Guess Who’s Back

So here we are again, another blog entry after a long break. A two year break, ARGHH. A lot has happened in that time. I fubared a computer, banged-up my body, and other not-so-fun hijinks. In between all that, I’ve been working, gaming, and well you know, the usual.

I spent most of 2022 in a depressive slump. Parting ways with my former publisher was a hard blow. I tried to not let affect me. However, in the weeks after writing my last blog entry “Faking it,” I had a far greater hit to my professional constitution and ego. I discovered the editing in The Goddess’ Respite wasn’t complete. It’s easy to point fingers, but at the end of the day, it’s my name on the cover and spine. The mistakes and incomplete nature Respite was in was ultimately my fault. Let this be a lesson to all upcoming writers everywhere, always double-check. Save yourself the embarrassment and humiliation. Trust me.

I’ll spare you the months of pity parties and self-doubt. The rest of 2022 was uneventful unless you count the gaming I did. What few highlights there were that year, I was putting work into Book 3 and fixing Respite. The first book was written in 2018 after four years of trial and error. My writing skills had improved in the intervening time, and since I would need a fresh edit anyway, I rewrote several scenes. They were hold overs from the earliest drafts of Respite and stood out like sore thumbs. This work continued into early 2023, but a problem arose.

As you can imagine, constantly typing wears out a keyboard. By late January 2023, half the keys were cutting out or sticking. I tried other options, but it was clear I needed a replacement. I should mention I have used laptops exclusively for the last ten years or so. My machine, at the time, buried its keyboard underneath the system board. In order to fix it, I’d have to tear down the whole laptop.

I’m no stranger to the guts of laptops or desktops. Being a PC gamer, I am applying new thermal paste occasionally and I’ve upgraded a few times. Luck was on my side. I found a distributor who carried my model’s spare parts. Because I was going to be going deep, I bought a static wrist band and watched tear-down videos. I was in no rush once I started. Rushing a job means mistakes are more likely, or so one thinks. One cable was being stubborn. No biggie, if they were loose in the socket, the average jostle a laptop receives would unplug it. I tugged with a little more force, and the cable came loose. So did the socket it was plugged into, and the metal fittings underneath. (I was pulling it the wrong way /facedesk) It wasn’t just any cable or socket either. It was the main line between the system board and the onboard display. I just fubared my machine. It was dead. There were only two points of solace in the whole disaster. I had backed up everything to an external drive, and I got a refund on the keyboard.

There was no way for me to buy a new machine. Not with what I had planned, but more on that later. Fortunately, my wife’s dinosaur of a laptop still worked. She let me commandeer it, so I could continue working. That was what mattered, I told myself, and don’t misunderstand me, it was. Nonetheless, I fucked up my machine. It pissed me off that I couldn’t just replace it. The anger lit a fire under my ass. Writing was well and good. I love my job, but for it to be a job, if not a career, I need to put myself back out into the wilds of the publishing world. The first step on this path was contracting an editor.

The money that could have bought me a new laptop went instead to paying for editing. I have been blessed to have friends with their foot in the door of the trade. This friend had started her editing business around the same time I was peddling around Respite to publishers. Five years had garnered her a lot of experience and wonderfully reasonable rates. We negotiated. A price was set, and I sent her my manuscript. I had taken the first step. One mountain left over from 2022 crossed.

If you’ve followed me for a while, you know that I have father issues. Namely, that my dad died when he was at 42 and I was 14. 42 seemed so distant when I was that young. However, 14 became 24 in the blink of an eye. Before long I was 37, and that knowledge put me into a cycle of horrific panic attacks which only medication could break me out of. Soon I was 42. In tumult of conflicting anxieties, I came to two conclusions. 42 was so young, and I was going to be 43 before long. See, my dad died 17 days before his 43rd birthday. As my 43rd birthday drew closer, I was on the verge of panic attacks again. The one thing that kept me sane in the first half of 2023 was the pending release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. It bears saying that despite my weight and other issues, I am in relatively good health. There was only irrational fear fueling my doom-thinking mania.

Naturally, in what must be one of the greatest coincidences of my life so far, Tears of the Kingdom’s release, May 12th, 2023, was 17 days before my 43rd birthday. I had to make it that far. I wanted to play it. In my heart, I knew all I had to do was hold my copy of the game in my hand, and I would be fine. Why? Because I knew once I had it in hand, I would be older than my father. May 12th arrived. So did the game, and for the first time in years, the fear of death couldn’t touch me. I had been told for years how much I was like him. Well, unlike him, I would see my 43rd birthday. With that thought in my head, I put the cartridge in my Switch and played until I wasn’t able to keep my eyes open.

Oh, one giant, but mostly unrelated caveat. I forced myself into a deadline. I needed to have a significant portion of Book 3 drafted before I was allowed to tear the plastic off the game case. I completed the deadline. When I started playing, I had Act 1 and a decent section of Act 2 typed up.

2023 was also the year for trips. I don’t mean vacations. No, that would have been lovely. I mean I tripped up and fell. I have cerebral palsy, and as I’ve grown older, the disability has worn me down. My first “trip” was in early March of 2023 in a gas station parking lot. I misstepped on an incline and lost my balance. There was nothing around to steady myself or keep me upright. The concrete was more than happy to step in though. How nice of it. The fall wretched my glasses from my face, and in the process broke my nose. I also smashed up my left elbow. Both mended well, just in time for the second “trip” at home. This time I did it good. I landed on my right hand and fractured the three outer metacarpals of it. That hurt like all hell because it is my right side that is affected by my disability. I don’t have fine motor control in it. As the shock wore off, the muscles in my hand wouldn’t stop having involuntary spasms for about four or five hours. The pain was so terrible, I couldn’t sleep. Eventually, my hand and I wore ourselves out. I ended up in a brace from August until the end of October. So far, there hasn’t been issue with it.

