I published my first Novella in 2019. I was finishing my MFA and. Had taken countless writing classes over the years. I thought I knew everything. Of course I didn’t, and still don’t. Here are a few things I have learned since then.
When I first published, everything I’d read said to keep your genres separate. If you write in different genres, use a different pen name for each. That sounded like good advice, and I think for a rapid release author that’s still true. Rapid release authors publish a book every month or at least every two months.
I am not a rapid release author. I write daily, but my brain doesn’t focus on one story at a time. Currently, I am writing on four different novels/novellas and a slew of short stories. I will finish them all. I write about a thousand words a day towards them. That means over a year I may finish two of the novels and some short stories, or I may finish tons of shorts and one novel. So far this year, it’s early April. I have finished four short stories, and one novelette. This year I have written 100,000 good, mostly publishable words. I’ve tried sticking to one story at a time, and my brain just doesn’t work like that.
Listening to my muse and writing what she tells me works for me as long as I write daily. As long as I write daily, I will complete my projects. It will just take me longer.
I used to feel bad about that. I could see very successful indie authors. A couple of them are friends of mine in real life. I’ve watched one of them write a 1000,000 word novel in a week, then spend less than a week copy editing and designing the book cover. I tried to be like them. Trying to be like them caused me to create so much pressure for myself that I quit trying to write for publication. I didn’t quit writing. I just did free writes and an occasional writing session beyond that. Eventually that pressure turned into kicking myself, for not being someone else.
I firmly believe the secret to life was written about the Oracle of Delphi’s cave several thousand years ago. Know thyself and all things in moderation. I told my students for years that’s the secret of life. I’ve told them if they actually know who they are, then they’d be harder to stop. If you know who you are, you know what you’re capable of, and you know what you’re worth. I, on their other hand, didn’t know who I was, at least as a writer. I tried being someone else. I was terrible at being someone else.
Christmas Eve I gave myself permission to be myself as a writer. Over 1000,000 good, publishable words in a little over three months, shows I’m a pretty good me. I’m writing great stories, submitting them to traditional publications, submitting quarterly to Writers of The Future, and getting close to finishing my first full-length novel.
I’m also done kicking myself for not being someone else.
I set at goal at the end of last year. I would either win the Writer’s of the Future contest this year or pro out. It’s, I believe the oldest science fiction and Fantasy writing contest. I’ve submitted to the contest sporadically since 2016.
Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash
In 2019 My story Not a Piece of Cake earned an honorable mention. At first I was elated. It was acknowledgement that my writing was getting good. I almost cried when I received the certificate. Pretty quickly my resistance kicked in and I convinced myself it wasn’t a big deal. I eventually posted it on Kindle unlimited as The Zone. You can read it there for free.
I went ahead and reentered the contest and, nothing happened, other than more rejections. Then I quit entering, until December of last year year. I entered for the first quarter of 2024.
I just heard back from them, and another honorable mention for my story Secondhand Speedos and other things you find at the Dump. From what I’ve researched that means I was in the top 10 percent of entries last year quarter. They have several thousand entries every quarter, so while it’s a rejection, it’s also a win. I’m now submitting the same story to other paying publishers.
I’m putting the polishes on my next entry 12 Miles Out, deadline is March 31st.
I was fourteen and we were on our annual trek to Huntsville, Alabama to space camp. Loaded in our two-tone, gray and blue, GMC crew-cab with camper, were my mother, two little sisters, little brother, and best friend Mark. My mom decided we should stop in Henryetta, Oklahoma to visit her aunt Wanda. Henryetta is an unremarkable town, its only claim to fame Troy Aikman, a former Cowboys quarterback. It is a small town of small houses with peeling paint and cracked sidewalks and unmanaged lawns, a town of potholes, of worn-away blacktop and exposed cobblestone roads.
I didn’t want to see my mother’s aunt. I thought that this town offered me nothing. Wanda didn’t have cable or even a VCR so I couldn’t escape into a science fiction movie. What could possibly interest me in the middle of a small Oklahoma town? After all, I was on my way to space camp. I was preparing to go to the Moon, to go to Mars, to enter the Brave New World I had seen in countless science fiction movies or read about in books. There could be nothing in this little town for me. Nothing.
