Trey Stone's Blog, page 11

It’s Indie April!

Celebrate your favorite independent creators and creatives this month – Indie April is here!

I’m not sure how it started – I always thought it had to do with indie authors on Twitter wanting to celebrate their hard work and shine a light on the lesser known creatives and their art, but for some reason the all mighty internet isn’t giving me a definitive answer.

Anyway, the point is simple – in April we celebrate indie creators (be it authors, musicians, filmmakers, painters, wood carvers, or whomever) and post about, discuss, buy and share their work!

Seeing as I’m an author myself, I figured I’d share some of my favorite indie books:

One Hand to Hold, One Hand To Carve by M. Shaw

A delightfully weird and horrifying novella that recently game out through independent publisher, Tenebrous Press. I read this just a few weeks ago and I’d recommend it to anyone who’s a lover of weird, strange tales that make you question everything. Oh, and horror.

The Fall by S. T. Campitelli

One of the first indie books I ever wrote and an absolute gem if you like post-apocalyptic survival thriller. This one is set in Australia and follows a group of people struggling for survival – and all that comes with it. Highly recommended.

Dark of Winter by Christopher Percy

If you like dark, dreary fantasy stories then this is the book for you. I remember being blown away by this one and I’m sure you will be too. It’s like if Game of Thrones was a fairy tale and a nightmare at the same time.

Of course, I would love it if you picked up my own books. My latest, the psychological thriller At The Gate, a story about a man down on his luck who found himself trapped in a weird hotel with strange guests can be found right here, or on Amazon, if you prefer.

If you prefer crime thrillers, my Columbus Archives books can be purchased here. And here’s a secret – for free: the third one is right around the corner.

You can always check out all my books here and all my short stories here.

And one last thing, in the spirit of Indie April – if you do decide to check out some lesser known books, listen to an unknown musician, or buy that piece of art you’ve been eyeing on Instagram for a while – please, leave a review if you can. It helps the creator more than you can imagine.

It’s All Coming Together

It’s been an exciting six months. We’ve moved house — from a small, modern apartment to something bigger and older —and though we love it, it comes with a lot of things that take up a lot of time. Just when you’re finished moving all your stuff in, you realize you have to start doing and fixing things to make the place truly yours.

Those things often make you feel like you don’t have time for anything else. I felt like there were whole weeks where I hardly managed to keep up on any of my routines, other than going to work and sitting down in front of the TV to eat at night.

At the same time, my wife and I have very busy lives with more than a couple of interests that are entirely separate from each other, so the little time we had to work on personal endeavors and projects were often spent alone.

Yet somehow, things are happening. I’m working on revising a project after feedback from a potential publisher, and I’m very excited to finally be realizing this. The whole idea was born in a grocery store in Finland while on vacation, and it’s one the most clearest times an idea has just fallen into my head, almost complete from start to finish.

I’m also waiting to hear back about two things that are in the works, both of which should be out this year, and I’m very excited to hopefully soon be able to share something new with all my reader. Something’s happening, just you wait.

This year has also seen me return to the stage as a heavy metal guitarist. Music and guitars have been close to my heart since my early teens, but other than a handful of gigs here and there it’s been almost 15 years since the last time I played with a band. Well, now I’m back at it and it amazing. We have great chemistry, we put on an awesome show, and we write great music together!

I’m also planning on releasing some of my own music, where I write, play and sing together with a couple of my oldest friends – and I can’t wait to get it out there.

But at the same time, it often feels like I’m standing still and that nothing ever moves forward. That it’s all too much and that I’ll never see the end. So what I guess I’m saying is this:

Don’t just celebrate the wins. They’re often too far in between. Instead, take a moment to breathe in the small steps and the little milestones. That’s how you measure real progress.

Book Review: One Hand to Hold, One Hand to Carve by M. Shaw

What an exquisitely strange type of horror.

Shaw has created something delightfully strange and haunting with this novella – as it starts off with two halves of a corpse waking up together in a morgue. They don’t know why or how, or what has happened to them – all they know is that they’ve only got each other to figure it out.

It’s a weird start to a story by any measure, but I got more intrigued by every turn of the page as the brothers, as they coin themselves, try to figure out what’s what. Shaw uses a delicate and nuanced language, poetic and lyrical at times in a way that serves to elevate the novellas mystique.

I loved that the book would take us from utterly unbelievable and supernatural events in one moment to mundane activities without anything in between. The two half-brothers (pun very much intended) would be hopping around on one leg each wondering how they’re alive, then taking the bus to work because even half-people need to earn money. What the h*** is going on, Shaw?!

It gets stranger and builds and builds until the very end, and you’re not going to be able to put this down. I had to take some extended lunch break at work because I was reading this. If there was anything I’d want to be different, it might just be that I’d want the ending to give me a little bit more, to reveal a little extra. But that’s just me being demanding.

