Don't Break the Chain

I have a 2018 Buffy the Vampire Slayer calendar. That's important later on in this post, but I wanted to let everyone know up front because it's awesome.

I've got a new productivity philosophy I've been trying out, and I'm going to tell you about it because, so far, it's working out pretty well for me.

I've always been a streaky writer. When I'm on, I'm on, and words spring forward from me like Athena from Zeus' skull. When I have the right combination of momentum, positive peer pressure, and atmosphere, I can churn out five, six, sometimes more than ten thousand words in a day. Those streaks are pretty fantastic, and I love how productive I can be when I'm on.

There's one major downside to this condition, and it doesn't actually have much to do with "off" periods--even when I'm not "feeling" it, I can still achieve at least 1k words, usually a minimum of 2k, if I go full bic-hok. It's more effort and takes a lot more time than the periods when I'm "on," but I can still put the work in.

No, off-periods I can handle. What I've realized, after a few years of writing full time, is that the most disruptive thing I can do to my writing schedule is take a break. (🎵 "take a break!" 🎵)

For a long time, I'd take a much-needed, and usually well-deserved, break after I finished a draft of a novel--typically two or three days, or at least that's what I'd tell myself. But two or three days would turn into a week, and a week would turn into two. Eventually I'd start a new project, but starting a project usually involved outlining character arcs, structuring the story, research, and other pre-writing. This takes anywhere from a week to a couple months depending on the scope of the project and number of characters.

A little insertion, here: there's a big difference, at least for me, between composing, or writing first draft prose, and pretty much every other part of the writing process. Composing is why I write; it's the part of the process I find most interesting. I think it's the most fun. And I love it. Pre-writing and revising, while each are very different in their own rights, both have more of an industrial, day-to-day grind feel for me. I enjoy them, but not nearly as much as composing. For me, composing is the heart of writing. Taking what I've planned in the pre-writing phase and forming it into prose is what it's all about.

So, after my three-day to two-weeks long break, I have another period of time, sometimes as long as a few months, where I don't do much actual writing, which for me is composing first draft material.

(And that doesn't even include holidays or vacations, where I usually take a break from writing as well.)

Trying to get back into composing--into the literal and, in my opinion, purest shape of writing--after that long of a break is very. very. difficult. It's sometimes so difficult that I've spent weeks (and, once when it was at it's worst, and combined with a number of other psychological, existential, lifestyle-ish issues, months) paralyzed as I stare at a story I either haven't started yet or haven't touched in a bit too long.

I've tried a few things to deal with this problem, but nothing has really stuck--until now.

My new goal: Don't Break the Chain.

Anecdotally, this advice is attributed to Jerry Seinfeld. That's a pretty reasonable suggestion, if you ask me, because Jerry Seinfeld generally knows what he's doing. Supposedly, when asked what his pre-eminent advice to an aspiring stand-up comedian would be, it was to write new material every day, and that, more or less, i what I've been trying to do.

The basic gist is this: My goal is to write new prose every day--to not break the chain. Every day I write, I mark an X on a wall calendar I recently purchased for my office. As I start to accumulate a "chain" of unbroken writing days, I get this positive motivation to keep that chain going. This consistency accomplishes, chiefly, two things. (1) I'm writing every day, and I'm only going to get better at it when I'm writing every day, and (2) I'm solving my re-starting problem--by writing every day, I'm keeping my momentum going and always staying more or less in the zone.

Now, to be clear, I'm not writing 2k words every day. 2k is still my baseline goal on weekdays, and I'm happy to write more than that when I can, but on weekends the drops to a mere 250-500 words, and honestly, I think that's enough. I don't need to kill myself on the weekends to get an extra 3k words in/week; I'm not worried about my quantitative output, but I am focusing on consistency. 250 words takes me between 5-15 minutes to write, and that's something I can do on my phone right when I wake up, or on my computer right before I go to bed, or whatever.

One drawback for me: when I missed two days after about a 70-day chain from September-November (my current streak started on the 21 November, marked below), my gut reaction feeling was shame--it felt like I was an addict who'd lost his sobriety, if that makes sense, and I don't think that's a healthy way to approach this (aside: I have strong opinions on shame, basically that it is never, ever a positive thing). Fortunately I recognized that feeling pretty quickly and was able to acknowledge it was silly and get over it, but still. There's that risk, I suppose. That said, whenever I do wind up missing another day in the future (which I imagine will happen; it'd be a pretty amazing, but unlikely, feat to end up writing every day for the rest of my life), I'll hopefully have a better emotional approach to the whole thing.

