Craig Schaefer's Blog, page 6

The Insider: Available Now!

I'm pleased to announce that The Insider, the second book in the Charlie McCabe thriller series, is available now, launching today in all formats (paperback, e-book, and audio, narrated by Susannah Jones.) I was really pleased to be able to return to Charlie's world, and craft a twisty little mystery off my usual beaten path. I hope you enjoy it!

At the moment I'm hard at work on the next Daniel Faust adventure, Down Among the Dead Men. The draft is coming along, closing in on the finishing stretches. Meanwhile, the follow-up to Ghosts of Gotham, A Time for Witches, is in my editor's hands: we're looking good for a release this coming October. (And of course, in 2021 we'll see the return of Harmony Black, but it's too early to get into any details there.)

As an aside, I’m super-grateful that so many folks have shown an interest in my new Patreon project (over at https://www.patreon.com/craigschaefer); all in all, it’s a busy time here at the studio, but busy is good. I’m aiming to keep you entertained (or at least pleasantly distracted) as we launch into the second half of the year and beyond. Onward and upward!

A New Adventure - on Patreon!

I hope you’re having a great weekend! I’ve got a little surprise today — well, not much of a surprise, since I said it was coming, but nonetheless. My Patreon page has just gone live. And with it, the opening installment of a new, serialized novel, with new chapters coming to subscribers every Tuesday and Friday. Subscribers can also look forward to a monthly Q&A video, and whatever other interesting tidbits I can come up with along the way.

The first serialized story, by the way, will be a return to the world of Ghosts of Gotham. It’s not a direct sequel — that’ll be coming in October, with the release of A Time for Witches — but it’s a fresh delve into haunted New York with a new cast of characters and a new, murky corner of forgotten history to explore. You can read the first three chapters (the first five if you decide to subscribe) right now. This is a new thing for me! Kinda scary! Doing it anyway!

This should be an exciting little experiment, and I hope we have some fun with it. As always, your support — no matter what form it takes — means the world to me. I’m so honored to be writing stories for you all, and I hope to still be doing it many, many years from now. Thank you, always.

On Being Okay

Happy Thursday, everybody! Folks have been asking for an update on my last post, regarding my mental health issues, and I’m at the point where I feel like I can give a positive progress report (and it is, thankfully, positive.) Also, given some of the feedback I got, I know some folks are thinking about getting help and you might be worried/curious about the process.

For me, it began with choosing a health-care provider. Like most writers, my insurance is utterly terrible (it’s basically for catastrophic coverage only) so that wasn’t much help, but I started by identifying my in-network doctors. From there I trawled for reviews; just like anything else, hearing from clients of potential doctors was a great way to identify the candidates with strong skills (and the ones best avoided.) Once I made my choice, I was provided with intake forms to complete prior to my first appointment.

If you’ve ever filled out healthcare history forms for a new physician, it’s just like that, but considerably more in-depth about your background, your family history and relations, and your current symptoms. It can feel invasive, but for an important purpose: figuring out exactly the best way to get at the underlying cause of your symptoms and come up with a real, effective plan of treatment. The important thing to remember is that folks in mental health are not, as a general rule, in the business of judgment; they want to help you get better, and there is nothing you can reveal about yourself that they haven’t seen before.

All the same, I was pretty darn nervous on the morning of my appointment. (Which was, by the way, conducted via webcam; given the ongoing pandemic, many doctors’ offices have switched to online consultations, so there’s no need to visit the office or leave your home in order to get help.) Turns out I didn’t need to be nervous at all. My doctor was empathetic, knowledgeable, and we discussed potential courses of treatment together.

I need to underline that: together. A good healthcare professional will keep you in the loop and in the discussion, because nothing in mental health is one-size-fits-all. And nothing is guaranteed to work from square one. We ultimately decided on a modest regimen of medication – a small dose, to test the waters and avoid over-medicating, which I’ll try for three months in order to give my body chemistry time to acclimate, then we’ll re-assess (with regular check-ins along the way) and either stay the course or try something different from there.

