Race Days and Writing Days

If you’ll notice the tumbleweeds around these parts, that’s because I’ve spent the last few weeks immersed in The Jimmy Project, my alternate history superhero story about a boy and his feelings. And saving the U.S of A., I guess.

I finished The Jimmy Project last weekend, and now I’m in a bit of the afterglow that accompanies the end of a first draft. Leaning back and knowing you’re done with that challenging draft is one of the most rewarding things you can imagine. It’s not just that you had an idea, because ideas are a dime a dozen. It’s that you took that one idea persevered when you worried that it might be a bad one. That you kept pushing even when it seemed foolish to do it. And somewhere along the line, you wrote a book. Oops. Continue reading →

The Writing Jam

guitar

This weekend, I picked up the guitar, something I wasn’t sure I’d do again for a long time yet. If you had told me back in college, when I was strumming away almost hourly, that I would have dropped the guitar in my late twenties, I would have scoffed at you.

Perhaps I would have even played you a ditty about it. I was fond of ditties. Continue reading →

Spinning Plates and the Snowflake Method

I suck at writing novels. I’m not being down on myself, it’s just a simple truth. Unfortunately, I would like to write novels for a living one day. So yeah, those two things kind of collide in the worst way possible.

In many ways, being a writer is like being one of those dudes that spins plates. I’m not really sure if there’s a technical name for that, and I really don’t feel like Googling “that dude who spins plates”, but I’m sure you get the gist of it. Basically, with first drafts, there’s always something else to fix. Whether it’s general copy, something thematic, a dumb character, a bad piece of dialogue or just terrible story crafting, some plate is always going to be wobbling. You might drive yourself mad trying to keep up with it all. Continue reading →

The Dungeon Writer

When I was younger, we didn’t have a whole lot of limits on what we could and couldn’t consume in terms of media. I think I started watching rated R movies when I was around 6 or 7 years old. Of course, I started with the greats: Predator, Rambo III, Commando and the like. I guess my dad was really into burly dudes shooting machine guns, so I was into it, too.

However, through all of the blood and gore, there was one thing that my mom was always adamant that we couldn’t watch: anything with magic. Continue reading →

Shredding and Editing

I’ve been anticipating 2011 as the year of the revision, much like 2010 was the year of the first draft. As such, this means that I’m now tackling the lengthy process of printing, reading and revising, and so far it’s been a mixed bag.

Oddly enough, I actually decided to revise the most recent book first, the fully fleshed out version of In the Blood (although that will not be the final title). I came to this conclusion for a number of reasons. Continue reading →

Things I Did in 2010

Seeing as how we’re already 12 days into the year 2011, I figured my time was running short on doing a self-congratulating post about last year. I could write a whole bunch of nonsense about how 2010 was a year of ups and downs, but it really wasn’t. In all honesty, it was one of the best years I can remember, and I have no reason to believe that 2011 will be any different.

Here’s some stuff I did in 2010, mostly in chronological order: Continue reading →

The Raggedy Edge

standing on the edgeIn the realm of things that are totally are-you-freaking-kidding-me ridiculous: last night, I officially hit my goal of writing 100,000 words for Seven Sons. There was no fanfare associated with this, nobody standing there and cheering or popping champagne bottles, but it was an event for me nonetheless.

The threshold was crossed on the following sentence: A few lies would set them back on their way just as easily as a blade, but the death would only mean questions later.

Continue reading →

The Creative Bog

Brays Bayou

Lately, I’ve been getting into riding my bike along the Brays Bayou here in Houston several times a week. It’s a nice stretch near our neighborhood with a path for biking and running. The only problem is that it’s so open, there’s always one direction where the wind buffets you like a whip, and keeps you from getting up to full speed. So basically, there’s a portion of the ride that’s a bit of a chore.

I’m finding out that writing is kind of the same way. My biggest problem throughout college and my early adult life was that I had a terrible habit of starting new projects without finishing them. Getting started on something new wasn’t a problem at all — it’s actually the easiest part. But once that initial rush of doing something creative is gone, you’re left trying to ride against the wind or run up hill. It’s what I refer to as the Creative Bog. Continue reading →

Seven Sons Prologue

When this site got up and running finally, I promised a small glimpse at the opening section of my novel, Seven Sons. So, I figured I’d make good on that. Here is a (very) rough version of what I have in mind for the prologue. If you need a primer on Sons, I’d suggest you go read up on that first.

Something I feel that I should point out: once again, this is a rough draft, so nothing here is final. That includes characters, titles, etc. Anything is fair game to change. At the moment, I’m writing for quantity over quality. This hasn’t been edited much, because the idea is that the heavy revising will happen in the next draft. The main goal right now is simply to get to the end. That’s the hard part. Going back and making it sound pretty is the simple stuff. So, I would appreciate it if you could keep it easy on grammatical critiques, as it’s not the thing I’m concerned with at the moment. I’m sure there are a great many. Also, it should be noted that this opening POV is from Jonas, a thieving, conning, all around rotten dude.

So, now that those caveats are out of the way, feel free to read and tell me what you think. Continue reading →