But, generally, it's going very well! I don't know how many days I've racked up at this point, I'm not really keeping track other than x-ing them out on my calendar, but it's been about three full months' and I think that's pretty cool. Productivity is on the up and up, and I see myself pretty much sticking with this Don't Break the Chain concept for the foreseeable future.

You can see I wrote all the way through December, which included a two-week trip to see family, the holidays, and my birthday. There were a lot of smaller word-count days in the second half of December, but getting back on the horse in January was so much easier--because, basically, I'd never gotten off the horse to begin with.

Wrote every day in January. Also, bask in the awesomeness of Giles' page on my Buffy calendar.

February is going well so far, too. Still unbroken. Also: Spike.

#AuthorLifeMonth Day 10ish: Fun Times

I did something cool! I suppose these count for #AuthorLifeMonth "non-author photos," which would be day 10. (Like I said, since I already did the whole #AuthorLifeMonth thing last year, I'm doing it again this year more as motivation to just get back into blogging again.) I went to a full-blown masquerade, tho. It was cool. You know, the "hide your face so the world can never find you" type. Proof:

We looked pretty good tbh.

To a prosperous year, and a new chandelier.

Take your fill and let the spectacle astound you.

#AuthorLifeMonth Day Whodunnit: Chaos Queen Theme

Back when we were working on the book trailer for DUSKFALL, we had some original music commissioned for the project, and the composer recently put it all together into a full theme and it is AWESOME!

Huge thanks to Mark Hoy for producing such amazing music, and to Garrett Gibbons at Cosmic Reach Media for putting together an amazing book trailer.

Check it out!

#AuthorLifeMonth Day 8 (kind of, I'm bouncing around a bit)

So I'm sort of going to kill two birds with one stone here because (a) I'm a bit behind and (b) they actually haven't changed much in the past year.

Day 5 was actually "Comp Covers," and I covered that funny story last year. Since then, each of my covers have been pretty phenomenal (seriously, I love love the Blood Requiem cover), and I'm quite happy about them.

Day 7 was "Writing Music," and that too hasn't changed much since I wrote about it last year. A couple new Audiomachine albums have been released, and they're still ruling my headphones during writing time. I've also been enjoying some music by Giles Lamb, one particular song I raved about at the end of last year.

And there you have it! I think tomorrow or soonish I'm going to post another not-so-AuthorLifeMonth related, and I'm actually looking forward to that; it's been pretty formative in my writing lately. 'Til then!

#AuthorLifeMonth Day 5ish: Your WIP

So obviously I'm not being super orthodox about the whole Author Life Month thing this time around, and I'm okay with that. I've missed a few days, and I posted my list of 2017 films the other day and that was fun. But I would like to keep plugging along with the thing, so let's talk about my current WIP!

Book 3 of the Chaos Queen Quintet, Blood Requiem, is currently with my editor. I should receive editorial notes from her any day now, and when I do I'll hit that last revision hard and get it ready to go into ARC production. So that should happen soon.

But for now (and for the past couple months), I've been making some nice progress on Book 4 of the CQQ, tentatively titled Fear the Stars.

I have to say, this book is coming together very nicely.

It's an interesting, and actually pretty unique, feeling. You see, I've felt very confident about all three of the books I've produced so far. I think they are very different books from one another in a lot of ways, and each have different strengths. But Book 4 feels very good so far. I think I might have something special, ya'll. Only time will tell I suppose, and I'm sure there will be at least some people who will not enjoy Book 4 as much, but at least for now I am very excited about it. Some really cool things--things I've been writing towards since I first conceived of the CQQ world and characters--are finally happening on the page. I'm writing scenes that have driven the narrative for almost a decade, and that is really cool.

So! That's what I'm working on right now. While it's difficult to tell, I'd estimate that I'm about 30% through the first draft (while Book 3 is shaping up to be slightly shorter than the first two, I think Book 4 might end up being slightly longer), and my goal is to have it finished by the end of March. Fingers crossed.

