I Love a Good Story

I bought my daughter a Kindle for Christmas. Tammy was less than enthusiastic when I told her. Like me, she has a house full of books. Neither of us have room left to add new shelves and new books. So I thought a Kindle would be a great gift.

I own a couple of Kindles myself. Plus a Nook. I love being able to carry an entire library with me wherever I go. I love being able to buy a title online from home (often for much less than a paperback or hardback) and have instant access to the book. I love my Kindle. I love my Nook.

But I love the feel of holding a real book in my hands. I love the smell of pulp and ink and glue. I love physical books as much as I love the words printed on their pages.

So does my daughter love to own physical books. She loves to move them around on shelves. She loves to leaf through the pages to pick up bits and pieces of new knowledge. And, when Tammy reads a novel, she loves to become totally immersed in the tactile kinesthetic experience as well as the intellectual experience. She needs to touch the paper to give the experience full meaning. She needs to have real books at her fingertips, not plasticized digital images.

You may have heard that physical books are making a comeback. New independent bookstores are springing up all over the country, and even Amazon has opened its first brick and mortar store filed with real books. Publishers Weekly reports increases in hardbound and paperback sales, and decreases in e-book sales.

And the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) published a study this week proving that library patrons prefer physical books and audio books on CD to digital versions. Library circulation data confirm the BISG findings.

That’s both good news and bad news for writers. The good news is physical books in bookstores and libraries reach real readers who want to buy and read everything a writer writes. The bad news is writers get paid a smaller percentage of hardcover and paperback retail prices than the percentage they’re paid for e-books. Of course, the retail prices of hardbounds and trade paperbacks are usually much higher than e-books. I guess it all comes out in the wash.

Lately, I’ve found myself buying the hardbound or paperback versions over the Kindle or Nook versions, though sometimes I buy both. When Light and Winds and Spilled Milk came out in trade paperback, buyers of the paperback could also purchase a Kindle version for only 99 cents.

A good book is valuable in any form or format. Some folks find it easier to read digital versions. Some find it easier to read print copies. Gretta loved to listen to audio books on tape or CD.

I’m glad to see books are still viable, and I’m happy to see so many people reading or listening to stories in whichever form is most comfortable for them. I also read graphic novels and watch movies based on novels or short stories. I love a good story. Don’t you?

 

 

 

 

Ever have a bad day at black rock? Today is mine.

 

An arctic cold front moved in to shake the last leaves off trees and scatter them willy-nilly. Dangerous thunderstorms last night left many residents without power. The winds are so vicious that Chicago has closed the Skyway until further notice. Wind gusts of 60 to 90 miles an hour rip shingles from rooftops and tear down powerlines.

I wrote about killer winds in Winds: A Novel (November 2015, 2AM Publications, ISBN 978-0-937491-16-4), and today I feel like a character from that novel. I feel hunted and haunted and targeted. I’m running for my life in a vain attempt to escape.

 

It’s a perfect day to make revisions to Impossible, the second novel in my Under the Gun series of thrillers. I love the four main characters in Impossible. I don’t want any of them to die. Unfortunately, each of them is hunting the others and it seems impossible that all of them—or any of them—will make it through the entire novel alive.

 

When I’m having a bad day at black rock, the only escape is to write.

 

I'm in Ecstasy!

Today was the official publication date of Winds: A Novel, and I’m ecstatic.

I began writing Winds (working titles “Whispers on the Wind” and “Written on the Wind”) in 1979. The first draft featured Philip Ashur, the main protagonist of a planned series of supernatural fantasies I tentatively titled “Cast Away Stones”. Over the next 35 years, Philip Ashur evolved into the villainous behind-the-scenes manipulator you’ll meet in Winds.

Ashur could astral travel. He learned the precious secret more than 8,000 years ago in the Indus Valley. Philip Ashur wasn’t originally a bad man. In his own way, he was quite heroic. Like all mortals, however, Ashur wanted a way to not only prolong his life but to accumulate incredible knowledge and wealth he could take with into his next lives. Ashur’s fatal flaw was he didn’t care what he had to do nor whom he had to hurt to accomplish his goal. I sought to follow Ashur’s quest for immortality, omniscience, and omnipotence through multiple reincarnations. I think I have done that in Winds. Spoiler alert: Ashur will return next year in Stones.

