Zoe E. Whitten's Blog

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Guest Post: Carrie Clevenger – The Bad Side of Writing

I’ve got a book coming out that I’ve been working on for almost a year. Champagne time, right? Cake and ice cream? No.

Time to write another book, because that’s what we do. Once you write your first book, it never stops. The ideas flow like water and sometimes you’re straddling two worlds. Frying bacon while getting hit with a sudden plot revelation equals burnt bacon. A night planned out with friends coinciding with a deadline or a character really laying into me about a story equals me staying home.

I can express disgruntlement with writing. A few, really.

No Friends

I have a couple of friends, but nothing solid and steady locally. My friends are instead in other states or even countries. Since I work at night for my real job, most are on the other side of the world. I flake on plans because instead of going to see a movie, I know I could do two to three thousand words. I’m inaccessible at times by my family that lives with me because I must write. My head will explode if I don’t, and brains don’t come out of carpet easily.

I have to leave the house at times because I get cabin fever. Since I work at home, I see a lot of the inside of my house.

No Spare Time

Every minute is accounted for and any event out of the ordinary has to be categorized and color-coded on my calendar, or I’ll totally forget about it. I’d love to sit and veg in front of the TV or level a toon on a game, any game, but I have to choose my priorities. I think that’s why music has become such an obsessive crutch for me. It’s the one thing I can do while doing something else.

No Peace

My characters are always pacing like tigers in a cage, anxious to tell me this or that. Some days it’s fine, but I wish there was an ‘off’ switch that could let me think about menial stuff, like planning a dinner party or remembering to change the oil in the car. Stamps at the grocery store. I have apparently bought rice and pasta seven times because I don’t remember that I bought them already. Yet I run out of bread.

Last week I had a driver honk me out of a plot stupor when a red light turned green. I was that dumb guy that didn’t know when the light changed. It makes me wonder if I’m behind another writer when the driver ahead of me doesn’t react immediately.

I Love It

But what can I say? I love writing. I love the power and freedom to create or destroy worlds in words. I can have anything I want in words. I can take you places you’ve never been.

This time around, let me take you to Pinecliffe, Colorado and down into New Mexico in Crooked Fang:

Sometimes a vampire’s past can bite him in the ass.

Xan Marcelles–bassist for Crooked Fang, vampire and full-time asshole, is content with his quiet existence in the backwoods of Pinecliffe, Colorado. But life at the Pale Rider tavern is set to become a little more complicated when he gets entangled with a feisty, blue-haired damsel and her abusive soon-to-be ex boyfriend.

To add to his woes, he’s gone from hunter to hunted, and his past returns to haunt him when a phone call draws him back to New Mexico. With the help of friends from his living past, he must get to the bottom of a murder, and figure out where he stands with his lover and his band, all while keeping one step ahead of his enemies. Hiding won’t be easy for him, especially with a mysterious woman dogging him every step of the way.

WARNING: Cussing, smoking, drinking and hot sex.

Main site: crookedfang.com