Matthew Cesca's Blog, page 2

Five Years an Author

Celebrating the 5th Bookiversary of The Stairs in the Woods

Life has a way of making choices for you. You may have your own dreams of who you want to be, but the world is under no obligation to take that into account. For instance, I wanted to grow up to be the rhythm guitarist for a metal band. Turns out, my hands have certain limitations with regard to that particular talent. I can only play so well, and I've long come to terms with that fact. But in a strange way, my love of music prepared me for the passion I never knew I had: writing.

See I never dreamed of being an author when I was a kid. Not seriously anyway. I toyed with the idea when I was in high school and enamored with every Stephen King novel I could get my hands on. But like a kid can be prone to do, I moved on to other obsessions - particularly with music. I had started guitar lessons my freshman year of high school, and was possibly the okayist guitarist I knew.

But come the summer before my junior year I responded to one of those old pull paper tag ads at the local music shop where my lessons were for a local band looking for a guitarist. The next two years I poured my heart and soul into a garage band with overly large dreams. It was an interesting mix of kids who all loved different styles of music. Mash us together and you got quite the conglomeration of sound. And while I enjoyed my part in the band those two years, it was certainly a bit part. I wasn't writing any of the riffs or lyrics; I wasn't doing any of the musical arrangement, though I did write my own parts. That all came from our bassist and lead singer. When I did try to introduce any of my own stuff to him, I got a little more than a shrug out of him. While we were all "in the band," it was clearly "his band."

When I moved on to college and met other people I had the opportunity to play with, I found people with more common musical tastes to my own. And when I introduced them to the riffs I had written, they immediately started bouncing ideas off me. And when they introduced stuff to me, I did the same. It became a collaberation rather than a dictatorship.

This is where I finally got a chance to write. I wrote most of the band's lyrics, though if other members had a line that was better than what I wrote I was quick to interate it. I did most of the arrangement, as I do have a knack for that. And about half of the riffs were mine. They weren't always the most technically challenging, but they complimented what others brought to the table.

When I left college, I left a lot of that behind. I still played and wrote music for my own enjoyment, but the dreams of making it big in rock and roll were long gone. I had entered the real world out of necessity, and I put a lot of myself on hold in order to survive. Add in the eventual marriage and child, and it's incredibly easy to forget about who you are in service to that family.

But what happens then when that family falls apart? What happens when you've poured so much of yourself into something that's broken and forgotten about who you are? These were the questions that lead me to sitting down one day and writing what I thought at the time was just a little bit of therepy. It was a scene about a woman coming home from the other side of the country to take care of her dying father, and that one last good day before the all too awful end. I pulled a lot of inspiration from my personal life as Kaitlynn's father was dying of cancer--a disease that has taken far too many people from my life. And as the story expanded, I poured in the grief from the loss of my marriage, as well as the grief I had never truly faced when my own parents split up.

For those of you that have read my first novel The Stairs in the Woods, you know what happened next. I took this story of grief and this woman being at her lowest point in life and turned it into a story about finding who she really had been that whole time. In a strange way the story mirrored my own tale--I was rediscovering myself along the way. The creative part of me had been there all along lurking under the surface and dying to be released once more.

That's not to say I hadn't done any writing or used any of my creative energy in the years between. I ran my fair share of table top role playing games for friends. I wrote articles for a pair of small video game websites. But until I sat down and wrote The Stairs in the Woods, I had never believed that I could have been an author--even though there had been people in my life telling me that I should do just that. I didn't believe it until I did it. And when I hit publish on August 14th of 2018 (5 years ago yesterday) I still had no idea of the journey that waited ahead of me all these years later.

And it's fair to say I made my share of mistakes along the way. The book's first cover was not my idea of what I would have ever wanted, but it was the best I could do with Amazon's free creation tools. My second cover was a lot better and the sales came with it, though the more I've learned about this industry the more I've come to believe that it's still not exactly to the professonal level I really want.

[image error][image error]

That's why Stairs will be getting a cover refresh sometime next year. I've already gotten in touch with a cover artist I've been wanting to work with for quite a while and I can't wait to see what they come up with. I hope this will be the first of many projects we work on together, not just on new books like The Shadow Sisters, but on refreshes of old covers as well.

But for today, the point is that this is the book that got it all started. It's the reason I'm here today with five novels out in the world and why I have even more of them to come. In the midst of the worst time in my life, I found myself--just like Kaitlynn did. And if this story does nothing else for those who dare to finger its pages, I hope that the key takeaway for readers is that it's never too late to become who you always should have been.

Chase your dreams.

Pulling the Strings

There's no right way to write

"I've got no strings

To hold me down

To make me fret, or make me frown

I had strings

But now I'm free

There are no strings on me"

-Pinocchio (or Ultron, take your pick)

Everyone has seen writing advice online, be it on Twitter, TikTok, or some half-baked article or blog like this one (I'll leave it up to you to decide how half-baked my ideas are). And to be fair, lot of that advice is good.

