Author: charliemoore

“Forward. Always Forward.”

Posted on by charliemoore

The hardest part of any short story or novel, any piece of writing, is the first line.  No matter what roadblocks you may run into later on, no matter how complicated the plot or how involved the characters, it’s that first sentence where you meet the most resistance.  From there, it’s just a matter of momentum.

Have you ever had to push a stalled car out of the way?  Once you get it rolling, it’s a lot easier to move.  But that initial start is where you expend the most energy.  Writing is the same way.

You have to GET going, but once you do, you’ve got momentum, and momentum will help you KEEP going.  But once you HAVE momentum, you have to MAINTAIN momentum.  Once you’ve started, write every day.  Much like the example of the stalled car, it’s so much easier to keep going on a story once you’ve started.  But if you start, then stop the car when you encounter a speedbump, getting started again is going to be so much harder.  And now you’ve got this speedbump in front of you.  You’ve already got momentum, use that to roll over the speedbump, ignore it and keep going.

William Faulkner said, “When my horse is running good, I don’t stop to give him sugar.”

Many writers, when they hit a part of the story that’s going to require research, will put a notation in there, something they’ll remember and can easily find again (I will usually mark a passage with *** on either side of it, then do a search for *** later on so I can find it again; this is called the bracket method, except I personally don’t use brackets), and they keep going, only coming back to this part much later, after they’ve completed the current scene or chapter.  They’re following through on the momentum they’ve established, riding over the speedbump.

This is a case where an outline would be most beneficial.  If you know where the story is going already, all you have to do is transfer that to prose and put it on the page.  The outline is your momentum kickstarter.  You’ve already done the hard part, figuring out the course of the story.  But, again, once you’ve started, you have to keep going.

Another way to maintain momentum is to set a word count.  But not a word count where you tell yourself, “I have to write 500 words in the next hour.”  Instead look at your current word count, and go from there.  For example, say your current story is at 4234 words.  Say, “I have to get to 4300 words.”  That’s 66 words.  You can do 66 words.  And chances are, once you’ve started, you won’t stop at 66.  You may stop at 350 words.  Then you’re at 4584 words.  Okay, you have to write 16 words to get to 4600.   But you won’t write 16 words, you’ll write another 158.  Now you’re at 4742.  Only 58 words away from 4800.

I’ve used this method to reach my 1000 words a day goal several times and it’s never failed me.  But that’s to maintain momentum THAT DAY.

If you need something to help maintain momentum from one day to the next, a great trick is to stop in the middle.  My writing time every morning is limited to whenever I get out of bed to whenever I have to start getting ready for work, so I don’t always have a lot of time (I overslept an hour this morning.  Thank God I already had the day off), so sometimes what I’ll do is, if it’s getting close to time to stop, but the story is really chugging along—because I’ve established excellent momentum—I’ll look at the clock, decide how much further I think I can go, set a nice round cut-off point (“I’m at 4376 words … I can stop at 4500.”), and once I reach that point, I stop.  Just stop.  Even if I’m in the middle of a sentence.  Even if that sentence only has one more word to go.  I’ll finish it TOMORROW.  But naturally I’m not going to sit down tomorrow and just write one word.  I was right in the middle of a thought, I’m going to finish that thought.  And since I’ve already got started for the day, I’m going to keep going until I hit the end of that scene, or until it’s time to stop and get ready for work.  With any luck, when that day’s time is up, I’m right smack in the middle of a sentence again.

Maybe setting a 1000 word daily goal is a reach; not everyone has that kind of time every day.  You can still maintain a DAILY momentum with, say, 200 words.  The above paragraph, from “If you need something” to “middle of a sentence again” is 246 words.  If you can do THAT on a regular, consistent basis for a year, you’ve got an 89,790-word novel.  The key to momentum is not quantity, it’s all about consistency.  Remember, the hardest part is starting.  But once you’ve started, it’s so much easier to keep going.  An object in motion tends to stay in motion, right?

You just need to START.

L is for “Learning to Write”

Posted on by charliemoore

I have a day job, and I’ve been in that job for ten years at this point.  I like to think I’m pretty good at it.  Do I know everything there is to know about that job?  No, but I’m always trying to learn more, not so I can know it all, but just so I can be better at it, and in turn hopefully not get fired for incompetence.  The same rule applies to writing.  Or any creative art, really.

I’ve heard of seasoned, road-weary guitarists learning new licks from fellow musicians, and visual artists who study the work of others in hopes of learning new techniques.  As a writer, you’re never done learning.

“But, CDM,” you say, “I’ve been published.  I’ve written five novels, and some of them sold.  I know how to write.”

Hey, I know how to write, too; I’ve been doing it for over 30 years as of this writing.  But I still read every book with an eye toward figuring out how the author did or did not succeed in creative believable characters, an intriguing plot, or in writing prose that carries me along and makes me forget I’m reading fiction.

Ray Bradbury said, “Success is a continuing process.  Failure is a stoppage.  The man who keeps moving and working does not fail….  If you write a hundred short stories and they’re all bad, that doesn’t mean you’ve failed.  You fail only if you stop writing.  I’ve written about 2,000 short stories; I’ve only published about 300 and I feel I’m still learning.”

There was a quote from THE Harlan Ellison, one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, hands down, no questions asked, no doubt about, no argument to be made, where he said that after decades of writing, he was “just learning how to do this.”

You have many jobs as a writer, and one of those jobs is to NEVER stop learning.

I’ve met writers over the years who had that earlier mentality where they assume that, because they found an editor willing to publish one of their short stories in a “for the love” magazine where their payment is two contributor copies, they’ve learned all they need to know as a writer.  And they never progress any further than that point, churning out the same stories with the same mediocre prose and the same stereotypical characters over and over.  Sometimes those stories got accepted, sometimes they didn’t, but those writers never ever matured, their style never changed, and NONE of them ever achieved the level of success I KNOW they hoped for.

