Keith Deininger's Blog, page 8
September 16, 2014
September 12, 2014
GHOSTS OF EDEN Available for Pre-order and Advanced Review
Yeah, it's coming. November 4th is the date, immediately following Halloween. This one is a trip, I don't know how else to say it. But, if you review books, GHOSTS OF EDEN is available now from NetGalley.com here.
And if you're looking for the Kindle edition, you can pre-order now and save a few bucks here.
If you're looking for the limited edition hardcover, you'll have to check my publisher's online store come November and the paperback will be available November 4th wherever the hell books are still sold (so, Amazon).
Here's the synopsis:
A neglected and abused little girl…A hopeless drug addict…Horrifying visions of bizarre beings that may or may not be human…A haunted desert refuge that could hold the key to everything…and all of it tied together by a mysterious jar that contains the secrets of good and evil, reality and nightmares, creation and death…and everything in between…
Following a family tragedy, Kayla, a twelve-year-old orphan, and Garty, a college dropout and junkie, are sent to spend the summer with an enigmatic uncle neither of them have ever known, at his palatial desert home in Los Alamos, New Mexico, the birthplace of the Atomic Bomb. While Garty struggles to come to grips with his reckless past, and Kayla attempts to discover her place in the world, their Uncle Xander reveals the true purpose for them being there.
Soon, dark secrets will be revealed. They will be shown things that will change their perceptions of the physical universe, because nothing is as it seems, and no one is safe from the terrifying secrets awaiting them. When the strange jar is opened, otherworldly horrors slip forth with ambitions of dominance, oppression and terror.
Eden will be reborn.
August 14, 2014
A BEAUTIFUL MADNESS Blog Tour + Giveaway
Ah, yes, so today Lee Thompson stops by on his A BEAUTIFUL MADNESS Blog Tour with some encouraging words for aspiring writers and published authors alike. Good stuff. Check it out...Welcome to Lee Thompson’s A BEAUTIFUL MADNESS blog tour! This blog, and the others participating, will receive a paperback copy to give to a random reader who leaves a comment and shares this post.
Throughout the book tour, I’ll be sharing fun facts about my first Mystery/Thriller, and also offering dubious advice to novice writers because I’ve had writers and editors farther along the path than myself give me tips that have helped me tremendously. If you want to up your game, pay attention and pass what you find useful on to those in your critique groups.
If you’re here as a reader, thanks so much. You’re every author’s life source. You’re the yin to our yang. The stories we set down on paper don’t seem to exist until someone else has read them, and the more the merrier.
A BEAUTIFUL MADNESS BLOG TOUR + GIVEAWAY
A Texas Senator and his wife go missing… On the same day, their son is slaughtered by an enigmatic killer on the lawn of ex-Governor Edward Wood's residence. Sammy, Wood's drug dealing son, suspects his father of the crime. After all, his old man snapped once before and crippled his wife with a lead pipe. But there's something more to these events…something deeper and festering just beneath the surface…In direct opposition to Homicide Detective Jim Thompson, Sammy begins an investigation of his own, searching for the truth in a labyrinth of lies, deception, depravity and violence that drags him deeper into darkness and mayhem with each step. And in doing so, brings them all into the sights of an elusive and horrifying killer who may not be what he seems.
A brutal killer on a rampage of carnage…a hardened detective on the brink…an antihero from the shadows…a terrifying mystery that could destroy them all…
Your Publishing Path: Expectation vs. Reality
When I first began writing it was mostly for fun. But as I started reading and writing more I knew what I wanted to do.
I expected to stand on the same ground as my heroes : What a better gift than moving another stranger the same way that Stephen King or James Lee Burke or Joyce Carol Oates or John Green moved you. I think early in our careers, and miles deep into our careers, we need something like this, a massive goal, one that seems beyond our reach, because it will push us to grow and hone our craft and focus on why those authors and those books move us and others do not.
Reality: Our heroes usually have ten published books or more under their belts by the time we discover them, and sometimes it hurts us to look that far down the road because it can keep us from writing our first publishable book. I think it might be a truism that what we really want could take us ten times longer to achieve than we expect.
At least for me. I’m on my third year of being a published author and…
I expected it to happen with my first novel
: Which is so rare that it’s laughable. Instant success doesn’t teach us much and if we’re fortunate enough, or cursed enough, to encounter it, the following fame or silence can nearly crush us. With my first novel, Nursery Rhymes 4 Dead Children, I knew I had something special. It was a solid introduction into the Dark Fantasy canon and I’m still extremely proud of it, but it created barely a whisper in terms of moving my career forward and building an audience. Reality : Books and careers are built one minute, one sentence, and one honest interaction at a time. Give yourself the time. There’s no massive rush unless you’re afraid of dying young like I am.
