The American Dream – A totally non-sarcastic essay

A few years ago, I penned a quick essay for a European friend and high-school teacher. Its purpose was to educate a class of students, few of whom had ever been to America, on the meaning of the so-called American dream.

I recently stumbled across that essay. Looking back, I can hardly believe I wrote something so non-cynical and free of sarcasm.

Accidents will happen.

Enjoy:

Smeagle the Eagle

The American Dream – A Not So Simple Definition

If one believes historian James Truslow Adams, the American Dream is the unique and substantive quality of America ‘…which has lured millions to our shores.’

Of course it’s not nearly as simple as that.

There are myriad ways one might define the hopes and dreams of an American, and while many are optimistic, others are just as pragmatic, even cynical.  For as much as a man or woman might believe America is a land of endless opportunity, of boundless hope and liberty, there will always exist another who believes the opposite.  No two views are likely the same.

Let us begin by describing the classical view, the idyllic American life as imagined in hearts and on paper, if not in reality.

There exists an idea, however unattainable, that all American men and women possess equal opportunity for success, material gain, and personal fulfillment.  Whether an American hails from the poorest city slum or from the farthest rural meadow, the ideal says that we’re all the same, that no matter our pedigree we might hope to scale the rungs of happiness in whatever form that happiness might take.  This is not a utopian view, but simply a giver of hope, an unspoken possibility that because of the freedoms intrinsic to the Constitution, we might all aspire to be greater than we presently are.  This view of the American Dream would not have us believe that every man and woman is destined for fantastical prosperity, but instead that any person, no matter his or her beginnings, can hope for better than they have.

There also exists a more realistic view, a sensible way of believing in the American Dream without necessarily contradicting the idyllic hopes of our forefathers.  The practical American man or woman might say that the Dream exists not in the forefront of every American’s mind, but instead upon the very periphery of our collective consciousness.  While liberty, happiness, and success are possibilities, they are not always available or deserved.  This view stresses that while one might grasp for all things wished and hoped for, without hard work and good fortune such dreams might never come to fruition.  This view is not incompatible with the other, nor does it discount the great freedoms granted at America’s founding.  It aims instead to promote the spirit of striving hard for success, rather than see America’s hopes and aspirations founder while waiting idly for good things to come.

There are those who say the American Dream is dead, that the fantasy of America’s youth has given way to the cynicism of maturity.  Only the individual knows for certain.  This dream, likes so many others, lives solely in the hearts and minds of the people.

– J Edward Neill

circa whenever

J Edward is the author of sci-fi thriller, A Door Never Dreamed Of, fantasy epic Down the Dark Path, and the ice-breaking Coffee Table Philosophy series.

Ten Quick Observations About the Writing Bizniz

It’s a quirky industry, writing books.

Some take it seriously. Others not so much.

Some work with an entirely homegrown approach. Others hire professional muscle to do their dirty work marketing. Most use a mix of the two.

One of the biggest vehicles for so-called ‘indie’ authors (I hate that term) is social media. Twitter, Facebook, Linked-In, Tumblr, and Instagram. There are many ways of publicizing a book, but most cost money and/or require authors to either sell their work for pennies or list it for free. Such is the world we work in.

In this new environment, everyone has a strategy. Or at least, everyone probably should. There is no silver bullet for literary success. Much of what we do involves throwing our work into the wind and hoping someone catches it.

And so…

The following are my somewhat satirical thoughts on what authors do and how they do it.

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1. What’s with all the memes?

Look, I get it. People nowadays communicate their feelings via memes. It’s cute, I guess. At least for a little while. To research this observation, I scrolled up and down the pages of some of the authors whom I follow. What did I find? Memes. Tons and fucking tons of memes. Most of which pretty much said the same things, including: Quotes by Stephen King, how much writers surf the web while they’re supposed to be writing, and how you can tell so-and-so is a writer because (insert some stupid stereotype here.) Ok. That’s all well and good. But while these people are busy posting memes, some of us are writing giant fucking circles around them. It’s also probably worth noting that if one’s audience is primarily made up of readers, one should probably target the commentary at them, not to other authors. Readers probably don’t give a rip about how much you surf Facebook while you’re writing vampire porn. Just a thought. 🙂

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If this is what you do when you’re ‘writing,’ it’s time for a new career choice.

 

2. Spamming on social media will only go so far.

Like anything involving people, images and links will only cut so deep. To really get people’s attention, you have to engage their minds. Authors shouldn’t want followers; authors should want fans. The best way to capture the hearts of your audience is to be in the moment with them. Talk to them. Show them how you’re a real person and you give a shit. Your product is only as awesome as you are. Whenever I see a writer or an artist having a conversation with their audience, I crack a smile. Whenever I see a pile of memes or spammed Amazon links, I shake my head.

3. Content, content, content

The state of the indie art seems to be: write book/pitch book. And then: write another book/pitch another book. I guess this approach might work if you’re A. A fucking badass author, or B. Lucky to  hit the right genre at the right time. But in case you’re not a badass or lucky, I suggest you spend a LOT more time creating content. And by content I mean shit that engages the audience, but doesn’t make a direct pitch at selling them stuff. Write about your life, your experiences, or just some funny stuff your cat did. But don’t expect to just write a book and sell 10,000 copies based on the work itself. Create content that has nothing to do with salesmanship. Entertain audiences for free…and then maybe they’ll consider forking over cash to buy your stuff. I dunno. Just a thought.

4. Your cover art is beautiful. Your book sucks.

There’s a famous saying. Goes something like, “Never judge a…” Oh hell, you know what I’m talking about. The modern state of the business is this: Kickass cover art is available to everyone. Good (and truly great) artists are out there, and they’re willing to take authors’ cash in exchange for creating cool-as-hell book art. The ish here is that for every one awesome storyteller selling his or her book for pennies on Amazon, there are ten people who couldn’t word their way out of a 1st grade creative writing class. Meaning…there’s some dude out there who just shelled out $500 for a sexy vampire slut on his book cover, but who didn’t spend a damn dime on getting the same book edited. His grandma and his sister’s barely-literate coworker were the only ones who read it before he hoisted his book, Vampire Sluts from Hell, onto Amazon. And yeah, you just bought that shit for $5.99. This probably sounds like sour grapes. It’s not. All I’m saying is…don’t judge a book by its cover…and don’t buy Vampire Sluts from Hell.

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“That book was awful. It was two hours of my life I’ll never get back.” “Well, you prolly should’ve looked past the boobs on the cover.”

 

5. No, I don’t want to ‘check out’ your new book.

Name a sales pitch that would grab your attention. Now name one that wouldn’t stand a chance. Chances are, if you saw a product on tv stating simply to ‘check out’ some new product, you’d gloss over that shit. (Imagine the Dos Equis ‘most interesting man’ if all he said was, ‘Check out this cool beer.’) If an ad features a unique take or maybe something funny, you might actually look into the product. If not…you won’t. And that brings me to this: if an author is trying to sell something, they should never ever use the words ‘check out’ in the sales pitch. Seriously. Never. Pretty much 40% of the book ads I see (or ads for any kind of art, really) use the exact phrase “Hey, check out my new ____.” Really? Is that supposed to grab a reader’s attention? Hint: it doesn’t. Try harder. Actually, since you’re all my competition, don’t. Ha.

Also…try not to use superlatives. Nobody’s book is the bestest ever of all time. 🙂

6. I can feel the love.

There’s at least one good thing that has come of the ‘indie’ author movement and the rise of online self-marketing. It’s called teamwork, and I’m happy to say I see it every day. People who would otherwise be stuck on lonely little art islands are now able to talk, vent, and most importantly, help each other. Artists can collaborate at the speed of light. It’s easier to have a voice than ever before. And yeah, I know I said I’m in competition with every other author in the world, but even so… Twenty years ago we were all slaves to the big publishers. Now…fuck those guys. Other authors and painters might be my competitors, but at least we’re all on the same battlefield. Now excuse me while I go retweet my twenty favorite writers and painters. Even if it involves a bunch of bullshit memes. 🙂

7. Why, why, why all the man abs?

Ok. This isn’t a serious question. All I’m asking is for all my cool-as-hell female authors to occasionally put an image up on the internet I can share for you that doesn’t include Captain Situp and his 74-pack abs. (In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s the title of at least half the romance novels out there.) But seriously…that shit’s intimidating. I do a fuckload of crunches every day, but I can’t live up to these dudes. I can’t in good faith share an image that makes me look pathetic. Now boobs, on the other hand…

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Jesus Christ, man. Eat a pizza or something.

 

8. We all need a better work ethic.

Myself especially. I mean…what excuse do we have? Thanks to computers, super-fast internet, and this wonderful little site called WordPress, reaching audiences is easier than ever before in the history of mankind. I’ve published 23 books in the last few years, which a hundred years ago would’ve taken most of my lifetime to finish (not to mention try to sell.) And yet here I am, knowing that if I worked harder, I could’ve done more. Look, I’m not gonna pitch statistics to you. Every writer in the world worth his or her salt will confess to needing to do more. It seems convenience is a double-edged sword. Technology gives artists the tools, but is utterly distracting at the same time. What’s the answer? Hell if I know. Smash your tv and dump your girlfriend, maybe? Worth a shot. 🙂

9. Automated Replies kill your business, not grow it.

See # 2 in this list, way up there near the top? Well there’s this sector of modern art marketing dedicated to using auto-replies instead of actual human engagement. I don’t know about you, but when I see an auto-reply for anything, not just books or art, I lose interest immediately. What it says is that I, the customer, am not worth a moment of personal time. What it also says is that the offending artist believes that the first contact with me should be a sales pitch, and usually a pretty boring one at that. Honestly, when trying to connect with new people online, I’d rather they not answer me at all than send me an auto-reply. That shit is annoying. Please stop. Thanks.

10. Despite all the mess, the writing world is a better place today.

You wanna know why? Because nowadays, if you’re a good storyteller with a tale to tell, you’ve got a shot. You’ve got some power. Your ability and effort matter. Ten little ole years ago, this just wasn’t true. So even though there’s a ton of straight-up awkward stuff going on in the biz, there’s also a lot of good. And to me, that good is great.

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Hey look, I’m breaking my own rules. Eat some of these delicious words. And be happier for it.

J Edward Neill

The Agonizing Art of Writing Book Blurbs

A while back I got mega sarcastic with a list of alternative movie blurbs.

And later I roasted myself in public by making fun of all my books.

This time I’m keeping it serious.

If only to illustrate the pain and suffering that accompany writing blurbs (and query letters…and synopses) I’ve challenged myself to write one-sentence descriptions of all my books. The real challenge: giving readers a feel for what the book is about. One sentence. Not too vague. Catchy. Not cliché.

I challenge all my writer friends to do the same.

And all my readers to enjoy this.

Darkness Between the Stars – While gazing at the night sky, the world’s loneliest boy sees the stars begin to disappear.

Big Shiny Red Buttons – The most absurd scenarios imaginable stacked between 100 pages.

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Hollow Empire – Night of Knives – After a plague wipes out most of a medieval nation’s population, five lost souls must survive the horrors that follow.

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Down the Dark Path – Book I – A young woman leaves home to make a better life for herself, only to wander into the heart of a horrific, world-consuming war.

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Old Man of Tessera – The lone survivor of a deadly storm finds the city of Tessera, in which nothing and no one are what they seem.

 The Hecatomb – A ghoulish monster and its offspring stalk cities at night with the aim of killing every last human in the world.

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101 Questions for Humanity – The original entry in the Coffee Table Philosophy series asks short, simple questions with aim of provoking thoughtful answers.

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101 Questions for Midnight – The stakes are raised and the questions darker than ever in this fun, engaging ice-breaker book.

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Down the Dark Path – Book II – A woman follows her lover into a battle he can never hope to win.

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A Door Never Dreamed Of – In a distant Earth future, two young men on opposite sides of an apocalyptic war collide.

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Down the Dark Path – Book III – After invading and crushing his rival’s homeland, a war-crazed emperor sends his cruelest warlord to butcher the last of his enemies.

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101 Questions for Women – Written with women in mind but accessible to everyone, 101 Questions for Women focuses on love, lust, and the breakdown of traditional gender roles.

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101 Questions for Men – Geared for men, this entry in the Coffee Table Philosophy series asks questions about sex, relationships, and much more.

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Down the Dark Path – Book IV – As a world-ending conflict reaches its climax, a young woman must choose whether to join the winning side and become queen or sacrifice everything to betray her kidnappers.

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The Sleepers – A wealthy student in a far-distant future is tasked with destroying an alien world to save humanity.

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Let the Bodies – A little girl suffers alone while everyone in her city vanishes.

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101 Deeper, Darker Questions for Humanity – 101 dark questions to test your morality, challenge your ethics, and entertain your friends.

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101 Sex Questions – Lovers and laugh-seekers alike will find entertainment in this sexy sidekick to the Coffee Table Philosophy series.
  Dark Moon Daughter New Kindle CoverDark Moon Daughter – Young Andelusia Anderae is seduced by a messenger and convinced that her budding black magic is the key to saving thousands of lives.

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Nether Kingdom – At the world’s edge, a sorceress awakens to the terrible realization that she alone can stop an invasion of otherworldly horrors.

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444 Questions for the Universe – Meant to entertain for hours, 444 Questions is a grand compilation of serious yet fun questions.

The Little Book of BIG Questions – Science and morality collide in the ultimate conversation-starting book for smart people.

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101 Questions for Single People – In the modern world of swiping left and never looking back, 101 Questions for Single People asks readers about every facet of love, lust, and human romantic connection.

Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows – A leper dedicates his life to saving children, a woman accepts the rarest of all murder contracts, a girl suffers insanity in a space colony, a train-hopping duo crosses through dimensions, and much, much more…
*The Ultimate Get to Know Someone Quiz – A delightful crash course of fun questions to ask spouses, significant others, family, and friends.

 

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There might be no better way to grab a reader’s attention than through a good blurb.

…and no easier way to lose it with a bad one.

See you on the flip side.

J Edward Neill

Notes from a (mildly) successful author

Last year I sold just over three-thousand books.

Using Kindle Unlimited alone, readers devoured about 18,000 pages of my written works.

Does that sounds like a lot?

It isn’t.

But nor is it insignificant.

So here I find myself, two years after starting my self-publishing journey.

Let’s be honest; I’m stuck squarely in mediocrity.

It’s not a terrible place to be, I guess. I’m not beating myself up about it, but nor can I pat myself on the back. To be honest, I don’t know what I expected in terms of success. When I started this journey I didn’t have a well-crafted plan, a true marketing focus, or an end-of-line goal. It was just me, a small pile of fantasy books, and a notion that a few people might like to read them.

And yet…

The more I wrote, the more I wanted.

And suddenly the idea of mere modest success didn’t sit so well with me.

Let’s jump back in time a bit. Last year I was at a friend’s house party. I was there alone, no date, but most of the others had significant others. As I sat on the couch, cocktail in hand, I people-watched. Cute girls, I observed. Young dudes. But WTF? Everyone is on their cell phone. An idea struck me right then and there. A non-fiction book. Something I’d never even considered before. Something simple to read at parties, break the ice, and pry people’s noses out of their devices. In that moment, the 101 Questions for Humanity series was born. I published the book in less than a month…and all of the sudden sales started to rise. (Special thanks to the UK for buying the hell out of these.)

