Cameron Lowe's Blog

Brains

I’ve wasted an entire day worrying over a tiny blip of a technical hiccup out of my control. Basically, I have a generic title for an uploaded book, something that several other writers have used. It’s a common phrase, so I’m not worried about it being dinged, but because of the similarities, they have to go through a review process that I found out late today will take up to another five business days. All fine! I get why they have to do that.

But my brain, for whatever reason, decided, ah h...

The beach

I used to wonder when I was a kid if I couldn’t swim out far enough in the ocean to see the continental shelf. I don’t know why this just occurred to me except that I’m writing a beach scene. I still sometimes look at rushing waters and wonder if I could beat it at my best – which, don’t worry, I fully recognize as being very far behind me.

Still… I used to be good in the water. And walking. I loved walking. Weird how we break, hm?

My brother and me

My brother: “Hey, what’s that song that’s like Daniel’s Oriental Palace?”

Me: “I have no idea. Wait. Do you mean Shawn Lee’s Ping-Pong Orchestra? The music group?”

My brother: “That’s it!”

Siblings are magic.

Tickling the Ivories on Deviant Earth

I’ve been tapping away at some early scenes in Deviant Earth’s first book (formerly Excision, currently titled Scrap Parts) This is a book I wrote damn near 90k words in a few years back and barely left the first third of the plot I’d written down. It was bloated, but this feels leaner and meaner.

That said, I think I’m going to immediately jump in and tweak a few things. I kinda want it to be a blend of magic and cyberpunk, when it was originally just post-zombie-outbreak fiction with some ...

The meh-est of release days

It’s weird not being able to talk about successes but I can say this. For the first time since 2016, I have launched the second in a series and that should feel pretty damn good. It went live today, it’s getting decent page counts, and that’s about it. I like the work, don’t get me wrong. There are some late scenes that are pretty good. Not among my best, but as a whole, it’s solid.

But apart from some good days here and there, I’ve felt nothing for my writing lately. That’s not a depression...

Break the Castle update

I made some serious progress tonight with Break the Castle by finally deciding screw it, this thing needs to be written. The big problem is its middle third. It is both at once bloated and not bloated enough. In the hands of a better writer, it would be a full-blown novel, but it doesn’t feel right that way.

I hit a real snag when I realized I was introducing an important scene far too soon. I had it plotted out as happening in the 70k range, when it looks like it’ll be happening around the 5...

RIP Dusty Hill

Gutted today over Dusty Hill’s passing. I love ZZ Top in just about any era, but especially their seventies and early eighties work. Their cover of Sixteen Tons is and always will be my mental “theme song” of the Seven Heroes series. So much of their music influenced the Rankin Flats stuff too – Just Got Paid, Sleeping Bag, Sharp Dressed Man…

Absolute legend. RIP, sir.

Odd things I can never remember

You’d think after writing eight or nine books about eastern Montana I’d remember the word “wheatgrass,” but you’d be wrong. Every time I write about the plains I have to look up the vegetation to make sure I’m correct. Bleh.

One billion dollar horror idea…

…leperchauns.

PRINT IT.

Small wins

I’ll make this one quick, but I wanted to share two things that make me happy this week. First, my pseudonym writing has netted me a small cash prize, something I celebrated over the weekend by buying – in typical Cam fashion – cheese popcorn and cherry Danish-style things from Winco. I’ve also been seeing a sharp uptick in KU numbers this month, which will be nice.

Second, Beast was called “real old-school horror” in a positive review on Amazon, which I particularly loved since that’s exactl...