I expected to make a living the first year as a published novelist: This is many, many, many writers’ goal and I wasn’t any different. I could not foresee a better future than sleeping in, going for long walks, banging out a couple thousand words in the middle of the night, watching movies all the time, answering fan mail, and reading all the time.
Reality : You can make a living from writing, but to do so—especially if you’re not incredibly warm, personable and outgoing—you have to be prolific. I’m fortunate that I’ve always had a jump-in-neck-deep work habit, girlfriend habit, drinking habit, because the ideas and the motivation to get them on paper have helped me become prolific.
For many writers there is such a thing as having too much time on your hands. You can’t count on some mystical creature to motivate you when your rent is three months late and the only thing in your cupboards are roaches. You have to write to survive, emotionally, financially, and spiritually. You have to produce, meet deadlines, be a businessman or businesswoman, all without a safety net. It won’t be easy. Many days you’ll want to give up. Many days you will give up, if only for a minute, or an hour, or twelve.
But you go back, don’t you, because you have to get the words out, the stories crafted, otherwise you’ll drown inside, it’ll be like water in your lungs, and that type of slow, helpless death is a miserable and lonely one.
So write the book, make it the best you can make it, get feedback, learn and grow, and don’t give up. Expect setbacks and disappointments and deals to fall through (because they’re waiting in the wings) but know that I, and many others like me, wrote for years (eight for me) before ever selling that first novel and earning the trust of a total stranger.
Looking at your life, and what you want to achieve in your allotted time, what lessons have you learned only through braving the trenches?
Buy A BEAUTIFUL MADNESS on Amazon Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/Beautiful-Madness-Lee-Thompson-ebook/dp/B00K36ITGS/
Buy A BEAUTIFUL MADNESS Paperback: http://www.amazon.com/A-Beautiful-Madness-Lee-Thompson/dp/1940544297/
Author bio: Lee Thompson is the author of the Suspense novels A BEAUTIFUL MADNESS (August 2014), IT’S ONLY DEATH (January 2015), and WITH FURY IN HAND (May 2015). The dominating threads weaved throughout his work are love, loss, and learning how to live again. A firm believer in the enduring power of the human spirit, Lee believes that stories, no matter their format, set us on the path of transformation. He is represented by the extraordinary Chip MacGregor of MacGregor Literary. Visit Lee’s website to discover more: www.leethompsonfiction.com
A BEAUTIFUL MADNESS main page (http://www.leethompsonfiction.com/?page_id=2423)
Enter to win a paperback copy! There will also be a grand prize at the end of the tour where one winner will receive my novel, and four other DarkFuse novels in Kindle format!
Simply leave a comment on this blog and share the link.
Thanks to those who participate.
Happy reading~ Lee
August 4, 2014
Cover Reveal: THE HALLOW, Feb. 2015
I like this one. This one is very much me. It has drinking, drugs, and the uncanny. It is creepy and very disturbing. Here's the synopsis:When James and his roommate Vance stumble home drunk, they find a young woman lying on their couch. Without a word, she walks into James’s room, lies down on his bed, and dies. After that, nothing is the same.
The streets, James discovers on his walks to and from the grocery store, are forlorn and empty.
His roommate, despite his loud and reckless nature, begins spending an unusual amount of time in his room with the door locked, strange shuffling sounds coming from within.
And his new girlfriend, the cute and free-spirited Allie, may know more about what’s happening than she lets on, and she’s about to take James on a surreal, drug-fueled journey to see the Hallow…and the horrors it has unleashed…
July 30, 2014
From Work in Progress
From the safety of the bushes, Grady watched the two kids playing in the street. One was a boy, the other a girl. The boy had been lethargically kicking a soccer ball around, but now he sat with the girl in the yard across the street. They were facing each other, and playing with various things scattered before them.
“I left the lawnmower on all night and it drove the neighbors crazy,” the boy said, holding up a doll of some sort, trying to make his voice as deep as possible.
“I’ll bake some cookies,” the girl said.
“Then I’ll build the fire.”
“Okay.”
The boy began to dig in the dirt between them with a stick. When he’d loosened the dirt enough, he scooped dark wads free with his hands and flung them over his shoulder. When dirt from his vigorous digging sprayed up into the girls face she said, “Hey!” And the boy laughed.
