The Blank Page

A familiar sight...

The difficult thing about being a fiction writer, is having to make it all up, day in and day out. You can borrow on what's happening all around you, if that makes it slightly easier. The crime, the politics (if you're so inclined), the cultural pulse, and so on. But always, you are are still left facing the same blank canvas.

There are mornings when I wake up, having no idea what I'm going to write or how I'm going to write it. All I know is that it, whatever it is, must be written. It's what I do, how I define myself, and and my reason for living.

Some days it's easy. Other days, it truly is like biting on the nail, as someone far more famous than me described it a long, long time ago. But always, I do it. No matter what's happening in my life, no matter my physical or mental condition, no matter the day, no matter the weather. If a nuclear attack were imminent, would I still get the word count in?

As absurd as that question is, the answer is obvious enough for me.
But what about you?

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Coming Up for Air: Notes from a Hybrid Author (Part ???)

I think it was late August of 2016 when I was informed that my services would no longer be required at the one trade journalism gig I maintained outside of my fiction career. It was a sweet gig that ran for ten years, an absolute lifetime in the fickle world of freelance journalism. I wrote architecture and construction related pieces, and it paid well and I won a bunch of awards along the way.

But after the new owners came in and cleaned house, I searched for another similar job, but my heart wasn't in it, so I abandoned the search almost as soon as it began. Which lead me to the realization that I should be putting that extra time towards creating more fiction in the form of serial novels, stand-alone novels, short stories, and novellas. Material that would provide passive income for years and years, as opposed to journalism in which you get paid for your time.

That said, since September '16, I've written and completed two novels. The Ashes and the forthcoming The Embalmer, the pilot novel in what will be the new Steve Jobz PI series. I've written the pilot episode in a new CIA-inspired series called Assignment Rendition, and completed two new Chase Baker pulp thrillers, Chase Baker and the Dutch Diamonds and Chase Baker and the Spear of Destiny. At present, I'm closing in on the half-way point with another stand-alone thriller, The Girl Who Wasn't There.

Also completed are several short stories, including Moonlight Gets Served which appeared in Pulp Metal Magazine and Dressed to Kill (A Jack "Keeper" Marconi PI Short Shot), among them. The latter was also serialized in Pulp Metal and will be published in its entirety under my own label, Bear Pulp next week sometime. Add in maybe half a dozen essays for the Vox, and several guest posts and pieces, and it's been one hell of a busy six months.

In the midst of all the new work, I also managed to rewrite The Corruptions several times in preparation for its late January '17 publication (Polis Books), along with a new stand alone, The Detonator, which will appear in January '18 in hardcover (also Polis Books). Amazing when you stop to think that I consider this part-time work.

So, with all this material needing homes, kind of like lost, wayward orphans, I will have to make the decision on who will publish what and when. In the old days, you wrote maybe one book per year, and hoped your publisher would push the crap out of it (which they usually don't). But now you have options. You can maintain your own list of titles of which you control the writing and the marketing.

But I'm a strong believer in having your books in the bookstores as well, and that's where the traditional market comes in. I enjoy seeing my novels come out in hardcover and reviewed by the major trade journals and papers. It gives me professional satisfaction and the respect of my peers. But there's nothing like having total control over your books as well, and that's where the beauty of indie publishing becomes self-evident.

I guess some authors choose to go hybrid because they feel it's smart to take advantage of all the publishing options out there in this, the new golden age of genre fiction writing. I do it because I really have no choice. Just make a quick count of all those books and stories I mentioned above. No way a publisher is going to take on all that work. They wouldn't be able to keep up, nor would they want to. I'm curious to see how the next six months goes, and how many more stories and novels I can produce. At 2,000 words per day (good words), I suspect it will be quite a few.

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An Unintended Creation Story

Who knows how David started out?

These days, Zandri's been getting a lot of people asking him where he comes up with his ideas, so he thought he might address the issue. The question, admittedly, is a difficult one to answer. When a lovely young woman asks him, "Where did you come up with the idea for The Remains?" the best answer the writer can manage is a shoulder shrug and a, 'I'm not sure. It sort of wrote itself.'

The answer, on one level, might be considered silly if not trite, a blow-off, if you will. But on another, more metaphysical level, the answer is as honest as the one God would surely give if someone were able to ask Him how he created the universe, not necessarily in seven days, but at all for that matter. Who ever really creates what he set out to create in the first place? Perhaps Michelangelo envisioned an entirely different pose for David when he started chiseling. Maybe Vaughn Williams came upon The Lark Ascending entirely by accident while messing around with his violin one day (or perhaps he found himself staring at a lark, on a lark). For certain, For Whom the Bell Tolls began as a short story, and blossomed into a mega masterpiece. God might have intended, at first, to create a universe filled with magical flying creatures and peaceful little cherub-like creatures who inhabit a lush forested world where no one wages war, no one goes hungry, skin color is the same but different, and religion doesn't exist (who needs religion when you are happy?) In the end, God got what we have now. For better or for worse.

The point here is that the power of creation is beyond us mere mortals. It is a part of something that cannot be defined by concrete terms or boundaries and therefore is a part of the universe. An infinite, ever expanding universe.  

So how did Zandri create The Remains or Everything Burns?
God only knows...

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