I have decided to retire The Slaying of the Bull. That is a stranger sentence to write than I expected. I have abandoned story ideas, cut chapters I once loved, killed characters, scrapped outlines, and consigned more than a few half-written manuscripts to folders where they will probably remain until some future archaeologist excavates myContinue reading “Retiring The Slaying of the Bull”
Category Archives: Writing journey
Flashback Fridays #10
For this Flashback Friday, I’m going back to February 3, 2021—to the very first time I wrote publicly about the story that would eventually become Dawn of the Lightbearer. Of course, it wasn’t called Dawn of the Lightbearer yet. Lucardia didn’t have a name. There was no Absolution of the Morning Star, no sprawling history,Continue reading “Flashback Fridays #10”
Every Wound Has an Ancestry
As I mentioned in my last post, over the last few weeks, I have been looking backward more than usual. Part of that has come from my Flashback Fridays series, which has forced me to dig through six years of blog posts and revisit the person I was when all of this began. Part ofContinue reading “Every Wound Has an Ancestry”
Flashback Fridays #9
I struggled to find a post to look back on this week. I settled on two that mark the beginning of a transition. In the late summer of 2020, I was entering the doldrums. After the little spurt of sales for The Island of Stone, the numbers tanked, and my strategy for publishing The SlayingContinue reading “Flashback Fridays #9”
The Year I Almost Wrote the Joy Out of Writing
My Flashback Fridays series has forced me to spend a lot of time with a man I barely recognize. He has my name, my memories, and most of my insecurities, but he is standing at the beginning of a road I have now traveled for six years. He has just published Island of Stone. HeContinue reading “The Year I Almost Wrote the Joy Out of Writing”
Flashback Fridays #8
This week’s Flashback Friday comes from June 7, 2020, and I chose it because I still need the reminder. When writers first begin, every sentence feels precious. We polish, protect, and defend words simply because we suffered to put them on the page. Cutting them can feel less like editing and more like destroying evidenceContinue reading “Flashback Fridays #8”
Every Wound Has an Ancestry
I have spent some time beating myself up for not finishing Absolution of the Morning Star sooner. The series was moving along nicely. Four books were complete, and only two remained. I knew where the story was heading, even if some of the roads were still obscured. Then I got sidetracked by Koen. At first, Koen:Continue reading “Every Wound Has an Ancestry”
Flashback Fridays #7
I skipped a bunch of posts about my writing plans and progress in editing The Slaying of the Bull. They are interesting to me in a documentation way, but since many of those plans changed and The Slaying of the Bull wasn’t the hit I thought it would be at the time, I won’t boreContinue reading “Flashback Fridays #7”
Chasing the Current
Sylvanus: Swords and Sons has now crossed 60,000 words, placing me roughly at the midpoint of the novel. After a long and arduous journey, Sylvanus and his remaining companions are preparing to cross into the Northlands and enter the realm of his brother, Koen. It is a major transition in the story, but also inContinue reading “Chasing the Current”
Flashback Fridays #6
In this week’s look to the past, I focus on the moment I received my first novel in hand. True to the nature of my life, it had a bumpy road getting there (it was a premonition of my future struggles with Amazon), but when it finally arrived, it was something special. Finishing a bookContinue reading “Flashback Fridays #6”
