Update - A Long Time A’Comin’

Happy New Year!

After a relatively sustained period of silence, I
have committed to make 2017 the year of much, much, much more writing
- which includes updating this website with much more frequency than
in times past. “Updating,” I believe, will include news about my
own writing process, reviews of novels I’m reading, discussions about
the craft of writing, cool movies, video games – anything,
basically, do with storytelling.

So now for the first update of 2017 – in one
month’s time, I’ll be finished with The Magic Hound of
Eastminster, a novel I’ve been
working on since October, and a story I’ve been planning in my head
for twelve years.

Twelve. Years.

Here’s a little
history lesson just so you can have some perspective: when I was
fourteen years old, my aunt gave me the album Thirteenth
Step by the band A Perfect
Circle. This was when I was becoming a music nerd and rapidly falling
in love with every genre of rock I could get my hands on. I listened
to that CD backwards and forwards for a solid year, memorizing every
lyrics, vowing that one day I’d find a way to rip off Billy Howerdel
and create my own art rock band.

On one particular
January evening, I believe it was, I was riding my bike around the
neighborhood while listening to the album. My favorite track was
towards the end – it’s called “Pet,” and it’s basically a man
being spoken to by a drug-induced hallucination that tells him it
will keep him safe from all the troubles in the world. (My 14 year
old self didn’t know that at the time; I just thought it was an
awesome song, especially since it was the “heaviest.”) It had
grown dark, and I was biking home, and that song came on – and all
of a sudden I had this image in my head of a boy, trying to run away
in the dark from malevolent creatures bent on destroying him, being
protected by the narrator of the song: a mysterious being from
another dimension who willingly sacrificed his own life to keep the
boy from harm.

I can’t remember if
I rushed home and started working on the story that night, but I
remember that in a few days’ time I had a short, five page piece of
fiction simply called “E,” named after the mysterious being. But
the idea kept intriguing me, and 5 pages wasn’t enough – so I
turned it into a novel, at least in my head. Then into a trilogy.

I made it to page
40-something, and then stopped.

A few months later,
I took up the thread again. This time I reworked the story, giving it
another spin. I did this over and over again over the course of the
next two years or so – starting a draft, not liking where it was
going, deleting it, starting over. The first, original draft of the
story miraculously survived, as did the fourth or fifth version which
I named The Anartheid
– not quite sure why, but you know, whatever – but this too fell
flat. Every version I created fell flat. I loved the core of the
story – the main character, Adam, and his protector (now named Ea
because I figured that was easier to read than simply one letter) –
but all the twists and turns of plot, the complications, the
particulars: I couldn’t get them right. Over and over again I worked
on the story, transforming it, adding elements, taking them out. It
eventually took on the name it still has to this day: Blindsight.
That was probably about six years ago, maybe a little more.

I finally reached a
place where I thought I finally had it – the story had transformed
into an extremely complex science fantasy trilogy – but then I ran
into a number of plot holes and problems that I couldn’t fix, so I
made the decision to finally shelf the tale indefinitely. I had used
up so much time and creative energy with world-building and
plot-structuring and character-developing that my authorial faculties
had run dry. I almost didn’t want to write anymore. In fact, I
remember I took a break for a number of months, extremely
disappointed that my first real story into which I’d poured so much
was continuing to come up flat, lacking something – that little
spark to give it life.

I decided, then, to
take up other projects I’d started to work on or had worked out with
enough clarity in my head to put to the page. I finished a novel I’d
begun in college, Descent Into Madness,
and self-published it last year – though admittedly that took a
number of drafts and false starts before I finally reached the place
with it where I was happy. I finished up some existential, fable-like
novellas I’d tinkered with over the years. And finally, over the
course of a few weeks last year, I wrote a little book called
Darkfield – an
experimental sci-fi novella that reads more like a puzzle than a
story.

All the while,
Blindsight sat on the
shelf of my mind, waiting expectantly to be taken up again someday.
But still I refused, because I just couldn’t get it right. So I took
a shot at some other ideas: The Sparrow in the Wind Cage,
a retrofuturistic fantasy trilogy. I didn’t like where the first
draft was going, so I retired it. I started working on the Peregrine
trilogy, realized it needed some
more work, trashed the first draft. (I’m pleased to say that
Peregrine still
exists, and it’s the next project I’m working on.) And then, after
finishing Darkfield,
while trying to decide what to work on next, I got intrigued by a
simple idea featuring a character I instantly liked, named Barth
Despact. The story would be called…The Magic Hound of
Eastminster. Yes! I already
liked where this was going. The premise was simple: a man named Barth
is the apprentice to the Magic Hound, the sole person in the city of
Eastminster responsible for finding any and all traces of magic and
apprehending the caster by any means necessary – sort of like a
Sherlock Holmes of magicians, if you will. But then his master is
brutally murdered by a group of renegade wizards, and suddenly Barth
finds himself the new Magic Hound even though his training is
incomplete – and it’s his responsibility to track down these
criminals, who call themselves the Warlocks, before “all Hel breaks
loose.”

I started writing
at the end of October and couldn’t believe how quickly, how easily
the story came together. It flowed out more completely and smoothly
than any other story I’d worked on in – well, I don’t know when.
I’d never experienced this before. Yes, it was far from perfect –
there were a number of places that needed work, and still do. But
even on the worst days I was finding that the story was almost
telling itself. I wasn’t writing it, I was transcribing what I was
seeing in my head. It was amazing.

Not until I was
halfway through the book did I realize that I was actually writing
Blindsight. The
characters, the story – all of it was Blindsight, a new version,
one that had been germinating in my subconscious for who knows how
long and was finally ready to see the light of day. The story I’d
first created twelve years ago, that I’d tinkered with more times
than I could count – it had finally taken on the form it needed. I
had a version that I loved and was proud of, with characters I
enjoyed, with a plot that made sense but still had enough
complication and tension to keep it from being 2D cardboard.

I still don’t quite
know how this happened, or why it happened the way it did – all I
know is that I am so happy to finally be writing the story I’ve been
working on for what feels like ages, what is in many ways my “magnum
opus” even though it may not be the most creative or epic thing
I’ll ever write. Of all the stories I’ve ever devised, it’s the most
precious to me – and I cannot wait to share it with the world.

I’m so sorry for
this ridiculously long post, but I wanted to share my journey with
this story if only to capture some of the excitement that I’m feeling
now that the first draft of Blindsight, Book One: The Magic
Hound of Eastminster is almost
finished. By the end of this month, it will be.

My plan from there
is simple: my alpha readers are on standby, and I’m assembling my
team of beta readers now. After spending as much time as I need to
this year revising and editing, I plan to dedicate all of my energy
to looking for an agent while beginning to write Book Two of
Blindsight. That’s
what 2017 is going to look like for me as an author, and I couldn’t
be more excited.