Scott William Carter's Blog, page 6

News & Muse (January 2021): A Very Rainy Christmas

It’s that time of year in Oregon’s Willamette Valley when it’s mostly rainy and dreary. Will we get snow? Some years we do, some we don’t, but when we do it usually isn’t much and it almost never sticks for long. I usually don’t mind the rain, of course, being a writer and a reader, but usually by March I’m ready to see more blue sky. My hunch is that feeling will come even sooner this year, considering how trying 2020 was. But then, every place you live has its pros and cons.

As grim as the pandemic has been this winter, and it’s been plenty grim, the vaccines are rolling out, though, so life feels like it’s getting better. While it will take quite a while to vaccinate the entire world, the most vulnerable, and most likely to be hospitalized, should get vaccinated much faster, which means both the death toll and the strain on our hospitals should start to lessen more more rapidly, I should think. We shall see.

My immediate family is all in good health. For me personally? Just working away, on two books at the same time, actually. Not something I usually like to do, but it just worked out that way. Kids are approaching the halfway mark of the school year, and we’re all hoping that by Fall 2021 that face-to-face classes will be the norm again.

Hoping. I find myself using that word a lot lately. While it rained all day on Christmas for us, the sun came out in earnest the next day, which seemed symbolic.

A Bit of Whimsy: A Very Rosie Christmas

Here’s Rosie at 7.5 months, looking adorable as usual. Of course, her cuteness hides the fact that she’s often known around these parts as THE TERRIBLE RED BEASTY, for her propensity to steal socks, chew up shoes, and destroy tree ornaments.

Scott Recommends

Uncle Frank. This Amazon Studios production is just the sort of movie that makes me so optimistic about the future of filmmaking, despite the fairly grim future I foresee for movie theaters in particular. It’s doubtful this poignant drama about a gay man from South Carolina, and his relationship with his family as he returns from New York City in 1973, would have seen much time in a theater—especially now, but probably not ten years ago either. And yet, it’s one of the best films I’ve seen this year. Great writing, great acting, highly recommended.

Sunset Express by Robert Crais. Another great entry in the Elvis Cole series, a Los Angeles-based private investigator with a wry wit. What I admire about Crais, just as I admire about writers like Robert B. Parker and John D. MacDonald, is how easy it all goes down. I don’t mean the story, which in this case involves an extremely rich restaurateur accused of murdering his wife, a police detective accused of tampering with evidence, and a powerful celebrity attorney, but the writing itself. The voice is strong and bold and grabs you from page one. It’s always a pleasant few hours I spend with Cole and his assorted friends and associates.

M*A*S*H. This has been one of my go-to shows during the pandemic lately, something I can watch for thirty minutes while folding laundry or just a short escape before bed, and I’m amazed at how well it still holds up more than thirty years after the final episode aired (1983). Sadly, it might have something to do with how evergreen the subject matter is (war). Lasting eleven seasons (and eight years longer than the Korean War in which it was set), it has just the right balance of pathos and humor. I could do without the laugh track, of course, but that’s my one small nit. The whole series is available on Hulu.

News & Muse (December 2020): A Year as a Full Time Writer, Three Lessons Learned

It’s been twelve months since I gave up the day job to give full-time writing a go. And boy, what a year. A global pandemic that we still haven’t climbed our way out of yet. One of the most divisive Presidential elections in the United States of my lifetime. And here in Oregon, devastating forest fires that ravaged many of the small cities east of my hometown, starting just a thirty minute drive from my house.

But with the fires put down, encouraging news on the vaccine front, and an imperfect but at least decent and empathetic human being soon to be in the White House (sorry folks — if you still don’t know what a threat Trump was to our country, please go read about what happened to Hungary, as just one recent example of how a democracy dies) hopefully 2021 will be a better year. Still, it was another reminder that life happens, and sometimes life happens in a big way, and when it does often all you can do is hold onto the raft until you get to smoother waters.