There’s another quote, this one attributed to Albert Einstein who said, “Once you stop learning, you start dying.”  That absolutely applies to writing.  When you’ve reached a point where you think you know all there is to know about writing, you are creatively dead.  You may continue to write, but everything you produce will be stunted and weak.  Only by continuously learning new methods of storytelling and world-building, new ways to structure a plot, or even just to use the language we all use, can we truly become the writers we all WANT to be.

By 1992, I’d read all the Stephen King there was available to read, but it wasn’t until I read Clive Barker that I started to understand that poetry and prose could be interchangeable, or that sometimes it’s ok to show the horror, that it doesn’t have to be vague suggestion, the monster can be there on the page.

It wasn’t until PULP FICTION that I learned how to successfully tell a story out of order.

The Prince song “Housequake” taught me that, we all use the same words, it just depends on HOW you use those words, and the really successful ones will use it every way they can.

Clive Barker, Quentin Tarantino, Prince, all voracious learners willing to push themselves to keep getting better, and the ONLY way to get better, to progress, is to NEVER STOP LEARNING.

How?  First, read everything you can.  Everything you read will teach you something, even if it’s a terrible book: you’ll learn what NOT to do.  Second, write.  Every day.  And if you can’t, do SOMETHING writing-related every day, even if it’s just thinking through a story you’re already working on, or want to start.  Churn it over, explore the plot, get to know the characters, look for those plot holes before you write them.  Third, get to know other writers, talk to them about writing.  Writers LOVE talking shop with other writers, and that’s a back and forth you want in your life, believe me.

While I do believe some things just can’t be taught, that you either have it or you don’t, why stifle yourself and your growth by not even TRYING to learn?  And writing is a marathon, not a race.  That means it’s never too late to start.  So start now.  Find a writer you love, open a book, start reading and learn all you can.

“K” is for Kill

Posted on by charliemoore

Kill Your Darlings

Some of my most favorite passages I’ve ever written were things the world will never see.  While beautiful and poetic—to my ear, anyway—they added nothing to the plot of that particular story, so they had to go.

I was once editing a story for a friend, this was back in the very early 2000s, and she had a scene in a park where a side character goes on a rant about something or other, I think it was about fast food.  I crossed it out with the notation “author intrusion”.  The author really liked the bit, though, and fought for it.  I insisted it had to go because, while it had meaning for the author, it was a point she wanted to make about society, it really had NOTHING to do with the plot or the story she was telling.

In the end, she had to kill her darling.

This is a phrase you hear a lot when you start writing, but what does it mean?

Put simply, it means that, when you reach the editing phase, that line that you think the world is going to faun over, that side plot or supporting character you think gives the story flavor, chances are very good it doesn’t.  In fact, chances are just as good it’s unnecessary fluff that is only going to distract from the main plot.  Readers don’t have time for your bullshit.  Tell the story, and tell it in the most straightforward manner you can.  Anything that isn’t THE STORY has to go, no matter how interesting you think it is, no matter how purple the prose may be, and no matter how cleverly YOU think the passage doles out some universal truth.

In fact, that last one definitely HAS to go.  That’s author intrusion and it has no place in your story.  YOU have no place in your story, even if the story is told in first person.  In the world of the story, you don’t matter.  You don’t exist.  Only the story exists, only the story matters.

Kill your darlings.

 

JOY IN REPETITION

Posted on by charliemoore

What’s the line by Marie Kondo about chucking things that don’t bring you joy?  I haven’t watched her show, but I’ve heard it paraphrased enough times to get the gist.  That’s not only a good home organization philosophy, but just one to follow in life in general.

 

I was recently trying to force my way through a story I could visualize in my mind, but for which the words hadn’t yet come to me.  But this was the story I’d decided I was working on, I KNOW what it looks like, so why can’t I WRITE what I know happens?  After a week or two I realized this story just was not bringing me joy.

 

But I didn’t chuck it.  I know there’s a good story buried in there, but I was killing myself trying to make it appear on the page.  So I took a step back and rethought my approach.

 

See, I’ve got like 90 minutes before work in which to write every morning, which isn’t a lot of time when you’re in the groove and the words are flowing, and I didn’t want to waste that time staring at the screen trying to decide which words went where.  I wanted to write SOMETHING, but it obviously was not going to be this story.

 

At least, not every day.

 

So I came up with a plan, one that, if it worked, would bring me a joy I’d been missing in the work.  Instead of banging my head against the wall trying to make this story work itself into some kind of usable shape, I decided to work on several things, knowing that, at some point, at least one of them, work come together.

 

Sunday is always newsletter day for me.  It’s the one day I know I’ll have off and can dedicate the time to such an involved piece of writing.  Monday is my short writing day, the day I go in to work earlier than usual, so I wanted something that could be quick and easy.  So I made Monday blog day, the day I write things like this.

 

On Tuesday we’re back to my regular writing schedule, but instead of jumping back into that story that’s not working, I ease myself into the seat instead with a short story.  On Wednesday, though, it’s back to work.  I’ve worked out those writing muscles on Monday and Tuesday, and now it’s time to get serious and tackle this other project.  And I have to say, for the past two weeks, it’s been working.  I’ve been getting other writing done throughout the week, so I’m feeling accomplished, and it’s allowed me to look at this other story without so much pressure on the words those days.  And guess what, the words have been coming.

 

And then, just when the getting’s good, I stop and turn toward other things, namely two different novels that I work on on Thursday and Friday, then on Saturday I try to do a review of some kind.

 

This routine brings me joy.  And that’s the word of the day here.  I’ve had a lot of jobs and many of them have paid WAY better than writing ever did, but for all those jobs, as much as I didn’t mind some of them, none of them, not one, has ever brought me the kind of joy that writing does.  Even when the words aren’t coming or the plot is a mess, the act of creation makes me the happiest I’ve ever been outside of holding onto my wife.

 

Ray Bradbury said, “may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days.  And out of that love, remake a world.”  He was a man who found joy in the work.