A little snapshot of my process as I write Book 4.

#AuthorLifeMonth Day 3: Last 5-Star Read

Technically my last 5-star read was Misery by Stephen King. It was actually even better than I expected it to be; with the exception of one uncomfortable description towards the end of the book, I thought it was not just a great yarn but also very well-written. But I've already talked about one of the things I enjoyed about Misery, so I'm going to take this time to give some shout-outs to some other recent 5-star books I've read.

The first is The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris. I've been studying story structure recently, and one of the methods I've been studying is Shawn Coyne's Story Grid. Coyne gushes about how good The Silence of the Lambs is, so I finally got around to checking it out. I can certainly understand why it's help up as one of the finest thrillers of all time; it delivered on all fronts. I enjoyed it even more than the film (the same can be said for Misery--and neither is a small claim, they are both very good films.

The second is Mother's Milk by Rachel Hunt Steenblick. This was a more unconventional read for me--it is a book of poetry inspired by the author's ongoing relationship with deity, particularly a female, motherly deity. It was beautiful, and absolutely a five-star read.

The third book I'll recommend is Long Dark Night by Janci Patterson. This book has one of the best, most harrowing takes on vampirism I've ever seen packed into a fast-paced thriller. If you want the anti-Twilight (in every good sense of the phrase), check this one out for sure.

#AuthorLifeMonth Day 2: Author Photo

Well, I mentioned last year that my photo needed to be updated, and that is still the case. My hair is long. I am sans beard (usually). But, hey, I do still wear scarves and leather, so I've got that going for me at least.

Yep, still rocking this as my go-to author photo--mainly because it does the job quite well (thanks to my cousin who takes fantastic photos--check out some more from the shoot), and I don't feel the need to fix what ain't broke. I also love the castle-y background.

WILL I EVER GET A NEW AUTHOR PHOTO? Only time will tell.

Also, yes, absolutely, one day I will.

#AuthorLifeMonth Day 1

Author Life Month is back! I'm excited to be doing it again, and hoping that it will jumpstart my blogging habits this year.

I'll be going through (most of) these prompts in the month of February (I'm not yet aware of any fan art for my books, for example, so I'll either skip that one or do something else). Some of the responses will be similar to what I did last year, but I'm looking forward to running through it again and seeing how things have changed.

So, to get things started, let's check out my books. And wouldn't you know it, I have one more book available than I did last year--Dark Immolation was released in June of 2017--and I have three more on the way this year! (Er, don't get too excited--two of them are translations of my work being released in other countries.)

The three of my books that are available right now are Duskfall and Dark Immolation, books 1 and 2 of the Chaos Queen Quintet (a dark epic fantasy series), and Frostflamme, the German translation of Duskfall.

The German translation of Dark Immolation, Feuerstunde, will be released in Germany on 2 May of this year.

And of course Blood Requiem, book 3 of the Chaos Queen Quintet, will be released on 5 June of this year!

Also, Duskfall will be translated into a third language: Polish! That version should be released later this year.

I think it's going to be an exciting year. Blood Requiem in particular is shaping up very nicely, and I can't wait until it reaches the masses in June!

#AuthorLifeMonth Day 25: Pimp a Pub-Sib

I haven't forgotten about #AuthorLifeMonth, I swear! I've just been busy, you know, writing Book 3 and all. I'll likely come back to some of the posts I missed in the near future, while some of them I'll probably ignore. Today is a cool one though, and I want to make sure I got to it, even if it's almost the 26th.

"Pimp a Pub-Sib" day is when I get to talk about another awesome author, either represented by my same agency or published by the same house. I'm in the pretty awesome situation of having dozens of folks whose work I could rave about, but because I have a special place in my heart for steampunk, I have to go with the inimitable Megan O'Keefe. She makes soap for a living, ya'll, and she's a fantastic writer. She also happens to be up for the David Gemmell Morningstar Award, along with yours truly. I'll talk more about that in a later post, but you can vote for either of us (but, unfortunately, not both) here. Go do it now!