So. Yeah. A non-fiction book. By a guy who’d only ever written deep, dark fiction. At the time I wrote it, I still didn’t have a plan. But I did have the drive. Know what I mean?

That was about eight months ago. And today here I am, still pounding out words. I’m floating in the grey space between not-at-all-successful and full-time-pay-all-my-bills-writer. I imagine this is where most of my contemporaries sit. We don’t make enough cash to quit our jobs (yet) but nor are we the sort to publish one or two books and sell them only to sympathetic families and friends. We pay our utilities with our royalties, but not our mortgages. Our sales charts look like roller coasters, neither flat-lining nor reaching the grand plateau of holy-shit-I-made-it.

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It feels a little like this. Battling for crowd supremacy. Sparring with a thousand other people who want the exact same thing.

I guess, given that I’ve only been at publishing two years, and taking into account I have a kid, a terrible day job, and an aggressive social life, I should probably be happy with being in Middle-Land. It’s not so bad. I could walk away right now holding my head high, thinking to myself, well, I wrote more words and sold more books than 99% of the population. I could probably give up the art and never look back.

But if you know me…and more importantly if you know human nature…sometimes settling for mediocrity isn’t in the cards.

I’m going to write until I’m dead. That’s just how it’s gonna be.

A while back, I penned a piece about enjoying healthy competition with your peers. I launched it with writers and artists in mind, but really it applies to everyone. The idea is this: if you want to be better than everyone else, you have to BE better. You have to live it, own it, breathe it. And when you find yourself swimming with ten thousand other fish and you’re aching to either push on or quit and try something else, you’ve got a tough decision to make. Existing in mediocrity ain’t easy. It’s hard to push yourself to the limit, harder still when you learn the fruits of your labor are smaller than you hoped for. You can quit and be happy. You can keep on keepin’ on, content with being in the middle. Or you can roll your sleeves up and get ready to fistfight the entire world. It’s your call, really.

Look, this is not where I get motivational. I don’t have any advice to speed anyone on the way to success. That’s not really my thing. But…I do have a few observations:

Being in the middle of the pack doesn’t suck after two years. It probably will after ten.

Having modest success feels a half a click better than having none…but ten clicks worse than earning big success.

Consumers of books and art don’t usually need perfection. They want to be engaged. They want an emotional response.

If you can keep giving it to them, you’ve got a shot.

My point is that swimming with the crowd won’t kill you. It’ll sting a little every day you’re stuck in it, but it’s not like swinging and missing completely.

Or is it?  

*

The End

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Sudden stops are my kind of thing.

Sudden heart-stops, too.

Until next time.

J Edward Neill

Killing Your Darlings or Editing My Over-used Words

I’m in the process of editing right now. It is honestly my least favorite part of the writing process. Mostly because the act of that first draft is very freeing, if you allow it to be. I’m not one who needs every line and every word to be in its right place during the initial stages. I’m more than willing to just put it all on the page and hope for the best.

Now that’s not to say I don’t have a game plan or outline, but it means I allow myself to make mistakes. I don’t really self-edit as I go along. Really the only thing I will do is fix something’s spelling… and that is mostly so I don’t have to bother doing it later.

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So I finish up the draft and much celebrating is done because you should be celebrating writing 90,000 words or 60,000 words or a million words or, hell, 2 words.

But…

It also means that there is a lot of fixing needing to be done on the second pass. Though, to be honest, while it’s time consuming, I don’t mind that pass too much since most of it is manipulating words and phrases, deleting things which no longer belong, or adding things in to foreshadow something later in the book. In fact, this is “writing” more than “editing”.

This is not where I’m at with The White Effect. No, I’m at that next pass where I need to start making sure the stupid stuff isn’t screwing me up. The, gulp, grammar stuff. You know, all that crap they went on and on in English class and you spent the entire hour doodling in your notebook? Yeah, that.

Sigh.

Not only that, but it is also the point where

Luckily (or at least I think it is lucky), I have begun to figure out my crutch words and phrases. So that 3rd pass is really about systematically eliminating all those “bad” words. A true Seek and Destroy style mission using your word finder and the delete key a far amount (note, this doesn’t always apply to dialogue – people do not speak “correctly”).

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Adverbs – Anything that ends in “ly” is fair game for elimination. However, as with all of these words or phrases, I do a reread of the paragraph and see if it really warrants extinction. Sadly (hey, there’s that “ly”), adverbs most of the time don’t add as much as we think they do.

For example: “The girl ran quickly.”

Well, how else might she run? Typically if I wanted to imply that she was really pouring it on I’d opt for something like: “The girl sprinted.”

That – This is my absolute favorite one to get rid of. Most of the time the word “that” can be eliminated. Flat out. Read your sentence with “that” and then read it again without “that”… no difference (I’d say 75-80% of the time).

Nodded, Smiled, Laughed, Sighed, Shrugged, Shook, and Grinned – These are really more like placeholders for me on that first pass. I can’t always think of great things for someone to do, so I slot these in initially, and it is on this pass I begin to alter them into something a little… classier maybe. “She grinned.” vs. “She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.”

I just need something different that 1000 instances of “grinned” and “nodded”.

Just – I probably use this more in my dialogue than in my prose, but it does sneak in there as well. Another word to be deleted.

He said aloud – Another placeholder, waiting to grow up and become something better.

Cliches – These vary from project to project, and I’m not going to claim to find them all, but most of the time I try to avoid them: Needle in a haystack, grasping at straws, get out of dodge, and fast and furious have managed to infiltrate my prose on more than one occasion.

That’s just some of them. I have a word document full of them.

The best thing is that each project I’ve managed to eliminate some of my tendencies. The bad thing is that sometimes exposes a new one.

That’s all for today, back to hunting.

 

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John McGuire

John McGuire is the author of the supernatural thriller The Dark That Follows, the steampunk comic The Gilded Age, and the novella There’s Something About Mac through the Amazon Kindle Worlds program.

His second novel, Hollow Empire, is now complete. The first episode is now FREE!

He also has a short story in the Beyond the Gate anthology, which is free on most platforms!

And has two shorts in the Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows anthology! Check it out!

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com.

20 Things I’ve Dreamed About

Not so long ago, I lost my dreams.

Meaning; I stopped having them.

Entirely.

I think I know the reason why. But reasons aren’t always important. Instead I think I’ll catalog some of the ones I remember. For my sake. And hopefully for your entertainment.

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A lot of people describe having falling dreams. I can’t remember ever having one of those. But I used to have falling ‘up’ dreams. As in I keep falling toward outer space. I don’t die out there in the stars. I just keep going. Trippy.

Remember the cool spherical submarine James Cameron took down into the ocean deeps? I dreamed that. Except the sub went way, way down. Not just the seven miles into the Marianas Trench, but a hundred miles deeper. I can’t really recall what I saw down there, but it was fascinating…and terrifying.

I once dreamed I met two men in Israel. They each offered me a different power, but the catch was I’d have to use it to help them do nefarious things. One power was to slow time for everyone else besides myself. The second was to become as heavy (in terms of weight) as I desired, while maintaining the same size. Both would make me unstoppable. I did bad things. I chose the weight power, then used it to steal the time power from the other guy. Oddly enough, this weird little dream inspired my new book, A Door Never Dreamed Of.

Ever seen the movie, The Fountain? Pretty good flick. I dreamed I was the dude in a space bubble, and I dreamed it fifty times, maybe more. I was utterly alone, forever floating. I was immortal. It was kinda cool, and supremely lonely.

I had a baaaaad nightmare when I was eight. My recently departed grandfather visited me, only he was rotting, eyeless, and nasty. His guts were hanging out. He looked like the dude from the old Metallica video, The Unforgiven. Yikes.

Less a dream and more an observation. I’ve never heard music of any kind during any dream I’ve ever had. Is that unusual? Do you guys hear tunes while you sleep?

I used to have a specific night terror as a boy, then later as a teenager (after several years of not having it.) In the nightmare, a skeletal shadow hovered over me as I slept. It woke me, whispered horrible things to me, and promised one day it would destroy me. Not just my body, but my soul. I decided later in life to make this critter the bad guy in my way-too-F’n-long fantasy series, and haven’t had the nightmare since. Hmmmm…

I had a recurring dream about a genie in a bottle. No…not the Christina Aguilera song. The genie asked me what my one wish was. (It was BS I didn’t get three.) My answer was always the same: The Power of Persuasion. Meaning anything I suggested to any person, they listened to. It was the ultimate Jedi mind trick. Sometimes I used the power for good. Sometimes just to get laid. Other times I took over the entire planet, upon which I established a seriously dark, tyrannical empire. Fun!

First dream I remember having: I’m in a car driving down a long road I’ve been down before, but can’t remember where it is in real life. Graveyards sleep on either side of the car. It’s not scary at all. There’s someone singing to me in the front seat. It’s soothing, but kinda dark.

The worst nightmare I’ve ever had (worse than rotting grandpa and shadow demon) was definitely this: I’m relaxing in my childhood bedroom. I have earphones on, but no music is playing. I’m at peace, but suddenly every single light in the world starts going out. I can sense the lights dying one by one. And then the outage comes to my house. It’s slow. It’s agonizing. And when the last light dies (a lamp beside my bed) I expire.

I dreamed this one almost exactly as I ended up writing it. I’m a boy at a zoo for aliens. I’m with my family. Everything seems fine, until it doesn’t. If you care, the story is here.

Ever played the game Metroid? Basically it’s a story about a woman alone on a planet full of things that want to kill her. For almost a year, I had a similar dream. Earth needs me to go to this weird planet and blow it up. No one can go with me. After training, I land on this eerie place and wander into some caves. Sadly I never get to finish. I like to think I completed my mission. Guess I’ll never know.

In a completely non-sexual way, I had a recurring dream about a red-haired woman. She was like my sister or something, and I was completely obligated to follow her around, protect her, and to not under any circumstances fall in love with her. All of this I did in a medieval setting. No modern conveniences at all. The girl later became part of the inspiration for the heroine (Andelusia) in my dark fiction series.

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In one of my favorite dreams, I soar through clouds that look much like these. I’m utterly free, no cares in the world. I like to think we’d all love this dream.

I dreamed once, maybe twice, of a great, dark city. The city was newly-made, shiny and black. It wasn’t really modern, but nor was it from the old world. The city lay on a black shore upon which oil instead of water washed up in waves. I wandered the city for years. And found no one. So I painted it here.

Had a dream that the Russian government asked me to end a war. All I had to do was assassinate the president of their rival nation. I did terrible things in this dream, but perhaps the saving grace is that I never got to the end. The Russians didn’t win, and I always had the sense that they were the bad guys to begin with. (Disclaimer: I don’t believe this in real-life.)

I used to have persistent (and weird) dreams of being Lucifer from Paradise Lost. I fight God, lose, and fall. Except Hell in my dreams isn’t scary or hot. It’s peaceful, albeit cold.

Ok. Yes. I’ve had the typical I’m the best NFL quarterback in the world dream. I mean…it’s been a while. Forgive me, ok?

This one sounds like a nightmare, but it never really was. As a ghost, I wandered the world for hundreds of years after my death. I couldn’t touch or really affect anything. I figure I should’ve been lonely, but somehow I wasn’t. It was kinda interesting observing how humanity evolved. I only wish I could’ve remembered all the cool tech I dreamed up. 🙂

The last dream I remember having before my dreams stopped: walking through the rain on a forested mountainside. So very peaceful. If that was the last one I ever have, I’ll take it.

* * *

Here’s a book that wasn’t inspired by any dreams.

And here’s one almost entirely dream-made.

See ya.

J Edward Neill

 

Weird Journal Prompts

So I was randomly searching the internet for things like the average temperature of Alaska and how many werewolves does it take to call it a pack, when I stumbled across something called The Five Minute Journal. It’s one of those ideas so obvious that it bums me out that someone else thought of it first. This is exactly the sort of thing which people love to do in the New Year. We like to reflect upon what has come before. We like to record out thoughts, in the moment, so that we can see how far we’ve come and how far we have yet to go… but this takes it a step further… it prompts you for the answers.

old books

What are you grateful for?

What could you have done better?

And I thought, that’s nice and all… and more power to you if you have one (and the discipline to keep it up throughout the year).

But…

I think that not everyone is so happy and upbeat about things. And the bad thing about those prompts is they expect you to actually have a measure of self-improvement over the long haul. So I wanted to help those who might not fit into that box. Give them a few prompts to help them record their daily thoughts.

Journal Prompts for the Apathetic

Quote: “The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.” – Albert Einstein

Why do I bother?

What would make today less of a grind than the previous day?

Daily Depressions: I am…

3 Horrible things that happened today.

How could things have gone worse?

 

Journal Prompts for Nightmares

Quote: “Sleep. Those little slices of Death. How I loathe them.” – Edgar Allan Poe

What unnamed HORROR visited me last night?

What device/pill/supplement can I take to stay awake throughout the day?

Daily Fear: I am…

3 Things to try and dream about.

What will I actually dream about?

nightmare

Pleasant dreams of babies and puppies and kittens… Not these kind with babies eating puppies and kittens…

 

Journal Prompts for Winning Your Marriage

Quote: “Winning means you’re willing to go longer, work harder, and give more than anyone else.” – Vince Limbardi

3 Things you’ve already seen your spouse do wrong today.

How will I prove I’m the best today?

Daily bit of awesome…

3 Things I corrected my spouse on today.

What other ways was I right today?

 

Journal Prompts for Procrastinators

 

p-journal-A5-Rule

I’ll write something tomorrow…


***

John McGuire

John McGuire is the author of the supernatural thriller The Dark That Follows, the steampunk comic The Gilded Age, and the novella There’s Something About Mac through the Amazon Kindle Worlds program.

His second novel, Hollow Empire, is now complete. The first episode is now FREE!

He also has a short story in the Beyond the Gate anthology, which is free on most platforms!

And has two shorts in the Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows anthology! Check it out!

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com.

 

 

End of Year Check-In: Writers Edition

I like writing. I love writing. Writing kicks all kinds of butt.

Writing for me has always been a way to get these crazy ideas out on paper, to give them some type of life. Ideas of those who save the day, and those who seek to destroy said day. Characters who struggle internally with self doubt, and those who are so full to the brim with cock-assurredness that they drown on it.

Writing about anything and everything is what I like to do. It’s my trade, and I’ll continue to do it for as long as I can.

So in keeping with this, I’m going to do a rundown of some of the writing that’s come and gone in 2015, and what’s slated for the future. Sit back, relax, and read on!

                                                                               2015

 

ROUTE33COVER3-768x1168 (2)

Route 3 #3

What began way back in 2013 has now been completed in 2015. 🙂

And I’m darn proud of it.

My wife has been extremely influential in keeping me going with this series (and everything else that I write), and for that (and many other reasons) I love this woman a lot. Living with a creative type is not the easiest thing to do, and I commend her for it. Love you T’.

Without the help of John, Tony, Mark, Tanya, Pete, Sean, Ann, Omi, Anthony, Vincent, Khari, and the whole Terminus Media crew, this book could never have come to fruition in the awesome way that it has. I can’t thank these folks enough.