 

If the work isn’t making you happy, if you find no joy in the act of sitting down and making up a story, then stop doing it.  Writing is work, yes, but it’s one of those jobs that’s not supposed to feel like a job.  If you sit down every day, begrudgingly, and force words onto the page, the reader is going to know it and they’ll find no joy in reading your work.  You’ve written a miserable story and, in the process, made readers miserable when they try to wade through the mess you’ve created.

 

If the work isn’t making you happy, then stop doing it.

 

And, in stopping, ask yourself what it is.  Is it the writing itself?  Has the process lost its luster?  Chances are it’s just the story, whatever you’re working on.  I don’t know many writers who one day just fall out of love with writing.  Writing is a CALLING, it’s something a select number of people don’t just do because it seemed like a good time; writing is something most of us HAVE to do.  If you don’t believe me, ask the loved ones of a Writer who hasn’t written in a week.  We’re no fun to be around when life comes in and takes up all of our writing time.

 

So if you find you’re not having fun writing anymore, take a look at the story, because that’s probably where the problem lies.  The solution?  Just write something else.  Write something fun.  Write something you’ve always wanted to write but would never let yourself take the time to work on.  No one said you had to start and finish that 10-book epic you’ve been thinking about for the last 20 years.  But there’s no harm in writing the first chapter.  And this has the added bonus, on top of you’ve just written something you had fun writing, but now, when you think about that series the next time, hey, you have the first chapter written.

 

There’s no shame at all in abandoning a story that isn’t bringing you joy.  God knows there are struggles enough with this job, we don’t need to add to them by insisting on powering through on something that just isn’t working.  And remember, if there’s no joy in the writing, there won’t be any in the reading.  Just, for five seconds, don’t think about how to market it, don’t think about what the cover’s going to look like.  Shut out everything else, and just write something that makes you happy.  And, I guarantee, in rediscovering the joy in writing, it’ll be easier for you to write something that brings you—and your readers—joy.

My (NOT) Secret Identity

Posted on by charliemoore

“Leaders who bob and weave like aging boxers don’t inspire confidence—or deserve it.  The same thing is true of writers.  Sell yourself, and your subject will exert its own appeal.  Believe in your own identity and your own opinions.  Proceed with confidence, generating it, if necessary by pure willpower.  Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it.  Use its energy to keep yourself going.”

–William Zinsser

 

As I said in my last entry, I am a horror writer, and it’s all I’ve ever wanted to be.  I write horror fiction.  Yes, I have stepped outside the genre here and there, but if you asked my newsletter subscribers to describe me and my work, I am confident they would say Horror Writer.

 

Stephen King is a horror writer, one of the most famous.  He got that label by starting out in the horror genre.  The story goes when King submitted his second novel, ’salem’s Lot, to his agent, the agent warned him he would be labelled a horror writer.  We see how that turned out.  You say “Stephen King” to any random person, and you know exactly what kind of images come to mind.  Stephen King knows his identity.

 

The same goes for Edgar Allan Poe, Clive Barker, John Grisham, Tom Clancy, J.K. Rowling.  They have all established firm identities in the literary world.

 

Identity is important, especially when you start publishing and selling your fiction.  If you enjoy writing mainly science fiction or crime stories, it wouldn’t do to be known as an author of children’s stories.  Or to be perceived as an author of children’s stories.

 

Some authors will use a pen name for publishing different genres.  Some authors do this because they have established an identity and don’t want to confuse their readers.  If a young adult author decides to try their hand at erotica, they don’t want those young adult audiences seeing their name on the cover, recognizing it as their favorite young adult author, and buying their smut.

 

It’s important, when publishing and selling, to know who you are, and to convey that to your audience.  It’s equally important to do this if you’re just getting started, especially if you’re an indie author.  Make sure your cover conveys the genre and establishes your identity.

 

My short story “Maggie Andrews Gets the Facts” sounds like it could be part of a mystery series like Nancy Drew, so I made sure the cover spoke louder than the title.  You’re not going to confuse THIS cover with a YA sleuth:

 

 

This cover says “I’m a horror story by a horror author” because I know my identity.

 

In a sea of anonymous authors writing anonymous books, you want yours to stand out, you want your name to be one readers know they can come to for what they’re seeking because they know who you are.  And they know who you are because YOU know who you are.

 

Having an identity is what plants your feet in the publishing world.  Marketers and booksellers hate an author they don’t know what to do with (I’ve heard countless stories of novels publishing companies loved, but didn’t know how to market, so they passed).  Readers hate an author they can’t find in their bookstore.  Know who you are when you start publishing, shout that name to your (potential) readers so they can find you.  Decide who you are, who you want the world to see when they look at you, and then be that person.

 

I’m a horror writer, and despite publishing stories like “Kung Fu Sasquatch”, I’ve never wanted to be anything else.

 

H is for HORROR

Posted on by charliemoore

My name is C. Dennis Moore and I’m a horror writer.  I’ve pretty much always wanted to be a horror writer.  It was never the idea of wanting to be a writer, and then finding horror, or being a writer who wrote horror.  No, I wanted to be a HORROR a writer, a writer of, specifically, horror.

 

Why?

 

Don’t know.  I guess it just never occurred to me to be any other kind of writer.

 

I mean, growing up, I always knew there were other types of books out there, but I never read those books.  To be fair, I didn’t do a lot of any kind of reading when I was younger.  But on those occasions you saw me with a book, you better believe there was a monster in it somewhere.

 

To me, for the way my brain works, horror fiction is just the only kind of writing that ever made sense.  For the way my brain works.

 

I’m not a sociable person, I have a hell of a time connecting with other people and the way they think, their problems and solutions.  I couldn’t write a Hemingway-type story if my life depended on it.  That’s not to say I couldn’t find enjoyment from READING a literary novel.  I just don’t have it in me to WRITE one.