Side effects can be wild, y’all. You have to be prepared for that, because there’s a big grab-bag of potential side effects and there’s absolutely no way to know what you’re going to get (if anything). The good news is that unless you have a seriously adverse reaction (in which case you should reach out to your doctor immediately), they tend to fade over time. My first night on the new meds, I had some bad nausea; by afternoon of the second day, that had faded entirely.

What remained, hilariously considering one of my biggest symptoms was anxiety-induced sleeplessness…was insomnia. Though that was oddly useful in terms of seeing the positive effects of the meds: there’s a stark difference between “can’t sleep because I can’t stop worrying” and “can’t sleep, but I’m relaxed and dealing with it.” One’s scary, one’s mildly annoying. And that too, is fading. I was still tossing and turning last night but – now on my sixth day of medication – I got eight hours of cumulative sleep and that is NOT a thing I can normally say.

The important thing is, I’m writing again. Yesterday I patched up the act-three outline for the new Faust novel and smashed the story blockage that had been walling me in for a month.

Is life perfect? Heck, no. I’ve still got stuff to work on, health-wise, and even if that wasn’t the case, the world isn’t exactly sunshine and roses right now. The purpose of these meds is not to make me happy, and that’s something I can’t stress strongly enough because I think people often misunderstand that point. The purpose is to shore up the chemicals that my brain should but doesn’t make on its own, and allow me to process and deal with the world without tripping over my own feet. It’s about being able to see clearly. “Happy” is a philosophical pursuit, and a totally different deal. I’m actually fairly melancholy today, about some unrelated life stuff I’m not going to get into here – but it’s a genuine, true melancholy, one I can grapple with and process in a healthy way, and one that isn’t pulling me down into paralysis or a spiral of depression. And that makes all the difference in the world.

So, about writing! We’re less than one week to the release of The Insider, so that’s a very cool thing. Also, for some time I’ve been contemplating launching a Patreon; now that I’m dealing with added medical bills for appointments and meds that my insurance won’t cover, let’s just say I’m more motivated than ever. I’ve spent some time planning, working out ideas, figuring out what I can effectively offer to subscribers.

A lot of writers offer short stories on their Patreons, but short fiction just isn’t my forte. So what I’m planning at the moment is a serialized novel; maybe two chapters a week, something unique and new, straight from my keyboard to your brain. You’ll basically be right there with me from the first line to the final draft of a new novel, and through the process beyond as it makes its way to print. I’m also contemplating a monthly Q&A video where I answer subscribers’ questions.

I do have to be careful about Patreon benefits; I already tend to work seven days a week, and I don’t want to go overboard on benefits or my regular-writing-time could suffer. That said, if there’s something you’d really like to see from a subscription, definitely let me know.

So, yeah. That’s the update. And The Insider is out next Tuesday! See you then.

I'm Not Okay

Sometimes I know just what to say. And sometimes I sit down, staring at a blank white square on my screen and a waiting cursor and just say, “How do I do this?” You can probably guess this is one of the latter times. Let’s start where the story starts.

I’ve always been open about my struggles with mental health, because mental illness is still heavily stigmatized in our society, and I strongly believe that the more open and honest that people are about it, the more that mental illness will be understood, accepted, and properly treated. It baffles me that in 2020 I still encounter people who think “depression” means “feeling a little sad sometimes,” or that it’s a symptom of a bad attitude/not getting out of the house enough/cell phones/pick a reason instead of what it is, a neurochemical imbalance.

It’s also been fairly easy for me to be open about it, because I have largely dealt with my shit. I began dealing with my shit twenty years ago, when I was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder and mild depression. I took Luvox and started cognitive behavioral therapy for the OCD. Ten years later, thanks to the therapy, I was able to wean off the meds and go drug-free — which was a decision, I really really massively need to stress, is a) not something everyone can do, b) not something everyone should do or should even want to do, and c) was a decision made in tandem and with the approval of medical professionals and with continuing support.

Art has always been my sword and shield against depression. I’ve often joked that I’m prolific because I don’t know what the hell to do with myself if I’m not working. The reality is more that I find fulfillment in storytelling; writing is my purpose in this life, it’s what I’m for, and when I’m immersed in my work, the depression can’t find any cracks to worm its way inside of me.

