Charlie – Preorder 19 Feb 2021 6:42 PM (4 years ago)
My first novel, Charlie, is available for pre-order on Amazon right now! The paperback will be ready very soon!
Get the ebook here! – Charlie on Amazon.com
New Novel Coming Soon 30 Jan 2021 4:56 PM (4 years ago)
In the early 1970s, Charlie, a teenage runaway, and a vampire named Caroline meet, and the course of Charlie’s life is changed forever. Caroline wants a partner, for eternity, and Charlie wants to escape to Los Angeles. We follow as their relationship blooms and decays into madness.
Danny mix 2 Sep 2014 8:15 PM (11 years ago)
[8tracks width=”600″ height=”600″ playops=”” url=”http://8tracks.com/mixes/4743247″]
Some songs I’m listening to while rereading the Danny stories in preparation for writing What Danny Did.
New Story in Development 1 Sep 2014 10:31 PM (11 years ago)
Okay, so after some false starts and dead-end ideas, I’m almost 100% decided what the next story will be.
I’ve had a series of scenes in my head that I’ve wanted to work into the series, but never really had a place for. I’ve figured out a pretty solid way to make use of them and it comes in the format of this story, What Danny Did. It will be a stand alone novella, like The Death Game, and it will be structured in a similar way. To be honesty, I haven’t been 100% happy with the Danny books so far. Not because I think they aren’t written well or because I don’t like her story or character, I just feel like the beginning of her story is a fairly disturbing, sad experience, and a lot of it is her being confused and upset about all the terrible things that are happening. That’s one of the downsides of this serialized format. It’s not that it’s a bad story, it’s just that when I chop it up, the first couple are kind of depressing and stressful.
I recognize it’s probably not a great idea to talk shit about my stories, and honestly, I’m not even really complaining. My frustration isn’t that the stories aren’t good, it’s that I’m anxious to get to the part I’m more excited for. The beginning part has to be told, because it’s important, but I’m more enthusiastic about other parts of her story. Which is why this What Danny Did story is going to be fun.
There’s tons of good stuff in the first two Danny stories, and they’re some pretty important story elements in there. I recommend them as much as any of other stories. Perhaps maybe not as a starting point though.
First, before I can start, I have to finish my reread and editing. I’m doing a big once over on the whole series so far, fixing some grammar mistakes and implementing some proofreading. I’m tweaking a few lines here and there, just because I can. It’s something I’ve needed to do for a while, and something I’ve intended on doing ever since I went back to Amazon exclusive. I’m almost done with that. Then I start writing again.
10 Books 30 Aug 2014 8:20 PM (11 years ago)
So I saw a thing on Twitter where someone posted a photo of 10 books that influenced them. Here are mine.
Not pictured: The Great Shark Hunt by Hunter S. Thompson (because, for some reason, I can’t find any of my HST books. I must have a box or two of books in a closet) and The World According to Garp (which I also can’t find… damned random book boxes)
10 is not enough books. I make no apologies for the fact that most of the books that influenced me I read before I was 12.
Bloodletting 29 Aug 2014 12:58 AM (11 years ago)
I’ve decided I like it much better without the “A Vampire Story” subtitle.
New covers 25 Aug 2014 11:37 AM (11 years ago)
Since I’ve decided to take the “A Vampire Story” out of the title, I needed to remake the covers. Luckily, I still had the photoshop files for all but one of them. I had to rebuilt Devon from scratch, but it wasn’t too hard.
Even though I really liked the comic book style template I had set up for the covers before, I can see how it might have been confusing for all of the volumes to be called “Bloodletting” so I put the emphasis on the character name. It works well for some, and not as well for others. One benefit is that with a bigger, shorter main title, they seem to read a little better as ebook covers. One of the main goals in designing an ebook cover is making it readable as a small thumbnail picture. My old covers weren’t great for that, so hopefully this will make a difference.