As of this writing, the third issue seems to be doing fairly well in terms of the reception. Feedback has been pretty positive, as folks are either jumping onto this series for the first time, or have been down with the Route 3 cause from the beginning.

With the completion of this initial story arc, I’ve completed the first part of my goal with telling Sean Anderson’s story. Here’s hoping to have many opportunities in the future to build the story of this potential hero in the making.

RFA-Book-3-Final-small-1

Radio Free Amerika # 3

Once again, major props to creator/ writer/ artist Barron Robert Bell for giving me a chance to play in his sandbox known as Radio Free Amerika. 2015 saw the release of Radio Free Amerika # 3, and a limited print run of the Radio Free Amerika graphic novel, Radio Free Amerika: Season 1.

As in the case of the Route 3 series, the third issue wraps up the first story arc of Mose B and his crew as they struggle to fight the good fight. Reception to the book has been pretty kick butt, and word continues to spread about the series.

On the writing front, it’s been an awesome opportunity to help lay out a world spanning story of war, hip hop revolutionaries, and important current event topics.

Stealth: Vol. 1, The Life and Times of Allen White (Prologue)

stealthTo be asked to help tell the origin story of a hero that you admire is a once and a lifetime opportunity. So when William Satterwhite, creator of the webcomic Stealth, approached me about writing the origin story of Mr. Allen White, a.k.a Stealth in an original graphic novel, I jumped at the opportunity

Add to this the artistic awesomeness known as Jamar Logan, and we’ve got a winner on our hands.

In 2015 we released a 19 page prologue opening the larger story, and once again, the reception we’ve received has been awesome.

The book has  superhero fights, it has an emotional moonlit conversation in a graveyard, it has a little bit of everything. Heck I’ve even got a scene in the book that got my little brother sort of choked up.

 

 

Machina Obscurum

Machina Obscurum: A Collection of Small Shadows

Once again, I’ve got to say thanks. First to my Tessera Guild crew for accepting me into the fold, way back when, and secondly to Jeremy Neill for sending out an invite for me to contribute to Machina Obscurum: A Collection of Small Shadows.

As a kid I started off writing prose. These pursuits began with a time travel novel which will never see the light of day, and numerous short stories afterwards. I kept up with writing short stories in high school, submitting some of them to my literary magazine. Fast forward to college and afterwards, and the focus then became the journalism.

Fast forward a bit more and now I’m writing comics, while still doing the freelance journalism. Prose unfortunately took a back seat, but the desire to go back to what I’d started with stuck with me.

The CrossingSo then comes Mr. Neill with his offer to contribute to an awesome anthology, and I thought to myself “sit your butt down and write”.

Enter stage left The Crossing: Moonlit Skies. This is a short story set within the larger events of The Crossing, which is a comic book series Mr. McGuire and I are collaborating on. The short is filled with adventure, and a bit of action set on a world far, far away.

 

 

 

BSF

BlackSci-fi.com

During the back half of 2015 my output with BlackSci-Fi.com picked up in a big way. Maurice Waters is doing awesome work with his creation, and I’m just grateful to be able to hitch a ride on this awesome website.

The stories that I’ve written have run the gamut. I’ve been able to write about the personal experience of a cosplayer who was featured on a variant cover of the new Marvel Comics series Sam Wilson: Captain America. I also had an opportunity to review a gut wrenching yet timely anthology titled, APB: Artists Against Police Police Brutality.

So all in all I’m really looking forward to what 2016 will bring in the way of future opportunities.

 

TesseraLogoFull1-Best-Logo-Copy

 

Tessera Guild

This year was a good one with my blogging pursuits, though it could’ve been extremely better. The goal has always been 2-3 Friday posts per month, and I need to start doing better with that.

The great thing about this website (aside from the awesome folks I write with here) is that I can write about any of my creative or nerdy interests. This year was no exception to this, and hopefully my output displayed the fun I find myself constantly having with writing for this website.

To top it all off, I just realized this was my first full year as a Tessera Guild contributer. 🙂

2016

 

 

DATC

Dark Universe II & The City II

My plan is to contribute to the second installments of each of these awesome anthologies, after being invited to play around in these universes.

ROUTE3VOL1

Route 3: Vol 1

Next year will bring the collected Vol 1 of issues 1-3 with a brand spanking new cover, bonus Route 3 content, with the ultimate goal of bring the book to a comic book store near you.

Rdio Free Amerika Season 1

RFA: Season 1

Terminus Media’s first collected trade paperback (extra content included) will be released in comic book stores in early 2016, and I’ll be grinning from ear to ear when I see this and Route 3: Vol. 1 on a comic book shelf.

paralleee

The Crossing

John McGuire and I are going to wrap this puppy up with a nice bow. Clean up the pitch. Knock out the first issue. Get it to a publisher.

In addition to this I’m brainstorming an original novella set within this world, which will flesh out the early days of Crossing, The Right Stuff style. I had so much fun with the short story, that want to keep things going with the prose in addition to comic book series.

Kaboom. Magic.

Stealth: Vol. 1, The Life and Times of Allen White (Graphic Novel) 

The hope is to have this entire project completed by the mid to late 2016. Jamar’s killing it on the upcoming book as shown below, and I’m focusing on adding to/ refining the current script.

STEALTHGRAPHICNOVEL1

 

peyah_with_mask2 (2)The Best (Title is definitely subject to change): So guys and gals, you’re getting an exclusive preview of artwork from a comic that I and the talented Takeia Marie are partnering on. Without giving up too much, the story features alien zombies, futuristic guns, kick butt space vehicles, and an intergalactic war.

Don’t worry, we’re not taking the Michael Bay approach and jettisoning a great story, and strong character development.

We’ve got that on lock.

With me on the scripting duties, Takeia on the art, with us both building the story of this world, we’re going to kick sooooo much butt with this.

Below (and above) is concept art done by Takeia of one of our stories main protagonists, Peyah, and some of the hardware that she’ll be using.

I’m having a ball writing this, and I hope it’s reflected in the final product.

peyah_gun (2)

Terminus Team Up: Amber Fox  vs. Terra Force:  A cleaned up version of the first issue in this awesome series (with new colors/ cover/ logo) will be released for the first time digitally this year featuring my scripting duties, Sean Hill (Dark Shaman, Route 3) on pencils and inks, and Lauren Brown on the brand spanking new colors.

Did I mention the awesome new cover? 🙂

TTPREVIEWPG3

TTPREVIEWPG4

TTPREVIEWPG6

BlackSci-fi.com: Still reporting on a host of topics for the website. Assisting with a major overhaul of the webpage, and there will be an announcement soon about my work with the website coming soon.

BSF

 


 

Well, that will wrap everything up for now. The list is definitely subject to change with additional projects, so I’ll keep everyone posted.

If you want to purchase any of the projects mentioned in the 2015 portion of the post, or even from my earlier work, head to http://robertkjeffrey.wix.com/robertkjeffrey. Thanks for the support, and spread the word.

2016’s here.

Resolutions, 2016

Time again for my look ahead/look back. It’s where I like to sit down and judge what I managed to do, what things didn’t get done, and then push onto next year.

I have so many things that I would like to do. So many ideas for books and stories and comics. Most of the time I’m not fighting time or money, but fighting my own brain. Trying to get focused can be the biggest problem of them all.

[Of course having more time and money wouldn’t hurt. :)]

writing

 

So first, the look back at 2015:

The Edge of the World – Finish the 1st draft. Finish a 2nd draft. Get to Beta Readers. Possibly get an editor by end of year.

Yeah, if 2015 taught me anything it taught me that a story will take as many words, as many pages, and as many hours as it wants. My desires and schedules will be damned in this process. I wrote about it a bit here, but the big thing was that I thought I was closer to the end than I really was, so not finishing the 1st draft until November was difficult.

[The always fun thing of “When are you going to be finished with that book?”… “Soon.”]

That said, I did end up doing a partial edit on about 2/3 of the book. I wouldn’t call it a 2.0 edit, but it might be 1.25 or 1.5.

Regardless I am extremely proud of having finished another draft of another novel. I know that these things don’t just appear overnight but take tons of “butt in chair” time. So I’ll give myself an A.

The White Effect – Revise the current draft with all the Beta Reader notes I have. Identify potential Editors/Agents to Query. Draft query letter. Start that process.

This has begun, but that’s about all I can say at this point. Work in progress type of thing. We’ll call this one “Incomplete”.

Veronica Mars Kindle Worlds Novella II – We have the outline, I just need to put some words on the page now. It is 3rd on the list for a reason though.

Finished the 1st draft. Waiting on the co-writer’s edits/thoughts. This gets a solid B.

Hollow Empire II – Begin those discussions in the next couple of weeks. Begin outlines, drafts, and maybe, just maybe get it out by end of year? Maybe it could be a Fall release every year?

No movement on Hollow Empire. I was busy with Edge of the World, and he was busy with… not sleeping and writing 1 billion words this year. So, yeah, it might be time to start bugging Mr. Neill again. I get an F on this one.

The Dark That Follows Sequel – Originally I wasn’t going to try to fit this in this year, but I have an idea for this and a third book, so I’m hopeful to have a 1st draft done.

Wow… I had this on the list? Whoa. Yeah, this didn’t happen. A big ole’ F for that one. Talk about eyes bigger than my stomach!

Unstuck – A series of novellas I would like to get done about people who are outliers in the timestream… abandoned by their own timelines. Each one would be about 25k words, and right now I have 3 of them roughed out. My guess is having one done by end of the year is a resonable goal (though I could easily see it getting squeezed out by the above).

I knew this was on the list… not started, but lots of notes being gathered. And it got pushed back because of another project (see below). So I’ll say I get a D minus for this one (but with a legit excuse).

S.O.U.L. Mate – Something that did not exist in any portion of my mind last January. A full outline has been written. The damn thing came in a blur over the course of a day. Fully formed. Beginning/middle/end… just like that. And that really caused the Unstuck stories to get slid back on my schedule.

Work has commenced on it.

Shorts – 4 more shorts, to be finished. Online magazine submissions (get on it McGuire!). Start that train a moving.

3 shorts written. Two of which are in a short story collection: Machina Obscurum (you should check it out!).

Machina Front Cover

I have started the online magazine submissions. No success yet, but it is in progress. I’ll call this a solid B (unless I can write one more short in the next couple of days!).

Comics

Gilded Age – It is my hope to have issues 2, 3, & 4 out this year. Of course, that was my hope for this last year. Either way, I will be finishing up the scripts for 3 & 4 in the next couple of weeks.

I am Jack’s broken record. The issues aren’t out.

Boo!!!

However, I did finish issue 3 and 4. Issue 2 and 3 have been drawn, inked, and colored (they merely need the words added to their pages and they will be all but done). Issue 2 even has a cover.

So I’m going to give myself an A for getting my part done, and continue to cross my fingers about the last issue.

Tiger Style – Issue 2?

I must admit, this is completely out of my hands at this point. I may be 100 before this comes out (sad Panda).

The Crossing – A comic I’m co-writing with Robert Jeffrey II… if we can secure an artist, then I think we can get something going. I don’t want to put an absolute number on issues or scripts or anything. If this is solid this year I’d be happy.

No real movement, but lots of good work done on the first issue due to Oni Press’s open submissions. So a little bit of movement, but I believe we can make something happen in 2016 if we push it hard enough. Sadly I need to give me a C on this one.

Blogging – Let’s keep it going for another 52 weeks.

And with this post I made it! A++++!

Mystery Short Film

I mentioned this one during the Halfway Blog Post. A pleasant surprise, and perhaps a little bit more work set in that world coming up in 2016. Again, one of those things I had no idea was coming, but am so happy it did!

keep-calm-and-welcome-to-year-4

Goals for 2016

S.O.U.L. Mate

Finish 1st draft. Finish 2nd draft. Hire editor.

A big piece of next year. One thing that should help is that it isn’t nearly as long as Edge ended up being.

The Dark That Follows 2

It’s well past time to write the sequel. 1st draft of that to be done.

The Crossing Comic

I think having an updated pitch and sample script shopped out there is probably the goal for this year.

The White Effect

To send out query letters. To investigate publishing options.

I can’t control whether or not an agent or editor might take me on. But I can control getting this into some people’s hands to increase the chance of such a thing happening.

The Edge of the World

Finish 2nd draft. Hire Editor. Get cover done.

Right now I’m leaning towards self-publishing this one, but that may change as the year goes on (if things break one way or another).

Mystery Comic

The Mystery Comic is based on the Mystery Short Film above. My goal on this is to get that first issue done, and then cross my fingers that more will be asked of me.

calvin and hobbes-resolutions

Really I just want to be Calvin, I already have two orange cats.

 

Short Stories

Write 4 more shorts. And really set up a system for getting them out into the world (submissions, etc.). Plus these can provide a nice break from the longer formatted things.

Blogging

As ever, I want to continue to put out a weekly blog. Not miss a week. Keep the streak alive. In hopes of achieving this I’m going to try to have a couple in the bank at any time as there are those Tuesday nights when inspiration has been a bit lacking.

I want to add like 4 more things to this list. My writing To-Do is a long string of plans and hopes and dreams. I just have to put butt in the chair.

***

John McGuire

John McGuire is the author of the supernatural thriller The Dark That Follows, the steampunk comic The Gilded Age, and the novella There’s Something About Mac through the Amazon Kindle Worlds program.

His second novel, Hollow Empire, is now complete. The first episode is now FREE!

He also has a short story in the Beyond the Gate anthology, which is free on most platforms!

And has two shorts in the Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows anthology! Check it out!

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com.

My Commitment to Ending the World

So…

It’s a common theme nowadays that writers (or any artists, for that matter) aren’t in competition with one another. That we’re all pals in the industry. That we’re fighting on the same side to haul readers into our books collectively.

Just wander around Twitter or Facebook or any haunted electric highway and you’ll see stuff like:

BadMeme1

or

Meme2

or

untitled

I could probably dig up a thousand of these. And it’d be barely scratching the surface. I guess these are nice sentiments…maybe. They create friendships. They foster collaboration. They bring people together.

And I reject them completely.

*

Before we do battle, let’s be clear about some lines in the sand. We’re not talking about artists and writers who create for fun. If someone publishes a lone book or series and then wants to wander back into a normal existence, that’s cool. If they want to stop, collaborate, and listen, it’s worth supporting. And we’re also not talking about those wonderful people who create with the intent to be non-profit. If an artist’s goal is to put out a steady stream of awesome simply for the love, who couldn’t support that? It’s free, after all. Those who desire it don’t have to give up any resources. Any cash. Any moolah.

As for the rest of you, I adore you like brothers and sisters. But let’s be clear that we are in fact competing with one another. No…that’s too mild. We’re at war.

ZillaKong

Godzilla vs King Kong. Twilight vs Blade. Plants vs Zombies. Me vs YOU.

In any given market, any segment of any economy, there’s a little thing called market share. You’ve heard of it. If there’s X amount of money available to be spent on resource Y, companies A, B, and C are all gonna fight each other to the death to control Y and earn X. Sure, they might be pals after hours. They might drink together, hit the golf course as a foursome, and sleep with each other’s spouses. But when they’re on the clock, make no mistake. They’re gunning for one another’s throats.

To counter this argument, the artist might say to herself, “But J, you poor malcontent, in the world of art and written words, Y is limitless. Art has no boundaries.”