Usually.

April, things started to get bad. I mean, things started to get bad for everybody. My grocery store still doesn’t have toilet paper in stock. But quarantine and uncertainty took a mental toll that crept up on me. I gradually noticed that it was taking me longer and longer to do less and less. That I couldn’t focus, that I could sit down to answer an email and do absolutely nothing for an hour because getting my hands to move across the keys took a Herculean act of focus and willpower. Not being able to fall asleep at midnight, and waking up at 3AM, became a regular occurrence.

I know my body well enough to understand. This is old me, pre-treatment me, and my brain is sick. But I tried to fight through it because…well, I try to fight through everything. But now it’s June, and it’s crystal clear that the heightened stress I hoped would be a fleeting thing two months ago isn’t going to go away any time soon. Even so, I kept pushing against the idea of reaching out for help. Why? Pride, honestly. I worked so hard, in therapy, to wean myself off medication. It was a big achievement and it felt like saying “Hey, I’m not functioning anymore, my neurotransmitters are not neurotransmitting and I need a hand here” was somehow a betrayal of that.

In the immortal words of Marsellus Wallace, “Fuck pride. Pride only hurts, it never helps.” So today I pushed past that slight sting and picked up the phone, and made a doctor’s appointment. I need outside help — not just so I can live a better life, but so I can create the best art I can, and deliver the best books I can — and I’m going to get it.

Why am I writing this? Simple, and it goes back to what I said at the top. The stigma around mental health needs to be shattered, and while my platform is a small one, when I get the chance to use it for something positive, I’d be negligent not to. Also, I suspect at least one of my readers might be in the same boat: you might be feeling like you’re underwater and need a life preserver, but you haven’t made the call. So I’m hoping that by telling you that I’m reaching out, maybe you will too.

You’re worth it.

What Am I Doing?

When I’m hunkered down and mired in multiple-month stretches of daily writing – the in-the-trenches work of creating a novel – I still try to post an update once a month or so just to let y’all know I’m alive and working hard.

Wow, I picked a great day for it, huh?

I’ve rewritten this thing a half-dozen times, grappling in part with my desire to say something meaningful. The world is on fire at the moment, and my nation is wounded. And I’m just this person with a keyboard and I am nauseous and heart-sick.

What I’m grappling with right now is, what do people need? As an artist, what kind of work should I be writing and putting out into the world? I try to always be aware of what I’m promoting, what themes I’m working with, what kind of messages I’m putting forward, and that’s never been more important than now.

Vital distinction: I’m not talking about “message fiction” which boils down to a heavy-handed “here is an important social issue, and here is how you should feel about it and if you don’t you’re a bad person!” angle. That stuff sucks, nobody likes it. I’m talking about theme – a thesis, an underlying statement – which is present in all but the most cynically commercially-produced books. All art is an extension of the artist. I am not Daniel Faust (a bad review called him an “obvious author insert” once, and you cannot imagine how much my friends laughed about that), but when you read my books, you’re getting a piece of me, woven into the narrative.

I owe you honesty, I owe you care, and I owe you my best work. That’s part of the contract between an author and a reader. (And you owe me $4.99. That sound fair?)

So my challenge right now, with everything going to hell, is to figure out what my best work looks like. Do I deliver pure escapism? Sure, I can, but is that ideal? Do I try to deliver a narrative that challenges expectations? Again – is that the best use of my abilities? I’m figuring it all out.

Right now I’m leaning toward hope.

Writing is hard at the moment (just getting anything done seems to take forever), but the new Daniel Faust novel, Down Among the Dead Men, is coming along, and I’ve been thinking a lot about hope. Five years ago, when I plotted out the bare bones of this story arc (yes, five years ago – c’mon, you know me), this book was going to be the darkest, nastiest chapter in the entire series. But I was edgier then (in a bad way), I like to think I’m more mature now, and I put a lot more time into thinking “how is this story going to make my readers feel?”

