and gritty, extremely spiritual book. It dealt with death, addiction, sexual temptation, and religious hypocrisy.
Not everyone got it, but many loved it. Pastors wrote me, saying it was the most powerful symbolism they'd ever read in fiction. Non-Christians told me it was the most original vampire series they'd come across.
I also had people tell me I was "consorting with demons," "flirting with the devil," and "in danger of losing my salvation." One man, whom I had financially supported in his work with Romanian orphanages, refused to receive my money any longer because it was "gained by evil means."
My 7th book, Fireproof, became a NY Times bestseller and had Christian bookstore employees and readers wanting to take photos with me. Go figure.
When we as writers create stories, we can explore questions, enlighten, entertain, or offer escape. Sometimes we manage to do all at the same time. Even in a "safe" story, such as Fireproof, I dealt with porn addiction and destructive unforgiveness.
What can I say? I love tackling the thorny subjects. If you've read the trilogy, you know exactly what I mean.
Eric Wilson
