It's happening again. Writer's block.
It's no myth. No fantasy. It's very real. And it's got me stuck.
I was cruising along, too. I'm approximately halfway through a new manuscript, I had all the major characters established, the plot was moving just as it should and then -- boom. Nothing. Every time I've sat down to write for the last few weeks, I haven't been able to muster a word. Not a thing.
The worst part of it is that it's largely self-inflicted. When I do think about writing at the moment, I'm thinking about sales figures, about distribution, about reviews -- or the lack of them, about getting a deal for my most recent finished manuscript, and even obsessing over the details of my first one -- why it didn't sell as many as I'd hoped, why it didn't get in more stores.
This is supposed to be about the process. The writing itself. Doing it for its own sake. Not for money (God knows I haven't really made any). Not for recognition (no problem there, either). Not for the business.
But for some reason, that's all I can think about right now.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
A New Day
I haven't updated this blog since July. Not that I haven't been working, I just haven't had much to put up here.
The other day my agent asked me to put up a "blurb" on her website (agentR.com) for the manuscript that I've been working on this summer. It's not done. I'm barely halfway through it, in fact. While I usually don't like to do this -- I don't even let anyone read what I'm writing until it's done -- in this case I'll make an exception. This project is all outlined already, which is another thing I don't usually do, but it means that I know pretty much how it's going to look when I finish it.
If you've read this blog at all, then you might recall that about a year ago (after several trips to the desert Southwest) I started musing about the idea of a horror-fantasy set in the Old West. The blurb that follows is the result of those ideas rattling around my head for a while.
The other manuscript I posted about a while back, "The Prometheus Gate" is still out there in the ether, so keep checking back for updates on that one.
Anyway, here's the teaser for the new one, working title "The Hand of Osiris":
The year is 1879. Bounty hunter Jacob Hatcher has pursued the outlaw Jedediah Sykes from the Texas prairie to the deserts of the Arizona Territory. On the verge of capture, Sykes escapes into a valley that Hatcher’s Apache guides refuse to enter, warning that the lands are cursed by an ancient, nameless evil. The trail leads him to a town that appears on no maps, a dark paradise of sin and vice called Gehenna. Though gambling and gunfights rule the day, no one in Gehenna ever dies. Unless everyone in Gehenna is already dead. Hatcher and Sykes soon find themselves entangled in the mysteries of Gehenna’s peculiar denizens – a pale dandy, a fire & brimstone Jesuit preaching to a city of lost souls, and a shadowy figure who rules over the town like a living god. When one of them makes a choice that threatens to damn them all, the rest must work together, confronting not only their own demons, but the hidden horrors of Gehenna itself, to find a stolen key that can unlock the domain of the dead. The Hand of Osiris.
The other day my agent asked me to put up a "blurb" on her website (agentR.com) for the manuscript that I've been working on this summer. It's not done. I'm barely halfway through it, in fact. While I usually don't like to do this -- I don't even let anyone read what I'm writing until it's done -- in this case I'll make an exception. This project is all outlined already, which is another thing I don't usually do, but it means that I know pretty much how it's going to look when I finish it.
If you've read this blog at all, then you might recall that about a year ago (after several trips to the desert Southwest) I started musing about the idea of a horror-fantasy set in the Old West. The blurb that follows is the result of those ideas rattling around my head for a while.
The other manuscript I posted about a while back, "The Prometheus Gate" is still out there in the ether, so keep checking back for updates on that one.
Anyway, here's the teaser for the new one, working title "The Hand of Osiris":
The year is 1879. Bounty hunter Jacob Hatcher has pursued the outlaw Jedediah Sykes from the Texas prairie to the deserts of the Arizona Territory. On the verge of capture, Sykes escapes into a valley that Hatcher’s Apache guides refuse to enter, warning that the lands are cursed by an ancient, nameless evil. The trail leads him to a town that appears on no maps, a dark paradise of sin and vice called Gehenna. Though gambling and gunfights rule the day, no one in Gehenna ever dies. Unless everyone in Gehenna is already dead. Hatcher and Sykes soon find themselves entangled in the mysteries of Gehenna’s peculiar denizens – a pale dandy, a fire & brimstone Jesuit preaching to a city of lost souls, and a shadowy figure who rules over the town like a living god. When one of them makes a choice that threatens to damn them all, the rest must work together, confronting not only their own demons, but the hidden horrors of Gehenna itself, to find a stolen key that can unlock the domain of the dead. The Hand of Osiris.
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