Still, I kept at it throughout it all, and I’ve learned a few things along the way:

1. I’m more at peace being an Internet Minimalist. 

A couple months ago, I decided to recommit to being what I call an Internet Minimalist. Unless unavoidable, I don’t get on the Internet or check email until 5 p.m. every day. And yes, I really do mean I don’t go online at all unless there is some specific task that can’t wait; and it turns out that the vast majority of time, it truly can wait. I get my news from NPR via Alexa as I’m brushing my teeth in the morning, so at least I’m aware of any major events, but otherwise I’m completely off-line until 5 p.m. This not only made me a lot more productive, it made me happier, too. I’m still free to do whatever I want online after 5 p.m., and I certainly don’t want to be totally disengaged, partly because I need the Internet for my business, but in practice this translates into me being a lot more efficient online. I’ve read more books, produced a lot more practice drawings, and also started doing the Run of the House cartoon again—so that energy is going where I’d rather it go.

Why 5 p.m.? It’s a “habit stacking” technique I picked up from James Clear’s book, Atomic Habits. The basic idea is you connect or stack a new habit on top of an existing one. I already have a pretty firm rule that I don’t watch TV or drink alcohol before 5 p.m. It’s so entrenched I don’t think about it much, so adding the “no Internet” rule to it was pretty easy. It also ensures that I’m using my freshest, most productive hours of the day for my creative work. I’d tried using 4 pm in the past, but 5 pm does seem to be working better, so I do think there is something about pairing existing habits that reinforces both of them.

2. Having an easy production quota I followed every day, which I could exceed if I wanted, was better than having a more ambitious quota I only followed five days a week. 

When I tailed up my word counts for the last twelve months, I did about 20% more than my best year. It’s not bad, but since I don’t have a day job anymore, I was expecting better— certainly not double, I’ve been doing this too long to expect that, but perhaps 50% more. And then I noticed something else odd: my second best twelve month stretch, the one I’d beaten only by 20%, was actually the first year I got very serious about being a writer. In all those years, I’d never topped that year until now.

Here’s what baffles me. I had a very simple rule I followed that year: write at least 500 words, or for 30 minutes, whatever comes last. I’d gotten fed up with my low productivity and I bought a little digital kitchen timer. I told myself that no matter what, I could always write two pages of fiction. I made it my goal to stay completely focused for the thirty minutes, only checking the word count when the timer went off. (Having the timer actually paradoxically freed me up not to think about the time.) I’ve written about this before, recommended the technique to lots of others, and I’ve come back to it lots of times over the years as a way to jump start myself, but it seemed far too low a production quota for a full-time writer. So I decided to write 10 pages a day instead.

And while that resulted in some big word count months, there were other months where I …wasn’t as productive. Here’s the thing about that first year long ago when I got truly serious: While there were many days I squeaked by with 500 words, there were many, many other days I kept on writing because I was in the flow. Since it was only 30 minutes, I could always find the time for it. No excuses.

I recently went back to the 30/500 rule a couple months ago, and while the jury is still out on whether I’ll produce more, so far I am, while also having more fun. I can quit if I want, after all, and that feeling is very freeing. When I ran into a jam with the bigger book I’m working on, I just started a new story while I was figuring out what to do. I’ve already gotten three short stories that I wouldn’t have written otherwise, and I love the variety, too. Which leads me to …

3. When I stopped thinking of writing as a job, I was not only happier, I worked harder too.

That was the third major lesson I learned in the last year. When I tried to make writing into a 8 to 5, Monday through Friday sort of job, it became exactly that … a job. This added a bunch of emotional baggage that’s not helpful. The only way I could go back to writing every day (as well as cartooning and other creative efforts) was to not to see it as a job, because a job is usually something you do so you can do other things in your spare time. I don’t work a job any more. This is just what I do. It’s what I am. Along those lines, I also decided to just trust myself with the time and not worry too much about the schedule. The production quota has always been the key anyway. 

