Regular readers know I’m both fiercely commited and fickle at the same time. In the moment, what I’m working on is the most important thing in the world, but when the moment passes, I’m easily pulled in random directions. This bizarre combination of focus and indecision has served me well as a pundit and columnist, [...]
I blame SE Hinton.
When I was in seventh grade, we read The Outsiders in class and then went on a field trip to see a screening of the movie. The story is a classic, at least for me–and it was a first novel–and one of the reasons is a literary trick Hinton used. At the end [...]
One of the key differences between the original draft of Revelation, back in 1996, and the current one shouldn’t be a difference at all. In 1996 I was out-processing from the Air Force, going from appointment to appointment and scribbling in my planner in between. I wrote anywhere and anywhen I could, sometimes for pages, [...]
I’ve been ready to start for a week now. The outline is as complete as it needs to be, filling out any more detail will freeze the story. I have all my tools in order, I’ve given up on fiddling with mobile tech, I really have nothing to do with my time away from the [...]
It’s spooky how easily writers are distracted from our purpose. While I’ve been into mobile technology for almost as long as I’ve been online, I’ve been detoured into a programming endeavour recently that has finally come to an end, and with it, I’ve found all the time to write that I could have sworn I [...]
When I was a teenager (okay, still) I was really into role-playing games. It’s a natural fit for a novelist, the opportunity to allow other people to help you, actually join you, in assuming a different identity for a while and being someone else. It was like acting without the stage fright.
When I was 14, [...]
After filling in the outline a bit more, I’ve got a bit better flow for the story, but more importantly, it’s become really obvious where the holes in the story are, or where the potential holes will be.
Daniel helps at a wreck, sees a man with a fatal injury walk away
We meet Susan, a right [...]
Here’s what I have so far on my outline…
Daniel helps at a wreck, sees a man with a fatal injury walk away
We meet Susan, a right wing Christian blogger
Daniel investigates the strange life of Hendriks, the dead man
Batarel stalks Daniel
We meet Jeff Frankel, a crazy old
Viet Nam vet
Daniel meets Susan
We meet Jack Harris, FBI. He [...]
My regular readers (all three of you) will notice that I haven’t posted in a week. Part of this is life. I’ve been hyperbusy and that doesn’t look like it’s going to let up anytime soon. I’ll get my next day off on the 24th, and people are already scrambling to claim some my time [...]
Before I get into the specifics of the database and the gospel, I think it’s important to reiterate something. The immortals are the granddaddy of all ancient secret societies. Before we get into how our heroes discover proof that the immortals exist, I want to stress again that acquiring such proof should be really, really [...]