But some of it... whoa boy. It's bad. Really, really bad.

Often the worst advice is any advice that includes the word "must." And I say this because I'm a firm believer that so long as your writing process is working for you, it is valid no matter what anyone else says about it. And just because your process works for you, that doesn't mean it will work for anyone else. Which is why you;ll never see my telling you how you should write.

But it occured to me that I haven't really told you how I write. And if my process can help any fledgling writers out there, then I might as well put it out there. So take all this with the grain of salt that it is intended to come with and prepare for the wild ride that is my mind. Keep your hands inside the cart at all times.

Like all things in nature, writing processes come on a broad spectrum. The two endpoints of the line in this business tend to be labled as "Plotter" or "Pantser." As I've mentioned a few times before, I fall heavily into the latter catagory. And while I'm happy to admit that plotting out an entire story before putting pen to paper or finger to keyboard is a fully valid form of writing, I absolutely, possitively cannot do it. There's some sort of mental block that makes it impossible. I feel like I'm wasting time when I could just be telling the story in the first place.

Now, some might argue that a rough draft is basically just a more fleshed out outline. And that's true. But as I mentioned in my last blog, I don't think I've ever actually turned in a rough draft of anything in my life. If anything, my writing process looks like this:

That doesn't mean that there isn't some sort of method to my madness. One can't just sit down and start writing a 100K word novel without something to work with. We all need an idea--some sort of spark with which to light the flame. For me, that usually begins with a character and a scenario. Using my last release The Miranda Project as an example, I had a character named Alex who had the training of a Jason Bourne and the superpowers of Nightcrawler from the X-Men. Add in the fact that he was on the run like Bourne was with a sprinkling of the Psi-Corps from Babylon 5, and I had something to work with.

From there it was simply a matter of crafting the story around the idea. Add in a failing Mars colony, some space hopping around the solar system, a love interest, and a bad guy with the single-minded focus of tracking Alex down, and now I've got a story. But unlike how a plotter can then sit down and plan every nuance of their story out before they start writing it, I work the opposite way. I sit down, start at the beginning, and start typing.

And unlike some authors who can jump around and write scenes out of order, I cannot. See, for me the characters are more important than the plot. In order to feel invested in a story, I need to believe in the characters. So when I write, I want them to get the their destinations naturally as opposed to sticking a fishhook in their mouths and pulling on the line. The secret to a great puppet show is to never let the audience see the strings. You want them to believe the puppets are real--that the characters are real. When I start trying to force things to fit a predetermined plot, the illusion fades. The strings are laid threadbare and torn.

So when I said earlier that I "start at the beginning," I meant that literally. I may go back and insert a scene in if I think of it later. In fact I went back and added a prologue to my current work in progress after I'd already written over 75K words. But for my brain to piece a story together, I need cause and effect. This happens, so that happens. Specifically, this happens so the characters react this way.

Despite being a chronic underwriter, my drafts usually come out fairly clean. The whole idea of a "word vommit" draft just doesn't work for me. And that's because I break another rule that a lot of writers tell you that you must never do: I edit as I go. For me, I need each paragraph to feel done in order to move on to the next one. This means I may type out a paragraph, check it for structual issues, and then spend five minutes adding details to keep from having that dreaded white room syndrome. In fact, this is often where I spend the majority of my time when doing revisions after my draft is done.

Well, that and erasing all those extra commas that my editor points out. I am getting better at that though.

Once I have a finished draft, I don't do another full draft like some authors do. Because I edit and revise as I go, I often keep myself from having too many plot holes--or at least ones that I can fix fairly easily. That doesn't mean that at some point that won't happen, just that to this point it hasn't. But instead of rewriting the entire thing, I go through and revise. I'll change a sentence here or there to take out passive language and crutch words. I'll make sure I have enough details that incorporate all of the five senses.

Once I'm satified that I've improved my manuscript as much as I can without devine intervention, I send it off to my editor. And at this point, I usually start working on something else so that I don't have time to think about whether or not it's currently being ripped to shreds. Once it comes back, I do another round of revisions based on my editor's "polite suggestions," and then send it back for a final proofread before sending it out to beta readers.

It should be noted here that four of my five published novels, and one of my two works in progress, all have women as their main characters. So my editor, and all of my beta readers are women. We've all seen those videos of male authors witing women poorly. And while I have no intent to ever write about how one of my character's breasts breasted breastily, I still find it's a good idea to have a perspective that differes from my own giving me feedback.

