The Dark Days of Me and Him

In the claustrophobic town of Blackpool, Tennessee, Charlie Hudson dreams of escape, Audrey Allen dreams of being a star, and Theo Jackson no longer dreams at all.

After Theo Jackson's apparent suicide, Charlie Hudson only wants to play his guitar and watch the world burn.  He doesn't mean to start the apocalypse, but then again, he didn't mean to fall in love either. 

When Audrey Allen meets Charlie and invites him to join her band, she doesn't realize the high price she'll pay to see her dreams come true.  But she doesn't know how to stop the coming darkness...or if she even wants to.

As the world unravels, so do the secrets and lies surrounding Theo's suicide.  They say the dead can't speak for themselves, but that's not always true. 

The Dark Days of Me and Him is an experimental serial story told in bi-monthly installments over the course of 2012.  It follows the lives of Charlie Hudson, Theo Jackson, Audrey Allen, and the residents of Blackpool, Tennessee, as they try to solve the mystery of Theo's death and mend their fractured lives–even as the world whimpers to its end.

The beginning of the end starts February 1, 2012 at http://www.thedarkdays.com

The Point of It All

Why does this scene deserve to exist?

If your answer is not something along the lines of–because the story would die without it–then you must cut it.

I go through manuscripts multiple times before turning them in.  Each time, I mark my favorite passages and favorite scenes.  The ones that make me stop and say, "Wow! I love this."  I do that because I know that by the third or fourth read I'm very likely going to cut them.  

To be a writer, you also have to be part sociopath.  Keep the lines you cut as trophies or bury the bodies at the bottom of the ocean, but gut your work ruthlessly.  

On February 1 I'm going to unveil a secret project.  It's a free serial novel.  I'll be releasing 2-4 chapters per month until it's complete (which will likely take through the end of 2012).  It's an apocalyptic love story.  I'm not going to call it YA.  You might, but I won't.  The main characters are teenagers though. I also shouldn't call it a love story even though there is love.  The one thing I can say for sure is that there is an apocalypse.  But not in the way you may think.

 In addition to that, I'll be running a mirror image website for writers who are interested in the process.  I don't like teaching or preaching or whatever it is I feel like I've been doing on this blog for the last couple of years.  Because the truth is that I still struggle as much as the next writer.  On this mirror image site, I'll be releasing my rough drafts, character sketches, outlines.  So that anyone who is interested will be able to see how I got from my crazy scribblings to my finished page.

So, if you want to watch a sociopath work, check back next week when I'll release more details.  

Double Spaces in Writing

Don't we have better things to worry about? I keep seeing this issue pop up.  I even read a really self-rightous article about the double-space pop up in Slate, that went on to damn and demean anyone still putting two spaces after a period.  The nerve!

Here's the thing:  I learned to type in 9th grade.  We used computers with monochrome screens.  Before that, I was a hunt-and-peck specialist.  My typing teacher was a strict old dame who used to remove the letters from our keyboards so we couldn't cheat and look at our hands.  She was the person who taught me to put two spaces after ever period.  She practically horse whipped it into us.  It's more than habit, it's muscle memory.

Is it outdated?  Yes.  Does it need to be done anymore?  No.  Am I going to retrain myself to type with one space despite 19 years of writing with two?  No.  I'll put two spaces after my periods until the day someone drowns me in a lake.

"But, my editor prefers one space after a period," you say.   "What's a poor writer to do?"  Write your damn book.  When you're done, use Edit and Replace to replace all your "  " with " ".  I just did it.  4,797 replacements in 5 seconds.

Everyone is happy.  Problem solved.

Now, let's talk about the Oxford Comma...

And 2011

Last post of the year...better make it good.

Or not.

2011 was a struggle for me.  Lots happened.  Most of it was amazing.  Some of it was annoying. 

Now I'm looking forward, moving on. 

But before I do, I want to share a couple of 2011 greatest hits.

READY PLAYER ONE by Ernest Cline.  It's not going to win awards for being intensely deep, but this was my favorite read of 2011.  Fast paced and fun, READY PLAYER ONE was the book I needed to sail out of the reading doldrums I'd been stuck in.

STICK by Andrew Smith.  I'm beginning to think he's going to have a book on my list every year.  STICK is more than a great book.  It's experimental and sweet and the kind of book that you'll want to read again.

EVERYBODY SEES THE ANTS by A.S. King.  As a kid who faced bullies during his middle and high school years, this book spoke to me.  I've had trouble connecting to some of King's other protagonists, but Lucky Linderman was awesome.  And the writing, as usual, was brilliant.