Nada. Negative. Nope. Y is not limitless. Art created with the intent to make a living has boundaries. These boundaries are malleable. They move. But they exist. And moreover, despite the fact that every living human seems to want to write a book these days, there is a limited supply of quality available.

More to the point: just like in all other markets everywhere, X (money) will always have a finite value.

And X is exactly the hill we’re fighting to climb.

Look. It’s true. I savor artistic collaboration. It helped things like this and this see the light of day. It keeps artists talking, moving, and colliding. Sharing other writers’ works is a great endeavor. The best conversations happen between those with a similar purpose, whose visions align, and whose swords are sharpened at the same millstone.

But make no mistake; we’re still doing battle.

*

Think on these, fellow artistic warriors:

Those of us who give a damn, who really want a career out of writing/painting/sculpting/fighting, want to be the best. And nothing less

We want to be the mofo who makes it, not the one forced back into a boring ‘real’ job

We want the fruits of our labor front and center, and we desire to dethrone the Twilights, the Mockingbirds, and the 50 Shades of WTFever

We care more. We work harder. We don’t do easy satisfaction

And though we may smile for one another’s successes, we tend to get a little green when we see it

*

If you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, be at peace. This battle isn’t for you. Walk the tranquil path of creating without fear. That you desire to make beautiful things just for the sake of it is commendable. It’s enviable. It’s sublime. But for everyone else, everyone fighting for Y and X, don’t be deceived. Don’t lull yourself into a false sense of we’re-all-on-the-same-team. Reject any meme suggesting you need to be BFF’s with other writers or that you shouldn’t at least try to out-write, out-paint, and out-create the fuck out of everyone else. You are in a competition. You don’t want to be the third-string quarterback, the benchwarmer, the artist sitting on the sideline.

So stop kidding yourself.

You’re committed to this battle.

And when the world ends, you want to be remembered.

* * *

If that was too harsh, try something fun.

If it wasn’t harsh enough, this might be for you.

J Edward Neill

 

It’s the End of the World…

Monday. Another small step in an effort to blanket the electronic devices of young and old was released for consumption. 9 authors contributing a variety of short tales or excerpts from their own worlds appeared in a collection called:

Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows (Get it on your Kindle right now!)

Machina Front Cover

In which, I have three pieces of the overall collection. Two shorts and an excerpt from my very first novel The Dark That Follows.

You can get it here. For FREE! (Our gift to you.)

As I’ve only read one of the other stories in the book, I’m looking forward to seeing what sort of tales they’ve managed to spin.

Mine?

Well, I like to consider the two stories I’ve submitted: Til the Last Candle Flickers & And I Feel Fine as 2 parts of my Apocalyptic Trilogy. They are siblings of a sort to be sure (not the actual characters) in the themes of love and loss at the end of everything. And yet they represent very different things about that end. They are Alpha and Omega.

candle-579580_1920

Till the Last Candle Flickers came about from the idea of Preppers. You know, those guys and gals who are so sure we are on our way to some kind of apocalypse that their hobby is to be as prepared as possible. In some ways I think they have to be spiritual ancestors of those Cold War survivors with their fallout shelters.

But with this short I wanted to look at what can happen on the front end to someone who is so sure that all of our world will be gone soon. How would other people treat him? Do you close yourself off to everyone just so that you don’t have to lose them when it goes down?

How long can you go on like that?

Comet

And I Feel Fine is the other end of things. The Bad Things have come and gone and then more Bad Things have taken their place. And when it seems like there is no good left for you… when the world is surely trying to kill you on a daily basis… maybe that is the time to ensure there is a record left. A small snippet of how things were in those days, so that if there are survivors they might know a little bit more about this generation of people.

I call these two pieces of a trilogy, which would beg the question: “where’s the 3rd piece?”

Good question. I don’t know. I have ideas about it, but these two demanded to be written down. The words flowed in a way that let me know I was onto something worth finishing.

Hopefully you feel the same when you read them.

 

***

John McGuire

John McGuire is the author of the supernatural thriller The Dark That Follows, the steampunk comic The Gilded Age, and the novella There’s Something About Mac through the Amazon Kindle Worlds program.

His second novel, Hollow Empire, is now complete. The first episode is now FREE!

He also has a short story in the Beyond the Gate anthology, which is free on most platforms!

And has two shorts in the Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows anthology! Check it out!

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com.

Behind The Scenes of The Crossing: Moonlit Skies

Machina Front Cover

 

On December 8th, I’ll have a story called The Crossing: Moonlit Skies published in the short story collection, Machina Obscurum- A Collection of Small Shadows.

Before we jump into this, let me give a little bit of background.

Rewind a few years ago: my fellow Terminus Media/ Tessera Guild teammate, John R. McGuire, and I joined forces and each brought a concept for a story to the table, to collab on together.

For a while I’ve played around with the idea of doing a comic book mini-series which dealt with cross dimensional hopping, high-adventure style. 🙂

So during an initial meeting at Appelebee’s (you’ve got to have great food to generate great ideas. I think Stephen King said that….. yeah we’ll go with that), I brought a concept called The Crossing, which delved into the aforementioned dimension hopping adventure concept. I’d fleshed out some characters, a story, and with the awesome writing/ plotting talents of my writing brother in arms Mr. McGuire, we came up with what I think will grow into an awesome comic book mini-series, heck, franchise.

PARALLELEARTHS

 

We’ve currently got a pitch that we’re prepping to get to publishers.

A kick ass artist in Sean Hill.

Two awesome writers.

A dimensions spanning story.

High adventure.

A diverse cast.

Magic. 🙂

But until we find a home for the series, I’ve had an itch to continue to play around in this universe that’s kept me up many nights.

Enter stage left The Crossing: Moonlit Skies. Sort of an “interlude” within the larger story being told in The Crossing, we get a snapshot of the crazy, and tense multiple dimension travels that series our protagonists find themselves caught up in.

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Ever since watching Greg Rucka expertly wind his world of Queen and Country between comics and prose, I’ve wanted to try my hand at doing the same. Having an opportunity to expand the larger story of a property across many mediums, with original stories, is a goal that I’ve wanted to accomplish, and The Crossing: Moonlit Skies is the end result.

 Many thanks to Jeremy for allowing me to add this story to the mix of Machina Obscurum: A Collection of Small Shadows.

Dec 8th. Mark your calenedars.

 It’s going to be bumpy ride. 🙂

Story Telling – Micro Bursts

Everyone wants things smaller and faster. We can’t sit still for more than a few seconds before another image, webpage, show, movie, whatever needs to be consumed. A whole book? No. Can’t be bothered.

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Well if you can’t be bothered, then I’m going to feed you what you need little birds. I’ve compiled a few 2 Sentence Stories below. After I’d written a bunch of them, I then looked out into the web to see if I was doing it right. Turns out a couple of them pretty much matched some others out there. I call it synchronicity (or something). Either way, I’ve included them too.

Also, I’ve put some things in there which are clearly movies most everyone has seen, but I thought it was an interesting experiment to take some aspect of the films and distill them down into something so small which tells you about the movie, but isn’t (hopefully) just a pitch for the movie. I’ll let you see if you can find them all.

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My wife slipped out of bed during the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. A second later I feel another person shift to my side of the bed.

One of the greatest things about having animals in the house is that when the house makes a weird noise you can blame it on the dog. Our dog died last week.

He always wanted to be a part of a tight-knit community. It was only after the first person died that he realized the rest were waiting for him to drink next.

After struggling with a potential ending for his horror story, Jim decided to turn in, leaving it for another day. The next morning he discover the ending had been filled in for him, in blood.

Clenching her eyes shut, Clare reasoned that if she couldn’t see the monster then it couldn’t hurt her. The hot breath on her neck told her those rules did not apply.

He told them that they’d catch the damn monster terrorizing the town. It was only once they were at sea that he realized they were going to need a bigger boat.

In space no one can hear you scream. That knowledge didn’t stop him from trying.

He jumped. The ground rushed up to catch him.

He told himself the pain and agony was all for science. He’d already tried electrocution, drowning, and poison, so dismemberment seemed like the next logical conclusion.

No one had ever told him that if you die in your dreams, you die for real. So as the blades sunk into his flesh, Ronnie didn’t bother to scream.

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They all laughed when his head dipped below, his lungs filling with water. When he kills the last of them, maybe the laughing will finally end.

She’d worked at the bank for so long no one really noticed her anymore. How easy it would be to walk into the vault then and get her early retirement.

If there were an infinite number of parallel universes, then that meant there would be infinite number of Ryan Tommes out there. Yet he’d seen glimpses of them all, and he was unique.

The fortune teller’s promise was that water would be the cause of his death, so he moved inland, avoided showers, and stayed out of the rain. When the floods came he realized he should have learned to swim.

This stunning woman with curves in all the right places beckoned him to come to her with a look of lust unmatched by anything he’d seen before. “It’s a trap, get an axe.”

The Frog Prince closed his eyes, awaiting his kiss which would undo the witch’s curse and restore his humanity. When he opened his eyes, his female savior blinked back at him and croaked.

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David had beaten the AI at Tic-Tac-Toe too many times, so he was definitely up for another game. Thermoglobal Nuclear War sounded like a safe choice.

With graduation looming, Lloyd took a chance to ask out the girl he’d been dreaming about for the better part of high school. Miraculously, she said yes.

They called him Outcast or Idiot or Freak or Weirdo… so many names to show him how different they thought he was from them. Pressing the knife to his flesh, it surprised him to see green blood where there should have been red.

The explosions recalled memories of fireworks on the Fourth of July. The mushroom cloud foretold only death.

As long as she had light, the shadowy figure at the edge of her vision couldn’t claim her. The idea of rolling blackouts never occurred to her.

 

***

John McGuire

John McGuire is the author of the supernatural thriller The Dark That Follows, the steampunk comic The Gilded Age, and the novella There’s Something About Mac through the Amazon Kindle Worlds program.

His second novel, Hollow Empire, is now complete. The first episode is now FREE!

He also has a short story in the Beyond the Gate anthology, which is free on most platforms!

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com.

The Flocksdale Fireball – Carissa Ann Lynch!

Boom!

Today at the Guild we’ve got another awesome creative interview lined up. Our guest is Carissa Ann Lynch, author of the Flocksdale Files series. Her latest release, House of the Lost Girls, is out now!

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Let’s get to know Carissa…

Hi Carissa! Welcome to Tessera Guild’s latest creative interview. We want to know all about you: DOB, home address, social security #… But seriously, give us the goods on yourself:

Haha! Thank you so much for interviewing me! It’s an honor to be featured on Tessera Guild. So, about me…my birthday is July 18th. I’m (approximately) 30 years old. I live in a tiny town called Floyds Knobs in Indiana with my husband and kiddos. I have a degree in psychology and most of my career background has been in mental health and corrections. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I started writing seriously. I’ve always been obsessed with collecting books and reading, and I enjoyed journaling and writing short stories, but never considered myself a “writer”. One night I couldn’t find a book to read, so I got it stuck in my head that I would just write my own book. From there, it became an obsession and I’ve never stopped!

Carissa

The Sharpie, an essential tool in Carissa’s arsenal.

 

So…we hear you’ve got a new book, House of the Lost Girls, storming the world TODAY. It’s the second book in the Flocksdale Files series. What’s the series about? Where will House of the Lost Girls take readers?

The Flocksdale Files is about the most f&#cked up town in America, Flocksdale. In book one, Have You Seen This Girl?, readers were introduced to Wendi Wise, a struggling heroin addict hell bent on seeking revenge. At the age of thirteen, she was lured away from a local skating rink and held captive in a place she called the “House of Horrors”. Dumped off on the side of a dirt road, she found herself addicted to the drugs they fed and in fear for her life. So, she runs away from her hometown of Flocksdale, leaving her friends and family behind. After a tumultuous eight years of addiction, rehab, and foster care, she decided it was time for a homecoming party—so she makes a plan to hunt down the monsters of her youth. The monsters she remembers all too well from a tiny, little town called Flocksdale…

In book two, House of the Lost Girls, readers will again find themselves stuck in the horrific, demented town of Flocksdale. Only this time, they’ll get to meet seventeen year old Marianna Bertagnoli. (Although Wendi will make some appearances in Book Two). Marianna is miserable. Not only did her father abandon her five years ago, but she’s being uprooted and forced to move with her mom and stepdad to a creepy old house in a lame town called Flocksdale. It doesn’t take long for her figure out that her new house is none other than the infamous “House of Horrors”—the very house where a demented family kidnapped and murdered young girls several years before. History has a way of repeating itself, and within a week of moving in, one of her small group of new friends is found murdered, her mom disappears, and she’s attacked by a man wearing a hideous clown mask. Targeted by a new generation of evil, Marianna needs Wendi’s help to unravel the bizarre history of Flocksdale.

When did you know you wanted to write this series? What inspired you?

I never intended for Have You Seen This Girl? to be a series, but after I signed my contract with Limitless and sat down to start something new, I couldn’t stop writing about Flocksdale. I started writing it two years ago. It was originally titled “The End”, after the song “The End” by The Doors. That song plays a significant role in the story itself and it also served as inspiration for this book. There are so many things that inspired me to write this book. First of all, Indiana has recently received nationwide attention for our heroin and HIV epidemic. Addiction is an issue that is important to me, personally and professionally. I’m also interested in women’s issues that I address in the book—sex trafficking, sexual violence, post-traumatic stress, addiction, self-esteem, etc. I felt very connected to Wendi and she took the reins on this story. Although the first story has a clear, distinct ending, I felt like there was so much more to say and do…and that’s when Marianna came along. By the way, there is also going to be a third book. It’s called Carnival of Dead Girls.

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Your cover art is amazing. As in; everyone wants to date the Flocksdale Files girls. Tell us about your cover artist:

Oh, I know. You’ve been stalking my girls on Twitter for a while now hahaha! I have a girl-crush on them myself. I would LOVE to tell you about my cover artist! Her name is Ashley Byland and she’s a designer for Redbird Designs. She does a lot of the cover art at Limitless Publishing, and she is just amazing! I’m so grateful to her for making me such gorgeous covers and bringing my characters to life. Here is her website: www.redbird-designs.net. I recently tracked her down on Facebook and asked her to make me some bookmarks, promo pics, and an author logo. She’s nice as can be, and she can do it all!

It’s a tough world for writers these days. The competition is pretty much everyone in the world. What do you find most challenging? And what are some things that inspire you to continue to write and market your work?

For me, the hard part isn’t writing. The hard part is what comes after—trying to match my work to a certain genre or meet word count expectations, etc. And then of course there’s the marketing side of things. I’m incredibly shy in real life and gloating about my own books makes me extremely uncomfortable. Luckily, I’ve made so many awesome friends this past year—other writers who know what it’s like—and seeing them do it helps me feel a little bit more comfortable. As far as staying motivated…as long as I get to hold that book in my hand when I’m finished, and there are a couple people who want to read it, I’ll keep writing. I just want people to read it, so if I market all day long and only gain one reader, I see that as a success.

Let’s say someone wanted to immediately jump into reading the Flocksdale Files series. Where should they go?

Both books, Have You Seen This Girl? and House of the Lost Girls, are available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books a Million, and select stores.

Thank you so much for interviewing me!

