Monthly Archives: May 2019

BayCon – go there!

Road trip!

No, not really. BayCon is going on in sunny SoCal, and my publisher and two of the authors in Paper Angel Press are going to be there. Go visit!

Writing non-fiction is a little harder than I thought. Some of the items that I’m writing about, I got from other sources but put my own spin on them. I plan on having a bibliography, but do I cite the sources as I go along? I don’t want this to be a research paper – I’ve seen other non-fiction books just mention everything at the end.

I’m writing about summoning your muse. It’s not really “summoning”, more of a “calling to”. I’m running into trouble, again, with source material. I’m getting it from three different sources.

Research is in order.

Real Magic

I have decided to start on a new book. Blood From a Stone seemed to be mechanical, with no life in it. I got to the second chapter of the book, and realized that it was boring. Even though I hit the plot points did everything I was supposed to do, that was the problem. I followed a formula.

I followed the outline, and, I guess, the outline was boring. There’s a book called Story Trumps Structure, and it goes against the idea of using an outline. Sure you have “beats” and “inciting events” and all of that, but if there’s no life, there’s no story.

That’s why I felt I needed to do something different. I was talking with my publisher and mentioned to him about a panel that I could do called “Real Magic for Writers.” It would be about using the magic (chaos magic or eclectic magical practices) that I used to help my writing along. I drew up a proposal and he and his business partner liked it.

So Real Magic for Writers is slated to come out in October (I think? Or September?). With this one, I have an outline, and I’m following it, but I’m putting life into it because it’s about something I’m passionate about and that I’ve done for about 30 years. It’s something I haven’t done, a non-fiction book about a sort of secret part of my life.

And City of Heroes is back!

Switching gears

While waiting for the slooooowwwww download of CoX, I’m writing a new book.

I’ve stopped writing Blood From a Stone. I kept getting stuck, following the outline I had created for myself. I found out that I was forcing things to happen.

So now I’m writing a book for writers called Real Magic for Writers. It draws on my experience as a Sorcerer and Magician, as well as a writer of ten books.

I’m trying to keep the book conversational and easy to understand. The main point of the book is you can do the spells, but you also need to do the work behind them in order for the spell to succeed.

The good thing about this book is that the outline is clear. There’s no real room for diversion, once I can get the outline perfectly done up. With fiction, there’s rabbit holes even with outlines. With non-fiction, it’s pretty easy to go through.

I just hope that the people who read this book won’t go nuts if everything goes wrong.

Gaming or Writing? Or Sleep?

I have a lot of health problems. My internal chemistry needs to be perfect for me to function. Otherwise, I can sit and fall asleep anywhere, at any time. It takes a lot for me to work 8 hours, and then try to stay up for another four or more hours to try and edit or settle in for a game.

I can’t do it.

I eat, and I swear, half an hour later, I’m in bed. I read for maybe another half hour and I’m sleeping from 6:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m.. And still tired when I get up!

Between low iron, high sugar, and low steroids, I have no idea what the problem is. There’s too many problems to begin with.

And now I’ve found out that my old game, City of Heroes, is available again.

I want to go back to it, but my priorities are the story. I’m in the process of rewriting now. I want to game (I check in every once in a while but often don’t want to get into it). I want to read. I have to write. It’s not that I don’t want to do that; I feel like my body betrays me.

I’m on page 24 of Blood From a Stone, and it took me all week to get that far. I can only hope that I get further this weekend.