We passed one dreary little street after another as my mother tried to remember where her aunt’s house was: streets named Maple, and Birch, and Elm, and Spruce, ticky-tacky tiny streets that made the truck rumble as we hit the cobblestones.
As we passed yet another street undoubtedly named for a tree, I saw it, my dream, what I’d been waiting my whole life to see: a flying car. The first flying car should not have been in Oklahoma… What could “Oakies” possibly have to do with flying cars? And yet, there it was, in Henryetta. For the rest of the time my mother spent looking for her Aunt’s house, I could talk of nothing else. I knew I had seen the flying car.
Mark confirmed he had seen it. Ever the skeptic, “undoubtedly a gag,” he said. My brother and sisters were asleep, and my mother’s eyes were fixed to road, dodging potholes, so she had missed it.
We found Wanda’s house and my mother, meaning well, but none-the-less Marquis De Sade like, made me sit at the dining room table, politely talking with my relatives. They asked me about soccer and baseball, and school and girls. Who the hell had time for any of these? There was a flying car three blocks away. I answered their questions as politely and quickly as possible, not wanting to strike up a conversation. I had to leave. I had to go see who had invented this, who was building this, who was dreaming, who was the visionary.
After a daylong half hour, my mother finally let Mark and I go. We ran as quickly as possible to the place; the place we had seen the car. It seemed like it took forever, but we were there, and it was beautiful: twelve feet around, like a giant Frisbee, smooth as glass and white as porcelain.
Behind the car was an unassuming building. It could have been a handyman’s shop, or a place where they fix lawn mowers or a junk store, but it was the corporate headquarters for the inventor of the flying car. Stenciled on the front windows of the building were the words “want to know what this is? Come on in and ask.”
We did.
The man inside wasn’t a mad scientist, an engineer, or even a nerd. He had been a diesel mechanic and good at fixing things, and now he was a “dreamer.” His dream was to build the flying car. He couldn’t tell me how it worked, but he said no one could explain how the Frisbee worked either, so that was okay. Knowing that you had a dream, and knowing that you had faith was all that was important in life. Faith was a lever you see, and you could use it to achieve anything.
I was hooked. I had to have one of the cars. I needed to know how much they cost and when they would be ready. He handed me a mimeographed timetable and explanation of cost. Right there in blue ink still smelling of ditto fluid, it said his first prototype would be available in two years, after my sixteenth birthday. The car would only cost seventy-five hundred dollars.
Never mind how a fourteen- year-old was going to come up with seventy-five-hundred dollars, never mind he hadn’t actually built one yet, never mind the flying car in front of his shop was made of plaster and chicken wire… The important thing was, they were finally here.
The flying car was finally here, and it hadn’t taken science or math, or even space camp. The dream was coming to life and all it took was faith. I spent the next two years of my life dreaming of owning the flying car, and planning how to buy it. Buying it would be the easy part.
When I was seven my father had bought a brand new 1977 Fiat Spider turbo convertible. I was in love. The day we drove it home from the dealer I asked if I could have the Fiat when I turned sixteen. He laughed, and assured me that we wouldn’t still have it then, but even though he thought everyone should earn their own car, if by chance the car was still around when I turned sixteen, I could have it.
At seven, I became a maintenance obsessive, continually reminding my dad to have his oil changed, to check the fluids when we gassed, and on almost every sunny day I washed and waxed the car.
Now that I was approaching sixteen, “by chance” we still had the car. On my birthday my father would give me the keys to my “seven year-old” dream and I knew I would sell this old dream for my new one. I would give up my convertible for my flying car.
The flying car of Henryetta, Oklahoma, never got off the ground; well at least it never flew into production or off the assembly line. And when I turned sixteen, there was no flying car for me to buy.
That didn’t discourage me though. I enjoyed driving my little blue convertible, but even more, I enjoyed dreaming of my flying car. I enjoyed dreaming of letting my earthbound tires fall away, and of escaping another day, flying over roads, over roads and fields, effortlessly, freely away from Oklahoma, away from people, away from any place at all.