Megan's current series, the steampunk Scorched Continent trilogy, is freaking awesome. And, for those of you who don't like to buy books until the entire series is out, I have good news for you: the first two books in the series, Steal the Sky and Break the Chains, are already out, and the third book, Inherit the Flame, comes out in April! So get your hands on these books, because they're awesome. Here's the blurb for Steal the Sky:

Detan Honding, a wanted conman of noble birth and ignoble tongue, has found himself in the oasis city of Aransa. He and his trusted companion Tibs may have pulled off one too many cons against the city’s elite and need to make a quick escape. They set their sights on their biggest heist yet - the gorgeous airship of the exiled commodore Thratia. 

But in the middle of his scheme, a face changer known as a doppel starts murdering key members of Aransa’s government. The sudden paranoia makes Detan’s plans of stealing Thratia’s ship that much harder. And with this sudden power vacuum, Thratia can solidify her power and wreak havoc against the Empire. But the doppel isn’t working for Thratia and has her own intentions. Did Detan accidentally walk into a revolution and a crusade? He has to be careful - there’s a reason most people think he’s dead. And if his dangerous secret gets revealed, he has a lot more to worry about than a stolen airship.

#AuthorLifeMonth Day 20: Favorite Chapter Ending

I had a few favorite chapter endings from Duskfall that I thought I'd choose from, but I skimmed through the chapter endings in Dark Immolation and just can't resist positing my favorite from that novel. I won't say much about it, other than that it's from Chapter 29, because I don't want to spoil anything (and I don't think the chapter ending itself will spoil anything, it's just too far out of context), but it's a pretty awesome chapter, and a pretty awesome ending too imho.

Astrid limped away, felt the burning heat and crushing pain of her charred left hand, the raw soreness in her throat. She fled Cabral's great hall, already feeling her body heal, already wondering whether her soul ever would. When she reached the entrance of Cabral's tower-house, she ran. She ran and ran, until she left Turandel, until she left everything and all of it far, far behind.

😏

#AuthorLifeMonth Day 18: Research

Right now I'm researching two subjects in particular. On the left you see ancient warfare, particularly the Punic Wars (Blood Requiem is going to be a war novel, folks!), and on the right you have Quantum Electrodynamics (for the Chaos Queen Quintet in general). Exciting stuff ahead!

#AuthorLifeMonth Day 17: Where I Relax

Two places. Our living room, because that's where I watch tv and movies with Rachel and play PS4:

And, once again, the desk in my office, because that's where I play Dota 2:

#AuthorLifeMonth Day 16: Where I Write

Our apartment has three bedrooms. One, of course, belongs to Rachel and I, and another to Buffy. The third, I'm happy to say, contains my office and where I do about 95% of my writing. I think it's a pretty awesome space. On occasion I'll get outside of the house and go write somewhere public (usually a coffee shop), but most of my writing is spent either at my desk:

Or the nice little chair in the corner of my office:

It's a pretty awesome setup. I seriously love my office, ya'll.

#AuthorLifeMonth Day 15: SWAG

Who doesn't like swag??? I've got a bit of it, myself. Most of it's Duskfall related, but I just got some new promo postcards for Dark Immolation, and as the release date for DI approaches (June 20th, y'all!) I'm sure I'll expand my collection. I've got wristbands and other stuff not pictured, too. I love doling this stuff out at events, so if you ever see me at a con, signing, or whatever, ask for some and I'll hook you up!

#AuthorLifeMonth Day 14: Favorite of Your Covers

Well, considering I only have two covers to choose from, this choice was surprisingly difficult. But I have to go with the Duskfall cover.

I love this cover. I love the look of the trinacrya. I love the ice/crystal theme. I love the subtlety and abstractness of it all. I love the color scheme.

I'm not the only one, either. As I've toured a few locations and sold a few books, I've gotten a lot of compliments on this cover. Most of the time, if someone approaches with genuine interest, it's because they're intrigued by the cover. That's pretty cool.

So, yeah. My book covers are amazing. I really like the Dark Immolation cover as well, and I can't wait to see what we'll come up with for the rest of the covers in the series!

#AuthorLifeMonth Day 13: A Favorite Book in Genre

I've gone into detail here about why I love Alden Bell's The Reapers are the Angels so much. So, I won't bore you again with the details. But I love to spread the word about this book every chance I get, because I think it's brilliant and incredibly under appreciated. If you haven't read it, you absolutely need to do so.

WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR GO BUY IT AND READ IT RIGHT NOW!