 

And that isn’t to say I haven’t branched out since my first story back in 1991.  I’ve written some science fiction, but let’s not kid ourselves; science fiction is as close a cousin to horror as you’re going to find in literature.  I’ve written a small amount of fantasy, which is right there on the border, within walking distance of horror.

 

I’ve written superhero tales (my second greatest love in the world of fiction is superhero comics), I’ve written some erotica.  I’ve even written a story or two I viewed as romance (with some obvious speculative elements to make it interesting to me).  But I’ve never strayed too far from my first and greatest love in fiction: Horror.

 

So why horror?  Why was that always my main focus when it came to writing?  Was it the steady diet of Stephen King I fed my creative brain on in high school?  And by fed my brain, I guess I could say starved my brain of ANY other fiction except comic books?  Might be.  Or maybe I read almost strictly King novels because horror was the only prose that could hold my attention and keep me coming back the next day to see what happens next?  I read THE DARK HALF, about a writer or dark fiction, over the course of three or four nights one winter while lying on the floor in front of the fireplace when I was a senior in high school.  It was almost right after finishing that book that I began planning my first serious attempt at writing.

 

And even before I was a big reader, if I was renting movies, my first stop was ALWAYS the horror section.  If I was going to the theater, chances were pretty damn good, I was seeing a horror movie.  Horror has been at the top of my list of likes for as long as I can remember.

 

The macabre, monsters, the dark corners, the shadows, the things that make a normal person shake and shiver, I’ve just been drawn to that area my entire life.

 

I’ve read studies on the health benefits of being scared, and how “when you’re sacred, the stress response in your brain begins.  You experience an adrenaline rush that floods your muscles with oxygen, providing you with more stamina and strength under stress.”

 

I’ve also read how “Fear, or getting scared, is an emotion that’s part of our biology as human beings, just like other emotions such as sadness, joy and anger.  It serves a purpose that’s crucial to our ability to survive.”

 

But for me, for my attitudes toward fiction and, again, the way my brain works, it’s just the only area that really holds my interest or fascinates me at all.

 

While I’ve dipped my toe into reading some fantasy, most of it all feels like the same tired Tolkein retreads.  Quests and swords and magic and I don’t care.  In science fiction there’s a lot of space battles and Star Wars or Star Trek clones.  Granted, there are a lot of King clones in horror fiction, but it all comes down to a question of belief and potential reality.

 

See, I don’t believe in dragons or sorcerers or spaceships and laser blasters.  I don’t wake up from a dead sleep after hearing a weird noise in my dark house and wonder if the unicorns are coming to get me.  I don’t sit here at 4:00 AM while the world is still dark, hear a creak outside my office door, and wonder if there’s an alien out there creeping around or if it’s my wife going to the bathroom.  But it could be a ghost.  I’ve had enough unexplained situations growing up in various houses, not to mention the things I’ve heard just in THIS house over the decades I’ve lived here, that I honestly can’t say with any certainty it IS my wife, or one of the boys, or the dog walking around outside my office.  It could be something else.  It could be whatever I hear opening the pantry door sometimes when I know I’m home alone.  It could be whatever I used to hear tapping on my office door when I was in the back bedroom and I lived alone, after my daughter moved out, before Kara and I got together.  There are noises in this house, and I don’t know where they come from, but I know what kind of novel they would be at home in and it isn’t a Hallmark Christmas novel.

 

And while I do get uneasy sometimes about being here in this big house by myself at night, I don’t cower in the living room with all the lights on because I’m terrified, I embrace the feeling because horror is in my genes.

 

My earliest memory is seeing THE EXORCIST at a drive-in when I was very little, too little to know what the hell was going on, but those vague memories of demon-possessed Regan followed me throughout my young life until I was able to comprehend my surroundings and saw the movie again once I’d reached an age where I could properly discern what was what.  Maybe those images and ideas shaped my thinking and my personality.  Maybe it was my first drug and I’ve been chasing that feeling my entire life.  That feels right; I’ve definitely been on a search for fifty years now for a horror movie that made me feel like THE EXORCIST did.  Still searching, although I’ve come very close several times over the years.

 

I think another part of it, a darker, more hidden part, is that, for most of my time here, I’ve often felt very ill-equipped at Life.  Just little things get me from time to time, and at 51 I’m still learning how to navigate this world we live in.  But I’m very much NOT a live-by-the-seat-of-my-pants person, I like to prepare and plan, and I know there are things life’s going to throw at me, things I’m not prepared for, things that are going to scare the crap out of me.  Horror, loving and exploring it, has given me a calm in the face of some adversities, because I’m come across terrors in fiction before and seen characters overcome it.  If they can do it, I can do it.  Hell, I’m probably the only person I know who, on an almost daily basis, will see a location and think “That would be a good place to set up in the zombie apocalypse” and think it without a hint of irony or humor. Because when the shit goes down for real, I can say that a lifetime of horror prepared me for this eventuality, and I know what to do next.

 

Then again, who cares why I love horror?  I just do.  It’s fun.  Every novel, every movie, every idea, they’re like the highest, steepest part of the roller coaster and you’re going up and up and seeing the ground get further and further and you KNOW if things go wrong right now, you’re dead: “okay, now HOW do you get out of this” is always my thinking, because the world has presented me with his horrible scenario, now it’s my job to figure out a way to survive it.  And, to me, that’s just way more interesting than another quest for the lost king or which alien race is plotting against which alien race.  Who cares, just give me a creaking board on the other side of a closed door while the lights are out and I’m a happy guy.

PENPAL, by Dathan Auerbach

Posted on by charliemoore

Well that was interesting.

 

I just finished the debut novel PENPAL by Dathan Auerbach and I’m left thinking I really need to step it up in my own novels.

 

Originally written as a series of posts on the “No Sleep” subreddit in September 2011 before being turned into a full-length novel, PENPAL is the story of an unnamed narrator recounting events from his childhood that he had forgotten and is reminded of by conversations with his mother years later.