I can remember my dad’s accident. He was standing outside my bedroom window. I see this from across the street. I was barely three, I was never allowed to cross the street, but yet I see our front yard from across the street. My dad collapses and then he’s gone. MY grandparents, his parent materialize. Grandmother Sally is distraught, a cigarette hangs loosely from her mouth. Grandpa John stands to the side: aloof. Grandmother’s sadness will go away. She will have a range of emotions. Granpa John will remain aloof, or angry. He has only three emotions.
This is how I remember my dad’s parathyroid episode. This is not how it happened. My dad Was in San Antonio, TDY, temporary duty assignment, when he collapsed and had to have emergency surgery. My grandparents came to Oklahoma as soon as they could, probably a few days by car. My mother, grandmother, and I drove to San Antonio to see my dad in the hospital.
I remember none of that. I remember him removing my rusty window screen. Taking it off of the brown brick house, and setting it on the ground, and then collapsing.
It wasn’t the only brickhouse we had when I was a kid. It’s the first time I remember moving. I knew we were somewhere before the brown and red brick house in Midwest City, but no idea where.
The living room wasn’t carpeted. I’d lay on the floor on Sunday afternoons watching the Sunday Matinee’s creature features and classic Horror films. I was four years old, and my mom delights in telling my sons what a handful I was at that age. The Creature feature may have been the only thing that settled me down.
My Dad was in Medical school and my mom was in graduate school. They both were Air Force officers. Watching Tv kept me out of their hair while they studied.
The house was haunted. I remember looking down the hallway that connected my bedroom to my parents, and seeing it. I was late one night, they were asleep, I’d been put to bed hours before. I don’t know why I was awake staring over the child gate blocking my door. But I was. And there it was. In the center of the hallway was the translucent spectre of a mad scientist, lab coat goggles and all. I did the only thing I could do. I climbed over the child gate and ran straight through him. I didn’t stop until I reached the safety of my parents’ bed. These events happened almost nightly while we lived in that house. I can still see the translucent mad scientist when I close my eyes and try to remember. I haven’t seen him in a house ever since.
Looking back I was too young to watch Karloff’s Frankenstein, or Chaney’s wolfman. I was to young to be left alone in the living room for hour at a time. Yet I understand now how much that time with the creature feature shaped who I am today.
I enjoy solitude. I enjoy creature features. Most of all my imagination still goes wild at the creaks of a settling house, or a dark foggy day.
Only now I know it’s my imagination, and not the mad scientist ghost.
Driving home from Christmas Eve Mass, my wife asked me to detour through downtown to look at the Christmas lights. Having gone to an early service, I did. Just a few years ago, our youngest begged to see Christmas lights. At seventeen,seventeen, with the temperament of an octogenarian, he was less enthused and began to grumble and gripe.
I ignored him at first — usually the best approach with an eighty-year-old teenager. After a few minutes of hearing how I was wasting his time I snapped at him. I quickly realized the snap was bigger than the offense. I apologized.” It’s probably just nicotine withdrawal, but can you go easy tonight? It’s Christmas Eve?”
“You’d have to quit smoking to go through withdrawal,” he quipped in return.
He wasn’t wrong, but sadly. He wasn’t right, either. I had quit only two hours ago, and was feeling the level of my addiction.
We have a twenty-year-old cat named Socrates. As infirmed as Socrates is when he gets one WIFF of catnip, he becomes alive. He will literally bounce down the stairs — as if being pulled by the nip. He rolls in it until his eyes become glasses and his addiction becomes satiated.
I call him Billy Burrows when he’s in that state, even though I’m the only one in my house that gets the Junky reference. Call him Billy Burrows, because I think it’s funny, and because I judge him, for being an addict. A judgment I can’t make anymore — knowing how short two hours actually is.
I’ve tried to quit for years. I promised my wife I’d quit before our oldest son was born. He’s almost twenty-three. I’ve gone so far as switching to cigars, little filtered ones, and not inhaling on them.
On a certain level, I know what bullshit that is, but I’m also aware it was a better step, and I don’t actually inhale, so on a smallest level it’s an improvement.
Moving into a new year, I’ve decided it’s not enough of a step. So I quit for two hours on Christmas Eve and realized what a junky I actually am.
I eased back my goals. From weight loss and writing, I’ve learned the best way to accomplish a big goal is to take little positive steps, baby steps, towards it, rather than a giant leap.