Oh, it’s still dark, I mean, given the situation Faust is in, but I’m leaning a lot heavier into satire and black comedy. Is it going to be funny? Eh, I hope so. Comedy is one of the hardest things to self-assess (we’ve all seen enough terrible stand-up comics to know that), but some parts should, if I do it right, put a smile on your face. More than that, I’m using the setting to take a look at people, and how people come together and support each other even in the worst of times and places.

Hope.

Also, the action scenes are over the top, an enemy from Faust’s past makes a comeback, and we get to meet Caitlin’s sister, who manages a television station in hell. So, there’s that to look forward to.

We’re still on track for a July 7 release of The Insider, the second Charlie McCabe novel, from Thomas & Mercer Publishing. It’s a very twisty little thriller filled with deception, double-crosses and danger, and if you liked The Loot, I think you’ll like this one even more.

A Time for Witches, the follow-up to Ghosts of Gotham, is currently in my editor’s hands and we’re looking at an October release. It’s pretty timely in its own way and is also, at its core, a story about hope. It picks up one month after Ghosts ended, with another dive into a world of Greek myth and mystery. Catching up with Lionel and Maddie was good for my heart, and I hope you’ll feel the same way when it comes out.

Anyway, that’s it for today, I’m going to get back to work. Be safe. Please.

Black Tie Required: Now on Audio

I’m pleased to announce that the audiobook version of Harmony Black book six, Black Tie Required — as narrated by the fabulous Susannah Jones — is now available! It’s on Audible/Amazon now, and should be available on iTunes shortly.

With the sequel to Ghosts of Gotham now in my editor’s hands, I’m hard at work on the next Daniel Faust novel, Down Among the Dead Men. There’s not much I can say without big spoilers, save to say that this book will be taking the series (and Faust himself) to a place we haven’t yet explored, and I’m eager to be your tour guide. Just climb into this hand basket…

Be well. Be safe. I’m going to get back to it, and we’ll talk more soon.

Lockdown: A New Short

I hope everyone is staying safe out there! I'm currently reviewing the final files for the audiobook version of Black Tie Required; once I give approval (and I can tell you already that Susannah Jones did her usual fantastic job), it goes to Audible for final QA checks, and hopefully we won't be waiting long before it goes live.

Meanwhile, I was wondering what some of my characters were up to in this time of quarantine, and the next thing I knew, it became a slice-of-life short story. Just kinda happened. Stories do that sometimes. You can find it over at http://craigschaeferbooks.com/lockdown, and I hope it brightens your day a little.

Harmony Black: Black Tie Required is available now!

I'm pleased to announce that the sixth Harmony Black thriller, Black Tie Required, is now available in ebook and paperback. Susannah Jones will be recording the audiobook edition shortly (thank goodness for home studios) so that won't be far off. Here's the synopsis:

Las Vegas, Nevada. For some, a neon-drenched playground. For Harmony Black, a graveyard of bad memories. But when your job is protecting humanity from the horrors of the occult underworld, you go where the mission sends you.

The annual TechTopia conference draws Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, big thinkers, startup investors — and the Basilisk, a former German Military Intelligence officer turned freelance assassin. He’s in town to make a killing, and his target could be any of a thousand potential victims. To protect their source of information, direct action is off the table: Harmony and her team have to identify the target and stage a rescue without the Basilisk — or his mistress, the sadistic demoness Nadine — ever learning that they were involved.

Stranger things are brewing under the neon and glitz. The elite of the criminal underworld are flocking to the city like flies to a rotting corpse, rumors of a secret auction are swirling, and the assassin’s target has ties to Talon Worldwide — a corporation with a foothold on two parallel Earths. Soon enough, Harmony discovers there’s far more at stake than a single life. The consequences of this mission aren’t just global: they’re interdimensional.

Your virtual poolside drink is waiting. You can find the book at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B086WFLGQH (at this moment, it looks like Amazon hasn't linked up the ebook and paperback versions yet, but you can find the latter by searching under my name.)

In other news, Thomas & Mercer Publishing is still set on releasing the second Charlie McCabe thriller, The Insider, on July 7. The ThrillerFest convention has unfortunately (but understandably) been canceled this year, so I won't be making an appearance to celebrate the launch; apparently they're working on some kind of online option so we'll see if I can come up with something fun regardless. I'm currently elbows-deep on the manuscript for the next Daniel Faust adventure and working hard to make sure it lives up to expectations.