The girl at first continued to play with the dolls, making them talk to each other, mumbling inaudibly, but then she grew bored and began to help the boy dig. She began to scoop up the now-muddy earth and pack it into little cakes with her hands. “We need something to put these on,” she said.
The boy sprung to his feet. “I know,” he said, and ran to where debris from the crashed car that lay at the end of the cul-de-sac had scattered. He kicked at things in the dirt, found something, and ran back.
The boy dropped a relatively flat piece of fractured plastic fender before the girl, and then plopped down where he’d been sitting before.
The girl nodded and began to arrange the mud cakes on the “baking sheet.”
The boy rocked in place, excited, snatching the stick and digging, getting to his knees, flinging dirt behind him from between his legs like a dog. He laughed. “He called it a pillow light,” he said. “When daddy went to light it, he blew up.”
The girl shook her head. “Not my parents. They love each other.”
The boy stopped digging and looked at the girl. “No they don’t.”
“Yes they do!” the girl said, suddenly angry.
The boy shrugged. “Whatever. Well, mine don’t.”
“Yes they do! Yes they do!”
The boy returned to his digging, scratching at the dirt with his hands, then stopped, sat and looked around. “Where is everyone?” he asked. “Are those almost ready?”
The girl shook her head. “They have to bake first.”
“How long does that take?” The boy stood, put his hands on his hips. “I’m hungry, woman!”
The girl stood. She bent and lifted the tray. “Ten minutes,” she said. She set the tray to the side, where their shadows couldn’t block the sun.
“I want one now,” the boy said, reaching for the tray.
The girl slapped his hand away. “No!”
The boy looked at the girl, shocked. He lifted his fist, as if to punch the girl, but then dropped it and laughed. “My mom forgot a dog in the oven once,” he said. “By the time she remembered, the alarm was beeping and it was all smoke and black and stuff.”
The girl laughed too.
“What should we do now?” the boy asked.
“We need more cakes,” the girl said.
“You’re right!” The boy dropped to his knees and began to dig in the hole again, scooping mud into a pile.
The girl stooped to help.
“There’s something here,” the boy said. “I found something.” He grunted, straining to pry the object free.
“What is it?” the girl asked.
“Something hard...oof...and heavy.” The boy fell backward into a sitting position. “Got it!” He held up something about the size of a softball, dark with mud.
From his hiding spot in the bushes, Grady’s heart lept.
“Give it,” the girl said, and the boy passed her the object. “It’s just a rock.”
“I know,” the boy said. He sat with his feet dangling into the hole and leaned toward the girl. He shut his mouth and closed his eyes.
The girl looked at the rock she held, then at the boys head, then back at the rock. She lifted the rock with both hands, and casually brought it down.
The crack--like breaking pool balls--echoed on the empty street.
The boy slumped forward.
The girl lifted the rock above her head, and brought it down; lifted, brought it down. She let the rock tumble from her hands and began to pick and prod the boy’s head with her fingers. Her hands came away slick with blood. She stood, to get a better angle, and plunged her hands down. Her hands came away filled with soft matter. She carried these handfuls over and slapped the offal next to the drying mud cakes on the piece of car fender. She hummed to herself while she played.
Grady turned, disappointed, and crossed the yard back into the house.
“I left the lawnmower on all night and it drove the neighbors crazy,” the boy said, holding up a doll of some sort, trying to make his voice as deep as possible.
“I’ll bake some cookies,” the girl said.
“Then I’ll build the fire.”
“Okay.”
The boy began to dig in the dirt between them with a stick. When he’d loosened the dirt enough, he scooped dark wads free with his hands and flung them over his shoulder. When dirt from his vigorous digging sprayed up into the girls face she said, “Hey!” And the boy laughed.
The girl at first continued to play with the dolls, making them talk to each other, mumbling inaudibly, but then she grew bored and began to help the boy dig. She began to scoop up the now-muddy earth and pack it into little cakes with her hands. “We need something to put these on,” she said.
The boy sprung to his feet. “I know,” he said, and ran to where debris from the crashed car that lay at the end of the cul-de-sac had scattered. He kicked at things in the dirt, found something, and ran back.
The boy dropped a relatively flat piece of fractured plastic fender before the girl, and then plopped down where he’d been sitting before.
The girl nodded and began to arrange the mud cakes on the “baking sheet.”
The boy rocked in place, excited, snatching the stick and digging, getting to his knees, flinging dirt behind him from between his legs like a dog. He laughed. “He called it a pillow light,” he said. “When daddy went to light it, he blew up.”