Influences 24 Aug 2014 11:56 AM (11 years ago)
Just for fun, here’s a short list of movies/books/TV shows that have had a direct influence on Bloodletting:
Blade Runner
Mulholland Drive
Jacob’s Ladder
The Stand (the novel)
The Shining (mostly the novel, but also the Kubrick movie)
Time After Time
Boogie Nights
Near Dark
A Clockwork Orange
Alien
The World According to Garp
Audition
The Breakfast Club (seriously)
High Tension
Various HP Lovecraft works
Lost (the TV show)
Mad Men (TV show)
Mother Night (novel)
The Hunger (the movie)
The V Word 22 Aug 2014 11:52 PM (11 years ago)
Something that bothers me about zombie stories and movies is when they refuse to call the reanimated corpses zombies. The Walking Dead being the most obvious example, calling them “walkers” or “biters” or “geeks” or anything but zombies. They approach the story as though the concept of zombies in pop culture never existed and there’s nothing they can reference as an example of what it is they’re dealing with. Which I understand, from a storytelling standpoint, why they do that. Especially with zombies. These are typically disaster stories and one of the key elements of a disaster story is not knowing the hell is going on. Plus, if they’re offering a scientific foundation for why the zombies exist, then it would be an amazing coincidence if some virus comes along that brings dead people back to life and makes them behave exactly the same way as a fictional monster, with the same rules and tropes. I get it, that’s a big leap.
At the same time, it still bothers me a bit. It just strikes me as kind of arrogant and pretentious. As though they think they’re somehow above the genre. Too good to call their reanimated corpses zombies, even though that’s clearly what they are. And it’s not like the writers aren’t calling them zombies outside of the story, or acting like they’re anything but zombies. It’s just that in their world, they don’t call them zombies. And that bothers me.
The reason I bring it up is because when I first wrote this story, there was no stigma around vampires. People weren’t completely and utterly sick of them. There was no Twilight or Sookie Stackhouse or ten million knock-offs. I wrote the story because I had these characters and because nobody was telling the kind of vampire stories I liked. So it never occurred to me to call them anything but vampires. I wrote a vampire story, because I like vampires. When they’re done well, vampires are a lot of fun. I like the sexual subtext and the allure of immortality and the power dynamics. I think all of that creates a lot of opportunities for interesting character choices.
My vampires exist in a world where vampires exist pop culture, just like they do in real life. They’re self aware and they exist along side the pop culture interpretation of what a vampire is. The way I see it, just enough information about them has popped up here and there to create the vampire myth as it is in the real world, and the “real” vampires tolerate it and continue doing what they’re doing out of sight. So it never occurred to me to not call them vampires. I have them call themselves vampires because it would bother me to not call them that. They are vampires, so they call themselves vampires. Sure, they exist outside of the public’s idea of what a vampire is, and yes, they’ve been around longer than the mythology. They have their own ancient names for what they are, but those names are obsolete by the time my story takes place. They’ve adopted the word and use it because it’s not that far off from what they are.
I bring all of this up because when I wrote this story, it didn’t occur to me that one day “vampire” would be a dirty word in popular fiction. We’ve hit a saturation point where people are rejecting vampire stories sight unseen. They see the word “vampire” and they immediately move on without consideration. I’m not even complaining about that. I don’t blame them. I don’t read vampire stories either. The vast majority of vampire stories, in movies, TV or literature, are completely uninteresting to me.
To be fair, I’ve also actively avoided vampire stories/movies for the last year that I’ve been writing the Bloodletting series, because I don’t want to be influenced by anything happening now. Most of the influences I’ve channeled into Bloodletting have come from non-vampire stories, and that’s by design.
My point is that I’m concerned that I’m turning a huge portion of my potential audience away by putting the word “vampire” right in the title of the story. I called it “Bloodletting: A Vampire Movie” as a play on the Concrete Blonde song “Bloodletting: The Vampire Song” which I thought was cute back in the 90s when I first started writing the screenplay. It stuck and I’ve kept it and carried it over to the books, changing it to “a vampire story.” I’m already strongly considering going back and changing the title, taking out the “A Vampire Story” from the covers and title pages. I’ve pretty much decided that I’m going to do that. I’ve also taken the word “vampire” out of some of the descriptions on Amazon. I don’t want to be dishonest about what the story is, but I also feel like if people can get past that first hurdle, they’ll be entertained enough to get over the fact that it’s a vampire story. Also, because these are novellas and short stories, some of them barely have vampires in them at all. The first two Charlie stories have almost no vampire interaction at all. It’s mostly a story about a teenage girl running away from home, her relationship with her mother and dealing with pregnancy and depression. Those first two Charlie stories are basically dramas. There’s vampire stuff going on in the background, and by the time you get to the third Charlie story, you can see where there was more vampire stuff going on than you might have known. But yeah, those stories could be sold as non-vampire stories. Bette 4.0 is more of a noir crime story than it is a vampire story. There’s are vampire elements to it, but it’s not the focus at all.