 

The story is told in non-linear fashion, so there’s a bit of work to be done by the reader in piecing the full story together, but in the end, it’s the best way to keep from spoiling certain aspects of the plot.

 

And what is the plot?

 

PENPAL is the story of this very young boy—the bulk of the novel takes place while he’s still in grade school between the ages of 5-12—being unknowingly stalked by a predator, and the weird events that occurred during the course of his childhood. In one story, the one that opens the novel, he remembers waking up one night, barefoot, in the woods just past his house with no idea how he got there. When he finally makes it home, he finds police and his mother, frantic over a note he’d left on his bed saying he was running away. Only when the narrator reads the note, he mentions that’s not how his name is spelled, highlighting how small details can change everything, much like finding the right support for a ghostwriting masterarbeit or a Bachelorarbeit can alter the course of an academic journey. Similarly, a teacher might need a Unterrichtsentwurf erstellen lassen for a flawless lesson plan, or a student might seek a Ghostwriting Essay to craft a compelling narrative.

 

Later, in kindergarten, his class releases balloons as a class project with notes tied to them asking whoever finds them to write to them at the school and they can be penpals.  When our narrator’s note is finally answered, there’s no letter, only an out of focus Polaroid.  Over the course of that year, 48 Polaroids are received, and it’s only later that the narrator realizes, while not the focus of any of the pictures, he’s actually in them, in the background.  Later, when he and his best friend Josh open a drink stand in their neighborhood, the narrator receives a dollar bill as payment with the words “For stamps” written on it.  The same dollar bill he’d included with his balloon letter.

 

PENPAL is a non-traditionally-structured novel in that, not only do we never get a name for the narrator, but the antagonist is also off-screen for the majority of the book, unknown to the protagonist until the end.  There’s no climactic confrontation.  Hell, there’s no real “rising action” at all, just a chapter near the end where secrets are revealed to both the reader and the narrator, and pieces are not merely fit into place, but slammed there.

 

I really enjoyed PENPAL.  It’s the first novel in a long time that I’ve read where I skim ahead to see what’s coming and then find myself counting down until my next break at work (where I do most of my prose reading) so I can get to that next scene, especially near the end when the pieces finally start forming a whole picture.

 

Auerbach’s style is conducive to the story being told.  The narration fits into that young mindset without being overly simplistic and talking down to the reader, which definitely made reading about the adventures of a five-year-old easier to digest.

 

This is also the first novel I can recall reading where the dread so fully permeates every chapter, every scene, every page.  There’s just this constant undercurrent of “oh no, that’s not good; something very very bad is going on here and I have no idea what it is” and I, for one, loved that about the book.  PENPAL dropped into my life out of nowhere, just another random book on the horror shelf at a local bookstore.  I bought it because it was there, having never heard of it or its author, and I’m glad I saw it and picked it up.

 

That’s not to say it is without flaws, however.  There were moments during the narrative where I had to remind myself of the protagonist’s age because there were a few times I couldn’t believe he was so dense as to not see what was going on—then again, I’m reading the events with the added benefit of 51 years of life experience and horror fandom.  But even later, during his teen years, there’s an incident where, again, alarm bells should have been going off, red flags going up, and an anthropomorphized cartoon cricket telling the narrator to get the hell out of there that kind of pulled me just a little out of the story.  But as he says in the beginning, “As is often the case, remembering one thing helps you remember another, and as you learn new things about your old life, memories that you thought were insignificant (or at the very least irrelevant) parts of your overall story are suddenly its foundation.”  So we can’t really hold it against our young narrator when, at the time, he had so little of the full picture.  But there were definitely times I thought This kid is just purposely shaking hands with danger.

 

However, none of that affected my overall enjoyment of the book.  I REALLY dug it and hope I can find more Auerbach; I’m definitely curious to see what else he’s written.  PENPAL is highly recommended to horror fans who are tired of the same horror novel retreads every six months.  Or to people who just like a good book.

“THE DEMONS WILL SEE YOU NOW.”

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Now the waiting starts.  Yesterday I finished what is, for me, the final read-through of the latest DEMONS OF GREEN LAKE draft (3rd draft) and it is finally ready for outside eyes.  I’m handing it over to my wife first, then our daughter, who has read the entire series so far, and then I’ll ask my newsletter list if any of them would like to beta read (I have a few on there I’m sure would love to get an early look).

 

While I would love to say I’ll be ready to publish by the end of March, I know that’s a reach, but I only want to say March because I began writing at the start of October last year and it seems insane to me that a 27,000-word novella should take 6 months from beginning to end.  However, after 30+ years writing, I know it takes as long as it takes, and being an indie author, the only one putting deadlines on me is me.

 

I’m really happy with this latest draft.  I felt the first draft had some big issues, but I addressed those in subsequent drafts and now I really like what’s on the page.  Hopefully everyone else will, too.  I think it’s a hell of a way to end the story.

 

Meanwhile, I spent this morning reworking an old cover into something that, not for nothing, I think looks pretty fucking awesome.  I’ll get some feedback on it later, once the world starts waking up.  It’s 4:45 right now, though, so too early to be texting it out.

THE TROOP, by Nick Cutter

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Nick Cutter’s THE TROOP (winner of the inaugural James Herbert Award for Horror Writing) was not a book I would have sought out.  I’d never heard of the 2014 horror novel before, but I set myself the task one day to buy all the novels in the horror section of a local bookstore and this was one of those novels.  My daughter, however, had read THE TROOP in high school and insisted I read it, so I moved it up in the rotation.  I’m glad I did.  It’s been a long time since I’ve read a horror novel where the author was so obviously focusing on the HORROR.  It’s horror of the gross-out variety, but I’ll take it.

 

THE TROOP deals with a five-man scout troop and their Scoutmaster as they spend the weekend on a nearby island, free of distractions such as cell phones and the like.  On their first night on the island, however, they’re joined by a mysterious stranger who’s sick with an even more mysterious illness, one that causes his body to waste away while making him voraciously hungry, so much so he begins to eat algae and moss just to satisfy the hole in his belly.

