Inky Horizons

I've been thinking about the novel. I want it to be hard and grim. But not cold.

I don't think it's a fine line. But I want to be careful about it coming off as cold. That could be a problem.

I spent most of the day reading the stories and some of my old notes. At first I toyed with the idea of cut/paste story sections and writing around them. But, of course, that's really not going to work at all. For a lot of reasons. This will have to be rewritten from the ground up. Again, not a problem, just more work load. Ugh.

The story "Haxan" is the major framework for the novel. Other things that happened in some of the stories will be worked in as sub-plots. I see them dove-tailing nicely and giving everything an arc. The novel will allow me to explore things I never had time or room in the story, like how Marwood deals with taking on the job of Marshal and the roadblocks that would be in his way. There's a lot of stuff to write about there that would fit well into the overall idea of the novel, I think.

I want to keep that Haxan-voice people have come to know in the stories. I think that's really important. I constantly worry I won't find it. But that's silly it will be there when I need that. I'm just obsessing. When push comes to shove I trust myself and what I'm able to do.

These are just some of the little niggling details I'm working out. Nothing special I just wanted to share the thought process bc I said I would and some people said they were interested.

I'm giving the remainder of the week on doing all this brain-work stuff, which, let's face it, I'm barely qualified ot handle. Next week is slated for starting the novel.

I'm still excited about the project* but it's gonna be a lot more work than I originally thought.


*As excited as I get nowadays about writing. Remember, I've been doing this for quite a while. It's more of a grind now than a love. That's just another normal progression, I think.  It's a job, not a hobby.

I had a good year. I got some writing done and made some progress. That's how I judge whether a year was any good or not on the writing front.  Did I make progress? 

Why, yes, I did. So I'm satisfied with what I accomplished.  But writing is all about "what have you done lately?" so next year it's back to the grind.

Next year I'll write more stuff and try to sell it. I wish I could tell you I had some Master Plan drawn up...but that's pretty much how I approach writing.

Write stuff. Try to sell it. More often than not you can't go wrong with that formula. 

Soon I'll start on the Haxan novel. I'm curious as to how that will turn out. I'll blog about that much more when I actually start to write it.  Then short stories for the remainder of the year, I would guess.  :)

I've been getting over a cold these last couple of days so haven't blogged much. I feel better today.

Everyone is all up in arms over the movie Avatar. People either love it or hate it which is pretty much what you can say about most things in life. I must say I have no interest in watching it. Hollywood bores me for the most part. I don't like being talked down to or patronized, and that's what Hollywood does best. Anyway, it's James Cameron, people. You were expecting something more from this guy? C'mon. Film is dead. Just enjoy the visuals and stop trying to think. Hollywood doesn't want you to think. Not anymore. And you should have known that before going in.

Plus, I've read a LOT of SF. I know all the plots and there weren't that many to begin with. (The same argument can be made for any genre.) Science fiction isn't a very wide pool, but from a literary perspective it's fairly deep. Even so you can read through and exhaust the field within a decade or so, and I've been reading this stuff (both classics and hackery) since I was eleven. So. Yeah. I've seen it all.   Okay. Hollywood made some good SF films that were ground-breaking. Metropolis, 2001 and Gattaca come to mind. Not much else, I'm afraid. Nothing pops out.

On to more important news. I had a good Christmas. It snowed! I got The Burning Crusade expansion for World of Warcraft, a new electric shaver, and some DVD movies from Santa. I also ate some turkey and ham over the holidays. But now I'm turkeyed and hammed out so tonight I'll just have frozen pizza, haha. My life is simple. I prefer it that way.

I thought about posting a Year in Review thingy. Lots of other writers are doing it. But that's not me. It's not something I would do, listing all the stories I wrote and sold and placed during the year There were almost a dozen or so. I had a good year, writing-wise. I made some contacts and made some progress in the field. Can't complain about that. I'm satisfied. That's always been my writing goal. So long as I make progress.

I made a decision about the Haxan novel over the weekend. I'm going to write it. Dunno what shape it will take, trad western, full-blown fantasy or something in between. But I am going to write this novel. That much I've decided.