For baby steps to work, at least in my experience, there have to be rules. Simple rules that aren’t difficult to keep. For weight loss, my goals were simple: eat healthy six days a week. On the seventh, eat whatever. Exercise, a few times a week, easy exercise. I used DDPY, but anything works. If you’re really out of shape, any exercise is better than what you’re used to. You can read my weight loss post for more specifics on that.
As far as smoking goes, I’m really out of shape. I was smoking a pack and a half a day, at least. Buying my filtered cigars in bulk and a few months at a time, I can’t be sure what I was actually smoking. I didn’t refill my cigar order when I was running low in December. I buy two packs at a time now, that’s a baby step. I also bought a vape another baby step..
After a little over a week, I know I’m smoking 16 a day on average. That’s the most I’ll allow myself to smoke, a baby step and an easy rule to follow. That became my first baby step: don’t smoke more that sixteen a day. That’s cutting my habit in half, which wasn’t that hard.
Most of the cigars I smoked were mindless on the way to work. Or the first thing in the morning, and I was probably putting them out only about halfway through. It was nervous-smoking.
I’ve also decided not to smoke while driving, that was the biggest time of nervous-bored-smoking every day. That’s when I use my vape if I need to. I have used it a few times, but rarely.
In the near future, I’m going to cut the number of cigars I allow myself a day. I haven’t set a date, a goal, or a baby step yet, but I know it will happen, then I’ll do it again, and again.
I think this approach is working. I’m not an ex-smoker, but I’m closer, and no eighty-year-old children have been harmed yet.
When I first started self publishing I made a decision to publish everything under my own name. It was a declaration for me— a chance to take ownership of my life. After years of hiding from who I was – a writer, or half hearted attempts because I was worried about what people would think, or that I would fail – I decided it was time to let my proverbial freak flag fly and just own who I was. I’m okay with whatever the outcome. It’s not about anyone’s recognition, but my own. It’s about doing my work.
In that vein, I’ve written pulp science fiction, like Carrie Starr and the Rings of Death, short horror flashes like Moon Dog Went Surfing, trippy almost-literary science fiction like Make Me Famous and Transcending the Electric Bardo, and of course essays on weight loss.
Every one of these stories is mine and they represent me and my journey as a writer. It was a great idea. The only problem with it is Amazon’s algorithm doesn’t like it. It likes writers who write one thing and one thing only. That’s how it knows what to recommend. “Fuck the AI Hellspawn algorithms,” I thought.
Unknown to me when I started, that meant fuck my readers, and consequently, fuck my book sales.
My readers, or my potential readers, need that algorithm. It helps them know what to read. Amazon is filled with billions of writers trying to get their stories in front of the right readers and the readers are trying to find the right books.
Not everyone who likes pulp fiction likes literary fiction. Not everyone who likes weight loss stories and tips needs or wants to read zombie tales.
I still think my decision to take ownership of my writing is one of the best I’ve ever made. It’s right up there with marrying my wife, starting my yoga practice, and deciding to eat healthy.
Taking ownership of my writing doesn’t mean I have to publish everything under my own name. Starting today I’m using pen names. My pulp stories will be published under Ray B. Burroughs and the literary-ish stuff will be under Phillip G. Heinlein. These names not only should help the Amazon algorithms to figure out where the stories fit, but also pay tribute to the authors who shaped me as a writer
As much as I like to think my stories are mine, they really are a continuation of the worlds Ray Bradbury , Pierre Boulez, and Edgar rice Burroughs took me to as a child. My edgy literaryish science fiction are as much my own creation as they are te creations of Phillip K. Dick, George Saunders, and Robert Heinlein.
I’ve decided I need to own my writning, pay tribute to my teachers, and of course serve our algorithm overlords.
I think we get comfortable very easily, at least I do. It’s not just me though. Culture likes to be in a steady state, and equilibrium of sorts, where everything runs smoothly. It’s human nature, it’s nature’s nature, everything moving the way it always has. We assume the way it always will be.
I know that was true with my health. Years of eating garbage, because it tasted good— it was comfort food. Ultimately that life style would have killed me quickly. Change, that change came because I hit a level of discomfort, literally. Back pain, not all the big goals, got me to start yoga, and a new steady state started.