INVINCIBLE SUMMER by Hannah Moskowitz.  What can I say?  I'm a Hannah fan.  She has a way of writing families that makes you ache.  And her sophomore effort was better even than her debut, BREAK.

Now that that's out of the way.  What am I looking forward to in 2012 other than the end of the world?


PASSENGER by Andrew Smith.  Another Marbury book?  Yes, please.


GONE, GONE, GONE by Hannah Moskowitz.  A gay romance set to the backdrop of the DC sniper shootings?  If anyone can do it, Hannah can.


PIECES OF US by Margie Gelbwasser.  I've already read her amazing book but I'm dying for others to read it.  The story of 4 fractured teens will break your heart.


SOMETHING LIKE NORMAL by Trish Doller.  I've been hearing about Trish's book forever and I can't wait to get my hands on it. 


KATANA by Cole Gibson.  Ninjas?  Samurai?  Shopping?  I've read some of this and can't wait to read the rest.




What books are you waiting for in 2012?

The last bit of business is that the blog and website are going to undergo a major change in 2012.  Over the month of January I'll be redesigning my site and changing the focus of my blog.  The truth is that I feel I've run out of things to say that are worthy.  The thing about blogging is that anyone can do it and few people actually have anything worth saying.  I feel I've become one of those people.  When I began blogging, it was to chronicle my journey on the path to publication.

Now that I'm published and part of the machine, I don't know that I have anything left to say...or rather the things that I do have to say shouldn't be said.  Publishing is a business like any other, and just like I wouldn't blog about the goings on in my day job at an IT professional, it wouldn't be cool to blog about the goings on between my publishers and I. 

But that doesn't mean I'm done blogging.  Just that I'm going to change my focus.  In 2012, I'm going to begin a project.  An ambitious project where I'll write a book on-line and publish it like a serial under a Creative Commons license with a 2 chapters per month goal. 

My blog and website will have two areas.  One for people who just want to enjoy the story.  I'll talk more about the story in January, but it will feel more like a television show than a book, because of the medium in which I'm going to tell it.  The reader area will have the chapters, info about characters, a place for people to discuss what's happening...stuff like that.  The other area will be a writer's area.  A place where I'll post the first drafts of each chapters along with notes.  How I go to the final draft.  My outlines and all the little bits of how I write.  The process of every writer is different, so reading self-important posts by other writers about what you should and shouldn't do in a novel are kind of pointless.  But maybe by sharing my process, someone out there will find something useful to them. 

I was aiming to launch this January 1, but obligations to my publisher and my day job have kept me too busy to keep that schedule.  So February 1 is my new launch date. 

And that's it.  That all I've got for the year.  I hope everyone has a safe and happy New Year, and I'll see you back here in January.

Rotters

I snuck this book in under the read-it-in-2011 wire.  I read it based on the recommendation of Andrew Smith. You should read it too.

You're either going to love it or hate it.  I loved it and hated it depending on the position of the sun as I was reading.

It's a dissection of the complexities of the father-son dynamic.  But done so in a rather unusual way–through grave-digging.

We say that there shouldn't be boy books or girl books–and in some respects that may be true–but this is definitely a boy book.  Girls will read it, girls will like it (or hate it), but they will never be able to truly understand it.

That's not a judgement.  It's not a dig.  It's a fact.  It's biology.  Only someone born a son can fully appreciate the horrific complexities of the father-son dynamic.

Happy Holidays

As I slowly suffocate under the weight of obligations, I wanted to take a moment to wish you all a happy *insert holiday of choice here*.  And remember, he sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake, so try not to be a dick.  See you next year!

Oh, Twitter! Thy Sword is Mighty.

I keep promising longer posts about something I'm working on that I hope to release in Jan/Feb, but a revision that I'm THIS close to finishing is taking up all of my free time.

But I've been doing something for a while now that I thought was interesting.  Sometimes I fight sentences.  I work them and rework them.  This goes for paragraphs too.  But they don't quite work.  So I'll take them and put them into Twitter and tag them as #favwiplines.  Putting them in Twitter forces you to conform to the character length rules.  And I want the lines to actually make sense to the people on Twitter who might read them.

So it forces me to rewrite the lines, and I've found that 99% of the time, the way I structure it for Twitter is a million times better than the line I'd been trying to rework.  I'm in crazy mode right now so this post is a little crazy too.  But the gist is:  Putting troublesome sentences/lines/paragraphs in Twitter can help you be concise and brief while still getting your point across.

Go, Twitter.  I still hate your new iPhone app.  Give me my old one back.

Love,
Me.