June | 2026 | Albigensia Press

Archive | June, 2026

Why is that Cockroach Scuttling So Loudly?

You know when there’s a moment of silence, and inevitably, that’s when someone has a coughing fit? It’s only when it’s dead quiet that you discover that things around you are not as quiet as you believed. When you’re trying to record audio clips at your desk, suddenly every slight sound becomes a potential threat to your finished work.

I just recorded the first two chapters of my audiobook, No Such Wizard, and for someone who normally doesn’t notice background sounds (much to my bosses’ frustration), to have everything come in clear when my work was on the line was an interesting, and irritating, discovery. I started recording when my cubicle neighbor left to teach a class because I figured that I could have a nice quiet time to start getting this done.

Now this isn’t my first rodeo when it comes to audio production. I have a really nice microphone, I’ve got some great editing software, and I’ve done this many, many times for work-related projects. However, this is my personal project, so suddenly I find I care a lot more than I do when I’m muttering inanities like “For Fiscal Year 2026, 2027, the union agreed to allocate their funds towards…”

So as I was recording it, it wasn’t reading my words that was the problem, or coming up with separate voices that was the problem (although I’ll admit, I’m not great at that). It was every minor sound that came at me that I could only pray the microphone didn’t pick up.

What first annoyed me as the guy having a long conversation on the phone nearby. Now when I say “nearby,” that’s at least 100 feet from me. But in the quiet, suddenly someone talking at a normal volume piercing through the air. The better question is “Why the #*$& is it taking half-an-hour to explain something?!”

My phone ringing suddenly… that’s on me. I accept that and turn off the ringer. Our windows and thick concrete walls usually cut out the outside noise, but either today was the day for every truck in downtown Phoenix to suddenly rumble through… or I really just noticed it for the first time. The same with the airplanes; I know we’re next to the arrival pathway into Sky Harbor International, but My God, the booming seems to be louder. The polite ding of the light rail seems nice by comparison.

None of this noise terribly revealing to me, but when I’m suddenly recording, it’s like I’m hearing it for the first time. Wow; I’m hoping that the editing software can clear out any of that noise before anyone hears it. Yes, I could ask to use the voice recording box that has all the padding and whisper fan A/C thing, but I really didn’t think I would need it. I’m also not that confident that I’ll make dollar-one on this, so why go through the extra hassle? This is more for my edification than for success.

Hopefully, when I’m finished, you’ll be able to hear my nasally drone on Audible and I will have tried something new. If you’re impatient, I completely understand, and ask that you check out No Such Wizard, my recent novel. If you’re a dedicated Kindle user like I am, it’s only $0.99. Check it out. If you’re a cheapskate like me, I still want you to read it, but you can check it out on An Archive of Our Own (AO3) with simpler formatting, but the words are all the same. Enjoy!

Tags: audiobook, books, noise, recording

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Categories My Books

Vacation Shouldn’t Freeze Summer

26 Jun

There’s a simple math; average vacation is 1 to 2 weeks. There’s some holidays where it’s natural for a plurality of people to take their vacation during it. That window of absent time is not that big. So why is it that work, community, hanging out with friends… everything seems to stop between Memorial and Labor Day?

This has been a problem that has perplexed me for a while and maybe its just my circles. You go to religious services, attendance is halved. You try to schedule something; “Sorry, I’ll be out for that week.” You try to advance a project at work, the crucial person is off. All these vacations are not staggered. I live in Arizona, so “getting outside more” during the summer makes zero sense. We hide inside our AC bubbles like lizards. So what is going on?

Answer #1: When the kids are away (from school), the family will play.

If you have a family, the natural time to take vacation is when the kids aren’t in school. Granted, but I know of no one who takes more than two weeks off unless they’re retired (and in which case, they don’t have kids). Having experienced this often, summer involved sending kids to activities, camps, friend hangouts. I can see having to take off a day or so here and there for these natural “daddy taxi” things, but you’re still working, right? The kids are somewhere doing something, right? That’s why I reject this answer.

Answer #2: The key people are the ones who are gone.

