Tag Archives: creating

Why I love writing horror.

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This post goes to the heart of who I am as a person.

For as a long as I can remember I’ve loved horror. I read a few books when I was younger, but horror movies fueled my childhood.

I watched Children of the Corn and Halloween when I was eight.

In my teen years, my father wasn’t home quite a bit and I would stay up and watch horror movies on HBO, Cinemax, and Showtime.

He wouldn’t let me get horror books when we’d go to the book store so I watched a lot of the movies.

As I grew up I loved to be scared and I remember my dad taking me to see “A Nightmare on Elm Street: Freddy’s Dead.”

It was the first time I saw a horror movie on the big screen and parts of it were in 3D.

My biological father would never have taken me to see it but my dad, he’s always been cool that way.

I love to be scared and when I was able to buy my own books I devoured them. Clive Barker’s Books of Blood is a favorite.

Recently, my wife and I would read horror, then trade books and have a discussion about them.

I came to writing horror and dark fantasy because I enjoy being scared.

It took me a long time, my wife and mom would say too long, to accept that I’m a horror and fantasy writer.

Sometimes, as a writer we deny who we are because we’re afraid of judgment. But the only one who can judge us is ourselves.

Be free to write what you enjoy and don’t let what anyone thinks about what you write or create make you feel bad.

It’s your art, enjoy it!

Happy writing!

Editing break

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I’ve been thinking about taking a break for a while.

Now that I’m staring at a self-imposed deadline for the current novel, I realized in order to get it where it needs to be, I have to focus on one thing.

This will be my last post for a while.

I plan on taking at least two months to get the novel where I want it, though it may take longer.

If something amazing happens, I’ll drop in, but after this post, I’ll be working to finish the horror novel I wrote in August.

I hope you all have a pleasant and productive spring and early summer and hopefully I’ll see you in the summer.

When you’re not ready for the story, try anyway.

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I haven’t traveled as much I would like. This has destroyed some of my writing.

When I write real world cities that I haven’t experienced I get a flustered and feel like faking it won’t work. When this happens I don’t want to continue with the story. I worry about people from those cities reading my stories and saying, “ah, its not like that.”

This has come into play with the recent story as parts are set in London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and the Orkney Islands. These are places I intend to visit in the future. Today our finances don’t allow me to go gallivanting across the U.K.

This presents a quandary I’m trying to puzzle out.

I’ve written about Paris, Prague and other places in stories before, but this book is different from the others. It has more of my soul in it.

I have Scottish ancestry and its somewhere I’ve wanted to visit since I was a little kid, I’m 43.

I’m fighting with myself on this one and I don’t want to get things wrong.

My hope is that when I finish this, I would’ve been to those places.

Although I’m apprehensive about it, I’ll continue to write. Its one of those ideas that shouldn’t be tossed in the bin. It needs to be finished.

Being in love with the story helps with this one. I don’t want to give up on something I’m in love with, regardless of the issues my mind has with it.

Happy writing.

I’m tired of being unpublished.

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I’ve reached a point where I’m tired of being unpublished.

I’ve written eight books and haven’t published a single one.

There are many reasons for this. But they boil down to not editing and not giving as much time to editing as I do to the first draft.

This caused me, at times, to hate writing.

After trying to edit one book, I got tired of it and wrote a couple more short stories as well as a novella.

So with every screw up a plan is born.

This plan will allow me to write something new as well as edit. I tried editing at night. It took away from time with my wife.

I love time with my wife. Sure, most nights were sitting across the room from each other reading. In Las Vegas I was lucky to get that.

I have two novels I’ll be editing for the year. I want to make sure they’re as perfect as possible.

Last summer 13 agents said no to one of my books. After having my writing group go over it, they noticed glaring issues only a different set of eyes can give a story.

I’ll be giving my writing group one of these. The other I’ll post in various places.

I will publish this year.

Happy writing!

Writing, writing groups, and being a pantser.

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There is a frustration with writing. I don’t know where it comes from, but it’s there often enough to give me pause.

Not understanding where the story is heading. Not being able to control the story. As a pantser, these two things plague me daily.

Now, don’t tell me, “Use an outline. It helps.”

Not for me it doesn’t. When I write, it’s about jumping off the bridge and finding wings on the way down.

I’ve tried outlines and beat sheets. They hinder my writing. I don’t know why, but they do.

I’ve written eight books, seven of them written by discovery/pantsing. The one book I wrote with a beat sheet feels stilted. I tried to enjoy writing it, but I slogged through it to the ending.

Now that we’re done with that part, I’ll talk about today and this week.

This week I started something new, ending the story from last week. This feels different from the other horror stories I’ve written. It feels closer to me.

Getting personal in a story is something I know I’ve needed to work on. With this one, that’s why I’m doing. It’s closer and because of that, it won’t be the 86k in a month I wrote a couple of months ago. I’m working through this one more slowly. It feels like its needed.

I will start submitting my horror stories around for critiquing as I’ve found that my writing group doesn’t understand it. They don’t read horror, which is causing a problem.

Anyway, I hope you’re having a marvelous day. I will be posting pictures from my bartending event Saturday on Instagram.

It should be a nice wedding at one of my favorite venues.