I can also announce that the sequel to Ghosts of Gotham is done, and in my editor's hands. It's called A Time for Witches, and it will be out in October.

I hope you're staying safe out there! I'll be getting back to work now, aiming to keep you entertained.

On Current Events, and You

I’m seeing a lot of people resolve to use this time of quarantine to accomplish old goals or learn new skills, and that’s great. I’m also seeing people say everyone SHOULD be doing that, or worse, beating themselves up because they’re not getting any of those lofty ambitions met. That’s…not great. If you’re struggling right now and feel like you shouldn’t be, or feel like you’re failing, take some advice from an old hand at this.

My credentials: I’ve been a full-time writer for almost five years. I live alone and work from home, so what a lot of people are just now experiencing with quarantine is my normal life. I’m also, my readers know, an obsessive workaholic who writes three books a year and maybe takes one day off a month. Maybe. To be a writer, you have to be a self-starter; if you can’t motivate yourself you’ll never get anything done. Point being: productivity is my job. Discipline is my job. This is what I DO.

So you might be thinking, well, Craig’s fine. His situation hasn’t changed much and he’s used to driving his own business. Maybe he’s even more productive than usual!

Nope.

I’ll tell you the truth: I had a day last week where it took me nine hours to write five hundred words. Nine hours, to do what I can normally do in one. The uncertainty and fear of this month — worrying about my loved ones, worrying about how I’m going to get groceries, or what happens if people stop buying books, or the fucking toilet paper shortage of all things — it all just piled on and piled on, background radiation seeping in through my studio walls.

We are not living in this moment, we are surviving this moment, and survival is hard work. It’s hard work even when it feels just like sitting still. Being driven is something I have spent years training my body and mind for, and this is even hard for me. So if you’re in lockdown and new to the feeling, with nothing but time on your hands, and the best you can manage at the end of the day is watching Netflix? That’s fine. You’re fine. You’re surviving.

And if someone is telling you that you’re lazy or unmotivated because you’re not learning French or taking up the trombone or writing the great American novel, they’re dead wrong. And an asshole. And probably trying to sell you something. The fact is, you only have so much energy, and the world is a thief right now, sucking it dry.

If all you accomplish today is surviving, well…that’s a pretty damn great accomplishment. And I’m cheering you on.

Free Books? Free Books.

Heck of a month, huh? It feels like everything’s a giant mess out there, and people are enduring a lifetime’s worth of stress. I don’t have much power to change things, but I can do my little part: how about some free entertainment? From today until Saturday, three of my e-books — Winter’s Reach, The Long Way Down, and Sworn to the Night — are free to download. That’s one epic fantasy, one urban fantasy, and one dimension-hopping smorgasbord. Enjoy!

On my end of things, the virus situation has slowed everything down. The next Harmony Black novel is still in editing, and I’m still aiming to have it out in April, though I don’t have a hard date yet. There are so many moving parts in publishing, and it just takes one piece going out of action to slow the whole beast down. For instance, Susannah Jones is ready to record the next Harmony book, but the staff at Audible is working from home and quarantined, so even once the book and audio is ready it may (hopefully not, fingers crossed!) suffer added delays waiting for approval.

Likewise, The Insider is still slated for a July release from Thomas & Mercer Publishing. I don’t think anything can hold that up, and the advance copies have already been printed, but we’ll see. (And I’m still hoping to be at ThrillerFest in July but again…we’ll see.)

Presently I’m pounding away at the followup to Ghosts of Gotham. What about the next Faust novel? As I mentioned in the afterword to The Locust Job, I started working on that the second I typed “the end.” That said, sometimes plans shift in the air. Essentially a big chunk of it is done but I ran into a few second-act problems (the action isn’t exciting enough and a major plot point just doesn’t feel credible to me), so I put it on the back-burner while I sort it out. You know me — I don’t put my name on anything until I think it’s tight. Suffice to say that both books are getting worked on and I think you’ll be pleased with the end results, and you won’t be waiting very long for either one.

Stay safe, all. We’ll get through this together.