The girl shook her head. “Not my parents. They love each other.”
The boy stopped digging and looked at the girl. “No they don’t.”
“Yes they do!” the girl said, suddenly angry.
The boy shrugged. “Whatever. Well, mine don’t.”
“Yes they do! Yes they do!”
The boy returned to his digging, scratching at the dirt with his hands, then stopped, sat and looked around. “Where is everyone?” he asked. “Are those almost ready?”
The girl shook her head. “They have to bake first.”
“How long does that take?” The boy stood, put his hands on his hips. “I’m hungry, woman!”
The girl stood. She bent and lifted the tray. “Ten minutes,” she said. She set the tray to the side, where their shadows couldn’t block the sun.
“I want one now,” the boy said, reaching for the tray.
The girl slapped his hand away. “No!”
The boy looked at the girl, shocked. He lifted his fist, as if to punch the girl, but then dropped it and laughed. “My mom forgot a dog in the oven once,” he said. “By the time she remembered, the alarm was beeping and it was all smoke and black and stuff.”
The girl laughed too.
“What should we do now?” the boy asked.
“We need more cakes,” the girl said.
“You’re right!” The boy dropped to his knees and began to dig in the hole again, scooping mud into a pile.
The girl stooped to help.
“There’s something here,” the boy said. “I found something.” He grunted, straining to pry the object free.
“What is it?” the girl asked.
“Something hard...oof...and heavy.” The boy fell backward into a sitting position. “Got it!” He held up something about the size of a softball, dark with mud.
From his hiding spot in the bushes, Grady’s heart lept.
“Give it,” the girl said, and the boy passed her the object. “It’s just a rock.”
“I know,” the boy said. He sat with his feet dangling into the hole and leaned toward the girl. He shut his mouth and closed his eyes.
The girl looked at the rock she held, then at the boys head, then back at the rock. She lifted the rock with both hands, and casually brought it down.
The crack--like breaking pool balls--echoed on the empty street.
The boy slumped forward.
The girl lifted the rock above her head, and brought it down; lifted, brought it down. She let the rock tumble from her hands and began to pick and prod the boy’s head with her fingers. Her hands came away slick with blood. She stood, to get a better angle, and plunged her hands down. Her hands came away filled with soft matter. She carried these handfuls over and slapped the offal next to the drying mud cakes on the piece of car fender. She hummed to herself while she played.
Grady turned, disappointed, and crossed the yard back into the house.
June 26, 2014
The Strange Afterward I Wrote for Shadow Animals
“Where do your ideas come from?” I am sometimes asked.“Other worlds,” I say, and smile.
I have found, as I write, as I sink into “the zone” of my work and lose myself to all else that may be happening around me, the things I produce are strange. I sit back and read over what I have written and wonder how I could have come up with such things. They seem unusual, surreal, fantastic. They seem sometimes as if they’ve come from someone else, or somewhere else. I’m a normal guy, nothing special, not that interesting to talk to. So how can a guy like me come up with such things? Where do they come from?
I don’t have a definitive answer. But I can speculate.
There is a concept, revolving around David Lewis’s ideas of Modal Realism, called Fictional Realism, which theorizes that when creative people in our world create things, they aren’t really creating them so much as discovering them, that all things we consider fictitious exist in some world, on some plane of existence, somewhere in the multiverse. This would mean that creative people are those with the ability to see into other universes.
Perhaps this is what I’m doing as I write.
A little over a year ago, I became acquainted with someone who reminded me, in a lot of ways, of my younger self. His name is Colin Thorne. He shared with me the details of the summer he spent with a wealthy man in a dilapidated yet historical house. He was commissioned to paint an unusual mural in the man’s basement. In the basement, when he wasn’t painting, he found many old and fascinating things scattered about in boxes piled high that had clearly been undisturbed for some time, bits of history, letters and journals, clues left behind by people who had lived but are now forgotten. After some persuading on my part, he agreed to share with me a few of the things he’d found, and gave me a tattered suitcase filled with notes he’d collected.
Inside the suitcase, one of the things I found was a notebook filled with accounts of fantastic other realms, strange beasts, peoples, and cultures. It contains many stories written by a man who signs his name only as ‘Marrow.’ Many of the things he discusses are clearly within the realm of the fantastique, yet Marrow’s writings are filled with such detail, it is difficult to imagine them to be entirely fabricated.