Some weekdays I mow the lawn in the afternoon. Run an errand. Read a book. Walk the dog. Help the kids with their homework. Many Saturdays I write all day long. The point is, there was no reason to give up the day job if I was just going to make this into another day job, and the way I broke free of that mentality was to at least write a little something (two pages) every day. It allowed the joy to flow back in a big way. Rosie is now six months old, and already starting to grow out of some of her puppy behavior that took so much of my energy, but breaking free from the 8-5/M-F mentality also made it easier with her as well. Now, like the 30/500 rule, the jury is still out on whether this is sustainable, but I think it is. When I told writer friend of mine about this, he said, “You mean you never give yourself a day off? My God!” But that misses the point. Why would you need a day “off” from something you love? 

While I certainly have to push myself to the keyboard some days, this is no different than, say, a professional basketball player who loves their sport but still has to push themselves now and then to get in the gym and shoot five hundred free throws. You push yourself not because you don’t love what you do, but because you love it so much you want to get really good at it. 

A Bit of Whimsy: Me at the Pumpkin Patch

This one was from a little over a month ago, when we visited a nearby pumpkin patch with the kids and Heidi took a few photos. And yes, except for when she took this photo, we were all wearing masks and engaging in good social distancing practices.

Scott Recommends

Defending Jacob by William Landay. As usual, I’m late to the party on Landay’s excellent novel about an assistant district attorney whose own son is accused of a horrific crime: stabbing a classmate to death and leaving his body in a nearby park. Is his son innocent or guilty? And how far would you go to protect your own child? Those are the questions Landay tackles in this riveting legal thriller, which was recently made into a miniseries for Apple TV. I haven’t seen the miniseries, so I can’t vouch for it, but I can say that the narrative voice grabbed me from page one and didn’t let me go.

You’re It! by Alan Watts (the audio book). My daughter described me the other day as nonreligious but still somewhat spiritual. That’s close, but I’d clarify that I’m generally repulsed by religious dogma but open to spiritual thinking — as long as you describe “spiritual thinking” as being intellectually curious about the nature of reality and what it truly means to be human. I stumbled upon the recorded lectures of Alan Watts on YouTube a year ago, a man who described himself as a “philosopher-entertainer,” and was adamant he was not a guru even though many of his ardent fans in the sixties who attended his lectures at college campuses and other venues might have thought of him that way. You’re It! gathers many of his best lectures, and while the format means there’s a little bit of repetition, I found that actually helps drive home some of his main points. If you want just one book, I’d recommend this one, but you can certainly listen to many of his lectures for free on YouTube as I did.

The Mandalorian. Just to prove that I’m not completely out of step with what’s popular right now, let me echo everyone who’s said that the Manadlorian, a show set in the Star Wars universe on Disney Plus about  a mercenary (in the same vein as Bobba Fett) and a Yoda-like child, lives up to its billing. Now in its second season, it’s one of those rare shows that our whole family watches together, and there hasn’t been one dud yet. Just pure wide-eyed fun … which is something we all sorely need right now.

News & Muse (November 2020): First “Issue,” and the Return of the Run of the House Comic

I’m starting a new feature, News & Muse, to be published on this site the first of every month. As most of my readers know, I’ve been a very irregular blogger over the years, and my social media activity can be described as erratic at best, but I thought it would be fun to try more of magazine-style approach to this blog that combines lots of “features” rather than spreading them over many individual posts — the piecemeal method certainly being more the norm, and what most SEO gurus recommend in this age of supposed short attention spans. But hey, if the Internet has taught us anything, it’s that you should try to find a way to do things your way. (Cue Frank Sinatra singing “I Did It May Way.”) I also don’t think attention spans are all that short, really. Otherwise, who are all these people buying my books? So I can at least say that my readers have longer attention spans, and those are the people I’m most interested in anyway.

I’m going to let News & Muse evolve over time, but for now this is the basic structure: 1) A short news update or “muse” on a topic; 2) A Bit of Whimsy: Usually pictures or random drawings, occasionally a second cartoon, but be prepared for lots of gratuitous photos of my pets or other random stuff; 3) Scott Recommends: At least three, and possibly more, books, videos, lectures, comics, websites, or anything else I’ve really enjoyed recently that I think you might enjoy too, usually with a few sentences of commentary. You’re about to find out exactly how eclectic my taste is, and how out of step I usually am with whatever is popular at the moment; 4) A new Run of the House comic. This is the cartoon strip I started last year that went on hiatus because, while I was enjoying it, I’d become disenchanted with the way I was distributing it (on a separate site or via social media, giving it all away for free). I’m glad to bring it back here at least once a month, kind of like the comic section in a newspaper. I’ve got some other ideas regarding the strip, but I’ll save those for later. I want to mull it over a bit more.