That's all for now. Hope to have other stuff for you when I get over this cold. See ya soon.  :)

I've been thinking about writing a Haxan novel next year. There are arguments for and against, but at the moment I am coming down against the idea.

First, it's a huge time sink. Even if I set aside six months for the novel, that's six months I could be writing short stories. All kinds of short stories, not just Haxan. Yes, I have a good backlog of stories that might see me through those months, but I'm afraid this could hurt what little momentum I've got going. The publishing industry is all about what have you done lately.

Of course, I've been doing this long enough to know anything can kill your momentum. So that's really not an argument. But to do a novel you have to pimp yourself out and try and find an agent, then go through all the publishing houses. It's a whole big Magilla. You know how it is. It's a pain.

Not to mention the fact I don't know what genre to write this novel in. There are three ways (yay! a three way!) to do this:

1. Traditional western. This is my preference. I really want to write this. Plus, it would be a nice change of pace for Haxan and perhaps bring in readers across the genre barrier. The short stories could have the dark fantasty. But let's face facts. Markets for trad westerns are minimal at best. Even though I preach you should write the story your gut tells you to write, I'm not willing to cut my nose off to spite my face. It's a six month investment. I have to think of markets down the road and risk vs. reward. Writing is a business for me. Not a very profitable one, but that's how I view it.

2. Reguar Haxan story. Which means dark fantasy used to explore western themes. These are most of the Haxan stories so I'm comfortable with that. Opens up a lot more possible markets.

3. Full-blown dark fantasy Haxan. All the stops are pulled out. Some of my beta readers know what I mean by this. Opens up even more markets, but I have to admit I think it takes away from some of the magic that is Haxan. I may be wrong about that. Just how I feel. Probably I'm wrong.

So there I am. Knowing me as you do everything could change tomorrow. I would like to write a Haxan novel. I'm afraid I'll spend all that time and nothing will come to it; I'll never sell it. Sure, that's the risk you run with short stories. But it doesn't take me six months to write a short story, "Vengeance is Mine" aside. So the time investment vs. risk/reward is a much narrower gap.

And don't even mention a Haxan anthology. I'm a nobody. They're harder to sell than novels.

Feel free to give me your two cents worth. I'm still struggling with all this and nothing is set in stone. If you asked me two weeks ago I would have said "Yes, I'm going to write a Haxan novel next year." Go figure.

This is where I am right now. Kinda lost.

And I've always felt my job as a writer is to make readers connect with things.

I'm sorry I haven't been able to keep up with you guys. I've been working on a story revision and things have fallen by the wayside a little too much. I apologize.

But I wanted you to know my new dark erotica SF story is now up at Three Crow Press. Just click the banner below if you want to read it. And, please, while you're at it, check out the rest of the fiction, too!

Hope you like it! :)

I updated my website. Lots of new links, essays, more extra content on the Haxan Page about Marwood's Sharps Rifle and his horse, and a brand new sample story (actually a sample poem) just for you.

Hope you like it. Thanks for making it all possible, guys, I appreciate it.

CLICK ME! :)

Huh. Apparently some magazines still want hardcopy submissions. Go figure, haha. So I've got to catch up on that, and then some email ones.

Well, that's the plan, anyway. I'll get the hardcopy stuff prepared so I can mail it off tomorrow. (Seriously? Stamps? *sigh*)

I wish the weather was better. I miss sitting on the back porch and working from there. I prefer being outside.

Evan Lewis in his review of my story "In the Image of His Maker" mentioned that, regarding the town of Haxan, "...the locale, the town of Haxan, New Mexico, begins to emerge as a character unto itself."

I wish I could say I invented that trope, but I didn't. Samuel R. Delaney used Bellona in Dhalgren, one of my all-time favorite novels. Clifford D. Simak did it in his novel City. Lots of science fiction and fantasy writers do the same thing. I've seen it lots of times and I'm sure you can list lots of examples, too.  But  for whatever reason it never made a lasting impression on me until I met Richard Parks.