After I get my beta feedback, I make any adjustments that are necessary and then do another final proofread because I lied last time about that one being final. Then I get my cover art and formatting done before setting a release date, setting up a preorder, and holding my breath as I wait for the book to release. In truth, I could go on adjusting things in every story until the end of time. As a writer, I'm not sure any of my books are every finished I just finally reach the point where I am done-- or at least satisfied enough to let it out into the world.

And that's how I've gotten myself to where I am with five novels published and more on the way. My process is far from perfect and it evolves a little bit with each new project. But it works for me. For other writers, I'm sure that everything I just said sounds like absolute gibberish. And you know what? That's okay with me. If their process involves mood boards, playlists, and outlines, they're more than welcome to it. But those things just are not for me. That's the beauty of being a creative. We all get to our destinations by varying routes.

We can all learn a little bit from each other. And that's okay. But never force yourself to work in a way that doesn't work for you just because another author says you have to. Everyone's muse is beautiful and different in their own way. Follow yours.

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference."

-Robert Frost

Hitting The Wall

Juggling Mental Health and Self-Imposed Deadlines

There's a quote by Douglas Adams that has always really resonated with me.

No, not one of those.

Okay, well, yes those too. I mean my favorite number is 42. I've utterly devoured half of the Hitchhikers Guide series. Books by Douglas Adams make great little pallet cleansers between my more hefty reads. Same with Terry Pratchett and his Discworld novels. Anytime I finish something like the 1,100 page behemoth of a book I'm currently reading, The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss, I tend to go for something more humorous and snack sized as my next read. It's like a reset button for my brain.

But the quote I mean is this one:

The truth is, I don't work well on deadlines. I never have. My brain requires me to work on its own version of time. It's some sort of symptom of my anxiety and/or ADHD, I expect. I was always the kid in school who waited until the last minute to finish that project I'd known about for six weeks (sorry Mom). I don't think I have ever turned in a rough draft in my life. It's also probably why I can't outline or plot my books. I just sit down and wing it by the seat of my pants.

Well, if we're being honest (and we probably should be), when it comes to my writing I've always been somewhat sporadic. I know I've put out a book every year for five years straight from 2018-2022, but that was by accident moreso than by design. I'll write for months straight and then my brain will lock up for a time--usually in the summer. It's hot here in Arizona and I'm pretty sure seasonal depression works backwards from the rest of the world here. Add in the fact that it's been in the hundred and teens here for about three weeks straight, and it's fair to say I might be heading for another dry summer.

Unfortunately, this past year has been a struggle overall for me and my writing. It started last September with grief. Then a very difficult living situation came to a head earlier in the year, which then transitioned into a move that transferred my son out of his high school right before his Junior year. Mix in my aforementioned anxiety and ADHD, along with a fairly bad case of high-functioning depression, and my brain will not be quiet enough for me to focus on my writing nearly as much as I would like to.

Which brings us to deadlines--this time my own self imposed ones.

As I mentioned earlier, I have put out a book every year for the last five years. It's absolutely something to be proud of. However, it's also made me believe that I HAD to put out a book every year. And because I've been working on two projects and struggling with my mental health, the progress I had been making was minimal for the last few months.

However, I had already announced The Shadow Sisters for a late 2023 release. In an attempt to build up hype for a project that I hoped you would all love, I set myself a deadline that in my current mental state I simply cannot meet. The thing is, it's at 81K words, and it's nowhere near done. And I know this is a strange thing to say for a book that is already longer than one of my fully released novels and is quickly catching up to the rest of them, but it's also only about half-way through the story I want to tell. Here's the thing though. This doesn't feel like a story I can split up into a duology or a trilogy in a neat way that would satisfy readers. And frankly, I'd rather release one complete 180K work book than two incomplete 90K word books that feel like they should be glued together. I simply don't want to put my name to something I'm not proud of.

So we're pushing The Shadow Sisters back until late 2024. I'm still extremely excited to bring this story to you. But I want to make sure I do it the justice it deserves, because I love what I've got and where it's going.

So here's the updated teaser trailer to get your mouth watering:

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/4f12bd_480e93de715f4d38bcd9f3ce75cb2309/360p/mp4/file.mp4

The Shadow Sisters is the story of a young woman named Anjia who grew up in a small coastal village. She was chosen at the age of five to become one of the sisters of the Temple of Kyrsma, the Goddess of Life and Light. To be chosen is a great honor, but the Temple holds it's secrets close and she must prove herself in a final trial--a sword dance against a shadow demon called the Khimital. Should she fail the test, her life is forfeit. If she succeeds, Anjia must embark on a life of darkness and shadow--whether she wants to or not.