 

It’s soon discovered the man is riddled with tapeworms, and as if that wasn’t bad enough, the boys begin to notice military boats floating just outside the perimeter of the island, yet no one is coming to help them.  They’ll have to fend for themselves against the elements and each other as the infection spreads.

 

Nick Cutter (pseudonym for Canadian author Craig Davidson) tells a compelling story with some of the most graphic yet mild language I’ve ever read.  I usually have to go the more extreme route via someone like Ed Lee if I want to be grossed out, but Cutter is able to convey the same gut-churning response in a mainstream mass market horror novel, and I have to applaud the skills.

 

His descriptions of what the worms can do did nothing for me as I read this book on breaks at work, including my lunch break where I usually have one flavor of microwave Raman or another.  So while I was never necessarily SCARED reading THE TROOP, I was grossed out a number of times over its 355-page run.

 

It wasn’t all squirms and writhing, however.  There were a few spots where I felt Cutter may have been trying to pad for word length or this was the work of an early writer still learning the ropes.  That last, however, is NOT the case—Davidson has been writing as Cutter since 2014, but he’s been publishing under his own name and another pseudonym, Patrick Lestewka, since 2003 (the first time I ever encountered his writing was in 2003 with the novella MOTHER BITCHFIGHT and the novel THE PRESERVE, both published by Necro Publications where I served as copyeditor, so, unbeknownst to me until 5 seconds ago, I was reading Davidson before almost anyone else, and was a HUGE fan back then).  But still, the first half of the novel is riddled with asides.

 

For example he’ll say something like “The rocks were grey”, then follow it up with something like “like the curtains in his bedroom, which his mother had made for him.  They didn’t have a lot of money, so many of the things in their house were handmade by his mother, including the curtains, and many of his shirts.  He was wearing one of those shirts right now, in fact.”

 

This isn’t an actual quote, I’m making it up as an example of the constant asides that pepper much of THE TROOP.  In one instance, I counted TWO asides in a three-paragraph span!

 

But eventually the writing leveled out and these went away.

 

What didn’t go away, and I was happy they didn’t, were the “extratextual materials” in the form of newspaper and magazine excerpts, plus court transcripts placed between some chapters, each giving a glimpse of life after the main narrative while also serving as background material so we can piece together how things got to where they were when the novel started.  I loved these sections.  And yes they bring to mind a certain first published novel by a certain incredibly famous horror writer from Maine, but Cutter (Davidson) says upfront CARRIE was a huge inspiration.  I don’t know what others thought of the extratextual stuff, but I really dug it.

 

I am now finished with THE TROOP and I have to give my daughter credit for suggesting it; this was a very well-constructed novel.  I felt the characters were each well-defined enough, but to be honest it wasn’t until way too late in the book that I could discern some (Newt, Max, and Eef, to be precise) from each other.  Others, though, Kent and Shelly, were way more easily-recognizable from the start, but none of this hindered my enjoyment of the novel.  For sheer plot strength, storytelling, and descriptive language, THE TROOP is tops, a really worthwhile read.  Just maybe wait until you’re not munching a bowl of noodles to read most of the more graphic tapeworm passages…

DEMONS FIRST READ-THROUGH, SLAM DONE.

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I’ve just completed the first read-through of THE DEMONS OF GREEN LAKE and while I can still see what I was going for with the ending, I still don’t think it’s the ending I envisioned.  But this was just a first read-through; I haven’t actually started the editing or revision.  Mostly I was just checking for typos and to make sure the whole thing holds up and doesn’t crumble under its own weight.

 

I think it’s safe to say, I like the bones of what’s here.  Definitely need to put some thought into the traveling scene at the beginning and that ending still needs a ton of work to match up to the rest of the story as it still reads like I was rushing.  Which I was.  That was a LONG day finishing up the first draft and with the end in sight, I just wanted to type THE END and get on with my day, knowing I could always come back later and make it pretty.

 

I don’t think that’s going to be my focus this coming week, I think I need to give it one more week to marinate and I clear my head.  Then I’ll come back and fix the things I didn’t care for.  Meanwihle, I really should put some thought into plotting out the second and third books for both THE KINGDOM series and THE NIGHT series.  Maybe.

TRYING TO IGNORE THE VOICES

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This week I’m editing.  It’s not my favorite part of the writing process, but I think I used to enjoy it more than I do now.  I’m not sure why that is; the process now is pretty much the same as it’s always been, consisting of me reading through the work, looking for typos and inconsistencies and places where I just didn’t know what I was talking about.  If anything, editing should go even faster than it used to; I’m a much more attentive writer than I was two decades ago.

 

I think sometimes it might have something to do with an author’s inability to read their own work.  And that’s what editing is, especially after that first draft, re-reading the story.  In many cases it’s re-reading the story you JUST wrote.  For me, I finished this first draft … about 2 weeks ago, I think.  But I started it back in October 2023.  I’m not sure why it took me three months to write a 23,000-word story, but it did and here we are.

 

So now I’m editing it, re-reading it, checking for typos and inconsistencies and places where I just didn’t know what I was talking about.

 

I think for this one, part of the problem might be in the fact it’s part 4 of a series of novellas, this installment wrapping up the whole story, and I’d really like it if some of the details wrapped around to form a nice whole package.

 

For instance, there’s a side character in the scene I’m currently editing.  In the story this character’s name is Ronnie.  In book one of the series, there’s a side character named Parker who the main character is sure is in love with his daughter.  This idea is never mentioned past book one and I feel like the Ronnie character should have been named Parker, thus tying a little bow on this character’s whereabouts throughout the rest of the series, but when I got to that part today, I just couldn’t be bothered because it wouldn’t be just a simple matter of a search and replace, I’d feel I needed to call back to that scene from book one and I not only don’t remember enough of it without pausing what I was doing and going back to look it up, thereby having to either dig out the physical copy of the book, or open the file, I also just didn’t want to bother with it today.  For me, for NOW, it’s much easier to just leave it as Ronnie and not make mention of the short nothing scene Parker had in book one, and get to the end that much quicker.