#AuthorLifeMonth Day 11: A Favorite Review

I've been really happy to see that most of the reviews of Duskfall have been overwhelmingly positive, and that I actually have a whole bunch of awesome reviews to choose from. This seems like an opportune time, in fact, to thank everyone for reading the book and, if you're able to write a review (whether an official review or one on Amazon or Goodreads--they are all incredibly helpful)! So, everyone, thank you from the bottom of my heart. You folks make the whole process worth it!

All that said, I think I do have a favorite. Part of the reason I love it so much is that there's a pretty funny story behind it. I also enjoy it because it's simply fun to read. Oh, and, yeah, it has some pretty awesome things to say about my book, so that doesn't hurt either :-). Nicole Evans wrote the review on her blog, Erlebnisse. Cool side note, she recently wrote a "Waiting on Wednesday" post on my forthcoming novel, Dark Immolation. But anyway, without further ado, here's the review:

Check it out!

#AuthorLifeMonth Day 10: Non-author Photo

Because I like hiking. And just. Look. At. My. Baby. So freaking cute. Also my wife is in the background, which I don't think reflects the actual role she plays in my life. She's the best and I love her a lot.

#AuthorLifeMonth Day 9: Challenge Overcome

Yeah, I missed Day 8 (Awesome Moment). I've actually drafted a post for that but didn't get around to revising or publishing it, so if I find time to do that, I'd be happy to do it retroactively :-). But, for today, I'm going to talk about a "challenge overcome." And this one's easy so easy I can say it in two words:

Dark Immolation.

But what kind of blog post would be only two words?

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: this book was rough on me. Let's look at the timeline first.

I began writing DI in the fall of 2014. I finished a very rough first draft a little less than a year later, I think sometime in the summer of 2015. I took a couple months off from the book (to hang out with my brand new daughter and do some work on a YA novel I've had swimming around in my head for a few years now), and then started revising it in December of 2015. Revisions spanned from December 2015 until August 2016. Then, after a long talk with my agent, more revisions happened between August and October. After getting some feedback from my editor, my writing group,  and some beta readers, the final round of major revisions took place in January of this year.

So, yeah. DI took me almost 2.5 years to write. (In case you're wondering, that is a long time to spend on a book--even in epic fantasy.)

What made it so difficult, you ask? Well, let me count the ways:

1. I've never written a sequel before. That may not sound like a big deal--and I did not think it would be--but I was absolutely not prepared for what writing a sequel would be like. I typically think of myself as a discovery writer, and that's how I approached DI, but I didn't take into consideration the events I'd already set in motion and the promises I'd made to the reader in Duskfall, and how much they would dictate what I needed to do in later books. This was one major reason writing the book took me so long; I used my regular discovery writing approach, letting the characters sort of do as they wished, but as I wrote I saw myself moving farther and farther away from some of the promises I'd made to readers in DF. That frustrated me, made the writing process more than a bit confusing and daunting, until finally I finished a very weak first draft. Revisions, in turn, took me so long in part because I had to spend a lot of time cleaning up and fixing and rewriting all of the crap I produced in the first draft. Let's talk about word count for a moment: DI, at it's largest, was over 260K words long. The ARC draft that's being produced right now is barely 150K. That means I cut at least 43% of the book (and that doesn't even count all of the stuff I cut and then rewrote in revisions). That is insane.
2. A lot of crazy life events happened in the span of DI, and I hadn't prepared myself enough to juggle them efficiently. My beautiful daughter was born, we moved, my wife started working longer hours at her job for a while, among a few other things. Most of those things were actually incredibly positive, but did not make it easy to write a book that was already giving me a hard time in the first place.
3. Some other personal issues that I don't feel inclined to expound on at the moment took a lot of my mental energy in 2016. Suffice it to say that, while on paper, 2016 should have been one of the best years ever, it was, in fact, hands down, the absolute worst. Like, there isn't even another contender for the bottom slot. 2016 was, far and away, unquestionably awful. (And, for the record, I'm not talking about celebrity deaths or anything on that level. While I'm certainly saddened by talented people passing on, it doesn't shake me up that much unless it seems significantly premature.)

Those three aggregates developed into a perfect storm of execrableness and writing hell. Each compounded the other until I was so depressed and discouraged that it was almost impossible for me to get any work done at all, some days.