Other news? Nothing big, just working on a new book, of course. Can’t say much more than that, which is usually the case. Just got back from a quick getaway to Sunriver, Oregon with my daughter and Rosie, where we visited with my father, went on some nice walks in the woods, rode our bikes, and binge-watched Netflix’s The Haunting of Bly Manor. Both of us like the scary stuff, which isn’t the case for other members of the household. A fun time, though driving through the devastation from the Santiam Canyon fires was very sobering.

A Bit of Whimsy

Rosie, at five and half months now, has discovered the joys of a warm fire as the weather in the Willamette Valley turns a bit cooler.

Scott Recommends

GRANT by Ron Chernow. I think the best compliment I can give this mammoth, mesmerizing biography is that I truly hope someone makes it into a miniseries, much like HBO did with David Mccullough’s John Adams, another presidential biography I really enjoyed. He was not without his flaws, but I don’t think anyone would be tearing down statues of Grant if more people knew the kind of character this man had, and how ahead of his time he was in his treatment of African Americans, even compared to Lincoln.

SQUIRREL SEEKS CHIPMUNK by David Sedaris. When he’s at his best, Sedaris is both witty and poignant, and he is certainly both in spades with this “bestiary” of fable-like tales involving very anthropomorphized animals. Funny enough, even though I’ve been a fan of Sedaris’s writing for years, having read pretty much all of his collections, I missed this one when it was published and stumbled across it in a Little Library in our neighborhood. Hooray for Little Libraries!

LUANN by Greg Evans. I came to this comic strip pretty late (considering it’s been around 35 years), but I stumbled across it one day and ended up getting hooked on the slowly unfolding dramas of the titular character, her brother, parents, and everyone else connected to Luann’s life. You can read the latest strip online at gocomics.com/luann, or do what I did and get into the strip through one of the major storylines, which you can find at http://luannfan.com/. Or even better, buy one of the print collections. To me, it served as a reminder of how easy it is to become emotionally invested in a bunch of squiggly lines, if there are characters you care about.

New Garrison Gage book: A DEEP AND DEADLY UNDERTOW

As if dealing with a global pandemic wasn’t enough, here in Oregon we’re also suffering from a series of wildfires wreaking havoc across the state. While my hometown of Salem is not in any danger, the air for the last few days has been so toxic that it’s not safe to be outside without a mask for long. We’ve literally had some of the worst air quality in the entire world. (Fortunately, as my kids pointed out, we already have plenty of masks lying around!) The fires have blanketed the city in an ash-fog that’s lowered the temperature at least twenty degrees. But cooler temperatures, shifting winds, and a coming rainstorm should hopefully bring an end to the worst of this over the next few days. 

But despite what a crazy year 2020 has turned out to be, I go on writing. It’s now my full-time job, after all, but I also find it helps me not focus on everything in the world outside my control. Disappearing into a book as a reader also helps, of course, which brings me to my latest offering: A DEEP AND DEADLY UNDERTOW. This is the seventh book featuring Garrison Gage, and it’s a doozy, one that will leave both Gage and others in Barnacle Bluffs forever changed. More information about the book, including links to retailers, is below.

As usual, the book is available in paperback and ebook first. The audio version will hopefully follow before too long. Thanks for reading!

A Deep and Deadly Undertow



A Garrison Gage Mystery

What kind of treasure is worth dying for?

Years after his wife dies in a mafia hit gone wrong, Garrison Gage finally pieces together a life for himself in the Oregon coastal town of Barnacle Bluffs. Some days the cranky private investigator with the bum knee and the caustic wit could even call himself content. Maybe even happy. But marrying again? Never.