 

* * *

Carissa is all over the web! Find out more about her and get links to her books at:

Amazon

Facebook

Carissa’s Blog

Goodreads

Limitless Publishing

Twitter

* * *

Special thanks to Carissa (and all our other guests) for being a part of the Tessera Guild Creative Interview series. Look for more interviews to come!

Tessera Guild 2015

Things I Have Learned

This past weekend I finished the first draft of the novel I’ve been working on since last year: The Edge of the World. It currently clocks in at over 118,500 words (approx. 474.5 pages is what I ended up calculating – forgive the numbers, I’m an engineer by day – it’s kind of hardwired into my DNA).

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Throughout the last year it has kind of become just this THING I’m working on. The answer to the epic question that writers tend to get asked (“Hey, what are you working on these days?”). But in some ways it also became this thing that I had to wonder if other people were thinking:

“Wow. He’s been working on that for a while. Is he really doing anything or is he playing XBOX?”

“Wow. He’s been working on that for a while. Is he ever going to finish it?”

“Wow. He’s been working on that for a while. I’ve put out 100 books in that amount of time. God he’s slack!”

Or something to that effect. I don’t know how others really judged it, or how long people really thought it might take (writing a book, I mean).

It certainly took longer than I expected. For comparison I’d say that the first drafts of the other books I’ve worked on went something like this:

The Dark That Follows – 65,000 words – 4 months

Hollow Empire – 45,000 words – 4 months

The White Effect – 95,000 words – 9 months

The Edge of the World – 118,500 – 16 months

Why did those extra 23,500 words take an extra 7 months?

We’ll get back to that in a second. Because I think I’ve learned something with each novel I’ve written. At least that’s the way my mind has tried to analyze each book.

The Dark That Follows by John R McGuire

 

The Dark That Follows

What did I learn?

How to write a book.

It’s an extremely simple answer, but it’s the truth. I’m not saying I learned ever trick I need to know. I’m not saying its a perfect book by any stretch. BUT, it showed me that I had the ability to string words together in some kind of coherent way.

However, the biggest thing it taught me was that I could actually do it. I could sit down with a completely blank page and the barest of bones for a story and FINISH IT. I mean, how many people out there have that idea for a book floating around in their brains? How many of those have started the thing only to abandon it at some point later?

How many finish the damn thing?

 

The White Effect

What did I learn?

Though not out yet, I actually wrote this prior to Hollow Empire. But with it I think I took all the bits and pieces that came with my first book and put them to a better use. It was the difference between Kindergarden and Middle School.

And I proved that I could do it again. A small thing to some people, but an enormous thing to me. You see, if I really want to do this for the long haul, then one book was never going to cut it. One book had to be just that: ONE BOOK. And then there had to be a second, and a third, and so on.

HollowEmpireEP1

 

Hollow Empire

What did I learn?

Collaboration. It’s a word that applies so very much to writing comics. You have so many people working on to bring those things to life. Writers need Pencillers who need Inkers who need Colorists who need Letterers who need Editors who need…

I think you get the point.

So I certainly knew how to collaborate, but to sit down with someone and build a world, a setting… to divide up and then write these characters’ stories. And to then see what the other guy was doing while you were doing your thing. To edit each other. To steal from each other. So many times during the writing there would be moments where I saw something J Edward Neill had written and though “That’s a really cool idea. I wonder if I can use/mention/address/etc it?” (And hopefully he had the same opinion on some of my ideas.)

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The Edge of the World

What did I learn?

There is a big push pull among writers that I read about in a myriad of blogs week after week:

Are you a Pantser or are you a Plotter?

For those that don’t know what the hell I mean by those.

A Pantser is a person who “flies by the seat of their pants” when writing. They may only have the vaguest of ideas about what the book is about, where it is going, and how it is going to end. But they trust in their abilities to find the story somewhere deep within them.

A Plotter is someone who actually creates a road map. An outline. You know, that thing your teachers always wanted you to do before you wrote those papers and you hated? Yeah, one of those things. But there are benefits to having that road map in that it is very hard for things to go off the rails. In theory, you have done enough planning that you’ve figured out the bigger plot holes and know how to avoid them.

As to the debate, I say do what you want. What works for you? Then do that. The Dark That Follows was “pants’d”. The White Effect was “plotted”. Hollow Empire had probably a 60/40 split on pants vs plot. And The Edge of the World was very much plotted except in those places it wasn’t.

Which brings me back to those pesky 23,500 words that took an extra 7 months. Early in the draft I use my word count as a gauge on how things are going (told you – engineer). I strive for 1250 words a night (approx. 5 pages). I’ve found that if I hit that number often enough I feel good about the book, and more importantly I feel good about the progress I am making. But with this book I would hit sections that I hadn’t quite mapped out more than maybe a brief sentence. “A thing happens to get our heroes back together.” I figured I would have the answer to what the “thing” was by the time I got to that point.

And sometimes I did. But there were times I still didn’t know. So I skipped ahead and wrote the next scene. Or maybe I skipped two scenes and then wrote the next three after that. Regardless, by the end of this “run” I probably had 60,000 words in 6 months time, but I had so many gaps that suddenly it was affecting things later on.

You see when you leave a section blank and write something later you have to assume certain things. Things the characters might have experienced or learned from an episode. But without knowing what those lessons might be… well, it was almost like being hamstrung on it. Which would be an easy thing to address. Just stop skipping around and write those skipped chapters. No more proceeding until they are all done.

Yet, I didn’t realize that it was a problem until I had written everything else and then needed to go back and fill in. And suddenly the process bogged down. Granted, the book wasn’t the only thing I worked on during this time, but that matters little when you feel like you are getting nothing done on the book. Frustration led to more slowness… and the biggest thing was not Writer’s Block, but maybe the Beast’s cousin visited me. My word counts for the week slowed to a crawl.

Luckily, I made through the weeds and carved a path. I finally hit a groove again in the last couple of months. The words flowed and I kept churning them out. Finally this last week I realized how close I might be to the end.

And then it was done. Following Mr. King’s On Writing advice, I put these drafts in a drawer for a couple of months and work on other things in the meantime… it helps you be able to look at the thing with fresher eyes (always a good thing). Given the holidays, my guess is that the next time I really sit down to edit this book it will be 2016. And I already have some things I know will need to be added or subtracted… but for now…

I’m done.

 

***

John McGuire

John McGuire is the author of the supernatural thriller The Dark That Follows, the steampunk comic The Gilded Age, and the novella There’s Something About Mac through the Amazon Kindle Worlds program.

His second novel, Hollow Empire, is now complete. The first episode is now FREE!

He also has a short story in the recently released anthology Beyond the Gate, which is free on most platforms!

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com.

So What’s He Going To Buy With All That Gold?

Currently in rotation on HBO are all the Hobbit films. And while I’m not the biggest fan of the book, I find I’m watching bits and pieces of the movies here and there as I flip through the channels. However, there is one scene that I must turn to and watch in its entirety every opportunity I get:

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Smaug.

Smaug slowly revealing himself from under a treasure trove that would invoke Dragon Sickness on Thorin. Smaug talking with Bilbo, toying with him, showing him exactly how impressive he might be. And the extremes he goes to prove that the dwarves will never retake the mountain.

I love every minute of it.

Yet, the other night I was watching these sequences and a strange thought popped into my head:

Why does Smaug (or any dragon) need all that gold? And it isn’t just him – so many of these creatures throughout our myths are guarding a treasure horde. It is a staple such that in Dungeons and Dragons it is not questioned. The only questions anyone has any real concern to answer are: how much is the horde worth? Are we powerful enough to kill the beast guarding it?

But I feel like there is more to this idea.

***

The cavern shone whenever the tiniest glint of light broke through. In those instances, the gleam would bounce from coin to coin, making them sparkle. It would illuminate the lighter colored gems so they became tiny lanterns dotting the golden mound. Under this light the true spectacle could be seen. Appreciated. Gold and diamonds and coins and gems and… a myriad of skeletal forms cooked to a crisp inside their metal armor.

That same treasure acted as a beacon to some. Bands of adventurers who wove odd stories about how the dragon claimed their birthrights… their home. How every coin buried there was theirs to recover. Indeed, all of it would be restored to its rightful owners.

Yes, the cavern might have once belonged to dwarves or mountain men or even an orc herd, but it was the dragon’s now and had been for decades. It was his home. And more importantly, so were the riches it used as a bed.

For while the previous owners certainly contributed to its girth, not everything was from a singular conquest.

***

Krench moved into the cavern. Ever a creature of habit, he made sure to bring along a lantern, even if the act was worthless. At the outer chamber a familiar warmth ran down his leg. Long gone were the days he might have made excuses for such an action. How it could have been explained away as an involuntary response to the immense fear coursing throughout his body.

If his nephew smelled the urine, he did not show it. For that, Krench was grateful. There was far too much left to teach the lowly creature for them to become bogged down in such a trivial thing.

“The thing that no one understands is exactly what the Great Wyrm does with all his riches. The outsiders believe he simply slumbers on them. They make up superstitions where he extracts some form of nourishment from the metals in the coin allowing him to generate his awesome flame. They suppose he is vain and loves the way the gold and silver flicker in the darkness.

“Does that even make any kind of sense? It is up there with those who claim he stole the entire amount.

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“Lies! And I have the numbers to prove it.” Krench patted the large book tucked under other arm. “A quick reading of this would inform everyone that of his original horde, only thirty percent was from what the dwarves possessed. Then there was the twenty-five percent in tribute from the lizard men. Another ten percent from random caravans he assaulted when bored. The last thirty-five percent an investment with the orcs that paid him quite well upon their successful campaign against the elves.”

The tunnel tightened enough that they both were forced to duck. His nephew passed through the narrow opening first and took the lantern and book from him while he made his way. Holding the items, the younglings resembled him decades earlier. His mind would be a swirl, a jumble mass of expectations, questions, theories, and who knows what else. To his credit, no questions were posed, but Ketch knew the sermon was far from finished. There was just too much to prepare him for. To explain how the world really worked.

“Once a week the Dragon’s Accountant must journey here to give a full account on all his holdings.” That got the boy’s attention. “I know your question: how would his horde ever change? He’s sleeping on the lot of it.

“And that’s the secret. He’s not. That’s small level thinking. For a creature such as this, who counts his life in decades or even centuries, you must expand on all of that. And this one has holdings as far east as Silverpool, as far north as the great seas… where ever money might exchange hands the likelihood is very high some of the coin originated here.”

“That inn located at the crossroads of Madras and Danan. Where all the caravans stop. Where lords and ladies and even princes have stayed… he owns a fifty percent stake. The blacksmith shop in Butte has worked out a nice living for himself because of a certain anonymous investor.

“A fleet of ships supporting the Merchant Guild in Silverpool.

“And the latest Duke of Parthan, who somehow found enough of a foreign inheritance to afford the new title and the lands which come with it.”

Krench let it all sink in.Watching his nephew’s eyes dart back and forth, a mind at work. After a few moments, a toothy grin emerged.

“Not to mention the coinage itself. Think about it, most of the coinage will be old. Then after a time it will be very old. Then ancient. Kingdoms and empires rise and fall in the blink of an eye (well, from His point of view). They mint new coins, phase out the old ones… and no one wants to have worthless coins. So periodic exchanges have to occur. In small enough amounts not to arouse suspicion, but in enough transactions so that you actually gain some ability to pay for what you want to invest in.”

The first of the outer doors appeared at the end of the tunnel. Remnants of the previous owners. A loose stone along the right side of the door, halfway down, provided the opening mechanism. Krench pushed until he heard the click and the engraved doors shifted open.

“What people don’t understand is dragons are ancient creatures. On a long enough timeline, barring random adventurers stumbling in and murdering them in their homes, they might well live forever. Even the ancient elves appear to wither in the eyes of dragons.

“But forever is a long time. And while they may share more in common with cats in their sleeping habits- they still wish to be entertained. And with the level of money they possess… well, pulling the strings on some of the humanoid peoples is a pleasant distraction.

“More than anything else, he knows history will repeat itself if you let it. So he can push and pull. Nudge things along for the better. Well, for his better.

“You see, dragons have gotten a horrible reputation as being evil. But what no one will tell you is the word is made up. They simply don’t realize have the perspective to appreciate everything as it moves and twists and turns. The elves… yes, they might, but the lower races, the dwarves and humans and halflings and gnomes and orcs… the lot of them just don’t live long enough. So they make up new stories to explain the world around them. And more often than not they only have the vaguest of memories as to what came before. The devastation, the wars, the armies… evil.”

They were getting lower now, the tunnel’s slope increased to the point Krench had to hand the lantern over to his nephew. They both stumbled a bit, but neither lost their footing. A hundred feet or so later things flattened out once more, and he took the burden back.

“Of course, they don’t know about the art. Creatives need funding as well. Ancient dragons need songs and maybe stories to be written about them. To be retold for the next generation. And who’s going to pay those bards to make such beautiful art? He is.

“Exotic animals? Seems strange, but my father explained it to me. Some days you want beef and some days you want Minotaur. Nothing wrong with either. And when you exist at the top of the food chain and have this level of wealth…”

Richard_Caton_Woodvilles_The_Battle_of_Towton

Richard Caton Woodville, Jr. [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

“My great-grandfather realized one undeniable truth: wars cost money. Conquests. Paying armies to conquer the world. It’s a terrible business plan. First you outlay all of that money on the mercenaries. You pay to feed them. To forge weapons for them. To build the forges. To build the siege equipment. And all of that work and gold guarantees absolutely nothing.

“Up to that revelation, the Dragon’s Accountant merely handed out the sacks of gold to the mercenaries and kept a log of it all in the book. But it was a drain on the coffers, and no amount of caravans would cover the loss. That pile he sleeps on will surely drain until he’s sleeping on stone like some commoner. No! That would not stand! So he dared to pose a single idea: if the Great Wyrm really wished to take over the kingdom, then why not buy it instead?”

Careful to turn the key two times to the left and then once to the right (no one wanted a face sprayed with acid from a trap set to keep the undesirables out), Krench led them into the cavern proper. Pausing to let the younger of them take the sight in, he pushed his spectacles back up his long snout. Long ago the glitter was enough to nearly blind him. Too many restless nights were spent trying to determine exactly how one might extract such a mass from the mountain. When his own father passed the Book onto him, he spent more than enough time to understand how moving even one coin was as important as the whole of it.

Later, when he took a full account of the book, Krench realized some of the investments had gone sideways. A small war between human kingdoms, a great flood, and suddenly there was a loss to report for the fifth year in a row. Such a glorious day filled with fire to signify the passing of duties to the next Accountant.

“Krench…” The Great Wyrm stretched out his name so that it appeared to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once.

The two of them moved over to the large platform where he would deliver the latest news. As they climbed the steps, crafted so long ago by rough dwarvish hands, he pushed the book into his nephew’s arms. There was no need for it anymore.

Dragons were patient creatures, but above everything else they did not like to lose money.

 

***

John McGuire

John McGuire is the author of the supernatural thriller The Dark That Follows, the steampunk comic The Gilded Age, and the novella There’s Something About Mac through the Amazon Kindle Worlds program.

His second novel, Hollow Empire, is now complete. The first episode is now FREE!

He also has a short story in the recently released anthology Beyond the Gate, which is free on most platforms!

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com.