I’m just wondering now if I haven’t made a mistake in calling them vampires at all. Maybe I should have come up with some other goofy thing for them to call themselves. I mean, they clearly are vampires, but at this point, I’ve made enough changes that I could probably have gotten away with calling them something else and letting be a little more vague.
For example, there was a movie called Under the Skin that I watched not too long ago. It was about an alien (played by Scarlett Johansson) picking up hitchhikers and processing them as food for other aliens. It was, essentially, a vampire movie. A lot of the rules and key elements were different, but the tone was very much vampire. It hit a lot of the same notes. Lately I’ve been adding a bit of an HP Lovecraft style cosmic horror element and, exploring just how different the older vampires are from living people. It wouldn’t be that crazy to not call them vampires. Between vampirey things I’ve taken away and the things I’ve added that aren’t typically found in vampires, it’s not so crazy that I could call them something other than vampires.
Though, again, clearly that’s what they are. They’re drinking blood, they’re immortal and they can’t go in the sun. They’re vampires.
Either way, it’s too late now. I would have to go back and rewrite a ton of shit to accommodate that change. It wouldn’t just be cleaning up the odd grammar mistake or reworking a line or two (which I do from time to time with the older stuff) but fully retelling the story in parts, which I don’t want to do. Besides, I like calling them vampires. If I changed it, it would be because of a marketing decision, and that totally uncool. I’d hate it.
So I’m stuck with the fact that I’m writing vampire stories in an environment that’s quite hostile toward vampire stories. I just have to figure out a way to prove to people that these vampire stories are not only good, but totally different from other vampire stories. Right now, I’m just focusing on getting to the end of the story, then I’ll start my next series and, hopefully, maybe, if people like it, they’ll go back and check out Bloodletting.
Ferguson, Self Reflection, Institutional Racism and Bullying 20 Aug 2014 12:28 AM (11 years ago)
It’s probably not smart to express a strong social/political opinion on the blog for my writing, but I’ve been doing pretty much nothing but that this week on twitter, and honestly, if you aren’t outraged by what’s happening in Ferguson, Missouri, The United States of America, then I’m not too worried about offending you, because I don’t care.
I’ve been actively engaged with this Ferguson story. Far more so than any other big news story in recent memory. Clearly police abuse and institutionalized racism is a big deal, but there have been plenty of stories like this in the past (perhaps not on this scale, but certainly a lot) and none of them have bothered me any more or less than any of the other terrible things I see in the news. Also, obviously, it’s absolutely devastating that an 18 year old kid was executed in the street. Regardless of what he may or may not have done, there is ZERO reason for a cop to shoot an unarmed teenager through the fucking forehead. After shooting him five times already. There’s no argument that can justify that.
Part of it is because I’ve been taking a pretty honest look at social issues like race and gender and sexuality and privilege lately, and trying to figure out just how I fit into that equation. It’s both an introspective analysis as well as a social one, in that I’m trying to engage people as respectfully as I can and with as much of an open mind as I can. I want to learn what other peoples experiences are, and how I can help create an easier environment for them to exist in. At the very least, by figuring out what things I may be unknowingly doing that are making life more difficult for other people. I don’t always agree with everything I learn, but I do try my best to see it from another person’s perspective.
So this situation is a pretty clear example of how a certain segment of the population endures abuse and challenges that I personally have never experienced, and likely will never experience. In that regard, as a straight, white man, it’s making me more sensitive to and aware of how other straight, white people behave and engage with the world. That’s an eye opening and disturbing experience, once I actually started looking for it. It’s also making me more aware of, and sensitive to, other ways that people are divided and put into little groups that are more easily generalized and marginalized. Whether it’s the big ones, like race, economic status, gender, or sexuality, or some of the less visible issues like mental health or religious views or any number of distinguishing characteristics. Anything that can carve you away from the trunk of the tree can be used to marginalize or dehumanize you. That said, it’s pointless to start comparing struggles. Especially when you’re someone working with your own set of privileges. I’m not looking to join any clubs… I just want to be more aware.
