MODERN ARTIST/WRITER MASOCHISM ALSO KNOWN AS MAM

First, because I seem to hate myself on some subconscious and sometimes physical level, I’ve decided to write the sequel to my novel Beware the Ills in one month… Yes, that’s four hundred pages in one month, plus a month to copy edit. I might be dead by the time October runs around, since I have another novel coming out in that time span that requires attention. Yeah, I might die. Anyways, all this complication from my writing stuff was produced by a phenomenon known only as Modern Artist Masochism, or because as Americans we all love acronyms — MAM.

Whenever we as artists or writers (I’ll use writer in this post because that’s what I am) tend to have a little success we have this almost biological urge to jump ship from the very project that has earned us even the slightest bit of acclaim. We get success, and we immediately want to change our style, voice, or content away from the product that earned us an audience. We think, “well if they liked this piece, wait till they get a load of this other one.” This paradox stems from the modern stereotype that change implies better, where in reality change can sometimes be bad or good. The really talented writers can preserve their can change their style, but also leech onto what made them popular and universal in the first place. Their personality survives the change in narrative. Their personality is too powerful it can’t be contained by a certain genre. The vast majority of us do have a voice that matches with a genre, and if it this magnetic force is disturbed, we lose our presence as storytellers completely.

Furthermore, don’t think you can’t change style or genre if you want, just don’t do it when you’re in the midst of success. Failure and success are two sides of the same coin, eventually you’ll flip it enough times to get one or the other. If you flip it while you’re being successful, you can only fail. Time will make popularity in your writing dwindle; therefore, then it’s time to change. Diversity of artistic content has made us all masochists with our own projects. We just jump to something new without thinking, and this inflicts pain on us. We make this wrong decision often, so no wonder that we hate ourselves. We knowingly inflict pain upon ourselves while being successful… Welcome to MAM.

An Update About my Dark Fantasy Novel - Beware the Ills

Recently, I was thinking as an author, what I could offer my readers and audience concerning my recently published book (it has been out about a year) since the sequel is still a few months away. All I can really offer is some perspective on the story and its origin. It took me six years to write Beware the Ills, mostly because I was a teller at a bank and I would write sections by hand in a Moleskin notebook, which always seems to fascinate us writer types. I would also write on receipts and bank notes (no worries, there wasn’t any privileged leaked by a paragraph of narration). Eventually, I had this hodgepodge creation to type up, which took another year of my life. I eventually self-published the book on Kindle and in paperback. I’ve worked hard to sell the book at conventions, events, and to local bookstores. This is an unending battle, yet, I really enjoy doing it. I have complete control, which is pretty great. I also have help with copy editing and work-shopping, so I’m not putting out an inferior product.

Now to the guts…

Beware the Ills was inspired by three different things; the brave men and women locked overseas in endless war, the Roman invasion of Britain, and how my own consciousness tries to understand the complex world we live in. The book’s written in first-person, so I could use the narration of thought as a style and foreshadowing tool to engage the audience. You might realize when the author is lying to himself. You might not trust the narration, and this is part of the style. I didn’t want to write the standard three-act higher fantasy novel, but instead a fast-paced yarn about the metaphor of war, and humanities capacity for violence and change. When you write from third-person, you eliminate the taste of some details, and since war can only really hit our moralistic core when we’re given the grimmest of details, first-person was my pick of poison. The sequel will also deal with war, how we as humans are condemned to certain acts of violence, and also the social systems designed to keep us in endless conflict. Also, there is very little exposition in this novel beyond the main character. Stay tuned for the sequel in October where the world gets filled in a little bit.

If you haven’t read my novel, here are some links to it on Amazon. Thank you everyone for your support.

Find Beware the Ills in Paperback

Find Beware the Ills on the Kindle

Marscon Wrap Up

I've been wrenched away from my blogger duties due to the launching of my new child Calamities Press. If you need more info about it, check it out at www.calamitiespress.com or the blog entry below this one. I wanted to dedicate this entire entry to my experience at the local scifi con here in Minneapolis called Marscon.

First off, I had an amazing experience at Marscon: 2014. I was fortunate enough to be part of some really entertaining panels where I was able to speak my mind and sometimes (though rarely) sound intelligent. Those panels included; How to Market Your Ebook, The Hobbit, Poetry, and Dull and Realistic Characters. All of these conversations were excellent (though in the The Hobbit discussion I was branded the villian since I'm not a huge fan of the movies). Also, the panel seemed relatively certain Azog was never mentioned in The Hobbit, but he was by Gandalf at one point or another. I wanted to mention it, but I was already under fire.  

I was also fortunate enough to be part of the author's book signing in the swanky Krushenko's room upstairs. At this event I met a man named Dave, who was the regional Dalek expert (I had no prior knowledge of Dalek's or Doctor Who, may the heavens crash down upon me in streams of fire). He had the most energy of any one person I have ever met. I was trying to figure out if working on Dalek's required ridiculously large amounts of caffeine.

Besides the book signing, and all the panels, I was also able to do a reading at Marscon of my novel Beware the Ills, which was really fun and I'm super thankful for. My reading format is a little bit different from other authors (I do attend a fair amount of these events through courtesy and pleasure). Instead of reading giant strings of narrative for twenty to thirty minutes, I tend to read five to seven small sections from my book. Each section gets broken down to about five minutes each, at the very most. I avoid spoilers, and I pick sections of the book that can give the listener an overall snapshot of my tropes and plots. Also, I tend to read a piece of nonfiction with my novel, in the effort to explain how I got this way and why.  

Marscon was an amazing experience, and thank you everyone on the convention commitee for allowing me to be a part of it. I'll be updating this site once a week with what I'm up to, and how I'll be doing everything. Thank you everyone for your support. Please check out The Greenland Diaries, A Phantom Forest, and Chains. Thank you again everyone :)