To be clear, I'm not looking for sympathy. Things are actually exponentially better in my life right now, on all fronts--my life seems to have stabilized once more, I'm learning to either let go of or face and resolve the personal issues that came up last year, and, most visibly (and getting back to the subject of this post), Dark Immolation is FINISHED! The relief I felt at turning in that final draft was immeasurable. Ineffable. All of that means I'm feeling quite good right now, thank you very much.

To get back to the book, my relief (and sense of accomplishment, I might add) doesn't only come from the fact that DI is finished, but also from the fact that I think it's a pretty freaking awesome book. I'm very happy with the character work and events that occur in book two of the Chaos Queen Quintet, and I love some specific scenes in particular. (And I can't wait for you to find out what those things are!)

One more thing. As terrible a process as writing Dark Immolation was, there are some really great things that've come from it (in addition, of course, to a freaking awesome book). Namely, it's been a huge learning experience for me. I've approached the first draft of Blood Requiem much differently than I usually approach writing first drafts, and it's going quite well so far. I absolutely attribute that to everything I learned in writing book 2.

So, yeah. As a professional writer, the work isn't always cool fight scenes and character epiphanies. It's rarely that stuff, actually. But the cool thing? The end results are always worth the effort.

#AuthorLifeMonth Day 7: Writing Music

Ahhhh, writing music.

Some writers cannot write while music is playing, but I, fortunately, am not of that breed. I usually avoid music with lyrics while I'm writing, but that is certainly not always the case. So, without further ado, let me share with you some of my absolute favorites when it comes to writing music.

Audiomachine

From their website, Audiomachine is "a boutique, motion picture advertising music collective, specializing in original epic music and bone crunching sound design for theatrical trailers, television commercials and video game advertising campaigns." Audiomachine is my go-to writing music. I own every single one of their albums, and I think each track of theirs has 50+ plays in iTunes (with the exception of their newest albums).

I love their music first and foremost because it is awesome—"epic" to say the least. It's powerful, atmospheric, and conveys a number of different tones that are all perfect for writing dark epic fantasy. But I also love their music because I don't really associate it with anything--while I'll occasionally recognize a track of theirs on a movie or video game trailer, most of their music is not on official soundtracks, but on their own albums. This means that, for all intents and purposes, their music is the soundtrack to my writing. That's how I think of it, anyway, and it's pretty cool to (pretend to) have your own soundtrack, I must say.

Their most popular album is Chronicles, and that is a great one, but my current favorites are actually Phenomena, Decimus, and Magnus: B-Sides. If you are a writer of fantasy of any kind, and you remotely like music at all, you NEED to check them out.

Max Richter

Did you see Arrival? Did you wonder what that gorgeous composition was that opened and closed the film? I did, and that's how I came across Max Richter. (That track from Arrival is called "On the Nature of Daylight," by the way, by Max Richter of course. You're welcome.) Richter's music is subdued and subtle, but impeccably composed and capable of moments of great power. When I want music that isn't quite as bold as Audiomachine, I go straight to Max Richter. I've particularly fallen in love with his magnum opus, Sleep--an eight-hour tour de force that I've now listened to many times over.

Soundtracks (particularly from Game of Thrones)

While I enjoy soundtracks to a lesser extent, they do provide some variety to my typical Audiomachine- and Max Richter-induced music euphorias. My favorites include just about any season's soundtrack to the television show Game of Thrones (Ramin Djawadi is incredible) and the Skyrim video game soundtrack (which is surprisingly atmospheric). Both are worth a listen.

Sigur Rós

I've talked about Sigur Rós before, and they are easily one of my all-time favorite bands. The only problem with listening to Sigur Rós while writing, however, is that sometimes I get too into the music. SR creates the type of music in which you need to fully immerse yourself to fully appreciate. I like listening to them when I'm brainstorming and world building, and sometimes when I'm outlining, but I rarely listen to them when I'm full-on composing (unless a song of theirs fits perfectly the scene I'm writing, which has actually happened on a few occasions).

So, if you haven't listened to Sigur Rós, they are an absolute must. They are one of the true sources of beauty in this world. Buy an album of theirs, turn up the highest-quality stereo or headphones you own, turn all the lights off, find a comfy chair, and let their music take you.