This novella is published by Tenebrous Press, an independent publisher who has made it their mission to publish delightfully strange and horrifying things. I’ve read an anthology they published a while back and it’s just as brilliant as this.

If you like stories that are different with a capital D and you like weird, strange things that make you wonder what’s what, then this book is definitely for you.

What have you been reading lately? Anything weird? Let me know in the comments!

Do you ever just… Sit?

Okay, I’ll be honest: the title as an attempt at saying something particularly profound, but at the same it means exactly what it says.

Do you ever just sit? Just sit perfectly still, staring into nothingness, letting your thoughts wander? Watching as the world goes by without you as you deliberately sit there and do nothing?

You probably don’t. And even if you do, you probably don’t do it enough.

I’m in a hotel room. I’m away for work for a few days, with a colleague who’s in another hotel room, and I’m just sitting here. Or, well, I was for a while. Right now I’m typing this – as a response to just sitting there for a while, but for a while I was in fact just sitting there.

You see, I was contemplating what to do. Whether I should go outside for a walk, call someone, read a book, do some pushups, watch TV, play a game on my phone, or write.

My laptop was right next to me and the book I’m reading is currently resting on the empty side of my bed. My plan when I knew I was coming here was to get a lot of reading done (because you know, who doesn’t want to get an evening or to off from the world with nothing to do but read?)

But I realized I didn’t even want to do that, at least not right now. I didn’t want to write either, even though I brought the very laptop I’m writing this blog post on right now for that very purpose, and I do in fact have a very cool project I’m revising after some editorial feedback I received a few weeks ago.

Yet, I found myself just… sitting. At first it felt like I was just postponing making a choice. Like I didn’t know where to start or what I wanted to do and that I was wasting time by not getting to it. Then, I realized, that just sitting is a thing to do as well.

Just sitting and thinking (or not thinking, if that’s what you prefer), and it made me feel good. Made me feel content about all the things I wasn’t doing (for some weird reason), because maybe I was glad that I had them to do at all. I sat there, thinking that I had all these thing on my mind, and it gave me a kind of purpose.

…And also maybe I fell asleep a little bit.

I don’t know if I’m explaining this very well and I didn’t intend for it to come across as some kind of meditative, self-help, nonsensical spiral of weirdness. I guess I just realized that it’s okay not to try and do all the things all the time – and not just because you’re procrastinating, but because you choose to not do them. On purpose. And then I realized that I had to write all of this down and I stopped just sitting and found my laptop.

But honestly, I guess it’s because I’m constantly chasing that next thing I feel like I should be doing, because it’s only when I’m doing things I’ve convinced myself are important that I feel like I have purpose and meaning, and I know I’m not the only one who feels like that.

So the next time you’re wondering what do to, remember what I said, and remind yourself that it’s okay just to sit there sometimes. Just for a while.

Book Review: Tress Of The Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson

Not only the most successful kickstarter ever – also the best Sanderson book I’ve ever read.

Okay – first things first, I’ve only read three and that’s including this one. I read Skyward first and I recently finished the first installment in the Mistborn series. Both great fantasy/science fiction books that I’d recommend to any lover of the series.

Skyward was the only one I had read by the time I saw the Kickstarter for Tress, but that was enough for me to get onboard. If you’re not aware, Tress and The Emerald Sea is the first in four unnamed projects that Sanderson released as a Kickstarter – a campaign that turned out to be the most successful kickstarter in history, raking in over $40 million.

I only went for the ebook option, which means I’ll receive a new book every quarter this year. If they’re all as good as Tress, then I’m very excited.

Tress and The Emerald Sea is a fantasy, set in space, with a decent mix of steampunk and pirate adventure. Ever seen the Disney version of Treasure Island? Yeah, it’s very much like that.

And it’s amazing! It’s a fun, wholesome kind of adventure, but it’s also scary and brutal at times. We follow Tress, a young girl who leaves her safe homestead to go out and save the boy she loves and ends up sailing the spore seas in the process. If all of that didn’t make sense, I guess you need to read the book. (That thing about spores is a particularly cool piece of world building!)

Sanderson’s strength is as always the world building, and I think he did an exceptional job in this. I didn’t realize the Cosmere series (which Tress is a part of) wasn’t a new series, so I guess he’s had some time to work on this, but nevertheless – it’s really, really good. I loved reading about Tress’ adventures, and though I doubt the next book in the campaign is going to follow the same characters, I really hope so.

My point is: I really like this book and would recommend it to anyone. If you haven’t already read Sanderson, but was planning to, I’d suggest starting with this book.

But can you? I’m not sure if this book is going to be available beyond the Kickstarter, so unless you can somehow contribute to that now and get all the four mystery projects that way, I’m not sure you’re going to be able to get your hands on this. Though, with the success he’s had, I imagine they’ll want to make these books available for everyone else eventually.