 

And then, for the rest of the time I’m editing this piece, there’s gonna be that voice in the back of my head that says to go back and tie it all together.  And I honestly don’t know how long I can ignore that voice, or have any idea what other parts I’m going to see as I work through the rest of this draft that it’s going to insist I go back and rework.  Editing just isn’t as fun as it used to be.

EVERYTHING BUT THE B-I-T-C-H

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Sometimes the cover creates the book.

 

For years now I’ve had a collection called EVERYTHING BUT THE BITCH, which compiled three of my novellas, “Camdigan”, “Safe at Home”, and “Ice” under one cover, labelled vol. 1, with the intention of one day doing a vol. 2.  But while looking for cover images for an upcoming release the other day, I found this picture that said to me USE ME.  It even told me what book it wanted to be the cover for: Everything But the Bitch.

 

But this cover is so damn beautiful, that measly little collection wasn’t good enough.  So I have expanded that initial edition to include SIX of my novellas, adding in “The Organ Grinder”, “Aftermath” and “Kung Fu Sasquatch” for a massive, 93,000+ word book that I have just published today.

 

The paperback and hardcover editions are currently in the works, but if you’re a staunch ebook reader, you can get it NOW HERE on Amazon for only $5.99.

 

I mean, come on, look at that cover!

Ixnay on the OboKay and Raft2DigitalDay

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This morning, after publishing the reformatted-to-mass-market-paperback-sized WELCOME TO THE TRUST, I went through Kobo and Draft2Digital and removed all of my books—with the exception of the short story “Alter”, which Amazon has rejected for some reason, but only the ebook version.  The paperback version still exists on Amazon.  Try and figure that one out!

 

So I’ll give them a week or two, then go through the individual sites and make sure my books, after a random search, aren’t listed for sale, then I get to start the process of going through my entire 80+ titles on Amazon and making them exclusive.  Again.

 

Again, I need way more hours in the day!

Barnes and No Thanks

Posted on by charliemoore

Today I took everything off sale on the Barnes and Noble site.  Next up, Kobo.  Then Draft2Digital.

Then the LONG process of going back through the Amazon dashboard and making everything Amazon Exclusive.  AGAIN.  Sigh.

I need a business manager to make all of these decisions for me; I have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to marketing and selling my books.  I just write the story I want to write, put it into the world, and hope for the best.  But there’s got to be a better, more reliable way.  Doesn’t there?

WRITING UPDATE, JANUARY 16, 2024

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Last Saturday, January 13th, 2024, I finished the first draft of my next story, THE DEMONS OF GREEN LAKE, ending the Monsters of Green Lake series.  The first draft was 23,652 words; I did 2502 words that day.

 

With that done, I’m taking this week to republish the last of my collections in mass market paperback size, starting this morning with LOVE JONES, then tomorrow will be SO QUAKE WITH FEAR, YOU TINY FOOLS!, followed by POWER & THE GRAVY on Thursday and WELCOME TO THE TRUST on Friday.

 

I don’t think I’m going to get right into the edits on DEMONS just yet.  I already know the ending needs to be rewritten.  Not that the ending I have is bad, it’s the way the story always ended.  I just know it’s very badly written.  It was getting late in the day on Saturday and I’d been at it for several hours already and just wanted to enjoy some of my rare Saturday off with Kara, so I might have sort of maybe rushed through the writing of the epilogue.  Hell, I forgot to even label in an epilogue, now that I think about it.

 

I need to let what I have written marinate just a little longer before I try to go back and tackle it, so next week will, most likely, be more reformatting for mass market paperback sizes.

 

I’ve also been thinking lately of going back to Amazon Exclusive.  While it’s not hurting anything having the books up on Smashwords and Draft2Digital and Barnes and Noble and Kobo, I can’t really see where it’s helping, either.  Since I started putting things back up on those sites last year—a process I never finished, there’s just so damn many titles, and I had things I needed to write—I haven’t sold a single book on Barnes and Noble or Kobo, and my sales on Smashwords and Draft2Digital, combined, would probably be less than $10 a month, so why am I bothering, other than the CHANCE at exposure.  Honestly, I get more exposure making something free for a few days every couple of months.

 

Yesterday, I unpublished everything from Smashwords, except PINK JELLYBUG MINK and CUNT, the two books that have always been exclusive to Smashwords.  I may take the rest of this week, after I’ve done that day’s book, to go through the other sites and remove my stuff.

 

And then I have to go through and make everything Exclusive again on Amazon.  I need a 40-hour day!

 

(photo by Mohamed_hassan at Pixabay.com)

WORK IN PROGRESS UPDATE, JANUARY 4, 2024

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I just wanted to post a quick update on the current work in progress.  I’m writing the last book in the Monsters of Green Lake series, THE DEMONS OF GREEN LAKE, and today I hit the 20,000 word mark.  There’s still more to go, but that’s a pretty big milestone in ANY story, and worth noting.

 

Normally, these Green Lake stories don’t tend to run much longer than 20,000, but this one’s still got some story left to tell, so it’s gonna be a bit thicker than the others in the series.  Originally I’d thought it might even reach short novel length, but having gotten this far into it now, and seeing where the story goes, where the climax comes, it actually won’t be THAT long.  But it’s definitely still got some things to say before I get to THE END.

 

Having recently listened to the audiobook for book 3, THE WITCHES OF GREEN LAKE, I thought I did some pretty good work in that one.  But the stuff happening in THIS book, part 4?  I think it’s safe to say this is my favorite book in the series.

 

I can’t wait to finish it and share it with everyone.

