Wheels Keep Turnin’

These are strange times, to be sure. Unprecedented times. These are the times people will talk about in the future the way we talk about the Great Depression. They will speak of it in a dreamy sort of wonder at how it could have happened and why it happened and ponder how people survived. 

I think we have all gone a little crazy in the past few years, and it is no wonder. There is a lot going on and most of us are just trying to make it make sense in some way. 

We all have found our ways to cope, be it connecting with people virtually, or throwing ourselves into television, hitting the dating apps, investing more in our hobbies, reaching out to family, or just diving into the bottom of a bottle. 

We all survived the best we could in the best ways we were able. 

For me over the past few months writing has become a bit of a refuge once more, like it used to be for me years earlier. Writing either books or blogs allows me to focus on something other than myself and my mind and to pour out all my poison into something outside of myself.  If I let myself, I can burrow deep into myself and that doesn’t help anyone, least of all myself. 

Enter writing. 

As of yesterday I have written three books this year. 

That’s crazy to me. 

I edited Reliquary in Black and a few days later started a new book. After it was finished I started another a few days after that. And when THAT was done I started this newest one and have completed it in three weeks. 

It’s crazy. 

I am in no rush, there’s no deadline to meet because I am writing for me, but I can’t help the speed at which I write. I also try not to overwrite these things. The three most recent books are slimmer, mean machines that don’t feel like they overstay their welcome. They will all expand as I edit them and take a new look at them, but while there was enough material to stretch them out like dough, I didn’t want to. I was conscious of what the story was and what I wanted to say and didn’t want to overstay my welcome. 

It’s crazy though. 

It’s mid-July and I have written three books. 

Weird. 

I am not driven by fear in my writing, or by demand, but just the need to write. Perhaps there’s a part of me that, if I think about it, might push me on, and that’s the knowledge that a day will come when it’s over. A day will come when I can no longer see, or can no longer type, or can no longer imagine these strange stories that flow so easily. 

A day will come when I will be done, whether I am ready or not. 

That’s a sobering thought and one that has always spurred me forward. 

That’s why I always tell people with a desire to create to do it, and not to wait. We talk ourselves out of things so often, out of the things that may bring us joy or just some semblance of sanity, and we deprive ourselves and the world of what we might create. 

So I write. 

As I have said over and over again I’d love to see book sales that told me I was on the right path. I’d love to have there BE demand for more books. Alas, it doesn’t always work that way. 

So I do it for me. 

I like this newest book. 

It gets pretty wild. 

I have some work to do, some clean up, some expansion, but it’s a fun book and I feel that way about the last three. 

They are lean and mean and I am proud of them. 

Whenever I tell my dad I wrote another book he asks – 

Do you ever sell any? 

No, not many. 

Is it another horror book?

Generally, yes, they are. 

These three are, though the first of them is more dark fiction and less horror but it’s horror adjacent for sure. 

It’s there. 

When I edit it it will probably become even moreso. 

Huzzah!

I dunno what the rest of the year will yield. I will continue to blog, more than I have in my life I think, and I will write. I have a bunch of stories rolling around my head. I need to start editing soon too though. I have three books ready for me. 

I don’t know that I see any of them being released this year but who can say?

Who can say?

I sure as heck can’t but I am pretty excited to see what happens next and where I go from here. 

I have written a lot of books. 

It’d be wild if someone actually read them all. 

Maybe they could tell me what I am trying to actually say. 

Or if it’s just screaming in the darkness. 

…c…

Go read some of my books! Do us both a favor! Check the links on my page to browse around.