The Stiletto

The Stiletto

* * *

I knew it’d be a mistake the moment it was over.

But I did it anyway.

He was a ghoulish old king. He’d extorted, terrorized, and murdered to fill his coffers. His brothers were thieves. His wives…both of them…were daggers in every man’s back.

His subjects hated him. His enemies feared him. The ground he walked turned black beneath his boots. His bathwater reeked of death.

Every family who’d even a chance at sniffing the throne, he’d exiled, poisoned, or butchered. When his cousin’s coup d’état failed, the ghoul burned the usurpers’ children alive, drowned his cousin’s mother, and hung the collaborators’ bodies from gibbets so high even the crows dared not a single sniff.

It was time for the King to go. Everyone knew it. Everyone wanted it. His black towers had too long stood like knives on the kingdom’s throat.

When the three exiles came to me on autumn’s second eve, I knew what they wanted. One carried a chest of silvers. The other dropped a satchel of ingots on my table. The third stood in my doorway, the moonlight shining on his back. He was a weathered, ancient thing. Twenty years in the sand had done him poorly. I smirked, my dagger folded against my wrist in case he did something stupid.

“Lady Lusia, will you?” he asked.

“Will I what?” I pretended not to know what he meant.

“The Ghoul…the King…the hundred-year old nightmare haunting the eaves of every house in Lyrlech. Will you?”

“No.” I glanced out my window. I couldn’t see the black towers, but I knew they were there.

“Why?” asked the weathered man.

“He’s only a few more years left in him,” I scoffed. “Not worth it. I’m too pretty for the gibbets.”

“You don’t understand, Lusia,” he sighed. “If he dies, his brother becomes king. It’ll only get worse.”

I considered it for a moment, then countered, “Exactly. If I kill the Ghoul, it does nothing. The noose around our necks just gets tighter.”

“But Lusia, his family will be there. His brothers. His sons. His grandchildren. All under one roof for the first time in years.”

“So?” I smiled.

“You can save us,” he pleaded. “You’re the best. Everyone knows it. The Stiletto, they call you. You’re the only one who can deliver us from darkness.”

“You’re right,” I smiled. “I can. But I won’t.”

I got tired of waiting. I flicked my knife and split the three men neck to belly. They died quietly. Their blood drained onto the floor, but the night moved none at all.

I knew it was a mistake the moment it was over.

…but the Ghoul had paid me well.

 

* * *

The Stiletto, along with a volcano of other dark, eerie, and fantastical tales, appears in:

Machina Front Cover

Machina Obscurum features a host of writers doing their best to darken your world with short, deadly stories and quick-as-knives fiction.

It’s available right now.

J Edward Neill

Route 3: Sean’s Playlist

I like music. I like it a lot.

When I’m in my car I’ve got my Cake, Chance The Rapper, The Roots, Red Hot Chili Pepper, Kanye West, or Tito Puente Pandora stations on constant rotation. Music helps get me through the day, long writing sessions, and just Sean-3allows me to unwind.

So when writing Route 3 I’ve created a mix-tape of sorts that our protagonist, Sean Anderson, would have queued up on his MP3 player.

I’ll admit a lot of my tastes influence what Sean probably listen’s too, so hey, sue me. We both like good music.

Below is a small sampling of what Sean rocks out to when heading to school, or saving the day.

 

 

 

LOGIC

Logic – Under Pressure (Album): This guy has me constantly thanking Pandora for mixing him into my Chance The Rapper rotation. With a laid back flow, the Maryland born and bred Sir Robert Bryson Hall II, a.k.a Logic would be a constant fixture in Sean’s ears. Logic’s masterful rapping, including insightful lyrics speaking about his newfound success and struggles could form a great reflection to Sean’s own triumphs and trials.

Added to this, Sean would more than likely keep his head bobbing on his “road trip from hell” to the awesome beats/ production being laid down by legendary producer No ID.

KANYE

Kanye West- College Dropout/ Late Registration/ Graduation (Albums): Ok, ok hear me out. Mr. West has become a sort of polarizing figure for a lot of folks. To be honest with you, I don’t focus on anything with him outside of the music. I’m not big into celebrity news/ gossip, and when it comes to Mr. West, for me, all that matters is the music.

The Kanye that Sean would be rocking out to would be what I’ve deemed “The Backpack-Polo Trilogy” (College Dropout/ Late Registration/ Graduation). Not saying that I haven’t enjoyed any of his work that’s dropped after these three album’s, but for me, and Sean by extension, this is classic Kanye, and includes some of his greatest work.

This was the bashful braggart. The socially conscious/ fun rapper, who could belt slick lyrics laced with lines that would make you think and want to dance at the same time. The backpack carrying, polo shirt wearing, rapper/ producer. For Sean this would be a guy who would tap into the smart swagger that he himeself feels he embodies, but which has taken a hit due to death of his own mother.

Dave-Brubeck-Take-Five-EP-565413

Dave Brubeck-Take Five (Single): Gonna cheat here a little, as this would be
a song that would be suggested to Sean. This would be a track that Charles has slipped into the car radio while he and Sean are fleeing across the country. Charles is a bit of a “old head”, as the young folks say, and his musical tastes represents that somewhat.

So he’s a bit of an aficionado of all forms of music. Ranging from classic hip hop, to bluegrass music, Charles likes a little bit of everything, and this includes jazz. After a few conversations where he’s been able to pick Sean’s brain a bit, Charles decides to pull up Dave Brubeck’s seminal work, “Take Five”. It’d be a track that would keep Sean cool, calm, and collected as hell continues to rain down around him, while also opening new doors of music for our young protragonist.

IZ-WonderfulWorld

Israel “Iz” Kaʻanoʻi Kamakawiwoʻole- Somewhere over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World Medley (Single)- Even writing about this song gets me all misty eyed and what not.

I can get sappy sometimes.

This for me is the track that I picture Sean’s mother playing for him when he was younger. This was the song that Sean played every night on a portable CD player by his mother’s bedside at the hospital, as she battled cancer. This was their song. This track by the Hawaiian born and raised Israel “Iz” Kaʻanoʻi Kamakawiwoʻole is the type of song that just leaves you feeling good and happy with life.

The song has a melancholy feel, but at points uplifts you. In my opinion, it’s the best rendition of both Somewhere Over The Rainbow and What A Wonderful World that I’ve heard in a while. So, to just find a moment of peace in the tumultuous events that play out in Route 3, and reminisce on his mother, Sean would have this on repeat on his playlist.

———————————————————————-

Hope you enjoyed this trip down Sean’s musical lane.

One question for my fellow writers/ creators: what artists/songs do your characters listen to?

Just Another Day in Purgatory

The following is a guest spot from Tessera Guild favorite, River Fairchild. She’s got an awesome new release, Just Another Day in Purgatory, and it’s available. Right. Now.

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JustAnotherDayInPurgatory Blog

Hi. Death here. I’d introduce you to Chronos as well, but he’s stuck in the ‘80s and doesn’t understand social media.

I’m pleased to announce the release of our new novella, Just Another Day in Purgatory.

What’s it about, beyond the wacky fun and crazy misadventures of myself and my best bud, Chronos, as we keep the universe from imploding? It’s about friendship in the midst of insanity. Trying to find order in the middle of chaos. Living life on the edge and having fun while doing so. It’s about having someone’s back, no matter what.

Come have fun with us as we sort through the mayhem, one crisis at a time. Maybe I’ll even give you a ride on my Harley.

In Just Another Day in Purgatory:

Hell freezes over. Heaven heats up. A resort springs to life on the banks of the River Styx and souls don’t want to move on. 

Nothing scares our intrepid immortals—except a run-in with a scissor-wielding Fate after messing up the Great Tapestry. She’s the only one capable of cutting their Life Threads. 

It’s just another day in Purgatory for Death and Chronos as they sort through the mayhem and keep the universe from spinning out of control. Be sure to bring along your helmet. You never know when Death might offer you a ride on his Harley. 

Step into their world. The afterlife will never be the same.

Amazon / Apple / Barnes & Noble / Other Links

 River Fairchild is somewhat odd, brandishes a dry sense of humor, owned by several cats. Lives in a fantasy world. A fabricator of magic. Makes stuff up and spins tales about it. Believes in Faerie crossings and never staying in one place for very long. Speculative Fiction wordsmith. The secret to her stories? Spread lies, blend in truths, add a pinch of snark and a dash of tears. Escape into her world. She left the porch light on so you can find your way down the rabbit hole.

Blog / Facebook / Twitter / Goodreads / Google+ / Amazon /

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2015 Tessera Guild

Second Star to the Right and Straight on ’til Compton

StraightOuttaSomewhere (3)I think every young filmmaker has a handful of dream projects in their back pocket. Not only dozens of original ideas but also ones based on preexisting content: an adaptation of a novel or comic book, someone’s life story, a sequel to a beloved franchise, a tale from history, a (gasp) remake of a classic film. Projects filed away under the “When I make it big, I’ll use that clout to get one of these things made” category. Some of these projects you are sure will rock the box office; others, that you don’t really think will make any money but, if all goes well, will net you some critical acclaim.

The two big dream projects for me could not have been more different in tone and subject matter:

I wanted to do a live-action, semi-serious, sticking-to-the-book version of JM Barrie’s Peter and Wendy

…and a biopic about Eazy-E and the creation and dissolution of legendary hip-hop group N.W.A.

And they both got made.

But not by me.

It’s weird seeing these films come to fruition; it’s even weirder watching them. You can’t help but think about what you would have done differently, what they did better than you, what they fucked up entirely. It’s not a crushing feeling; I never got close to making either one a reality. But it’s… strange.

peter-pan-wendy-03What attracted me to JM Barrie’s 1911 novel Peter and Wendy was that it was a version of Peter Pan I had never seen, knowing only the Disney interpretation. The book was darker than the animated film. More violent. More powerful. With a bittersweet message about childhood, both celebrating it and recognizing our need to shed it. Peter himself was full of contradictions: he was charming, fun-loving, sometimes feminist (“Wendy, one girl is more use than twenty boys.”) optimistic and brave, but also selfish, mean, forgetful, and super-duper violent.

Which all made sense to me. Little boys are terrors. When I was a child, I may have used a stick or wooden sword to fight pirates (or Darth Vader. Let’s be honest here.) but I was imagining a real blade. I wasn’t knocking people over. I was running them through. Cutting off their heads. Killing bad guys. In Barrie’s novel, that’s what Peter does. He kills bad guys. It’s not the bloodless, G-rated action of the Disney film.

The novel has several other dark tropes that few Peter Pan adaptations have yet to explore. Peter’s role as an Angel of Death, tasked with holding children’s hands on their way to heaven. His hatred of adults, parents especially, and how he genuinely wanted them dead. The slaughter of the Indians, an aspect of the story that I admit feels racist here in the 21st Century. And the famous Peter Pan quote, when stranded on an island left to die, a line that has forever stuck with me as probably the most positive outlook on death I’ve ever heard:

to-die-would-be-an-awfully-big-adventureAnd then there’s the end. I’m not going to get into it, but the last chapter of Peter and Wendy is sad and beautiful and a real reminder that Pan is a boy who will NEVER grow up. Which is the main reason why I hate Spielberg’s Hook. I know it’s beloved by the generation after me, and that’s fine, but it’s a bad film, hands down, my Peter Pan purist proclivities aside. But more than anything: Pan doesn’t grow up. He isn’t a child. He’s a demigod, an angel, an imp, maybe even a devil. He will live forever, as the final lines of the novel tell us:

“When Margaret grows up she will have a daughter, who is to be Peter’s mother in turn; and thus it will go on, so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless.”

Gay and innocent and heartless. That is Peter Pan to me. I have yet to see him on screen.

30521196_1300x1733I’m not going to offer a full review of PJ Hogan’s 2003 adaptation, Peter Pan. I have only seen it once and did not care for it. It got a lot right, especially in the first half hour or so. But then it fell apart for me. And, while it did incorporate a little bit of the adult edge I was looking for, it didn’t go far enough. But when that film came out, I knew my chances of making a film out of Peter and Wendy had just been cut drastically. And then when it failed at the box office, it showed that maybe a big-budget Peter Pan movie wasn’t commercially viable.

We’ll see if Joe Wright’s film, simply called Pan, will be different when it comes out this year. It’s apparently a prequel or something which we know ALWAYS bodes well, right? (see: Prometheus, The Thing, Star Wars, Hannibal Rising). But I doubt it’s the film I would have made.

And, man, the film I would have made is so good. It’s still there, in my head, scene by scene. I could still write it, legally. In 2007 the rights to the novel basically became public domain, leading to a series of disparate book series’ that I have not read. And maybe one day I will. Or maybe one day I’ll come up with a different take on one of my favorite stories, a new way to bring it to life.

Straight_Outta_Compton

“You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge.”

In the late 80’s, when I was 13 years old, I got hold of a cassette tape I shouldn’t have. It was called Straight Outta Compton, by a band called N.W.A., which I soon learned stood for “Niggaz wit’ Attitude”. It scandalized me, excited me, educated me, and, quite frankly, scared the shit out of me. Especially the song “Fuck tha Police” and the shit storm that came with it.

The group’s frank and often gratuitous depictions of life on the street in a city I had never heard of called Compton, a place so far removed from suburban Atlanta that I couldn’t imagine ever going there, was eye-opening, sure, but it was also dirty. The non-stop assault of profanity, violence, and sex was exceptionally titillating to my white, sheltered, adolescent mind.

Just the use of the word “nigger” (or “nigga” or “niggaz”, technically), which my parents had raised me to strike from my vocabulary forever (“Forever. Forever? Forever ever. Forever ever?”), was scandalous. And, I admit, intriguing. This was a bad word used to describe black people. Why would these guys talk about themselves that way? I sort of understood it, but not really. Not for a long time. But I knew it was controversial and adult and, in the back of my brain, powerful. I just couldn’t tell you why.

18280-n-w-a-1680x1050-music-wallpaperO’Shea “Ice Cube” Jackson. Lorenzo “MC Ren” Patterson. Eric “Eazy-E” Wright. Antoine “Yella” Carraby. Andre “Dr. Dre” Young. These are guys whose faces and voices I’ve known since puberty. I can recite all of Straight Outta Compton (the album, not the movie. I guess we have to differentiate now) as well is its companion piece, Eazy-E’s Eazy-Duz-It, word for word. Still, to this day.

"See you at the crossroads."

“See you at the crossroads.”

When (SPOILER) Eric Wright died of AIDS in 1995, it shook me. I was mostly listening to heavy metal and grunge, but I had never forgotten N.W.A. and their 5’ 5” superstar (“Niggaz [his] height don’t fight.”) . I knew the group had broken up and there had been bad blood. If you were alive in the early 90s and remember Dr. Dre’s The Chronic coming out, it was impossible not to know. But Eazy was a part of my adolescence and he was gone.

I wanted to make a movie about Eazy-E and the formation of N.W.A. I did some reading and found that there was a lot of drama to be mined. The music would be center stage, of course, but there were also political, financial, racial, sexual, and societal themes to be explored. Were these men artists pretending to be gangstas or gangstas who stumbled into being artists? I wanted to explore that question.