I like this theory better. When I was a travelling consultant and got pulled into a lot of meetings, I came up with a theory that every meeting was there to have a single person make a decision; everyone else was window dressing. During the summer, there’s a lot more opportunities for these key people to be on vacation. Especially since most projects I work on involve not only working with the SME (subject matter expert) until you’re happy with the final product, but then getting their supervisor… and then usually their supervisor to sign off on it. This takes forever in ordinary time, but now with key people being absent, might as well wait until Labor Day. And God forbid if Legal and Diversity have to get involved.

Answer #3: People are just busier in the summer.

This touches on the “better weather means more outdoor activities” theory, which works great for anywhere outside of the desert. This is where balancing kid activities comes in play. However, when I lived outside of Phoenix, this still didn’t make sense. It’s not like you’re going to the beach every day; maybe you’re going to the pool more often, but why would that impact normal daily activities?

Answer #4: You’re simply less willing to participate in the summer.

There might be a mental block. “It’s too hot, I don’t wanna go to church. Let’s just stay by the pool.” When the weather is better, you don’t to go out and do stuff. I can buy this a little better for things outside of work. But again, people want to get paid, right? I know how much vacation I get, and you can’t be getting that much more, but you just have money to spend your vacation on. Right?

Answer #5: Skeleton Crews

There may be simpler answer. Many of the teams I work with are already operating with the bare minimum number of people they need to operate. I’ve noticed that this year, one person decides to retire from a three-person team, suddenly my project with them is indefinitely postponed… because they’re now trying to cover another person’s work. So maybe if everyone is already at peak efficiency, having one or two people drop out for a week can stop everything in its tracks. Now alternate that missing person and you’ve effectively shut down for two months.

I like this answer for work but not for community activities. There are key people in any volunteer organization, but it’s not like “Gee, George isn’t showing up to church, so why bother?” I can see that for a club, because frequently there’s only two or three people actually doing the work, so having one of them drop out will make it impossible to function.

The problem with theories is that there is never one answer for the question. I can’t say that I’m bothered terribly much by the lack of action in the summer, but it’s one of those cause and effect things that I don’t have a good answer for. Maybe you should just find a shady spot and read a book. May I recommend No Such Wizard, my recent novel, I could publish it. If you’re a dedicated Kindle user like I am, it’s only $0.99. Check it out. If you’re a cheapskate like me, I still want you to read it, but you can check it out on An Archive of Our Own (AO3) with simpler formatting, but the words are all the same. Enjoy!

Tags: Summer, vacation, work

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Categories My Life

Could You Change “Submit” to “Complete?”

25 Jun

The video is done, the training project is complete, and you’re glad because the three-month project is finally done. The endless “can you get back to me?” emails have passed, the client is happy with the project, and we’ve published. Then you get an email saying, “Hey, I noticed at 8:57 that you say “click submit in the top center” when it should be “click complete at the top right. Can we fix that?”

Now I’ll admit, I’m not a detail-oriented person, I’m a big picture guy. And thank God those people exist. We need them to handle… accounting, medicine, things that require attention to detail. This training is about how to “click here, click there, and click this” on an online system to help someone get benefits through the company. My client never asked themselves, “Is anyone going to be confused by the fact that the Submit button is now called Complete and in a slightly different place?” No, they just saw that it was wrong.

In their defense, they realized that I did the voice-over exactly as they wrote it, and they admitted that the mistake was theirs. Does it take that long to fix the mistake? No, five minutes on my editing software, five minutes plugging it my authoring software, and then fifty minutes for the authoring software to process that back into a new video. Meanwhile, I can fix the error that Amazon keeps finding in my paperback version of No Such Wizard, and get around to my blog post for the day.

What I object to is that this is a perpetual motion machine. There will always be errors if you look hard enough. There will always be something to fix, and if you wait long enough, the information will be out of date and you have to update everything all over again. I went through this with another client when she realized she accidentally said “$869” instead of “$863” in a training. Now, in terms of details, this affected how much money she said was going into someone’s paycheck, which you would think be more important. But it’s a difference of six dollars. She held up the entire project for a week so she could re-record five seconds worth of voice over.

What did she think was going to happen? Packs of firefighters banging on the (locked) door, furious, axe handles in hand, screaming “Give me MY MONEY!?” At some point, my clients need to ask the question, “Does this change really impact things enough that I need to stop the entire process?” But as I type this, maybe the answer is even more insidious. For her, the training is the lowest priority in her to-do list; it may not matter to her that they hold up the publishing for a week because frankly, “It can wait.” The fact that the training is the highest priority in my list doesn’t matter.