Shadow Animals, in its original translation, was found this way. Arranging the moldering papers until I could find some semblance of order, wiping the dust away, I discovered a story, and was immediately enthralled. It was written in an entirely different style from what I have written above, of course, in a language that does not yet belong to any cultural group in existence in this world, but I hope I have done it justice. I can only urge readers to be understanding and cognizant of the translation and interpretation I have provided.
And this is only the beginning. Much of Marrow’s accounts take place in a world he calls Meridian. It is a world vastly different from our own in many ways, yet similar in others, and they are inexplicably linked. It is Meridian, I believe, where Saul and Ezzy find themselves in Shadow Animals.
My plan is to produce more stories set in this world—in translation, of course. Collected, these stories—linked by a common mythology, if not by narrative—will comprise the Meridian Codex. Shadow Animals is a Meridian Codex story, as is Marrow’s Pit. Expect others to follow, including a larger novel, as I am hard at work.
Keith Deininger
June 20th, 2014
June 17, 2014
Cover Reveal: SHADOW ANIMALS!
My good friend John Sumrow (known for his artwork on the latest Monster Magnet album cover) did a kick-ass job on the cover for my latest novella and first foray into self-publishing.Here's the synopsis:
Saul, who has lived his entire life on the edge of the Copperton Forest—known for its strange and unusual wildlife—knows little about what stalks him. He knows only that it is dark, and powerful, and unnamable—and that it has stolen his nine-year-old son, Ezzy, from him.
Now he must travel into those ethereal woods, further upriver than he’s ever gone, into a wondrous, yet surreal and nightmarish world unlike anything he’s ever known, to recover his son from the shadows, if he can survive the journey…
This one is coming very soon. Basically, as soon as I can get it completely polished and uploaded to Amazon! If you'd like a reminder on release day, sign up here: #mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; } /* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block. We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */ * indicates required Email Address *
June 15, 2014
From Work in Progress
“Later that night, they go to his dorm room and she shows him what to do. He watches her take one of the containers and go around the room collecting the smudgemutters. He watches her fill the bathtub with water. He watches her drown them, one by one, until they fade into nothing, returning, as she says, home, to the Umbra Ina. He watches her face, calm, eyes stony, lips grimacing slightly. He watches her belly, which does not yet show signs of the life within it, that somehow, he has had a part in creating.”
Off the Deep End: Crossing the Line Between Horror and Fantasy
I must apologize for my absence. I’ve been slacking in my blogging and social media duties. I’ve been busy. I’ve been writing. And my writing has taken some strange turns. It’s exciting, but also very intimidating, as I swim further and further out into the sea of the fantastic, attempting to navigate the stormy waters of world building. I am writing a fantasy novel, without restraint, surreal and dark.
I think—some of you may find this strange; others, perhaps not so much—I have found comfort in the horror genre. In many ways, for the beginning writer, it is a safe place to start. While one discovers one’s place in the writing universe—one’s “voice” it is sometimes called—and what one wishes to write, it is a genre that allows a lot of freedom with character and a means to explore internal emotional turmoil and themes that are universal, within us all, and understandably poignant at even a young age.
As my writing develops, I’ve found myself drawn inexorably toward the fantastic. I’ve always been drawn to works that explore the imagination, from my early days with C.S. Lewis and Tolkien, to later with China Mieville and Clive Barker, amongst others (I read George R.R. Martin before it was cool ;)), and I knew my own attempt at a novel set in a world completely of my fabrication was inevitable.
But, I have to be careful. Writing horror is very different from writing fantasy. It is true, they often overlap (as my own work has done), but horror—good horror, I think—is about restraint and subtlety. Fantastic elements in horror are often called “supernatural”, and for good reason. They are unexplainable and contrary to the natural workings of reality as it is usually perceived, thus the uncanny is achieved, thus horror.
Fantasy, in contrast, “goes off the deep end.” It no longer has use for the natural laws, other than as loose guidelines to be manipulated. It involves the writing of one’s own rules. It begs the imagination for possibilities, to reinvent not what is, but what could be. It’s a lot of work, and, as I’m finding, perhaps more difficult to write well than is horror.
I’m still in the early stages of the novel, so we’ll see how it goes, but I’d like to share a excerpt with you all soon, so be sure to check this space.