In addition to being a fantasy tale, it's also very much a personal horror story. Anjia's life is not going as planned. Everything she knows is a lie. And while she loathes what she has become, parts of her are embracing it. It's an interesting moral dilemma, and I'm truly enjoying exploring the darkness of this tale. However, when you're already in a dark place, sometimes it's not healthy to dive deeper. And that is why we are where we are, pushing this story's release back. It deserves to be told well, and I need to be in a healthy frame of mind to do just that. Which means that I need to be a bit more gentle with myself with trying to meet demands that I unnecessarily created of myself.

Needless to say, there will be many more updates to come with regard to The Shadow Sisters, be it with regard to my progress or lack thereof. I do feel like late next year is a realistic deadline for where I'm at, both with regard to this story and my own mental health. In the meantime, I look forward to sharing more about it all with you as soon as I can.

Cracks in the Foundation

The Broken State of Social Media--And My Brain

Breaking up is hard to do. Especially when you've been in a long term relationship. Everything becomes intertwined. You end up losing half your friend circle. Nothing about the experience is enjoyable. But sometimes a relationship becomes so toxic that you don't have much of a choice. You can continue dealing with the neglect or abuse, or you can move on and find healthier relationships elsewhere.

Yes. I'm talking about social media here. Because this is exactly how the last few months on Twitter has felt: like trying to get out of a bad relationship. I kept saying I was going to leave, and I kept staying. Why? Because I have a friend circle there. Because I need to market my books and I have a large following there. But it's reaching the point where I can no longer see the value of trying to save the relationship.

I assume I don't need to give too great of an explination. The news of Elon Musk's hostile yet utterly incompetent takeover of Twitter has been easy enough to follow. But if you need a primer of what's been going on, here you go. Feel free to read in your best movie trailer voice:

An aparthied era emerald mine heir with a lifelong false narrative of being a tech genius buys a social media platform, runs it into the ground, and turns it into a playground for nazis under the guise of "free speech."

Yeah. I think that more or less covers it. Feel free to add your own "IN A WORLD" at the beginning.

And if you know anything about me and my belief systems, you understand why I would find that problematic to say the very least. If you've read any of my books, you likely understand that the bad guys often have fascist tendencies.

For example, in my Forbidden Scrolls trilogy, the villain is Frost Dirvent. He comes from a city called Felbreach that treats all half elves, half orcs, and the like as second class citizens. Then more or less toss them into the slums to fend (or starve) for themselves. It's no surprise that Frost is also a necromancer. At the end of the day, the tale has a fairly straight-forward point: if you can debase any one group of beings based simply on their background, you can do it to any or all of them with little to no further regard. Evil begets evil.

In this case, the villain is Elon Musk. Of course, you would have a hard time convincing him of that. The same could be said about his hoarde of fanboys willing to fork over eleven dollars a month to a billionaire for features that were free for over a decade. And frankly, no matter how much I need social media to promote my books, I just can't justify staying on Twitter as it falls apart--all the while being consumed by accounts that are only there to spread hate or promote their glorious leader's false image of superiority. It's a disapointing situation to say the least when you've put a lot of time and effort into a thing and then have to watch it deteriorate. In this case, I spent years building up a following, networking with fellow authors, and becoming friends with people all over the world. As anyone who has ever been in a bad break up can tell you, it can be disheartening to have to start over. Now imagine having to find twenty-one-thousand people who are potentially intersted in your work all over again.

And to be fair, there's also a bit of a problem with the indie writing community on social media as a whole, but Twitter especially. It is somewhat insular. In our search to find readers, we all found each other--though most of us struggle to break outside of that bubble to truly reach our potential audience. We are a community, but we're also seperated by miles--be they only a couple, or a couple thousand. You get used to seeing each other on a daily basis, but when you have to uproot yourself and move to another social media platform you have to rebuild those relationships with new people while also trying to find all the people you've lost. And chances are, a great number of the people you've come to know and love are not even there when you arrive. We have all jumped ship to different new platforms. Some of us have already tried other platforms that have sprouted up and then failed to deliver. As if just trying to market our little book babies wasn't difficult enough without having to constantly change direction because some dipshit billionaire decided to uproot everything we've spent years to build up to turn it into their own personal playground.

It's enough to make someone like me question what I'm even trying to do here. I've made no secret about the fact the two projects I'm working on (The Shadow Sisters, and the follow up to The Miranda Project) have been particularly difficult for me. My mental health has been in the shitter again of late. And with summer in full swing here in Arizona featuring temperatures in the hundred and teens for a couple of weeks straight, I can feel the seasonal depression kicking in full throtle. I love these stories, but they're not coming easily right now. Mix in the added stress of basically having to recreate my circle of friends all over again and things have reach a state that is far beyond daunting.

And that leaves me facing this harsh reality: chances are I'm not putting out a book in 2023. If that turns out to be the case, it will be the first year since I started publishing my work that I don't have a new release coming out. It's just not flowing, and I have too many projects outside of the actual writing part of being an author that I just can't see how it's going to happen. That doesn't mean that I'm putting these books on the back burner, it just means that I'm forcing myself to be realistic about where I'm at with my own mental state, as well as the crumbling state of the social network I've spent years building.