What about you, did you sign up for the Kickstarter? I’ve heard the hardcovers are absolutely gorgeous, and I bet you’re just as excited about the next book as me!

As always – let me know in the comments. I’d love to hear from you.

You Can’t Do It All

There’s something incredibly rewarding about feeling like you can do it all.

I’ve felt that feeling recently, I’ve lbeen living that life. I’ve been doing it all – writing, reading, working, training, socializing, recording music, fixing up my house – and I’ve felt like an absolute super villain on a quest for power, a quest that delivered exactly what was promised. That rush is amazing. (Am I saying I could be a super villain? Maybe. I do like mysterious jewelry).

But it doesn’t last. You don’t need twenty-twenty-hindsight-x-ray vision to see that there’s no way a life like that can last. Honestly, it’s so obvious even from the start that living like this is going to be incredibly draining, it’s not even funny. I spread myself so thin Hollywood was only days away from selling it as the next fad diet.

Because you can’t gain something without giving something in return – fans of Fullmetal Alchemist will know what I’m talking about, it’s basically the law of equivalent exchange. If you’re suddenly doing something, or gaining something new, you’re either putting in time, energy or, *cue ominous music*, something else.

For me, it’s always sleep that’s the price. Sleep and rest. I’ll be fine the first few days of doing it all, feeling like I’m on top of the world and doing great, then I’ll find myself not getting enough rest, feeling tired, and never sleeping enough. Sooner or later, I’ll find myself never being able to feel rested and I’ll be walking around in a daze.

It all hit me the day before yesterday – which was when I decided to write this little blog post – when I almost feel asleep while walking!

If that isn’t a sign, then not even an octagonal metal plate on a seven foot pole could make it more obvious to me.

I guess this post is mostly a remainder to myself, but knowing how creative people like myself tend to get, I imagine more people than me needs to hear this: you can’t do it all. So don’t. Take care of yourself and give yourself time rest.

The Best Podcast You’ve Ever Heard + Book Review: Funny You Should Ask by the QI Elves

I had to look it up and apparently it’s been nine years ago that a colleague introduced me to my favorite podcast ever: No Such Thing As A Fish.

If you’re not familiar It’s a podcast made by the people behind the British quiz show QI and it’s basically just a show about fact. Each week the four hosts take turns presenting facts they’ve been researching and it’s not only super interesting, but also often hilarious and very entertaining. So when I heard they wrote a book, I jumped at the chance.

Funny You Should Ask is just what it sounds like – the ‘QI Elves’ as they style themselves take turns answering questions sent to them by… The public I guess, or listeners to the podcast or… Someone? Anyway – it’s awesome, it’s fun, it’s super educational and it’s just great. It’s a perfect little side dish to the podcast.

And the podcast is fantastic too. I love learning things, especially little weird facts that you probably won’t use for anything other than tell them to other people and pretend you know things – and No Such ThIng is perfect for that. Also, it’s very easy listening, just like this book. I listen to a lot of podcasts and audiobooks when I’m at work and if they’re too exciting I can’t pay attention (to either the podcast or the work). That’s not a problem with this, you can zone out and in again, and feel like you haven’t lost anything.

So, are you convinced yet? Go listen to No Such Thing As A Fish and this book, then come back here and tell me all about it!

What’s your favorite podcast? I’m always looking for new ones – let me know in the comments!

Book Review: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson

It’s almost as perfect as everyone says it is.

Brandon Sanderson is kind of a mythical author to me, one of those that if you read just a little bit of fantasy here and there and discuss a book now and then, his name will eventually pop up. I don’t remember when I first heard of him, but when I did I knew I had to read him.

The mistborn series was always on my list, even though I read Skyward first, a few years back when it first came out. I liked it and it was a good introduction to Sanderson’s style and writing. If anything, it served to convince me more that I needed to read the mistborn series.

I usually keep at least three books going at a time: one ebook on my phone, one physical book next to my comfy chair at home, and one audiobook for when I’m on the go. The Final Empire felt like a perfect book to listen to, so when my audible credits started piling up during a particularly busy period last year, I used the chance to grab it.

The premise Immediately hooked me. A class of enslaved people rise up against their tyrannical rulers, planning to overthrow the elite and reclaim their magical homeworld. The perfect fantasy setting.

Sanderson’s biggest strengths is in his world building. Everything is perfectly planned out, from the social hierarchy, to the way the magic system works. The ancient histories of his world, the religion, the fantastical creatures that roam the mists… It’s all brilliant. It’s the kind of stuff that makes you want to go live there, that makes you wish there was an online roleplaying game, or a 12-season long TV series you could binge somewhere. Oh well, for all we know that might be in the works.