There are other areas of life besides health. Discomfort there also causes movement. I’m comfortable with my income, but I’ve set goals that far exceeded it. Being comfortable means my goals are out of reach, because I won’t do the extra things needed to reach those goals. I’ll stay in the steady state even though I want more.
I’m feeling discomfort now, things are getting tighter. Maybe not really, but they feel that way. That discomfort is pushing me to a different steady state, the push to get back to comfort. For that I am grateful.
I’m finding myself dealing with uncertainty. My temporary job feels like it’s wrapping up. I don’t know if I’ll be kept as they reduce staff. I might be I do my job exceptionally well, but I can’t know that for sure. With the uncertainty comes the anxiety. The second glueing questions, the not knowing.
It presents me with a great stoic exercise. There are aspects of this I can control, do the best job I can. I can’t control if that let’s me keep the job, or if my best is the best — maybe someone is better than me, more useful. I can’t control that, so I shouldn’t try. In this case I should follow my Tao enter the stream, and go with the flow.
As I’m researching my options, moving forward, there are things I can know. Things like are there similar positions available. Can I duplicate the pay scale? I am actively researching these, and should, because I can know the answers. Knowing the answers reduces they uncertainty. It decreases the anxiety. The questions I can’t know th answers to like what happens next, I shouldn’t fret about. I can’t know those answers and that’s where I should enter the stream/go with the flow.
This could be an exercise of any philosophy, I guess, even in the post I’ve mixed Taoism and Stoicism. With the being said I think Epictetus said it better than I could.
“Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our actions. The things in our control are by nature free, unrestrained, unhindered; but those not in our control are weak, slavish, restrained, belonging to others. Remember, then, that if you suppose that things which are slavish by nature are also free, and that what belongs to others is your own, then you will be hindered. You will lament, you will be disturbed, and you will find fault both with gods and men. But if you suppose that only to be your own which is your own, and what belongs to others such as it really is, then no one will ever compel you or restrain you. Further, you will find fault with no one or accuse no one. You will do nothing against your will. No one will hurt you, you will have no enemies, and you not be harmed.”
I’m beginning to wonder if anger isn’t simply internal, not just anger but, maybe, all emotions, have a life of their own. Maybe, they are just energy— like waves— crashing across a shore, and we are the shore. Maybe they have a life of their own moving from host to host — like an inter dimensional virus simply looking for a way to replicate themselves.
Either way what if I’m right? What if emotions aren’t internal, a mere biochemical creation? What if they exist out side of us and we are merely receivers?
That would mean when we experience a negative emotional state either our immunity was down and we were infected by it, or we chose to let it in.
Maybe we could choose to stop spreading the virus or choose to diffuse the wave before we let it continue on.
I’ve earned several advanced degrees, but I’m definitely a slow learner. I’ve been telling stories, writing them, since first grade. In hindsight it seems obvious I’ve always been a writer— I am a writer. I’ve done my best to avoid that— not sure why. I’m not sure that matters either. The fact I accept that is the important thing.
After years of dabbling, and denying my writing I released my first novel in November of 2019. I assumed I’d release my next one very shortly. I even set up an amazon preorder. I didn’t make my own deadline. I didn’t finish book two Planet of Terror. I didn’t know why either and I felt like a failure, especially refunding the few preorders that had been made.
I’ve come to discover I was trying to write the wrong story. Carrie Starr is fun — pulp— not meant to be deep literature. So, I assumed writing the next would be easy. Maybe fo. Different writer it would have been, maybe its lack of genre training, I have a few writer friends/professors who would agree with that assumption. I’m not convinced though. I think you have to be in sync with your stories. I think you have to coax them out. I think you have to give them a space to live. I hadn’t done that. I simply assume I could force the story out.
I started diligently working on Carrie Starr book two a month ago, or so. It isn’t Planet o terror, it’s a different book. Planet of Terror is now book three. I’m letting the story come at its own pace. Carrie is setting her own terms, and I am listening. I am writing everyday, maybe only a few sentences. Maybe a few pages, but it is happening every day, and I’m in love again with the world I created.
Carrie Starr book two will get finished and published. It’s not the easy fast write I’d assumed it would be, but its also a better story, and I am a better writer for the experience.