Oh, and don’t for a moment think of such things as swords and dungeons and wizards. And do NOT think I’d let myself become another Tolkien ripoff, or George R.R. Martin, or Robert Jordan, or anything like that. What I have so far, what I’ve been writing, looks to be a very different beast, a different experience, than anything else out there. And for my fans: don’t worry; my writing will always remain dark, violent, and disturbing. In fact, despite my claim to fantasy, my work may remain classified as horror, just like many of the works of such writers as Barker and King. ;)
Intrigued? Sign up for my New Release Mailing List: #mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; } /* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block. We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */ * indicates required Email Address *
I think—some of you may find this strange; others, perhaps not so much—I have found comfort in the horror genre. In many ways, for the beginning writer, it is a safe place to start. While one discovers one’s place in the writing universe—one’s “voice” it is sometimes called—and what one wishes to write, it is a genre that allows a lot of freedom with character and a means to explore internal emotional turmoil and themes that are universal, within us all, and understandably poignant at even a young age.
As my writing develops, I’ve found myself drawn inexorably toward the fantastic. I’ve always been drawn to works that explore the imagination, from my early days with C.S. Lewis and Tolkien, to later with China Mieville and Clive Barker, amongst others (I read George R.R. Martin before it was cool ;)), and I knew my own attempt at a novel set in a world completely of my fabrication was inevitable.
But, I have to be careful. Writing horror is very different from writing fantasy. It is true, they often overlap (as my own work has done), but horror—good horror, I think—is about restraint and subtlety. Fantastic elements in horror are often called “supernatural”, and for good reason. They are unexplainable and contrary to the natural workings of reality as it is usually perceived, thus the uncanny is achieved, thus horror.
Fantasy, in contrast, “goes off the deep end.” It no longer has use for the natural laws, other than as loose guidelines to be manipulated. It involves the writing of one’s own rules. It begs the imagination for possibilities, to reinvent not what is, but what could be. It’s a lot of work, and, as I’m finding, perhaps more difficult to write well than is horror.
I’m still in the early stages of the novel, so we’ll see how it goes, but I’d like to share a excerpt with you all soon, so be sure to check this space.
Oh, and don’t for a moment think of such things as swords and dungeons and wizards. And do NOT think I’d let myself become another Tolkien ripoff, or George R.R. Martin, or Robert Jordan, or anything like that. What I have so far, what I’ve been writing, looks to be a very different beast, a different experience, than anything else out there. And for my fans: don’t worry; my writing will always remain dark, violent, and disturbing. In fact, despite my claim to fantasy, my work may remain classified as horror, just like many of the works of such writers as Barker and King. ;)
Intrigued? Sign up for my New Release Mailing List: #mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; } /* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block. We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */ * indicates required Email Address *
I'm a Failure!
The reason many people will never find success in writing, or any other artistic pursuit, is very simple: rejection. It’s going to happen. You’re going to fail. You’re going to spend innumerable hours writing steaming piles of mastodon shit. And then, if you’re strong enough to keep going, you’re going to write something that to your mind is pure genius, that you know is at least better than some of the dreck you’ve seen while perusing the popular shelves at Barnes and Noble…and it’s going to be rejected. If you’re strong enough, you’ll pick up your work, dust it off, and try again. And it will be rejected. I’m a failure, you’ll wail. And you’ll be right.
And then, after that, if you’re strong enough, you’ll write something else, you’ll write even more, you’ll just keep shitting and shitting.
Eventually, if you’re strong enough, if you have a true fiery passion for what you do, you’ll see some success, maybe publish some things.
And then the next thing you do will be rejected.
Successful people are always failures first. And they continued to fail. It’s how he or she reacts to failure that makes him or her a success.
And so I’m officially declaring it now: I’m a failure! And I will continue to swim in my own shit, playing, discovering new shapes, sniffing a little, tasting, forming new shapes, uncovering secrets I never would have, had I given up the search and been afraid.
Intrigued? Sign up for my New Release Mailing List: #mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; } /* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block. We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */ * indicates required Email Address *
And then, after that, if you’re strong enough, you’ll write something else, you’ll write even more, you’ll just keep shitting and shitting.
Eventually, if you’re strong enough, if you have a true fiery passion for what you do, you’ll see some success, maybe publish some things.
And then the next thing you do will be rejected.
Successful people are always failures first. And they continued to fail. It’s how he or she reacts to failure that makes him or her a success.
And so I’m officially declaring it now: I’m a failure! And I will continue to swim in my own shit, playing, discovering new shapes, sniffing a little, tasting, forming new shapes, uncovering secrets I never would have, had I given up the search and been afraid.
Intrigued? Sign up for my New Release Mailing List: #mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; } /* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block. We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */ * indicates required Email Address *