Jan. 1, 2024, In Memory of Mike E. Swope

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I feel like I need to start this year by talking about a friend of mine.  But first a look back.  When I was younger, I’d tried to write many many times, all through grade school to high school.  Every so often I’d think I want to write a story.  It was always longhand, and that was the first stumbling block.  But also I just didn’t have the tools, mentally, to do it.  But the desire never left.

 

Then one day in 1990 or 1991 I started working at a fast-food restaurant where I met a man named Mike Swope.  Unbeknownst to me at the time, Mike was a writer.  He came to work one day with copies of a book he had self-published, a chapbook really, of poetry and short fiction, called OR.

 

Fascinated by the idea that this guy I knew, this fellow fast-food employee might also be a writer … I had to buy a copy of his book.  Naturally I read it, and was floored, not just at how much I enjoyed it, but also how effortless he made the words, and the work, seem.

 

More chapbooks followed, one was called Passed Through the Hands—which, now that I think about it might have been an earlier book, but I didn’t discover it until after OR—and then I found out he edited and published a small literary magazine at the college he attended in town.  The zine was called Soundings.

 

To my then 18-year-old self, this was all just the wildest, most insane thing, all literary and arty and so far over my head.  But I wanted in.

 

Soon after meeting Swope, I took the plunge once again and started writing a story.  I didn’t know how long it would be or even if I would finish it, but it was the first time I’d ever tried to write something where the story was so complete in my head. I didn’t know every detail when I started, but I knew a lot of them, and I was determined to finish, AT LEAST, this one story.  If I ever wrote another, I’d worry about that later, but for that moment, I had that one story in my head.

 

And then I had another story, and another, and another followed after that, and pretty soon I had all kinds of story ideas in my head, and then one day I showed something I’d written to Swope.

 

My heart was in my throat, I think is a saying for when people are incredibly nervous, and that about sums it up as he read what I had written.  And then he said he liked it and I should keep going.

 

So I did.

 

Over the years, Swope’s guidance gave me a greater education, in a much shorter time, than I ever could have gained on my own.  He taught me so much about editing, word choice, scene construction, and just, well, everything about writing that would have taken me forever to learn without him.  Would I have gotten there eventually?  Maybe.  But with Swope’s mentorship, I don’t have to wonder.  He got me there.

 

And then he went one step further.

 

Back in 2003 when an author website was more of a novelty, something we all wanted, but probably wouldn’t know how to use if we had one, and most of them were from other sites like geocities—there weren’t many dedicated domains back then—he gifted me with my very own domain, cdennismoore.com.

 

Why did he do it?  I have no idea other than maybe he had more faith in my writing than I did.  Whatever the reason, for the next 20 years, I had my own site.  Every year for Christmas, Swope renewed the domain name and offered me free hosting.

 

I haven’t always taken full advantage of having the site, I’ve often neglected to update it as regularly as I should or could with my new works, but it was always there, and the address has always been in every one of my books if people wanted to check it out.

 

Then a fucking TERRIBLE thing happened in October 2023.  Mike was in a motorcycle accident that took his life.

 

My friend was gone.  My mentor.  The guy who still, over 30 years into my writing life, I wanted to impress more than anyone else, wasn’t there anymore.

 

And then I realized soon after, oh shit, with Swope gone, what happens to the website?  I was going to have to make sure I secured the domain when it expired, and then I’d have to find alternate hosting, but after contacting his son who put me in touch with the guy who was taking over the other sites Swope ran—he had a lot of sites under his care—the site was only down for a few days.  Now it’s back up, it’s January 1st 2024, and I wanted the first thing I said here to be about Mike Swope and how grateful I am, and always will be, for everything he ever did for me, things he didn’t have to do, but things he did anyway, either because he believed in me, or because he was just that fucking awesome of a guy.  I like to think it’s a bit of both.

 

Most of Swope’s writings are now lost to time, but he did appear in a volume of L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future, and last year, I finally talked him into self publishing one of his old stories—the one from that Hubbard anthology, in fact—called “Timepieces”.

 

Swope’s gone, so I don’t know what happens to any money his story makes now, but if you’re so inclined to check out the guy who made me a better writer—and I encourage to do so, it’s a great story—click HERE.

 

Meanwhile, again, I just wanted to start the year with a testament to Mike Swope, the man without whom I probably wouldn’t have had even half the successes I have.  Thanks, man.  I truly couldn’t have done it without you.

 

–D.

CURRENTLY READING: DWS

Posted on by charliemoore

THE CALL OF THE TRACK AHEAD, by Dean Wesley Smith

Do you risk your life, your safety, and the women you love for a dream?

Sometimes just a single step from a moving train can provide the answer.

A heart-warming contemporary fantasy story by USA Today bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith.

Bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith has written more than one hundred popular novels and hundreds of published short stories. His novels include the science fiction novel Laying the Music to Rest and the thriller The Hunted as D.W. Smith. With Kristine Kathryn Rusch, he is the coauthor of The Tenth Planet trilogy and The 10th Kingdom.

CURRENTLY READING: A CHOIR OF ILL CHILDREN

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A CHOIR OF ILL CHILDREN, BY TOM PICCIRILLI

This lyrical tale of evil, loss, and redemption is a stunning addition to the Southern gothic tradition of Flannery O’Connor and Harry Crews.

A Choir of Ill Children is the startling story of Kingdom Come, a decaying, swamp backwater that draws the lost, ill-fated, and damned.

Since his mother’s disappearance and his father’s suicide, Thomas has cared for his three brothers—conjoined triplets with separate bodies but one shared brain—and the town’s only industry, the Mill.

Because of his family’s prominence, Thomas is feared and respected by the superstitious swamp folk. Granny witches cast hexes while Thomas’s childhood sweetheart drifts through his life like a vengeful ghost and his best friend, a reverend suffering from the power of tongues, is overcome with this curse as he tries to warn of impending menace. All Thomas learns is that “the carnival is coming.”

Torn by responsibility and rage, Thomas must face his tormented past as well as the mysterious forces surging toward the town he loves and despises.