Now thankfully, I work in an environment where I don’t have stress… or it happens maybe twice in five years of working here. The upside to being everyone’s lowest priority is that no one really cares when they the finished project. Which gives me plenty of time to pursue other things, like my second Master’s degree in Geography (graduated December 2025), or now, the first novels I have written in years. At the same time, I have the nagging fear that, “If they don’t care if my work is done, do they care enough to still employ me?” So far, the answer is yes, and as long as I turn things around (when I get them) within a day, I’m listed as a miracle-worker. I’m the hardest working man on the floor and I get tons of kudos… when in reality, I’m able to turn around things so fast because I have so little to do.

If you wanna see what I actually do with my time at work, pick up No Such Wizard, my recent novel. If you’re a dedicated Kindle user like I am, it’s only $0.99. Check it out. If you’re a cheapskate like me, I still want you to read it, but you can check it out on An Archive of Our Own (AO3) with simpler formatting, but the words are all the same. Enjoy!

Tags: editing, frustration, work

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Categories My Life

Now Let’s See “What God Hath Wrought”

24 Jun

It’s funny how a phrase will get stuck in your head and you’ll have no idea how it got there. So when I have the villain in my current story suddenly say something cool, and only realize later, “Oh, so that’s where that comes from?” Quotations are tricky things.

The line is “What God hath wrought,” which is from Numbers 23:23, which is part of the (pagan) prophet Balaam’s famous blessing upon seeing the Israelite people. To give you the whole King James Version treatment:

Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any divination against Israel: according to this time it shall be said of Jacob and of Israel, What hath God wrought!

What I didn’t realize (or maybe filed away in the back of my brain) was that this was the first line ever sent by telegraph in 1844. It was sent from Washington D.C. to Baltimore, MD as a proof of concept. Just to satisfy the radio nerds, it was also the last message sent by Morse Code via ship-to-ship communication in 1999, when they switched to the voice only system.

Now this isn’t where I thought about going with this, but when I tested for my Ham Radio License back in 1988, I failed the Novice exam because I missed one letter (“e”). I was upset because I had been studying Morse Code for a while, and since my Grandma and Uncles were all Hams, I wanted to be one too. However, my failing the test (when I was in junior high) turned me off to it ever after. As it turned out, the Internet killed most of the appeal of Ham Radio, since you could talk to anyone from anywhere without a license. It’s made a resurgence in the last couple decades, but they dropped the Morse Code requirement, and streamlined the levels.

But let’s get back to Balaam. He’s a controversial (?) figure in the Hebrew Bible. On one hand, he gives one of the most beautiful blessings in the Torah, one that is still used in services today. To have his she-donkey speak to him is considered one of the ten exceptions to the natural order that God did, spoken into being in the last minutes of the Sixth Day of Creation. He is someone who does divination; his words are known to come from God Himself.

Yet all of the commentaries treat him as the bad guy. Why? Because God tells him not to go with the king to curse the Israelites, Balaam refuses the king the first time, but when the king comes back, he asks God again. God tells him to go, but only do what he tells them. That’s when Balaam’s ass speaks, on the way to the king, to warn him not to step further because there’s an angel waiting to kill him if he proceeds. Once he sees the angel, Balaam’s convinced, and he only bless the Israelites. Which he does, much to the annoyance of the king, and he goes home. Balaam is listed as being killed, along with the king, a couple chapters later.

So what’s the problem here? God told him no, he wanted to do it anyway, God let him go do it, but to bless instead of curse. He’s also a prophet, but not an Israelite one, which makes the sages rather oogie. Then he’s killed off, which proves he was a bad guy to begin with. But that’s not what’s really going on here. Balaam becomes the default example of a man who appears righteous among the Gentiles, but would really much rather destroy the Israelite people (for gold), but can’t due to the intervention of the Almighty.

And frankly, I think that’s a bit of a cop-out. Same thing with Melchizedek in Genesis 14; Here’s a guy who is listed as a priest of the “Most High God” and even blesses Abraham, so there’s no wiggling out of this one… a non-Jew has a connection with the Almighty. What’s the cop-out here? Oh, well, Mel is actually Shem (Noah’s son) and therefore Abraham’s ancestor… so it’s okay. (Smacks head.)