So where am I now? Well, while I won't be posting there very much or at all anymore, I will be leaving my account up on Twitter. If people stumble across my work that way, so be it. I still have accounts on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and (though I rarely use it) Facebook. I've also added accounts on Threads and BlueSky Social. All of them will be available in my Linktree, and I'll keep the icons at the bottom of my website as updated as I can when icons and direct links become available--hopefully without all the social buttons down there taking over the entire site. It's becoming a thing.

So for now I'm gonna be taking things one day at a time. I've got 80K words of The Shadow Sisters out with my editor right now in an effort to clean it up a little bit before I jump back into it. I'm trying to rebuild a presence on two new social networks, but I'm going to take it slowly and hopefully find readers as well as fellow authors this time. And I need to start posting more content to both TikTok and YouTube. It's a lot, but it can be done if I focus on one thing at a time.

Ha. I have ADHD. No chance of that happening.

Three Years of Ruin

Celebrating Bookiversary Number Three for Redemption & Ruin

It's hard to believe that three years have passed since I released my third novel, ,Redemption & Ruin. This book had a lot to live up to in the wake of ,The Forbidden Scrolls, and in my opinion, it delivered. As much as I love the other two books in my ,Forbidden Scrolls trilogy, I still think this is the best of the bunch.

Why? Well, it's everything you want a middle act to be. It furthers the overall story, while having its own satisfying story arc. It introduces new characters and opens up new possibilities while tying up some loose threads. And it leaves you longing for the rest of the story without relying on a cliffhanger. And chances are, it probably leaves you hurting, because not everything goes the way the good guys are hoping it would. When you close the cover on Redemption & Ruin, you don't feel cheated--you want to know what happens next because the protagonists are at their lowest point. There's only one way things can go from here.

Or at least you hope so. There are no guarantees of a happy ending after all.

,Redemption & Ruin also contains some of my favorite locations in the entire series. The Crimson College was a joy to create, as was the puzzle within the Temple of Air. The same could be said of both the ruined temple in Necronis, as well as the frozen palace in Thea'Thal. In addition, Jozen's story arc is still one of my favorites of any side character from any of my books. His life was one raw deal after another, but in the end he regains his honor--albeit tragically.

Some of you may be asking, "How can we celebrate ,Redemption & Ruin's birthday with you?" Well, I have do a ,new Merchandise store. And I also have promotion codes of 10% off any ,drinkware item in the store. That includes everyone's favorite ",Write The Fucking Book Mug." This offer is valid through midnight Sunday, June 25th (Arizona time).

How do you get to be one of the lucky winners? Buy ,Redemption & Ruin (or ,any of my other books). Kindle, paperback, hardback, or even a signed copy straight from the Merch store are acceptable. Send me proof of purchase (just a screenshot of the receipt is fine) and I will give you the code. That's it. Simple. You get one of my books and you get some cool gear at 10% off.

As for what's going on here, I'm still working on ,The Shadow Sisters, as well as the follow up to ,The Miranda Project. I'm excited to bring both of these stories to you in time, as well as many more.

On The Move

Life Updates and Kitten Madness

So you may have noticed I've been a bit quiet of late. I wish I could say that it's because I've been writing, but that would have required the free time and mental capacity. It be like that sometimes. And with the Arizona summer seasonal depression about ready to kick in, I'm hoping that I won't disappear altogether. But it turns out, there's actually been a lot of change happening behind the scenes. And all in all, it's good stuff.

For one, I've moved! Not too far, just about an hour away from my old house--which my ex and I accepted an offer on last night only five days after listing it. The new place is very much more a home for me than my previous living situation, as I'm in with my girlfriend and editor, Vanessa Redmon. It's been a long time coming and we're looking forward to actually being able to see each other and be together every day.

Additionally, the assortment of cats that dominates has grown as we're currently taking care of four kittens until they are old enough to be adopted. Vanessa found them in our shed and couldn't help but take them in. I mean, can you blame her? They're adorable. They started off pretty scared of us, but the last couple weeks of socialization has done wonders with them all.

[image error][image error]

From left to right, that's April, Greyson, Charli, and Mason. Two boys and two girls. April--the calico--is staying with us. She's progressing faster than the other three, but they've made great strides in just the last few days. They are going to need good homes in a few weeks when they're old enough. It's going to be tough because we've already fallen in love with them. Merlin included, which was certainly reassuring when we took them in. Sadly, we can only afford so many cats.

But look at them. He's big brothering so well.