But that’s not REALLY what’s got me engaged with this story. It’s part of it, certainly, but it’s not the main thing. One other smaller reason is that I have a serious problem with what people call authority. As I’ve gotten older, more and more I’m finding myself looking at people in uniforms and people with badges as exactly what they are, just people. And I find myself questioning why they have those uniforms and badges. Not in an anti-government, start a militia, stockpile guns sort of way. Just in an immediate “who the fuck do you think you are?” sort of way. Growing up in the military, I’ve known too many fucking dumbass, punk hillbilly fuckheads who wear a uniform, hide behind a gun and have a license to kill, to have much respect for anyone in a uniform. I don’t see why a cop is any different, except in that they’ve got less training and thrive in an even more toxic environment.
That’s not to say that I think every cop is a monster… but every cop is certainly suspect, and I believe a good chunk of them are monsters. Watching this situation specifically unfold, it totally triggers my “who the fuck do you think you are?” response that I mentioned earlier. Some fat, old, pink faced pig with a crew cut yelling at ME? Fuck. THAT. In the neck.
Now, that’s how I feel, as a white guy who just doesn’t like cops on principle. I can’t even imagine what it must be like to have to deal with those same cops as a black guy. That’s something that’s impossible for me to understand, but I can certainly recognize that it must be fucking awful. I can’t imagine what it must be like to try and live your life every day knowing that maybe a cop might shoot you for no reason. I can’t imagine what it’s like to have to explain to your kid the best way to respond so that maybe they don’t get shot by the police. Maybe. I can’t imagine any of it, but I’m sure it’s terrible.
So that also plays into my first reason, which was trying to be more empathetic and open minded about the struggles of people who don’t share my particular advantage.
That’s still not the main reason this thing bothers me so much, which is that I just fucking HAAATE bullies. I hate them. I hate seeing people using force and the threat of violence to push other people around. I hate seeing intimidation tactics and I hate the expression on a cop’s face when he’s looking down at citizens and seeing them as animals. Especially when he’s doing it down the scope of a rifle. That’s disgusting to me and it drives me up the wall.
This whole situation has been about how a huge segment of that community (and, let’s be real, most of an entire ethnicity in America) lives under constant threat that some pissed off, morally superior jackass with a gun is going to be irritated that his wife didn’t feel like letting him do things he saw in internet porn, so he’s going to take that anger out on some poor kid who happens to be walking down the street. Fucking bullies. A huge portion of our population, right now, is standing up and saying “We will not be bullied by you pricks anymore” and I can’t not cheer for that.
What I’m especially invested in is how this particular group is so aware of themselves and how they’re being portrayed in the media and how it will affect the outcome of this. They’re standing up to oppression, but they’re being smart about it, and I love it.
I lived in Southern California during the L.A. riots. That was scary as hell. It was scary to watch it on the news and know that it was not that far away. That was an experience that, honestly, painted a picture in my head. It wouldn’t say that it instilled any kind of overt negativity, but images of brown people, dressed a certain way, smashing windows and stealing tvs and pulling Reginald Denny out of his truck and beating him within an inch of his life made an impression. As I got older (I was 14 at the time) and came to understand the politics of it a little better, and the circumstances surrounding it a little better, I was able to reconcile why those things happened. Not justifying them necessarily, but at least understanding how and why they got to where they ended up.
Now, contrasting that to what we’re seeing in Ferguson, I’m aware of just how much of an effort that community is making to control their image in the media, and how crucial that is. I want them to succeed in this. Obviously nothing that happens as a result of this will ever be worth the life of a teenage kid, but that doesn’t change that I very badly want every possible good outcome. I want this cop arrested, convicted and in jail. I want a federal law that says all police have to wear go-pro cameras while on duty. I want the demilitarization of local police. Most of all, I want a constant and productive conversation about institutional racism and especially how that relates to the police and the justice system’s treatment of black men. I don’t know that we’re going to get those things, or even any of those things, but that’s what I want.