Yet not long after quirky Rita Rodriguez enters the scene, Gage can’t imagine life without her. Unfortunately, when dark secrets violently emerge–involving first loves, tragic loss, and, strangest of all, a Spanish galleon that sunk in 1642 loaded with treasure–their relationship enters turbulent waters.

 Worse, the same deadly undertow that drags Gage into the darkness also threatens everyone around him. His friends. His enemies. Even the town itself . . .

Ebook: Amazon | B&N | Kobo | iBooks | Google Play 

Paperback: Amazon | Indiebound

Cover for A Deep and Deadly Undertow (Gage #7) and a Brief Update

Garrison Gage fans will be happy to know that the seventh book in the series, A Deep and Deadly Undertow, is now with the copy editor and should be out in early September. That’s the cover on the right. (You can click it for a larger version.) Book description will follow soon, but needless to say, this is probably the most consequential Gage book yet. Ghost ships, sunken treasure, dashed hopes and dark betrayals . . .  Even a marriage proposal. It’s got it all. 

If you want a tiny clue of some big changes in Gage’s life, be sure to read Throwaway Jane, the first Karen Pantelli adventure, which features a brief cameo from the curmudgeonly detective. And if you enjoy the book, please do write a review on Amazon or elsewhere. I get a lot of emails from readers who never write reviews, and while I do appreciate your kind words, online reader reviews are even more important these days than reviews from major trades, I think. It’s the new word of mouth. So if there’s one thing you can do to help an author (other than buying his or her books, of course), it’s to write a review of why you liked the book. It doesn’t have to be long. Just a sentence or two is perfectly fine.

More on the Gage book soon. I’d planned to write a few short stories between books, but I’m already hard at work on a new novel, an idea about a local amusement park I’ve been toying with for years. I often find that ideas I mull over too much often turn to mush, or become overly forced and stilted, as opposed to ones I come up with from scratch, but this one’s stayed fresh. I also think I might finally be ready to write it, which I think was the problem with the Big Epic I flamed out on a couple years ago. Just wasn’t ready to write it yet. Though I’m thinking I’m going to take another crack at that one, too. 

My plan right now is to alternate between series books and one-offs, but we’ll see how it goes. Other than that, life in the era of Covid-19 goes on here on Carter Hill (what I’ve taken to calling our 90-year-old Tudor-style house up on a little rise). Our Subaru Forester, which we bought almost 20 years ago, finally had to go, with so many repairs due that we couldn’t justify it for what the car was worth, despite how good the car has been to us (we brought our daughter home from the hospital in it, so it had lots of

sentimental value). We replaced it with a 2016 Nissan Juke, pictured there on the right. We already had a Nissan Pathfinder for bigger family trips, so this is a little town car that can hold four people in a pinch but I think is really intended for two. It has AWD, too, something I pretty much insist on these days, as well as a sunroof and a great sound system. While we bought our Subaru Forester new, I’m a big believer in buying slightly used cars, so someone else pays for the steep depreciation that cars see in those first few years. 

Kids are looking forward to going back to school in a few weeks, such as it is. It looks like it will be almost completely online. I’m typing this on the new flagstone patio I put in over the summer in the backyard. Rosie, our now fourteen-week-old Irish Setter, is sitting at my feet on a beautiful summer morning. The vet cautioned us not to take her off the property much until her series of shots are finished, so we’ve been settling for lots of backyard play, but I’m looking forward to the two of us getting out for some long walks (and eventually hikes!) in the months and years ahead. 

I’ll end this with a recent shot of Rosie. Back before too long. Stay safe out there.