And, morbidly, films about actual people are more satisfying if they have a definite ending. And by that I mean death. It’s fucked up, I know, but it’s true. And the more tragic that ending, the more drama you can conjure. And (SPOILER) Eazy’s death was tragic, to be sure. He was destroyed by his own reckless behavior, sure, but dying of AIDS made Wright an icon of the 1980s. He not only helped birth a style of music that rules the airwaves over 25 years later, but he was struck down by the 20th Century’s Black Death, just at the point where we were starting to understand it. As Eazy said, from his hospital bed, after being told he had AIDS: “But I ain’t no fag.” That was the attitude then. For a lot of people.

I tried to pitch this movie to anyone who would listen. Every one of my L.A. friends knew about it. But I was never able to get through any doors of consequence. People I did get to talk to weren’t interested. Plus, there was the matter of clearing the music, an incredibly expensive process that meant the film could never be made independently. I still held out hope for 15 years. Just like with Peter and Wendy, I had the whole movie in my head and “damn, that shit was dope!”

maxresdefaultRight now, for the second straight week, F. Gary Gray’s film, Straight Outta Compton, is on top of the box office charts. I was both excited and nervous to go see it. I mean, the subject matter is obviously attractive to me, but, motherfucker, I wanted to make this movie. And I was weary that the film was produced by Dr. Dre and Ice Cube. That meant that rough corners were going to be sanded down. Certain less-than-flattering things would be omitted. I was especially worried about how the film would depict Eazy, who would have been my protagonist.

I really liked the movie.

It’s odd. It’s not at all the movie I would have made but it’s also exactly the movie I would have made. It doesn’t look like the movie in my head. Doesn’t feel or sound or flow like it. But it covers the exact story beats I would have. Its Point A is my Point A and its point Z is my Point Z. It told the story I wanted to tell, just not in the style I wanted to tell it in.

And that’s fine. Because I liked it. And a lot of people seem to feel the same way.

(Especially after the mind-blowing clusterfuck that was the Biggie Smalls “movie”.)

I do wish it had explored a little more of the dark side of things, especially the famous incident involving Dr. Dre and Dee Barnes, an omission that is getting a lot of press over the last week. It should be in the movie. It really should. The first step to atonement is to acknowledge what you’ve done. Dre has done that in the press this week, releasing statements that seem genuine. But it would have been much more powerful to explore these themes in the film. Let it all hang out. Show your ugly side. The movie has to stand on its own and Dre’s history of domestic violence isn’t something that should be discussed in a press release.

osheajacksonjr_withicecubeBut the performances are great, especially by O’Shea Jackson Jr, who not only looks like his father but does a spot-on impression. The music is of course awesome. The cinematography interesting. The script could be better and sometimes the “bio-pic-ness” of the thing hurts it, with its need to make sure you understand who all these people coming in and out of the story are. Hey guys? I’m at a movie about N.W.A. I know that guy is playing Tupac. I am aware of his music. No need to point him out to me.

Surprisingly Eazy, the drug-dealer turned hip-hop mogul and star, comes across as the one of the biggest heart. He’s actually the soul of the movie. This makes me happy. Because that was going to be my way in, too. Through him. And when (SPOILER) Eazy dies, I was shaken, teary, even though I knew it was coming.

The only thing that pisses me off about the success of Straight Outta Compton (the movie) is… its success. It’s making BANK. All those years I was told no one wanted this movie. That it would be too expensive to get the music rights. That who cares about some gangster who died of AIDS? And now it’s ruling the Summer box office. Beating the crap out of more traditional Summer movies. I TOLD YOU, YOU MOTHERFUCKERS.

the-devil-in-the-white-city-by-erik-larson-book-cover-960x1459Do I have more dream projects in my head? Of course. Novels I want to adapt (not telling you which ones). Life stories I want to tell. Historical incidents I’m dying to recreate. And I will hold onto them, along with the countless original ideas I have in my head, until the next one gets knocked down by someone who got to it before me.

One of my favorite books, well, ever, is Erik Larsen’s Devil in the White City. I would love to make it into a movie. Recently, it has been announced that Leonardo DiCaprio will be starring in the adaptation, with our greatest living filmmaker, Martin Scorsese, behind the lens. I will defer and gladly give up that dream. Because while I think one day I could match the talents of PJ Hogan or F. Gary Gray (both accomplished, not taking anything away from them), I will never-ever come close to Mr. Scorsese. So make that movie Marty. I can’t wait to see it.

 

I don’t know how interesting this has been. I just had this gut reaction to seeing Straight Outta Compton (the movie) that made me sit down and write my first blog post in forever. Sitting there, watching a movie I have dreamed about a thousand times, not looking at all like the film I would have made but enjoying it all the same.

Now that I think about it, that’s probably how I’m going to feel about The Force Awakens, too, because I know I have at least 3,263,827 Star Wars movies in me.

And I’m not giving up entirely on Peter and Wendy. Some dreams die harder than others.

Preview – A Door Never Dreamed Of

I’ve begun work on something new.

It’s called A Door Never Dreamed Of.

For the moment, I’ve expelled just about all the dark fiction I can handle.

This new project will be completely different than everything I’ve done before.

  • It’s not an epic novel. Or a short story. Or a philosophy book
  • It’s not part of a series. Just one novella. No spin-offs
  • It’s the book I’ve always wanted to write

Disclaimer: In a serious race against time, I’m trying to finish the first draft of A Door Never Dreamed Of before the NFL football season hits. Once touchdowns start happening and the Chicago Bears start sucking, I’ll be helpless. The local pub with the massive TV will replace my crusty old writing chair. I won’t be able to help myself.

But honestly, I’m cool with the deadline. Because I’m dying to get this story out.

And this is where we fall off the reservation.

If A Door Never Dreamed Of showed up in your local bookstore, you’d probably find it in the Science Fiction section. It’d sit next to books about spaceships, galactic wars, and aliens. You’d look at the awesome Amanda Makepeace cover art and think, ‘Ooooo…spiky space station. Fun!’

JupiterEventTeaser1

A small sliver of the cover art – ‘The Jupiter Event’ by Amanda Makepeace

But genres are limiting. Art is static. And first impressions are usually wrong.

And A Door Never Dreamed Of won’t have space battles, flying spaghetti monsters, or intergalactic alien sex.

So what’s it about?

Two boys who’ve never met

Each given the power to destroy one another

Facing off with all of humanity at stake

With only one little door between them

I truly believe once you read A Door Never Dreamed Of, you’ll come to see things my way. You’ll forget all about genres. You won’t care that it’s a denomination of book you usually wouldn’t read. And what I really hope is that maybe, just maybe, you’ll see a deeper theme at work. You’ll understand where all our modern technology is leading us. You’ll see the scary places we might go if we continue hurtling toward the apex of human advancement. And you’ll shudder for what the future generations of humanity might one day become.

And so…

 Coming in Autumn 2015

A Door Never Dreamed Of

A new novel by J Edward Neill

And seriously, check out Lady Makepeace’s awesome art site. Click around. Buy something.

And when you’re done, check out my terrifying short stories Let the Bodies and The Sleepers.

Mortal, I am

The following piece is from Tessera guest blogger, Troy Jackson. Troy’s novel, The Elementals, is available now on Amazon!

 

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Mortal, I am

It’s a topic that few like to publically or privately discuss – our own mortality. However, it is used as a writing tool in many novels and comic books by both fledgling authors such as myself and well-known uber-popular authors like J.K. Rowling and Dan Brown. Imagine Harry Potter without facing Lord Voldemort and certain death. Or Robert Langdon not running for dear life in The DaVinci Code, Angels and Demons, or Inferno? They would be rather dull pieces without fear of death. Would you not agree?

The older I get the less I enjoy watching the news. All that seems to be shown are murders, child abductions, or apartment fires. And if the news stations have it their way, it’s any combination of the three! No news is bad news, right? I can’t say I blame these news stations, as bad news is what sells and they are in the business for ratings. It’s a rather sad truth about society today. But alas, I digress. This article isn’t about the news or how pathetic our lust for negativity is.

Ironically and possibly hypocritically, it is because of the negativity in society that I write. As much as I loathe the baleful effects of television and the internet, I use it as much as the next person. My tales always include a degree of mortality, as it is what ultimately interests many readers.

I will freely admit – I do not look forward to the day when I leave this world. My own mortality is something I’ve been keenly aware and frightened of since I was about eight years old when I wrote a poem entitled, “I am afraid of death.” Over the years, said poem disappeared into the annals of history, lost in some nauseating dumpster. But it is the first thing I can ever remember really writing for myself and not for school. I look to it as a catalyst, possibly the catalyst, in eventually becoming a novice writer. So in a weird sort of way, it is because of our mortality as a species that I push forward with writing, and writing whenever I can. I have many stories to tell and not enough time to tell them! So I leave you with this:

Time is immortal.

But mortal, I am.

Life is fleeting, so live it to its finest,

and then write about it.

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About the author:

Troy Jackson (found at http://www.tempestworks.com) Born in 1974 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Troy Jackson moved to the great state of Georgia with his family at the age of three where he has lived ever since. Currently he resides outside the city of Atlanta with his lovely wife and daughter. His passion for history, fantasy, and science fiction began at an early age with a little nudge from his older brother. Attending Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville, Georgia, he received a Bachelor’s Degree in History and a Master’s Degree in Teaching. In his spare time he enjoys being with his family, watching and partaking in sports. Although new to the profession he intends on writing about subjects that have always fascinated him, including fantasy, adventure, science fiction, and history.

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Look for Troy to pop up in future Tessera Guild articles!

 

Checking In: Writers Edition

Taking a cue from my fellow Tessera Guild member, John McGuire, I’m going to list out my writing related to do list for current/ upcoming projects. These run the gamut from super heroic tales of daring, to action adventures spread across alternate dimensions and space.

Superheroes and sci-fi?

I know, I’m a big nerd.

Comics:

Promo R3#3 2

A scene from Route 3 # 3.

 

Route 3 #3/Vol. 1: After getting the final draft edited by the esteemed Mr. McGuire and my Editor in Chief @ Terminus Media, Tony Cade, the book is now 9 pages in at the pencils/ inks stage.

I’m kind of biased on this front, but Sean Hill is killing it on the art duties, and I’m looking forward to seeing Omi Remalante’s masterful colors applied once this is all done.

Promo R3#3 1

A scene from Route 3 # 3

Setting aside any further delays, I’m hoping for a late September, early October release for the book. The final plan will be to compile issues 1-3 into a trade paperback (Vol.1), and get them into comic book stores and book stores all across the country, and *gasp* maybe even the world.

This issue will round out the first story arc of Route 3, and hopefully I’ll get a chance to tell more stories of Sean Anderson’s journey in the future. Once the book and collected edition drop I’ll be in overdrive mode promoting, while also continuing to generate ideas for future tales.

The Best: A zombie outbreak set against the backdrop of an intergalactic war. That’s the most basic pitch for a 10 page short that I’ve written in collaboration with the esteemed Takeia Marie.

zombie-horde-the-walking-dead

Zombies. And even more zombies.

 

You know those artists that once you see their work you really want to have an opportunity to collab with them? Takeia’s one of those creators, and I think she’s the best person to bring this space based action-horror hybrid to life.

The story will focus on two soldiers and a seemingly impossible mission they’re tasked to take on. Here’s hoping that this will turn out to be a small drop in a wider pool of awesome storytelling opportunities, because I’d love to widen this world out a bit more.

I had a lot of fun with this one, and hopefully it shows.

Radio Free Amerika: Season 1:  So yeah, I got my first graphic novel/ trade paperback released. 😀

Cover for Radio Free Amerika: Season 1.

Cover for Radio Free Amerika: Season 1.

Still kind of on cloud 9 on that front. Not coming down anytime soon.

It’s too cool for school up here.

My co-writing duties on B. Robert Bell’s Radio Free Amerika have been collected in a really nicely bound book, collecting issues 1-3. I’m really proud of how the story, and just the book overall, came out. By year’s end/beginning of 2016 you should see the collected edition at your local comic book store, books stores, libraries, bodegas, outer space, other dimensions. Just everywhere.

Barron and I will continue to generate ideas/ start scripting for Season 2, while spreading the word about Season 1. The plan is to try and get the trade in as many hands as possible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

-Stealth: The Life and Times of Allen White: A while back, I was hired by the

A page from Stealth: The Life and Times of Allen White.

A page from Stealth: The Life and Times of Allen White.

talented William Satterwhite to bring the origin of his character, Allen White, a.k.a Stealth, to life in the pages of an original graphic novel.

William’s web comic, Stealth, is a fun action packed tale of super heroics that deserves

to be checked out. So, to say I was beyond ecstatic to help tell a new story featuring this character was an honor. Add to that, the book is being drawn by the talented Jamar Logan. I think we’ve got a bonafide hit on our hands.

A sort of “issue 0” is scheduled to be released later this summer, which will serve as a preview of sorts, giving fans a look into what the future holds for our creative effort. Continuing to put the final touches on this script.

 

 

 

 

 

-The Crossing: John McGuire. Robert Jeffrey II. Sean Damien Hill. Alternate dimensions. High paced action. A story of loss and betrayal. What’s not to love?

parallel_world_by_ayronstorkarynx-d48sl11

Inter-dimensional travel: the only way to travel.

 

Still working on applying final edits to the pitch for this sci-fi adventure that my fellow Tessera Guild/ Terminus Media writer in arms and I have come up with.

John: I’ll get the edits to ya by this weekend. I swear.

Next will be finding a publisher for the book. But once we find a home for it, you all are going to need to hang on to your seats. Like, “get some seat belts installed in home” type of action.

Also working on a prose novella set within this universe, so stay tuned.

Blogging/ Journalism

-Tesera Guild: My commitment is to up my postings to 2-3 Friday’s a month, so get prepped to see more of my random rants on this page.

Comics, sci-fi, life musings, you’re gonna get ‘it all.

BLACKSciFi_4WEB-BlackSci-Fi.com: I’m honored to write for this awesome website, and things are going to be picking up A LOT on this front over the next few months.

Within my capacity as contributing writer for the website I get a chance to speak about a well established and constantly growing arm of this awesome genre we call sci-fi. Whether it’s prose, comics, movies, video games, etc, I’ll have articles coming down the pipeline about the work that African Americans are contributing and have contributed to the science fiction arena.

And as always, you can visit me here for a rundown of past projects, maybe buy some books,  and get updates about anything else I have coming up.

If you just want to chat, that’s cool too.

 

Don’t Look Back

The saying (or the song, I can’t remember which it really is) goes – Don’t Look Back in Anger…

Yet, we as humans are really conditioned to either reflect or to advance. I’ve talked about before how we should all live in the present tense. That too much time spent on the past or the future is not good for you.

Today I’m doubling down. I’m here to say, don’t look back.

Don’t play the What If Game. You know the one, where you take every success and failure, every “I should have taken a left turn at Albuquerque”… all of them and pull on that thread for days.

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Bugs totally gets it.

 

It keeps us up at night. The only worth to spending all the time obsessing and worrying is if we (somehow) come to a conclusion (and we almost never do) and then make different choices the next time we are presented with that problem (yeah, maybe that will happen). Which is kind of the rub in all of it, because you will never be put back into that exact situation again, with those exact sequence of events leading you to the EVENT. You are the person today exactly because you made the “wrong choice” way back when.