[image error][image error]

We had been considering getting Merlin a new brother or sister at some point since we lost Jasper back in September, but the time never felt right. We didn't want to feel like we were replacing Jasper. Clearly fate and feral kitten season have intervened.

And of course, I spent the last week preparing and adding products to my new merch shop. I posted a blog about that the other day. Here's the link in case you missed it.

Along with some other personal challenges (the nature of which I won't go into here), these things have taken up a lot of my time. And as one would expect, moving was an exceptionally stressful process.

Unfortunately, it has meant that I haven't made as much progress on The Shadow Sisters as I would like. I am, however, sitting at just under 80,000 words so far. So it's fair to say that it's progressing nicely. Still, this feels like it's going to end up being longer than any of my other books to date, so I may end up moving the expected release window into next year. That would mean that 2023 would be the first year since I published The Stairs in the Woods that I won't have a book out, so I'm hoping that's not the case.

I did just do a read through of what I have so far, and did some slight revisions while I was at it. The plan is to let my aforementioned editor take a look at what I have so far before I keep going just to make sure I'm on the right path. I'm feeling good about what I have, but it never hurts to get that outside perspective. And since it's been a couple of months since I've made any real progress on it, I'm hoping the fresh perspective with help get the juices flowing once more. In the meantime, here's the book trailer for The Shadow Sisters to get you hyped up for it:

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/4f12bd_9ca283176bdd44fab9d13d7504d4ac19/360p/mp4/file.mp4

Yes! Book trailers! I unlocked a new skill on my character sheet recently. I actually went to school for video editing back when video was called film, so I already understood the basics. So a couple months ago I made trailers for all of my books! They've been up on TikTok and Youtube for a while, but they're also on the front page of this website! They can be found right next to the newsletter signup--so, ya know, sign up while you're checking them out.

As for me, hopefully I'll be writing again soon. And I'm going to try and be more consistent about the whole blog and newsletter thing. As goes my mental health, so goes my productivity. So with all these changes, I believe we're heading to more good things ahead. Let's find out together...

New Merch Shop Launching Now!

Sometimes bad things actually do happen for a reason. Let me explain...

About two months ago, my merch store was closed down by RedBubble. I wasn't given any reason or warning for it being shut down, nor was my appeal even looked at by them. To say it was a frustrating experience puts it mildly. Additionally, it happened just as I was dealing with my third bout of Covid in four years. Needless to say, the timing was not ideal to be in the right frame of mind to do anything about it.

About a week ago I decided it was time to rebuild my merch brand and was offered a link to join up with FourthWall. After my experience with RedBubble, I was a little nervous. But so far it's been a great experience. Additionally, the new platform allows me to do things I couldn't do before. My personal favorite being the ability to put graphics on both the front and back of apparel. I may have already grabbed myself this zip up hoodie as my first test product:

I mean look at it. It's pretty gorgeous. Though I'm sure there's a "Stop looking at Uranus" dad joke in there somewhere.

And while I did create some new products, I'm bringing back a few old standbys as well. My best seller was always my "Write the Fucking Book" mug. Well, it's back, but as well as the all white one, you now have your choice of color as well!

In addition to the mugs, we've got some other new drinkware that wasn't available previously. My personal favorite are the pint glasses, though the stainless steel tumblers are pretty cool too for those of you that like that sort of thing.

There's quite a lot of products to explore. I've got men's and women's apparel, as well as a selection of unisex hoodies. There's coasters, mugs, and wall art. Another favorite of mine is my map from the Forbidden Scrolls trilogy. I have one of these framed on my wall and now you can too.

It's easy enough to reach my merch store. The quickest way is to hit that shop button up on the top banner of my web page. I've also got the link in my linktree, as well as in the social banner below. Or you could just click here. Whatever works for you. Either way, I'd love it if you checked it out.

And take special note, I can sell signed copies of my books through FourthWall as well! This is another thing I was not able to do before with RedBubble and I'm thrilled to be able to bring this feature to you all. So if you want a signed copy of any of my books, click here. The price includes the shipping, so it's just that rate plus tax. As usual, if you want the plain old garden variety without my completely illegible signature, you can always find them on Amazon.

In the meantime, check out the gallery below for examples of a few more products or jump over to the merch shop and give it all a look!

[image error][image error][image error][image error][image error][image error]

Dancing Amongst the Ashes

If you've been keeping up with my blog posts (and chances are you're better at it than I am), then you know I've been working on a couple of books lately. One is the follow up to The Miranda Project, which is still in the running for this year's Self-Published Science Fiction Contest. But I've also been working on a new fantasy novel, one that's quite a bit different from what you might normally expect from me. And now that I'm over sixty-five-thousand words into it, I felt it was time to give you all some information on it.