What’s my point? If there is one, it’s that when you take things out of context, you end up getting the wrong message. I was trying to convey a sense of wonder from my character, which is exactly what Balaam and Morse were saying. How do people take it? The sages distrust the messenger. I was too easily discouraged on pursuing my goals. I’m getting better. In fact, I finished two novels in two months! You can read it, in fact. It’s called No Such Wizard. If you’re a dedicated Kindle user like I am, it’s only $0.99. Check it out. If you’re a cheapskate like me, I still want you to read it, but you can check it out on An Archive of Our Own (AO3) with simpler formatting, but the words are all the same. Hopefully you’re understand the context.

Tags: Bible, books, context, radio, technology

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Categories My Books, My Life

Victory Over Sequels!

23 Jun

That’s right, I finally finished it – No Such Squib, the sequel to No Such Wizard, is finally complete! After complaining about losing my mojo, having to grind out the ending, it turned out that I ended up writing five more chapters! Wow!

This is my V-S day; victory over sequels. I was so determine to continue the story that I cranked out another 53k words to do it; the last three chapters I finished in one day. Woo – I am pumped! It’s time to party!

So what’s next on Marcus’s writing schedule? These are in no particular order:

Most importantly, do not start outlining Book 3. I want to… God, I want to badly, but finish the other steps before starting the next book.
Create a paperback version of No Such Wizard. Adding to my bookshelf of honor another finished novel makes me so happy. Counted it today, this is #14.
Create the Kindle version of this book, No Such Squib,
Then the paperback version of No Such Squib.
Try your hand at recording the audiobook version of No Such Wizard.

You can read the sequel, but I’d suggest reading the first novel first, No Such Wizard. If you’re a dedicated Kindle user like I am, it’s only $0.99. Check it out. If you’re a cheapskate like me, I still want you to read it, but you can check it out on An Archive of Our Own (AO3) with simpler formatting, but the words are all the same. Enjoy!

Tags: writing, books, inspiration, sequel

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Categories My Books

“The Perfect HR Voice Over”

22 Jun

So I’m debating whether to actually create an audiobook version of my recent novel. Thanks to my job, I have a good microphone, editing software, lots of practice with voice-overs, and plenty of time. However, my natural voice tends to be a high tenor, which my grandboss described as “the perfect HR voice over.” If I can’t sell my books, can I sell my nasally tone?

So I’m working out a pro/con list in my head, and because I haven’t really done it before writing this blog, you get to experience my thought process. Pros – the audiobook community is a fast growing part of the reading community. They’re willing to throw a lot more money into their books than the Kindle fans. Only 10% of all books on Kindle actually have an audio version, so the chances of being seen are greater. And if some buys my book (or uses an Audible subscription), I get a much higher amount of money for my profit.

Here’s the cons. It’s a lot of work. The final audio product for a 47,000 word book will be approximately 5 hours, which I know from past experience, means that I will be spending (at least) three times that recording, editing, and doing all the fiddly bits to get it up on Audible. Despite my job involving recording voice-overs, I do not have an audio engineer’s ear. If my dog is snoring in the background, odds are that I won’t hear it, but my microphone will pick it up. No amount of editing software will help me eliminate what I can’t hear. And if the fans get an inferior product, it will have been a week’s worth of work for nothing… and that’s assuming I have the patience to record it.

I’ve been able enjoy writing again because it is something I have enjoyed since I was a much smaller me. In fact, I might still have my first attempt at a novel somewhere, at the age of 12, and handwrote fifteen or so pages. I certainly have other high school attempts, including my first completed novel, which… is bad. It was also novella-length. My second one in college was much longer and still bad. I feel like I’ve improved a lot since then.

My point, which somehow got lost in that last paragraph, is “How much do I enjoy this book that I’m willing to put myself through recording and editing my voice for a week?” Because odds are that I won’t get much back; how much do I love the game? I would be better compensated if I just focused on advertising my books, but a) I have no spare change, especially with my car in the shop today and b) all the free ways to advertise bore the ever loving crap out of me. The last time I made a significant effort with b) I still made no money and burned myself out in the process.