As the holidays rolled around, I was back at the computer. However, Book 3 wasn’t shaping up right. I was also writing in chaotic spurts. All signs I was in a serious writer’s block. Instead of being a mind-numbing distraction, the internet gave me a life line. A random meme came across my Facebook feed. According to the meme, the late, great Terry Pratchett only wrote about 400 words a day. That comes out to about 146,000 words a year, or in Richard-speak, a book and then some. Keeping to Richard-speak, that broke down to about two handwritten pages a day. That I could do. With that decision, I made another choice as well. I was going back to basics.

You’ve heard that writers buy notebooks and never use them. The same goes with pens as well. I’m no exception. However, I broke the habit when I switched over to typing things out a long while ago. For whatever reason, Book 3 wasn’t cooperating. It needed to treated in the old school fashion. After some digging, I found an old notebook I used for notes and ideas for other stories that never came to be. As all writers do, even if they don’t admit to it, I excised the demons of forgotten concepts out of the notebook, lest they interfere with my current concept. (I tore out the pages.) Then I got to work.

I had forgotten how it felt to bring pen to paper. There is something to be said about the way thoughts flow with the ink. I wrote as far as I needed to, roughly two or three pages, between 350-500 words. There wasn’t the need to rush. Gone was the daunting task of filling a computer screen’s endless blank spaces. With a notebook, I just had to reach the last line of the page. The daily writing grew into a habit. Since I began, I’ve burned through two pens and about 200 pages of paper. My god-awful handwriting returned to being eligible, at least to me. I found myself pulling on more nuanced vocabulary. Don’t worry, my grammar is still atrocious. No paragon status for me, yet. Moving into 2024, I knew it was time to take another step forward.

I’m pretty sure I mentioned this in the past, but when it comes to a work ethic, you’re talking to the wrong Shoptaw. I knew I lacked it, and into the new year, I knew that must change. I grabbed another notebook from the pile, and made into a work journal. Every morning, I write up my agenda for the day. Every night, I write up a review of the day. It is a baby step but it worked. I started keeping up with my Facebook page. I launched into updating the website. To call back to earlier, this is a job. It’s my job, and I have to treat it as one. More than that, there was an epiphany. I am an owner of a business. It has one employee -me- and to become successful I have to be responsible. You know, have a work ethic like my wife, parents, and brother.

So without further ado, to business:

The edit of Book 1 is finished. I have commissioned a new cover as well. Why you ask? Well, the book is no longer named The Goddess’ Respite. Let’s go way back to around 2015. My characters had been ironed out. Back stories were established, and I had completed a 230,000 word or so manuscript. After learning no publisher in their right mind would commit to such a long book from a rookie author, I had some big choices to make. It needed to be split up. The first cut came at the end of Act 1. The story was told from the vanilla mortal’s point of view, which was problematic for too many reasons. However, I had planned for a mortal-centric telling of the story and then write the same story from the vampire’s perceptive. These two separate stories would be named The Wraith and The Goddess’ Respite respectively.

Curious as to how Act 1 of Wraith read, I asked a friend and fellow author to read it. For anyone outside of the business, you’ll likely find her critique harsh, but it was the best bit of information I received to that point. The manuscript was soul-crushingly slow. It read like a bad teenage drama, and most crucially, it was utterly bereft of anything remotely supernatural in the story telling. This led to the conclusion the mortal character couldn’t lead the story alone. This put me back into concept phase once more, and I decided to combine the two-book concept into one. I removed the overwhelming teenage angst and melodrama and injected an all-new supernatural plot. This mixing became the final draft of the first book. I wanted the title to be as clever as I was for combining the narratives and kept the name The Goddess’ Respite. Expect there was one teeny, tiny issue, clever doesn’t sell.

A title is supposed to grab the prospective reader and tempt them to buy. The simpler the title is to convey the story, the better. Clever is niche and it is only understood by the author. It is this fact more than anything else that held back sales on the book formerly known as The Goddess’ Respite. In a few weeks’ time, I will be announcing the new title on here and social media.

For those who have bought the previous editions, know there are changes in the text as I have mentioned earlier. The story itself has not been altered. However, there is a new chapter at the end of the book. This chapter was originally slated to be the prologue of The Witch’s Cradle. I think we can all agree the original cut off for Respite was kinda abrupt and shitty.

While I don’t have a specific date in mind, yet, the revised version of Book 1 will be released toward the end of this year.

There are still details to iron out, but if my schedule holds, The Witch’s Cradle will be released in 2025 and Book 3 will drop some time in late 2025 or early 2026.

Also expect some other stories in the lineup. They are still in the concept phase so I don’t know if they will be novels, novellas, or just short stories. We’ll see what they are once they shape up.

Expect changes to the website this year. I am testing new themes to bring some style and function here.

One last thing before I wrap up. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for the love and support from all of those who’ve stuck around have given me. It is so appreciated. Thank you.

Richard
March 30th, 2024