Meet My New Office Assistant: Rosie

I’m coming to end of the next Garrison Gage book, though my writing productivity took a bit of a hit the last few weeks. There’s a good reason for that. I took on a new office assistant, and I’ve had to spend quite a bit of time training her. You see, she’s not so good at typing, editing, filing, cleaning, or really anything most office assistants might do. But boy, is she cute. Her name is Rosie:

She’s a 10 week old Irish Setter. I think she’s about 15 pounds there, so as a female she’ll end up about four times that weight. When I started writing full-time, I promised Heidi and the kids we could get a new puppy. Belle, our Boston Terrier, is still with us, of course, though at 13 years old she’s starting to slow down quite a bit. Our first two dogs were both Humane Society mutts, usually the best kinds of dogs, but this time I had my heart set on an Irish Setter. When Heidi I visited Arlie Winery last summer, on one of our trips to the coast, the owners had a couple of sweet Irish Setters wandering around the property. I said that if we ever got another dog, I think that’s what I would want. My wife found a fantastic and very conscientious dog breeder up in Washington state, one who raised mostly Golden Irish, which are half golden retrievers and half Irish Setters, and for a while that’s the way we thought we were going, which would have been perfectly wonderful, but they ended up having a few pure Irish Setters available and it seemed like fate.

So after a quick, one-night trip to the Puget Sound area, which included a lovely stay just outside of Olympia and a near-perfect evening stroll through the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge, we returned home with a new member of our family. She’s been handful, of course, but as I told a fellow writer who said dogs were too high maintenance for him, and he’d stick with cats (we love cats too), dogs offer their own special kind of rewards usually commensurate with amount of attention and effort you give them.

I’ve never had a puppy before, so I’ve had to do a lot of reading. Even Belle was a year old when she came to live with us. So this has been quite the learning process. While Rosie has certainly thrown a wrench into my productivity lately (and just when I thought I was getting a handle on this whole full time writing thing), she’s also provided something more meaningful to focus on rather than … well, you know. It’s been a heck of a year, and we’re barely halfway through it. Stay safe out there. More soon.

New Book Published: THROWAWAY JANE (A Karen Pantelli Novel)

I hope everyone is doing all right during this trying time. My family’s health is good, the kids are adapting to online schooling, and most days I still manage to get in my daily words, which actually helps me focus on something other than the state of the world. I do think we’ll come out stronger on the other side of this thing, but it may be a pretty bumpy ride getting there.

If you’re looking for some fun escapism right now, please check out my new book THROWAWAY JANE. I’m very excited about this one, the first book featuring a kick-ass heroine named Karen Pantelli. Those of you who’ve read the Garrison Gage books may remember her, and our friend Gage even makes a brief appearance in this book. Karen was a character who stuck with me as soon as she appeared on the page. As you await the next Gage book (I’m working on that one now), I hope you’ll check out her first book length adventure. I had a blast writing it. More information below.

Stay safe, and thanks for reading! 

P.S. There is a little delay with the paperback, a slowdown in printing because of the pandemic, etc, but it should be available soon. The ebook is available from all retailers, however, so I didn’t want my most dedicated fans to have to wait.

Throwaway Jane
A Karen Pantelli Novel

Former FBI agent Karen Pantelli lives by a simple philosophy: never, ever care. Three years after a tragic mistake ends her once-stellar career, she drifts from one dead-end job to another, quickly moving on when she finds herself getting too attached. A new city. A new life. A new way of forgetting and being forgotten.

Until one chilly night behind a seedy bar, when a frightened girl leaps out of the back of a speeding van.
As they end up on the run in a thrilling chase that spans half the country, Karen soon realizes it’s much easier to say you don’t care than to actually mean it. And that unlocking the secrets in this girl’s extraordinary mind might not only save both of them, but bring down one of the most sinister organizations the world has ever known.  

“Carter’s writing is on target.”—Publishers Weekly

Ebook: Amazon | B&N | Kobo | iBooks | Google Play | Gumroad

Paperback: Amazon | B&N | Indiebound (Available Soon!)

Cover for First Karen Pantelli Book, and Thoughts on Writing in the Time of Coronavirus

That’s the cover on the right for Throwaway Jane, the first Karen Pantelli novel. The book is entering the production stage (copy edits, final proofreading, etc) and should be out in the world by mid-May.

I’ll have a book description soon, but for now I’ll just say that those of you who’ve read my Garrison Gage series may remember Karen as the FBI agent introduced in A Desperate Place for Dying and (after a tragic mistake compells her to leave the Bureau and become something of an aimless drifter) plays a more central role in The Lovely Wicked Rain. What happened to her the last couple years? What has she been up to? I wrote a book to find out, and I enjoyed it so much it’s a good bet I’ll be writing many more, assuming readers like her as much as I do. More detail soon.