Something with writers though, we’re never truly done with something. Up until the moment someone hits the publish button on the blog, short, comic, novel, movie, whatever, the work is never truly done. Oh, it can be version one thousand seven hundred and fifty three… and you can swear up and down that you aren’t going to look at the damn thing one more time. That it is as done as it ever is going to be.

All of it is lies we tell ourselves so that we can sleep at night.

I caught a random glimpse at a piece of writing I worked on a couple of years ago. Something I had not even looked at since it had become “locked” (though it hasn’t been locked fully, hence why it was getting looked at). And in doing the quickest read of a section of the script I had to shake my head… because I saw something that suddenly irritated me was even in there. And I KNEW I could fix it. That line which was fine back then, now grates the back of my mind.

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Crazy. The thing has been sitting out there for over two years, but…

I can fix it.

I should look on that line and smile at its imperfect structure. It’s awkward bits of dialogue. The clunkiness and how it falls from the mouth like a piece of lead. I should celebrate its very existence, and I should be overjoyed not because it is bad, but because I can see the flow within it. I should be happy that the bits and pieces of writing I have compiled over the last few years has given me a new form of insight (whether I realize it or not). The very idea that I can suddenly recognize the mistakes of my past should be a triumph.

But I can’t and I won’t, because it’s wrong now and needs to be fixed. I need to pull out the file and fix it. Right now. Stop the presses, don’t take another moment doing something else. Who cares if we’re long past the point where I should be able to change things. Who cares if it probably has bothered no one else on the project before now.

I mean if I was to even mention it to the co-writers they might get some form of the earworm and be unable to focus on their day to day lives without reliving the sentence.

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Wrath of Khan Style Earworm!

 

That terrible, terrible sentence.

But I can’t. It is long gone from my hands, pencils long since dulled from writing it. New computers have been bought in the interim. Dozens of people have given their ok for it. So maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there is nothing really wrong with it.

I have to let it go. Take a deep breath and let it all out. Don’t dwell and don’t think upon it again.

Now it becomes my own personal What If Game for the night.

Wish me luck in going to sleep.

***

John McGuire

John McGuire is the author of the supernatural thriller The Dark That Follows, the steampunk comic The Gilded Age, and the novella There’s Something About Mac through the Amazon Kindle Worlds program.

His second novel, Hollow Empire, is now complete. The first episode is now FREE!

He also has a short story in the recently released anthology Beyond the Gate, which is free on most platforms!

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com.

Grab Bag: July Edition

The following will be randomness to the extreme. Much like falling down the internet rabbit hole, this is my brain this day and some of the days before that and on some of the days before even that. You may exit the blog post feeling confused and possibly have a hint of madness now occupying part of your brain. I apologize in advance.

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I got a chance to watch the Kurt Cobain Montage of Heck documentary. My quick review would be to watch until about the point Courtney Love shows up and then turn it off. And that is not because I dislike Courtney Love, but mostly because of the way the documentary is set up. The first half has tons of stuff about Kurt’s early life, tape recordings that they animate, shots of his journals, etc. But once Courtney shows up things get weird. The animated stuff stops being informative, and I think we lose track of who he is (and who he is trying to be).

Maybe the director is making the movie weird because that’s how Kurt’s life suddenly became? It just didn’t work all that well for me.

But my favorite little moment from the film was a shot of his journal which read as follows:

Don’t read my diary when I’m gone

When you wake up, please read my diary

Look through my things

And figure me out.

 

I love this idea that sharing the thoughts you would save for your diary… instead you want people to really know you by reading those strange and maddening and difficult and every other kind of thoughts. We all struggle to be understood by those we love, and sometimes it only takes telling them what our fears and wishes are.

Sometimes.

***

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I’m obsessed with Pirates right now. I don’t know how it happened or why exactly (well, part of it is Edge of the World that I’m desperately trying to finish up). I’m scouring the web for good pirate movies to watch or rewatch (last week I worked my way through the first 3 Pirates of the Caribbean movies (shut up, I like them) and bought the 4th one, because why not (and Amazon put it on sale for cheap). I need to rewatch Master and Commander, but then I don’t really know if we’ve had any good ones for decades. I also need to watch Black Sail (sadly I don’t have Starz).

Anyone know any other good Pirate related movies or tv shows? Gotta ride this wave for as long as my obsession lasts.

***

Edge of the World continues to be this monster of a novel that has forced me to examine how I do things and come up with better options. And while I’ve been doing an editing pass over the first 2/3 of the book – I haven’t done my full 1st pass edit on it. That’s when I basically do a search and destroy for various words that can be removed or replaced. Crutches that I might have when I write. That sort of thing. I have a Word document with my list compiled from the 10% Solution and random other sources.

Then I stumbled onto this and saw many of the words and phrases I try to locate, so hopefully I’ve been on the right track!

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Never hurts to have a second opinion.

***

Lastly a link for you to also send you down the Rabbit Hole of the Internet:

What If?

Basically if there is some random question you had about the universe or people or habits or whatever… chances are you aren’t the only one who’s thought of the question and these nice people have decided to do their best in order to answer it.

At the very least it will give all of us more useless knowledge to bust out at parties or at work or when you want to torture someone.

***

That’s all I have for now. Go read. Go write. Go explore.

 

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John McGuire

John McGuire is the author of the supernatural thriller The Dark That Follows, the steampunk comic The Gilded Age, and the novella There’s Something About Mac through the Amazon Kindle Worlds program.

His second novel, Hollow Empire, is now complete. The first episode is now FREE!

He also has a short story in the recently released anthology Beyond the Gate, which is free on most platforms!

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com.

The Light Bulb

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Light Bulb by George Hodan

You ever have that Idea?

You know the one. Beautiful and powerful and takes your mind to places you never thought was possible. Forcing you to think on nothing else.

I’m not talking about those “other” ideas. No, I’m talking about The One. The million dollar, won’t be able to keep a copy on the shelves idea.

You’re so proud of this nugget, of this lightning in a bottle…

And then you say it outloud to a friend, spouse, co-worker, family member, etc. expecting their eyes to light up. Expecting to see the synapses fire in such a way that their head might glow.

But that’s not what happens, is it? There are no rapid questions prompting you to talk further about the Idea. There are no bouncing thoughts off one another. Instead there is that kind smile, the sort you have seen a parent give to a child.

The old “That’s nice” smile. They might as well pat you on the head and say “good boy” for extra measure, because there is no excitement you’re going to extract from them.

And it causes a quandary. Do I accept that perhaps I’m blind to the flaws of the Thing? Is this me being too close to the Thing?

Or are they wrong? Do they just not get it?

The inverse is one of those great feelings. Knowing that X thing is something someone is looking forward to.

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See, there are plenty of “good” ideas. Heck, there are plenty of “bad” ones as well. But thee are only a few “great” ones. Which is not to say that the good ones can’t be honed into greatness, or that the “great” can’t be screwed up. It’s about that raw potential. You want Lebron James or Michael Jordan, not the guy who won’t leave the gym every day. You want the guy that has the natural talent… and then hope not to screw it up.

I almost didn’t write this. Not because it may hurt feelings or whatever. But because they don’t know that this is happening. They can’t see the expression on their faces.

Rounders had it right – “The rule is this: you spot a man’s tell, you don’t say a fucking word.”

This is a secret. How else are you going to get the truth? If they know you are expecting surprise and excitement they might try to feign it. Not something that I want. I don’t want fake joy. I want real love. The kind where you only can see how everything flows perfectly and exactly where all the pieces are going to fall into place.

I want to have a clue about where the story begins and where it ends, but not know all the details at first, confident in the Idea.

It takes trust. Trust to be able to open up about the story and know that it isn’t personal. That it doesn’t have to mean death for the Thing. It just means that maybe you are only working with a good One and not a great One.

Trust to be able to take that criticism which hides itself from the sunlight most days. Trust to be able to embrace every reaction you get, big and small.

And trust in yourself and your skills to take it from good to great.

 

***

John McGuire

John McGuire is the author of the supernatural thriller The Dark That Follows, the steampunk comic The Gilded Age, and the novella There’s Something About Mac through the Amazon Kindle Worlds program.

His second novel, Hollow Empire, is now complete. The first episode is now FREE!

He also has a short story in the recently released anthology Beyond the Gate, which is free on most platforms!

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com.

A Writer’s Late Night Rant

Hi folks. Mind if I just ramble a bit?

::silence::

I’ll take that as a yes.

I’d planned on writing about a camping trip from hell that’d I’d experienced as a young lad. Gripping stuff. Hilarious now, though at the time not so much.

I’ll save that one for later.

I decided instead to talk about writing. Not a “laying out the tools/ tips of the trade” post, but more so about my personal experience with the craft. A little “ranty”, but not obnoxiously so.

To understand my love of writing, lets first start with an early obsession of mine: reading. Reading, and I’m not exaggerating, was my drug of choice. Books were, and still are, my narcotic, and libraries and book stores were my corner dealers.

Boy Reading Book in Classroom

I sucked up everything I could get my hands on. The Hardy Boys. The Righteous Revenge of Artemis Bonner. Nancy Drew. The Phantom Toll Booth. The House of Dies Drear. Choose Your Own Adventure books. Encyclopedia Brown. John Bellairs. Mark Twain. Stephen King. Octavia Butler. Christopher Golden. The list goes on and on.

If I added comics to this, we’d be here all day.

Let me give you an example of how deep this went with me: I had the route to my lunchroom  in elementary school so ingrained in my little noggin’, that I could walk the path to the cafeteria, nose deep in a book, without bumping into one of my fellow classmates.

I was that far gone.

In a good way though.

As I continued to read, and read, I found myself wanting to create my own stories. Take my own characters to these fantastical, adventure filled worlds, and just have fun. I knew I wanted to do it.

So I did it.

b2fThere was “Robert’s Time Machine” 1 & 2 (the less said, the better), then came the Double O Dwight series.  We even put on a skit at my school based on the adventures of Dwight and company.

Maybe I got a little playwriting in at an early age? That might be pushing it a bit.

Point being, I wrote a lot. This ran into short stories in middle school, joining my high school’s literary magazine, my college newspaper/ web magazine, freelancing on a regular basis once I got out of college, and now working as a comic book author.

Writing’s been a huge blessing for me, it’s something that I don’t ever see myself not doing.

It’s the thing (my marriage coming first) that I’m most proud of in life. Its something I do well. Its something that gives me a sense of sanity in a world where I’m assaulted by all sorts of B.S on a weekly, if not daily basis.

That’s life for you.

It’s something that, if you commit to it, deserves to be treated with the utmost respect, and love. And sometimes that doesn’t happen, just being truthful. I’ll admit there have been plenty of times where I’ve come home from a long day at the 9-5, and have just thought “no writing tonight. I just want to let my brain rest after dealing with the B.S of the daily burn”.

And believe me, there’s always gonna be B.S.Tired-employee

I will never say that this hasn’t happen, because it has, and it probably will again.

The best advice that I can give in this regard is to Just Do It, as difficult as it may be. Sometimes I’ll write a page, and that’ll be it for the night. And then I’ll write another the next, two more the next day, three more the next day, etc.

But what really gets me back in front of the computer is that same love and desire to tell stories that was sparked in the little kid reading at a library in Dolton, IL. It’s what drove me to break out of my shell and chase stories  for the Atlanta Voice Newspaper. It’s what got me to approach the fine folks of Terminus Media at Dragon Con.

I have so many damn stories that I want to tell. Some of ‘em might be great, some duds.

Some folks will love them, others won’t.

What I’m finding though is that at the end of the day, who can care less about what other people think? I’m still working on staying strong to that line of thinking.

But when such doubts crop up, what I tap into, as it was when I was younger, is that I’m doing this for myself. And to have fun.

Screw what anyone else thinks.

Ok, I wasn’t saying “screw” as a kid, but you get the point.

I wrote for myself.  I had fun. I just did it.

It’s time to write.

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Half Way There, Again

It’s the little slap of reality. It’s a progress report. It’s my road map.

It’s an excuse for my cat to block me from writing.

Most of the time I’m writing the blog to share some idea or thought (random many times), a favorite movie or book or whatever. This blog is more for me. A way to mark how I’m doing on my own (at times) uphill struggle to be a writer in the way I want to be. At the beginning of the year I wrote a “to do list” and now it is time to check in.

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Prose

The Edge of the World – So close yet so far away. I feel like I’m stuck in the mud on this one. Not because of any story difficulties, but because of the way I wrote the thing. I jumped around a fair bit and now have decided to fill in the gaps that I left myself. So at times I’m half in editing mode and half in writing mode (I know, I’m not supposed to do that). So the word count goes up a little slower than normal because I’m tweaking and trimming and writing and…

It’s going to be done, but it is not yet. Sigh.

The White Effect – Nothing yet. I’ve wanted to finish up The Edge of the World 1st. But my plans have not changed: Revise the current draft with all the Beta Reader notes I have. Identify potential Editors/Agents to Query. Draft query letter. Start that process.

Short Stories – Aha! Finally got some more done. 3 more to be exact. I took much of May and sat down to write some shorts… that need to be able to write the words: The End being the most blissful thing. I have 1 more to write to reach my goal for the year, but I’m extremely happy how this has gone. I have also received my first reject for publishing one of them, so I’m taking that as a sign of progress as well (as in, at least I am trying!).

Other Prose (Novels, novellas) – Aside from adding more notes to Unstuck’s file and Lightning’s file and The Dark That Follows II’s file, nothing concrete has happened.

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Comics

Gilded Age – Issue 2’s colors are 1/2 done. Issue 3’s pencils and inks are done (barring a minor tweak). Issue 4 has not been begun. However, I did finish both issue 3 & 4’s scripts, so another success. Fingers crossed these comics get done in the near future.

The Crossing – A tiny bit of movement. Robert and my project needs to have a sitdown just to get the pitch up and running.

Blogging – Still haven’t missed a week (though I must admit that last week I almost forgot… the beach does strange things to the brain!).

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Mystery Short Film Project – Finished. Can’t say much more about this one other than it kinda came out of nowhere and I feel really good about the final draft I delivered. And as soon as the client is ready to make it public, I will do a blog on what exactly it is. Just very excited about that opportunity. And it is yet another example of how I don’t always know what the next months are going to bring… what opportunities they will provide.

So that’s it so far, and honestly, aside from Edge of the World not being done, I’m decently happy about my progress so far this year. I definitely don’t have that kick in the gut feeling like I wasted 6 months or anything, which is exceptionally nice.

Now I just need to make sure I don’t waste the next six either.

 

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John McGuire

John McGuire is the author of the supernatural thriller The Dark That Follows, the steampunk comic The Gilded Age, and the novella There’s Something About Mac through the Amazon Kindle Worlds program.

His second novel, Hollow Empire, is now complete. The first episode is now FREE!

He also has a short story in the recently released anthology Beyond the Gate, which is free on most platforms!

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com.

Let the Bodies

Let the Bodies

A creepy J Edward Neill short story

Now available for Kindles and e-readers. Only $0.99

When one person goes missing…

…every day…forever… 

…poor little Mia doesn’t stand a chance.

Or does she?

LettheBodies_BlogLg

Let the Bodies is the sequel to Old Man of Tessera. It’s a standalone story. You don’t have to read one to enjoy the other.

For those who want to get into the prequel, check it here:

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J Edward Neill