Two Bits of Shameless Self Promotion

My new book, VERMIN:  Book One of the Stanley Cooper Chronicles, just hit Amazon, and I hope lots and lots of people buy it.  Stanley Cooper is an average guy, short, dumpy, with bad hair.  But an industrial accident left him dead for seven minutes.  When paramedics revived him, he discovered he had the ability to see dead people.  And not just ghosts, but the living energy that surrounds all things.  A telephone call from a panicked stranger sets events in motion that puts Stanley in the middle of a bizarre string of robberies and murders in Pittsburgh, and it's up to him, his best friend Maggie (who is a witch) and a skeptical cop named Taylor to find out what's going on and how to stop it before it's too late.  


Order it HERE!

Here are a couple of excerpts:

     It takes a lot of guts to come forward when something weird or frightening happens to a person. Most people feel like no one will believe them, or that people will blame them and laugh behind their backs. And most people are right. It leaves people with a sense of hopelessness, that there is nowhere left to turn. When people begin to feel that way, those dark forces win. I don‟t mean that metaphorically, I mean it literally. They win a victory, a conquest over a soul when a person loses hope. Someone experiencing what Shannon claimed to experience has to be at wit‟s end to come and find someone like me. Most of the time, they dummy up and don‟t tell anyone. When it first happened to me, and I thought I was losing my mind, sure, I mentioned it to a few people: a shrink here and there, a few friends, a bartender or two… My friends stopped hanging around with me, the bartenders cut me off, and the shrinks told me I was suffering from some sort of post-traumatic-stress-syndrome brought on by my “passing.” 

     They never say “death,” always “passing.” “Passing” sounds so much nicer, less final than “death.” “Passing” sounds like something a person might do walking between two rooms. It doesn‟t sound like what happens when a piece of safety equipment fails due to production cutbacks, dropping a person thirty feet onto the back of their head. It doesn‟t bring to mind waking up on a gurney with a sheet over one‟s head and a paper tag on a persons toe. That‟s not “passing,” that‟s “death” with a capital “D.” 

     Good things came out of it, though. I developed a new respect for people I might have thought were crazy before. I also quit drinking and smoking. I‟ve heard of so many people who‟ve had near-death-experiences who came away with the “live for the now” attitude and saying things like “I‟ve been dead, so nothing scares me.” 

     Frankly, the thought of dying and not coming back scares the ever-loving Hell out of me. People talk about seeing the long corridor with light at the end or seeing dead relatives. When I died, I saw nothing. I saw darkness. I didn‟t even get to float up above my own body or relive my life in fast forward. Just black. Just cold. 

And

     People say they don‟t believe in magic or ghosts. They call people like me and Maggie delusional or say that we‟re living in a fantasy world. Magic isn‟t real, they say, and there‟s no such thing as ghosts. They go along their happy daily routines, safe and secure in the knowledge that the unexplainable or things that go bump in the night aren‟t real. These same people are the ones who avoid shops like Maggie‟s, who watch me as if I might do something spooky, and are the first ones to scream and run if so much as an odd noise is heard in the old dark and creepy house. They say they don‟t believe, but it‟s a lie. The trouble is they do believe, but they don‟t take the time to try to understand. They believe, but they‟ll never admit it to each other because that would let the possibility in that there are things in the world that don‟t fit in with their neat little model of what life is supposed to be. In the light of day, it‟s easy to say there are no such things as ghosts, or possession, or haunted houses. In the dead of night, tucked in bed, hiding beneath the blankets while the sounds of footsteps cross the floor and the sounds of breathing come from under the bed, everyone believes. 

And Now, More Shameless Self Promotion

Okay, so it's not really self-promotion per se, but it is something I hope lots of folks check out.  My darling and talented wife, Tabatha, just opened up her own online store to sell jewelry, objects d'art, and other stuff that she hand-makes herself.  Seriously, look at Lurch over there and tell me that's not cool.  He's already sold, but there are lots of other zombie heads, necklaces (I have a "Hand of Glory" that I refuse to take off), earrings, book marks, and other stuff.  Oh, and where is her store?  Just go to Monsters Under Glass and help support artists like Tabby and myself.  I can't tell you how wonderful I think her artwork is.  So jump over there already!

Finding the Time

It's a statement I hear every day. "I'd love to *insert artistic activity here,* but I don't have the time." My general response to that is, well, then I guess you don't really want to do it, do you? Not to be cynical, but let me take you through a typical day for me: Up by 6 a.m., at work by 7:45, lunch for an hour around noon, home by 6pm. After that, there's the karate class, the children, dinner with the wife, and about a dozen other things that I do. The point is, I lead a really busy existence. So how do I find the time to sit down and write? It isn't easy, but here's how I do it.

I make time.

See, to me, writing isn't a hobby, or something that I do in my free time, or something that is a burden. It's something that I genuinely love to do. I don't find time to do it, I make time. It became a priority in my life, and so I set up my life accordingly. Now, I'm not saying that everyone in the world has to do what I do, but this worked for me. If it works for you, great. If not, figure something else out.

First, I decided that I was going to take this whole "writing" thing seriously. I gave it a priority status in my life, and moved on from there. For me, my priorities are 1) my wife and kids, 2) my job, and 3) writing. Everything else that I do comes after that. Period. Karate, music, television, you name it, it takes a back seat. Ask anyone who is serious about their craft (no matter what it is) and I'm betting they'll tell you the same thing.

Step two: Once you decide that you're going to pursue your artistic endeavor, take a look at what you really do in a day. You can't ignore the wife and kids. For me, that's my whole reason for writing. Without them, I'd be pretty directionless, and I love them dearly. So whatever activities I'm doing with them come first. Then there's the job. Well, that pays the bills (mostly), so I can't really stop doing that, now can I? So now what? How much television do you watch? And how much time do you spend surfing the internet (reading blogs like this one)? How much of that time is wasted? Surely reading this blog isn't a waste of time, but c'mon, television? Biggest black hole time-waster of all time, and it doesn't really stimulate the imagination. Instead of watching the latest episode of "Big Brother" or "Dancing with the Stars," go sit down behind your keyboard and let your fingers do the dancing.

Third and final step: Set a goal. How much can you write in a day? How much before you feel you've earned a break? Setting a modest goal will help you sharpen not only your writing chops, but also your time management skills. There is no magic number of how many words to write. Everyone's is different. Stephen King advocates something like 10,000 words a day, I believe. I'm nowhere near that prolific (yet) and I do have other priorities, so mine is a more modest 1,000 words per day. Come hell or high water, that's what I do. End of story. Lots of folks write more than me, and lots write less. But do the math: If the standard length for a novel is between 80-90,000 words, how long will it take you at that rate to complete a first draft? Oooh...The possibilities are endless!

The point is, if you want to do this, you have to train your brain to work for you, not against you. Time? P-Shaw...You have all the time you need. You just have to make yourself use it wisely.

Write On!