Other updates? I’m about halfway done with next Garrison Gage book — who, by the way, has a cameo in Throwaway Jane. It’s relatively brief, but it definitely contains a few tantalizing hints of some changes in Gage’s life, changes that will definitely come to bear in his next adventure. More than that I can’t say, except I’m really putting him through the ringer this time, poor guy.

Nearly six months in to working as a full-time writer, I can’t decide if I’m working all the time or hardly working. Benefit of loving what you do, I guess. Even when it’s hard, it seldom seems like work. That’s not to say it’s always easy. I’ve had good days and bad days, productive days and not so productive days, especially considering the anxiety-inducing state of the world at the moment. Yet even on the toughest writing days, I still feel like I’m following my bliss, to paraphrase Joseph Campbell. That’s all I think you can ask for on a personal level as a human being, I think, to engage in work, hobbies, pastimes, whatever the case may be for each person, that provide you a gateway to a deeply meaningful life.

But the family’s healthy, which is the important thing, and life goes on as it must. With two teenagers in the house nearly all the time (like most of the world, their schools are now online), I guess it’s a miracle I’m sane at all, but we’ve actually had a lot of great conversations and lots of laughter, too. House and yard projects. Teaching my daughter to drive. Some drawing here and there, when I’m not writing. Binge-watching fun escapist television with my wife to forget about the world for a while (Hart of Dixie, I’m looking at you). Mostly, I stay busy. It’s spring here in the Willamette Valley, lush and beautiful and what I always consider a reward for our long, gray, drizzly winters (which I actually don’t mind all that much — they drive out the Californians who dabble with retiring here).

The flowering plum trees outside my office are in full bloom, and on windy days their petals cover the sidewalks like pink snow. It’s a reminder to appreciate beauty wherever you find it.

The World’s Gone Crazy, So Here’s a Picture of Ducks (and a brief update)

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, the world’s gone a bit nuts lately, so I thought I’d start with a picture of some ducks. Just because. Who doesn’t like a picture of ducks? It was taken by my daughter a few days ago, when we took a long bike ride down to the river, passing through a number of parks along the way.

We’re engaging in good social distancing practices, which are getting easier and easier to do as Oregon continues to close up shop and the whole world tries to fight its way through the COVID-19 pandemic. I truly hope all is well with you and yours. We’re healthy here, which is the important thing.

It’s pretty clear that disasters like this one bring out both the best and the worst in humanity. Fortunately, I think we’re seeing more of the former than the later. If nothing else, it’s proving what a tightly interconnected world we live in now. There really is no pretending otherwise, and as we come through this thing, I hope it’s a lesson we carry forward. As a species, we’ve got some big challenges ahead of us.

I’ve been fairly silent online, but mostly that’s because I’ve channeled that energy into full-time writing. How’s it going, you might wonder? Four months in, I still feel like I’m trying to get the right balance to things, and of course the last month or so the extra pandemic-induced anxiety made getting into that creative space especially difficult. Seems like a pretty small problem in the grand scheme of things, no? But most days, I get in my ten pages. (In fact, the sign over my writing computer is pretty simple: “1) Write 10 pages. 2) Everything else.”) I was beating myself up a few months back, because my process seems to take longer than I’d prefer, but then I stumbled across a post by Nora Roberts, the world’s bestselling romance writer, and the next day reread parts of Stephen King’s On Writing, a man who, at his best, I consider our modern day Charles Dickens, and realized that my mutli-phase process, such as it is, is somewhere between the two of them. And if it’s good enough for Roberts and King, well, that’s pretty good company to be in.

In the end, as I’ve gotten older, I do think most writers have no idea, really, how they do what they do. That includes me. We just make up little stories about our processes after the fact. Like all good fiction, sometimes these stories have an element of truth to them, and you can certainly learn plenty from storytelling giants like Roberts and King trying to make sense of their craft, but I wouldn’t take what any writers say about how they do what they do too seriously.