So God willing, once I finish my current novel (which I’m on the last chapter of), then I can take a break from writing, and get inspired by reading out my last one. If you wanna read No Such Wizard, before the audio version comes out, pick it up on Kindle, it’s only $0.99. Check it out. If you’re a cheapskate like me, I still want you to read it, but you can check it out on An Archive of Our Own (AO3) with simpler formatting, but the words are all the same. Enjoy!

Tags: audiobook, books, marketing

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Categories My Books

And If You Thought THAT Was Convoluted…

19 Jun

So I was debating the structure of MACUSA and how to elect a wizard president in America, you might have thought, “Wow, you’re making that way too complicated. No one would ever do that.” Au contraire, my friends. This is particularly tame compared to what other countries have done.

Notice I didn’t say “…in the past.” There are lots of examples that are currently used today. I took the reserved seat and Congressional review idea from Iran. In their 290 member majlis, there are 207 constituencies, and five of those are reserved for religious minorities (including a Jewish seat). Wait… 290 does not equal 207. Yes, larger urban areas elect multiple deputies from a single constituency; in Tehran’s case, it’s 30. Oh… and ALL of these candidates have to go through the Guardian Council for approval or you don’t get on the ballot.

If you think that’s fun, let’s go with the oldest continuously elected position in the world (since 1189), the Lord Mayor of the City of London. Now that’s not the Mayor of London, that’s a different position, this is the guy (currently a gal) who runs the center of London, where most of the historic buildings are and is the historic center of the city. To be leader of London, you have to (and this is the simplified version) be a member of a livery company (usually a international banking firm) who had to be elected alderman. Once you’ve been a alderman, you had to have served as a sheriff. Then your fellow aldermen have to vote you in, but generally with the approval of the companies, and you get zero pay for this one-year position. This is where I stole Congress electing the President.

But it could have been far, far worse. Take the Serene Republic of Venetia, dominated the Mediterranean Sea for five hundred years. I could try and explain how they elected the Doge, their leader, but let’s have someone better qualified do it.

“Whenever the time came to elect a new doge of Venice, an official went to pray in St. Mark’s Basilica, grabbed the first boy he could find in the piazza, and took him back to the ducal palace. The boy’s job was to draw lots to choose an electoral college from the members of Venice’s grand families, which was the first step in a performance that has been called tortuous, ridiculous, and profound. Here is how it went, more or less unchanged, for five hundred years, from 1268 until the end of the Venetian Republic

Thirty electors were chosen by lot, and then a second lottery reduced them to nine, who nominated forty candidates in all, each of whom had to be approved by at least seven electors in order to pass to the next stage. The forty were pruned by lot to twelve, who nominated a total of twenty-five, who needed at least nine nominations each. The twenty-five were culled to nine, who picked an electoral college of forty-five, each with at least seven nominations. The forty-five became eleven, who chose a final college of forty-one. Each member proposed one candidate, all of whom were discussed and, if necessary, examined in person, whereupon each elector cast a vote for every candidate of whom he approved. The candidate with the most approvals was the winner, provided he had been endorsed by at least twenty-five of the forty-one.”

– Anthony Gottlieb, “Win or Lose,” The New Yorker.

How do you like those apples? So the beautiful of comparative government studies is that your imaginary government system can be perfectly justified being… whatever you want it to be! Do you want to see mine in action? Read No Such Wizard, my recent novel, I could publish it. If you’re a dedicated Kindle user like I am, it’s only $0.99. Check it out. If you’re a cheapskate like me, I still want you to read it, but you can check it out on An Archive of Our Own (AO3) with simpler formatting, but the words are all the same. Enjoy!

Tags: government, politics, weird

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Categories Interests, My Books

Running for (Magical) President

18 Jun

When I used to teach comparative government, we picked five countries whose governmental structure were so radically different from each other, that the students had to figure out, “How on Earth does that work?” So when I was considering, “How would a bunch of American wizards decide who was their leader,” the possibilities are endless.

In my current novel in what I’m calling the “Crane-verse,” I had to face the question, “How do you get a bunch of wizards who can cast fireballs to work together?” Answer: they were going to work for balance. Now add in the (limited) Potter-verse MACUSA canon: there’s a president, a unicameral legislature, and it was established in 1693, predating the Continental Congress by eighty years. Their government wasn’t going to be pure democracy, certainly not one person one vote, and they would go out of their way to keep all the major factions in the country, if not happy, at least accepting the result.