So allow me to introduce The Shadow Sisters to you:

The Shadow Sisters is the story of a young woman named Anjia from a small coastal village. She's been raised since she was five to become one of the sisters of the Temple of Kyrsma, the Goddess of Life and Light. In order to get in, there's a test...a dance she must perform. Anjia must pass this test, or die trying. Only everything she knew about the dance--and her entire life up to that moment--has been a lie.

In truth, Anjia will become of the Shadow Sisters, a group of assassins who serve the Khimital, a demon made of pure shadow who is the eternal enemy of Kyrsma. How the temple has been defiled in such a way so that it now serves the enemy of the Goddess it is named for is something that you'll have to read about when the book comes out. My expectation is that should be sometime in late 2023. But as with all dates this far out that is fluid and can change.

As for for the Shadow Sisters themselves, the Khimital has bound each of these women to his will and has the ability to control them by puppeteering them through their own shadows. They can either follow his orders, or have their own bodies betray them while they watch helplessly from within them. Either way, the blood will be, quite literally, on their hands.

Along the way, you'll get to know the other women of the temple. They are sisters in everything but actual blood. They are all stuck in the same situation after all, and come to rely on each other for they cannot tell anyone else about who and what they really are. The shadow controls even their voices when it so desires.

This is a story of personal horror for Anjia as she is slowly consumed by the darkness that controls her life. She begins the tale as an innocent young woman who slowly becomes more and more comfortable with the fate that has been forced upon her. Will she be able to escape this corruption and gain control of her life for the first time? That's still unknown. I'm expecting that there are tens of thousands of words still to come that I haven't written yet. But as usual, I'm writing this by the seat of my pants and I probably won't know those answers for a few months myself.

(And if you thought I was gonna tell you how it all ends in this blog post, well that's just silly. You should know better.)

Now, to be fair, light and shadow may sound like stand-ins for good and evil, but they're not exactly that. Light and shadow need balance in order for each to endure. The shadow needs the light. The light casts the shadow. But too much light can blind. It can burn life away. And despite everything Anjia and her sisters are going through, there is a true need for balance at play. The question is, do they truly provide the balance, or are they the thumb upon the scale?

There's also parallels to the conversation surrounding bodily autonomy in the real world to be found here--though certainly not in the same manner. The real world, as always, is far more important. However, this is a story that touches on the theme of personal freedom, or lack thereof--for if you don't have control of your own body, how can you truly be free? Some readers may choose to avoid such a tale, and I certainly understand why given the real world circumstances.

But if you're a reader of mine, you know I don't shy away from heavy topics, analogous as they may be. The Forbidden Scrolls Trilogy touches on ideas of racism and how the ability to dehumanize one group of people makes it easy to dehumanize them all. The Miranda Project is largely about one man's PTSD in the aftermath of prolonged brainwashing and torture. And The Stairs in the Woods tackles the themes regarding divorce, it's effect on the kids, as well as grief.

Well, to be fair, all of my books touch on grief.

Either way, I'm excited to bring this story to you. It is very different from anything else I've put out before, and that alone is exciting. But I really do love this story and where it's going. I hope you will too.

Approaching the Nexus

♪ Woah, we're halfway there! ♫

Well, almost.

Phase one of the second annual Self-Published Science Fiction Contest (or SPSFC2 for the acronym inclined) is coming to and end in a little less than a month. On January 31st, the Semi-finalists will be announced, cutting what was once a field of two hundred and eighty down to a mere thirty books. Currently, one hundred books are still in the running, and ,The Miranda Project by yours truly is still in the competition.

And I have to say, some good books have been cut from the competition already. I have a couple of cuts in my TBR pile and I'm still very much looking forward to reading them for myself. But obviously, not every book is for everyone. And not everyone can win. In the end, two hundred and seventy nine books will eventually get cut.

I haven't had a chance to keep up with reading the competition because I've been working on a super secret writing project for the last few months (more info coming in my next blog post). But my girlfriend and editor--the lovely and talented Vanessa Redmon--has been chugging through a number of books in the competition and has shared her thoughts on some of the best she's read so far on ,her blog. And that's why I'm so excited that mine is still in the running. A good number of these books sound pretty exciting to me and I'm looking forward to picking them up over time. If I'm being honest, I already ordered one and had it arrive earlier this week.

Though the competition has been going on since August, it's only within the last few weeks that the first reviews for ,The Miranda Project started to roll in. I admit to having been a little nervous for a number of reasons. But so far, both judges really liked it. You can check out the two reviews on the blogs of the two judges, ,Hatboy's Hatstand and ,Pages & Procrastination. Spoiler alert, they were some of the highest scores these judges have given! Hatboy's breakdown in particular is very detailed, and I've enjoyed reading all of his reviews for the other books in the competition he's read. And besides, the quote on the ad below might be the best compliment I could have received:

To say I'm somewhat shocked to have my book doing so well in this competition is an understatement. There are so many quality self-published authors out there. And I had made connections with some of these writers in the competition before throwing my own hat into the ring, and I can speak to the quality of their work. And I try very hard not to listen to the people around me who say great things about my books because I have no interest in getting a big ego. I'm just a guy who likes telling stories (though I do appreciate reviews).