For me, writing is still done one word a time. Describing it as anything else is like trying to explain a rainbow to a four-year-old. Either you get too metaphysical and sound like an idiot. Or you get too scientific and rob the rainbow of all its mystery.

I’ve mostly finished one book that’s just starting into production, the first Karen Pantelli novel. If you don’t remember Karen, she appeared at the end of A Desperate Place for Dying and more fully in The Lovely Wicked Rain, as a love interest of Garrison Gage and as an erstwhile FBI agent who’s coming to terms with a terrible mistake. You won’t need to read those books to enjoy this one, but it will give you a glimpse into her character. I’d always wanted to write a drifter-type character at novel length, but I didn’t realize that’s what I had until I started writing her story. One writer friend of mine pointed out that I essentially came up with my own variation of Jack Reacher, but I have to admit, as much as I’ve enjoyed many of the Reacher novels, that never occurred to me as I was writing her story. When Karen walked onto the stage, I just wanted to find out more about her. I hope my readers feel the same.

More on Karen Pantelli soon, as I’m still awaiting feedback from some of my first readers and the book goes into full production (copy editing, proofing, design, etc). Wrote a few short stories between books, some of which sold and I’ll announce down the line when they appear. And for you Garrison Gage fans, yes, I’m well into the next book now, so hopefully it won’t be too long. My production has definitely increased dramatically, but it may be a year before it’s obvious to anyone else but me. The Run of the House comic is still on hiatus, as I try to figure out what I want to do with it, but I’ve got some ideas. It’s back to that balance issue. I’ve been trying to come up with a “unifying principle,” some kind of approach or process (ah, that word again!) that creates a structure that works for me and creates some extra motivation. Toying with a few ideas. We’ll see.

For now, take care of yourselves!

Fall 2019 Update: Now Writing Full Time and Other News

I don’t want to bury the lead, so I’ll start off with the biggest news: As of November 4th, I’m now a full-time writer.

After nearly 20 years at the university, it finally seemed like the right time. I’ve been self-employed before — I owned a bookstore for a few years in my late twenties — so being self-employed is not completely new to me, but this is the first time I’ve been a full-time writer. My commute is now thirteen feet, bedroom to office. My coworkers are very quiet . . . except when they’re cleaning their paws.  In the picture above, you can see one of them, Paisley, sitting in my office recliner. Er, I mean, on my office recliner.

What does it mean for my readers? Well, the books should come a lot faster now. I won’t be writing any faster, mind you, or at least I don’t intend to. I’m just going to be spending a lot more hours at it rather than getting up at the crack of way-too-early to get in my pages before heading off to the day job. I have a good sense of what kind of pace is sustainable for me long term, but we’ll see how it goes. So far, so good. I’ve been hitting my quota, getting in my daily words on another book. I know if I get that right, I can figure out the rest. 

And what is that book? Well, I’m working on a spin off character from the Garrison Gage series right now — someone who appeared in a couple books and deserves her own series. (That’s enough of a clue. You’ll have to wait until I’m done for more.) After that, I’d like to jump right back to Gage for the seventh book in that series. And then? Well, I have a lot of ideas.

Speaking of ideas, what about the comic? Now that I don’t have that pesky day job, will be I be publishing Run of the House more frequently? Well, we’ll see. For now, I continue to publish the cartoon strip every Wednesday over at http://www.runofthehouse.net. I’m going to reassess my plans with it down the road a bit, after I’ve settled into my new routines, but I fully intend to keep it going. It appeals to a different part of my creative makeup, one I’d let go dormant for far too long.

Oh, in other news, Bury the Dead in Driftwood, the sixth Garrison Gage book, is now available in audio. You can find it on Audible and on iTunes, narrated by the wonderful Steven Roy Grimsley, who has narrated all of the Garrison Gage and Myron Vale books. If you like listening to audio books, as I do, please check it out.

It’s
a gray and drizzly November day here in Oregon. In other words, perfect writing
weather.  Time to get back at it.