So I started with Congress. Assuming 18,000 wizards in the United States (using 0.02% of population rule taken from the Potter-verse), you don’t want to have too big a legislature, but enough for it to handle all the duties that a small city requires. My answer: 50 representatives, 30 elected from single-member districts and 20 “reserved” seats. Reserved for whom? Founding families, powerful groups, two for goblins (they run the money supply), other non-humans, hedge mages, et al. Since a lot of these reserved seats have developed over time, the Wizarding Society of Friends (Quakers) have a seat, but haven’t been a power since 1800… yet no one will expel them either. Even seven of the reserved seats aren’t fill because the centaurs can’t agree with the sasquatches who should represent them. It’s a balance of representatives that seems ridiculously believable.

That leaves the President. In my story, he’s barely there… because I’ve only added Congress in for flavor. However, as the stakes get higher, they’ll have to be involved, so I need to know how they’re elected. We use the electoral college for the muggle US President, because of the belief that the mob is too dangerous/fickle to elect our leader on their own; so our founders put in oversight. The wizards in 1693 were unifying out of the Salem Witch Trials. They needed one leader to help them face the danger, but they needed someone who wouldn’t turn around and make themselves king, since that’s why they left Britain in the first place.

So how do we achieve security, balance, and trust among all factions? You can’t, so you compromise. Here’s the solution that I like:

Congress shall nominate any registered wizard that has held public office for five years. They must be nominated by three members, one of which must be from a reserved seat.
Any candidate who accepts the position must have their financial history reviewed by the goblins in order to ensure their financial independence. Any debts / obligations to criminal organizations or foreign governments would disqualify them.
Any qualified candidate is then put up for a public challenge period of 30 days, where any registered wizard can formally challenge the candidates standing before three judges. This challenge almost never works, but it reveals disqualifying information.
Congress then deliberates over the remaining candidates, probably having multiple rounds of voting to eliminate the candidates with the lowest support, until only two remain.
All registered wizards then vote to choose which of the two candidates become President.

In this solution, not anyone can be President, you would have had to serve first. Since I established that congressmen serve four years, the five year limit means that your own constituency has to like you enough to reelect you. This shows your commitment to the Republic. You keep the goblins happy by giving them veto power, and since they run the financial system, you want them happy. We don’t have primaries, so offer a challenge period to rake up all that muck. Then anyone who survives all that is approved by Congress, but the people get to approve Congress’s choice. Balance of powers, makes it difficult for demagogues to run the room, and keeps things stable.

Now even the best system can mess up, but when thinking how super-powered citizens try to mitigate disaster, this seems like a decent solution. Pop a comment down if you’ve got a better one. Or you can read how it works in No Such Wizard, my recent novel, I could publish it. If you’re a dedicated Kindle user like I am, it’s only $0.99. Check it out. If you’re a cheapskate like me, I still want you to read it, but you can check it out on An Archive of Our Own (AO3) with simpler formatting, but the words are all the same. Enjoy!

Tags: books, creativity, government, politics

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Categories My Books

Sucker DJs, They Get Stopped By a Single Finger

17 Jun

You would think that by the age of fifty, I would be used to rejection. I mean, enough people have told me I suck over the years that it should roll off me. But it still hurts; even the mildest rejection seems to throw off my day. This is the problem of any creative projects; dealing with criticism.

This is the great problem being a writer; being soft enough to let your emotions flow through you, and hard enough to take rejection. I can see why F. Scott Fitzgerald drank himself to death.

Recently, a radio show host I love listening to mentioned they were reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, a book I have never had any interest in reading. They are reading it because they are fans of… what I can only call “serious” fiction. Calling it “adult” fiction has a different connotation. These are fictional books about modern day life, which is probably the second largest category of fiction published today. The largest category is romance, and I’ve figured out that the difference between Serious Contemporary Fiction and Romance is how it ends; if everyone lives happily ever after, it’s Romance, if they don’t, it’s “serious.”

So why am I bringing that up? Because Wallace killed himself only a few years after writing what some critics call the “best book of the 20th Century.” I only tangentially knew him, because he was a professor at Illinois State while I was attending, and saw him across the room at the University Senate. (The less said about my political career, the better.) His book had come out while I was attending and the rumor was they were trying to do “anything to make him stay.” He didn’t, he got hired by the Claremont Colleges in California, and killed himself there.