Now, a couple of good reviews doesn't assure my book a spot in the next round of the competition. And if I don't make it through, so be it. I'll happily offer my congratulations to the winner and walk away pleased that a couple of judges liked ,The Miranda Project. Getting my work in front of more people was the ultimate goal of this competition, and in that I've already succeeded.

In the meantime, check out ,the other books in the competition. And remember, just because something's been cut doesn't mean it's not a great book. It may just not have resonated with the judges it was divvied out to. So if it looks good to you, pick it up!

Heading Nowhere Fast

Sometimes, life is just bullshit. It's nobody's fault. It just is. Things happen and it's all you can do to hang on for dear life. And worst of all, it all seems to hit at once, just as the future was starting to look bright. That's what the last month has been like. One moment things were finally progressing with both my writing and my mental health, and then suddenly everything came to a screeching halt.

Those of you on my mailing list may have noticed a lack of a September newsletter from me. The truth is, I wasn't in the right headspace to even consider such a thing. I've also done very little in the way of marketing on any of my social media accounts, be it FaceBook, Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok. And since marketing has a huge influence on book sales, it's fair to say that those have been lackluster as well. So let's get into what's been going on in my world.

On Saturday September 24th, I got a call right around 8am from my girlfriend. She was calling from the emergency vet to tell me that my cat, Jasper, had died. He was only 17 months old. It wasn't an accident. He jumped off the bed, gave a strangled meow, and was gone. It still makes no sense to us as he was so full of life one minute and gone the next. As you can see from the gallery below, he was quite the character.

[image error][image error][image error][image error][image error][image error]

I called him "my cat," but it's fair to say that I was really his person. When my girlfriend decided she wanted to get a pair of kittens, preferably 2 who already knew each other and could be a bonded pair, I was happy to go with her. I had a friend whose sister had two cats who each had a litter of kittens just two weeks apart, so it sounded like a good fit for what we were looking for.

Within seconds of walking in the door, Jasper was climbing up the back of my leg. It may sound ridiculous, but I can still feel the spot where he jumped up on the back of my calf. I knew right then that if my girlfriend didn't get him, I was going to. Luckily about five minutes later, the tan tabby up above, Merlin, crawled into her lap and fell asleep, choosing her. At that point, everything else was just a formality. these two were going to be our cats, and our family. And they really did spend the next year and a half becoming the best of brothers.

Now it feels like we're all lost in a fog. Merlin especially. He and Jasper really did bond and were as close as could be. It's hard listening to him call out for his brother and knowing there's nothing we can do. And I'm not there as much as my girlfriend is due to the fact we live an hour apart. I know it's been even harder for her because she lives with the silence Jasper left behind when he left us.

It's fair to say that in the past I never understood how upset people got when they lost a pet--especially as compared to a fellow human. Sadly, I understand it now. This little guy wormed his way into my heart instantly and I didn't get nearly enough time with him. Every time I go over to my girlfriend's house I still expect to see him sitting there waiting for me because he heard my car door and knew I was there.

Needless to say, any writing I had been doing before that came to a screeching halt. Even though it's been a few weeks at this point, it's still hard to make the thoughts coalesce. It's like walking in a fog, one that I feel like I've been popping in and out of since the pandemic started. It's the same fog that hits any time my depression kicks in full force. It makes getting anything done nearly impossible.

At one point I had dreams of getting two books out this year. With The Miranda Project dropping early last April, I had hoped to be able to get another one done before the end of the year. That isn't even close to happening. In fact, even aiming for next April seems like fools-gold at best the way things are going.

As if to add more fuel to the fire, my step-mother passed from a long illness earlier today. We weren't especially close, mostly because we didn't have a lot in common other than my father. We came from very different worlds if we're being honest, and I don't know if that gave us the best situation to start with. There's nothing wrong with coming from different places and different mindsets, but it didn't give the teenage kid I used to be a whole lot of incentive to make a real effort. And then I moved away to the other side of the country, so there wasn't a lot of opportunities to build on what foundation there was. You always think there's going to be a chance to make things better. I regret that I'm not going to have the chance now. I'm going to have to live with those choices forever now. It is what it is to an extent.

Needless to say, I don't believe today's news is going to do much to shake me out of my funk. But I appreciate you all sticking it out with me, because I promise I'll have more content coming your way as soon as I can get my head right again. I don't know when that will be, but we'll get there. I do have more stories to tell, I just need to be able to access that part of my brain again.