You see, Richard Parks (aka ogre_san) does it with his fictional Mississippi town Canemill. Canemill, in Richard's stories, is definitely a solid, living, breathing character, even if he means for it to be or not.  (I think he does, but I don't want to put words in his mouth.)  Even if it's just in the background in some stories its presence is always felt. It's not just an empty locale he uses. I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't have a map of it somewhere, even if only in his head. I know he has a history for it because we see some of it reflected in his work. Anyway, I think he views the city itself as an element that sometimes shapes the events we read about in his stories.

Not all his stories are set in Canemill, but those that are...wow. They are more often than not my favorites.

So one day, when I decided I wanted to try my hand at a western, I up and decided to steal that idea and create my own city, place it in the Old West, and call it Haxan.

Okay, I didn't actually steal the idea from Richard or anybody else. As we've seen it's an old literary device, probably from time immemorial. But I wanted to create a town that would be a significant character in some of the stories. Not always. But I did want it there and I did want the weight of its presence known if not felt even when Marwood was riding a hundred miles away in the empty desert wondering why he had memories that stretched back ten thousand years.

Mr. Lewis isn't the first person to remark to me that Haxan felt like a character unto itself. There have been others. I just want to say I am very flattered one of the elements I use in these stories was recognized by readers and that they liked it. It made feel...well, pretty good.

Very good.  *nods* 

I finished my latest story and feel pretty good. It's the last scheduled story of the year. I may write others before the year is out, but I'm okay if it doesn't happen.  I've got other writerly stuff to catch up on. Seriously. I'm behind big time like checking out some anthologies and seeing if I can't get something out to them, maybe. Also, I gotta contact the sf/fantasy cons coming to Dallas and a slew of other stuff. Busy, busy.

Goofed off today and didn't write.

Don't feel that bad about it, actually, haha.  :P

I made a good start on my new story today.

I finished my story today at the coffee shop and felt pretty good about it. Now I'll let it sit a day or two before I look at it again. It needs to be tightened up a bit but that's about normal.

Now I'm thinking about a new story. I meet my writing buddy again tomorrow and I may start it then to help distance myself from the one I finished today.  I think it's going to be called "Three Wise Men" and yes, it's a Haxan story, too.  Then again what isn't these days, haha.

I've always said no one understands a writer like another writer.  That's why having contacts in this business are so important. You may have family and friends who love and support you, but if they're not writers they don't understand what you are going through. They may empathize, but they don't understand. They can't.

I honestly believe this. Writing goes so deep into us, only someone else who writes can ever understand what we go through. And why.

All scenes of a story are important. And you can make a strong case that all words in a short story are very important. But, nevertheless, there are some scenes in some stories that are vital and if you don't pull them off the entire story crumbles apart.

That's what I'm working on now in "Vengeance is Mine" my latest short story. It's the final scene and it's the linchpin for the entire story. It's a tough one, all right. I'm having to feel my way through rather than just jump in and write the through. It may not come off. And even if I do bring it off heaven only knows who will buy it. But, man, this is a tough little scene to write, because one wrong move and the whole story blows up.

That would be bad.

Oh, well, no one ever said writing was easy, haha. But I would like to get this done so I can move on....

My attention was called to a glowing review of my new Haxan story that appears on The Western Online, so I thought I would share with you guys:


Review of "In the Image of Our Maker"

The Western Online has just published my brand new Haxan story "In the Image of Our Maker". Yay! So please click on the link below to check it out, and I hope you enjoy the story. Thanks, guys!  :)

I made some very good progress on the story "Vengeance is Mine" this week. So far I have twenty pages and I'm coming into the home stretch. I think maybe five or six pages will round out the story.  I'd like to get this done by the end of the week, but life stuff may interfere with that. But I'll try.  *nods*

I've been busy working on other writerly stuff, too, that has kept me busy. So far so good. Can't complain, really.

There's some love for my Haxan story "Till Death Do Us Part" and you can read about it HERE.

Awfully nice of him, I must say. I'm very flattered.  *nods*

Hey, guys, just a heads up about the reading I'll be doing in Austin, TX with a bunch of other HWA writers. I'll be reading my new Haxan story "Grand Guignol". My time spot is from 2:45 to 3:15 so please come by and see me if you can, and the other horror writers, too!  :)

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