The plot is great too, don’t get me wrong. Sanderson weaves an intricate and exciting story, all of which wanted me to see it through to the end, but… It got a bit boring during during the middle parts, right? Maybe it was the pace, maybe it was the fact that it was an audiobook, maybe it was me, but I just wanted it to move faster. Of course much of the plot deals with political conspiracies and working-in-the-shadows type stuff, which naturally moves a bit slow, but still. Good start, good ending, slogging middle.

I haven’t picked up the second book yet, because I’m not entirely sure if I’m sold on the series and I have too many books waiting to be read anyway. But I hate staring series and not finishing them, so if I know myself as well as I think I do, I’ll probably read them all.

So in short, if you happen be looking for a new favorite fantasy series set in an incredibly captivating world, you probably can’t go wrong with this.

Have you read this or anything else by Brandon Sanderson? What did you think? Let me know in the comments!

First Read of The Year! – Book Review: Her Last Wish by Blake Pierce

Welcome to 2023, friends! It’s time for writing, reading, and doing reviews, so here’s my first of the year.

We went traveling during the holidays and I knew I needed something on my phone to read on the flight. This practically jumped at me as soon as I logged on to browse for books and it sounded right up my alley. My first—but probably not last —Blake Pierce book!

Rachel Gift is a highly skilled FBI agent – who during an attempt to set a new personal (and all time) record on a Bureau training course, experiences pains and blurred vision that make her fall to the ground. Record attempt ruined.

She visits a doctor and received a terrible diagnosis, one so devastating she can’t really find a way to bring it up with her family. And before she even finds time to, her and her partner Ryan are thrown into a murder investigation.

Two women at opposite sides of town have been found stabbed to death – and it looks like the killer isn’t done with just the two of them.

Honestly, this the kind of crime thriller mystery that hooks me every time. It’s like watching a good episode of Law and Order or Criminal Minds. On the surface it’s so simple, there’s a crime happening and we have to find the one who’s responsible, but it just works, every, single, time!

Pierce writes with a pace and rhythm that won’t leave you hanging, yet he finds time to elaborate on the finer points and build enough of a backstory that you feel like you’ve lived this universe your whole life. I looked up Pierce after I finished this and he’s written an impressive amount of books and built up quite a few series. If you’re looking for mystery thrillers that will keep you entertained for months on end, Blake Pierce might be your guy!

I like books like these as a kind of palette cleanser between other reads. Sure, it is its own unique story, but it’s familiar and recognizable, and you know what you’re getting into. Right now I’m also reading Ken Follett’s Pillars Of The Earth, as well as Brandon Sanderson’s The Final Empire, and this is a nice little breather. There’s no massive character gallery or a convoluted conspiracy, it’s just a good ol’ crime mystery.

If you’re into this kind of thing, I suggest you give my own series crime thrillers a try, The Columbus Archives. Both A Consequence of Loyalty and A State of Despair are available as ebook and paperback, and they can be read in any order!

What are you reading at the start of the year? Something you’ve been planning to find time for for ages? Or something you picked up on a whim on your way through an airports? Let me know in the comments!

The End Of The Year!

Wait, it’s all over? Already? What happened to 2022?

It’s been a strange year. I feel like it started off so slow, with me not really knowing what I wanted or where I was going with it all, and now, twelve months later, so much has changed.

I spent 2019-2021 living in an Arctic peninsula and though I had settled in back home at the start of the year, it didn’t take me long before I ended up going back. I spent four months there last summer, worked at an awesome job, ran an ice cold marathon, and simply had an incredible adventure.

Though I try to keep writing a little bit all the time, it wasn’t until after the summer that I really kicked my creative endeavours into high gear. My latest novel, the psychological thriller At The Gate was published in September, and I published a short story with Dark Recesses Press. Right before Christmas I also sold a short story to an anthology that will see the light of day in the first half of 2023 and I couldn’t be more thankful. This year I’m looking forward to publishing the next book in The Columbus Archives, and I’ve written for a fiction podcast that I can’t wait to share with you all.

But it’s not just my writing that’s progressed—I’ve also spent a lot of time developing my music, playing a few gigs last year and getting ready to record some of my own music with a couple of my best friends. I’ve also joined a heavy metal band as a rhythm guitarist and 2023 is going to be very exciting—there’s already a handful of gigs lined up.

Most of incredible of all however was that my wife and I finally found our dream house. 2022 might have started off slow, but the end of the year rushed past in a chaotic mess as we bought a home, sold our apartment, moved out, moved in with my in-laws, moved out from my in-laws, and barely managed to get into the new house right before Christmas. We just managed to get everything unpacked in time for a nice Christmas Eve dinner. Best gift we could ever wish for.

Now we’re settling in and I’m looking forward to writing and creating new stories in our new place.

I hope you’ve all had a great 2022 and I wish you an even better 2023!