The book is about depression, or more specifically, what it’s like to be inside the mind of a depressed person who’s trying to go through life day by day, and having a hard time justifying to himself why he should go on. Apparently, this reflected the nature of the author himself, since his suicide was not the first time that he had tried. HIs wife came in on him strangling from a rope and saved him.

So this really inspires me to read the book, right? 🙂 It’s not the kind of book I would enjoy. And from past experience, I am never reading anything this radio host suggests that I read, because his taste is an exact 180 degrees from my own. But it does emphasize the writer’s dilemma; how can I be tough enough to get my story across and deal with criticism while still remaining soft enough to convey the emotions inside me?

This post came up in my mind because I received a relatively benign comment on my current story. Basically it came down to “look, I come here for fanfic, and this isn’t it.” Perfectly valid… but you felt the need to paste my story with your stink? If it’s not for you, skip it, and go somewhere else! Now I could delete it, but I told myself, no… post your rebuttal and have that as a trophy for anyone who cares. It made finishing said story (only 5,000 words away) very difficult to work on.

What I told him is what I’ll tell you; start with reading No Such Wizard, my recent novel. If you’re a dedicated Kindle user like I am, it’s only $0.99. Check it out! If you’re a cheapskate like me, I still want you to read it, but you can check it out on An Archive of Our Own (AO3) with simpler formatting, but the words are all the same. Enjoy!

Tags: books, criticism, depression, rejection

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Categories My Books, Other Books

Dropping Out of the Zone

16 Jun

I’ve been the writing “zone” for over a month. I couldn’t wait to get back to my story! I was cranking out a thousand to three thousands words a day, it’s been awesome. I have never been on a streak like this before. And then, the moment passes, and my creative streak has ended.

It’s been a good run; 80,000 words is no small achievement. Completely finished one novel, mostly finished with the sequel, and then poof! Suddenly, I fall out of the writing zone, and I see the sign, “Welcome back to the grind.”

My first thought was, “Well, you just don’t like writing the combat scenes,” which I wrote about yesterday. I’m approaching the climax of the story, so there’s going to be the inevitable face-off between good and evil. Can’t talk your way out of this one, Jack. 🙂 I managed to write the first combat scene, but even that came out… a little flatter than I had hoped. So I had to ask myself, has the moment passed? And as I thought about it, I realized, “Yeah.”

I just wish it had lasted a little bit longer… like so I could finish the novel I’m working on. 10,000 words to go, man! Just a little bit longer. Instead, you’re stuck in Grindville. Now, I could bother you with the normal platitudes: “Writing is rewriting.” “Inspiration gets you started, it’s not what keeps you going.” I’m familiar with the “writer’s high.” When I finished my first novel, Manifest Destiny (don’t bother googling it, it’s never been published), I wrote another 10,000 words of another novel. And then the high stopped.

However, that was over 25 years ago. Since then, I’ve written ten (or more) books, participated in lots of NaNoWriMos, and cranked out endless blogs. Most importantly, I’ve gone through grad school… twice. Nothing will prepare you better as a writer, regardless of what you’re studying, than having to crank out endless pages on the drop of a hat. Thirty pages a week, no problem. 500 words? Don’t make me laugh. So I’m a long time resident of Grindville. You don’t need inspiration to do your work, but man, does it really help getting the desire.

Now this is a purely creative project; no one’s clamoring for it, no one’s demanding I finish the story. I could just stop writing now. But I want to complete it; I may have lost my inspiration, but I haven’t lost the joy of writing. It’s the only project in my life that’s more than the just the everyday demands of work and home. Writing on this blog helps me prep for getting back into the novel. The process brings me joy.

So all I need to do now is push past the difficult to get to the conclusion. I’ll make it, but it just won’t be as fast, but I can only hope that the final product is satisfying and delicious. If you’re curious what a wave of inspiration looks like, read No Such Wizard, my recent novel. If you’re a dedicated Kindle user like I am, it’s only $0.99. Check it out. If you’re a cheapskate like me, I still want you to read it, but you can check it out on An Archive of Our Own (AO3) with simpler formatting, but the words are all the same. Enjoy.

Tags: books, editing, inspiration, writing

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