I pitched the idea to my agent Barbara Puechner in 1989. Barb said she thought Stones and Winds would be my break-out novels. She encouraged me to continue developing those stories. But, she said, editors wanted me to also produce the kind of horror and police procedurals I was already known for, and that’s what I did.

I worked on Winds and wrote a few short stories for anthologies and magazines while Barb took time out to deal with family and personal health issues. Gretta, my wife, also had family and personal health issues in the early to mid 1990s, and I experienced my own health crisis and close brush with death in 1996 and 1997. I didn’t try to find another agent nor attempt to market any of my novels on my own when Barbara Puechner died. I had nearly fifty novels—science fiction, fantasy, horror, westerns, and mysteries—in various stages of completion when Gretta died in January of 2012. If I wanted to see any of those novels in print before I also died, I needed to get busy. I completed twenty 100,000 word novels and began work on several more between January 2012 and November 2015.

4 agents and six respected editors expressed interest in my work, but none wanted to tackle the Winds series. David Niall Wilson at Crossroad Press agreed to reprint my previously published horror novels and short story collections, and David said he also wanted to publish all of my original horror and police procedural novels. I revised those manuscripts and Crossroad Press has been successfully publishing them as e-books for the last two years.

Eldritch Press published Abandoned, the first novel in the Winds-series, in March 2015. I pitched Abandoned as a stand-alone novel to several small presses, and Eldritch was the first to offer me a contract. I wanted to see how Eldritch marketed the book before I offered them the rest of the Winds novels. I’m glad I waited.

Because Eldritch Press did little or no marketing, I revived the 2AM Publications imprint Gretta and I had founded back in 1985. 2AM published Darkness in June, Light in September, and Winds in October. Winds was still in the hands of a traditional publisher in May 2015. The editor loved the novel but the publisher saw no place in their list for a novel with a reincarnation theme. When I received their rejection, I was thrilled. 2AM would publish the novel. If Eldritch Press does not renew their contract for Abandoned, 2AM will publish a new edition of Abandoned late next year.

Likewise, the editors who have considered Spilled Milk for nearly two years without offering me a contract, are out of luck. 2AM Publications will publish Spilled Milk in November 2015.

Some people have cautioned me against publishing too many titles in a single year. When you’re 71 years old and have been writing novels for fifty years and few of your titles are in currently print, you don’t want to wait. And you sure as hell don’t want to use pseudonyms. Been there, done that. I want all of my new books to be published with my byline.

I write every day from 9 AM until 2 PM, and again from 10 PM until 2 AM. I produce at least a thousand words a day of fresh fiction. I write four novels a year with time to do revisions and minimal marketing. Writing has taken over my life.

Although I have had ten new novels appear in 2015, those novels were written long ago and recently revised. I have another forty novels—some in first drafts, many in second and third drafts, and a few in partials with detailed outlines and synopses—in progress. And I have one or two brand new novels on the drawing boards.

I also have a couple of hundred trunk stories I’ll get around to revising for magazines or short story collections.

I have no idea when Damnation Books will publish Deviants. That novel has been under contract for more than a year and no publication date has yet been set.

I have news for all the agents and publishers who said reincarnation doesn’t sell: Reincarnation is the next big thing, bigger even than zombies. During the twenty-plus years that I was a professional hypnotist and past-life regression therapist, I regressed thousands of people who discovered their own past lives. I was completely booked up at conferences, and even today I get people requesting past life sessions every week (I tell them to buy my books instead). True, there are many people who are turned off at the thought that their karma will follow them even after death. The main selling point of Christianity is forgiveness for one’s sins. The fact that one is responsible for one’s actions and must suffer the consequences for everything one does is reprehensible to those people. They’re entitled to their beliefs. I pity them when they stand before their God and must account for what they have done with their talents. They’ll be up the proverbial creek without a paddle. Crying “Forgive me for I have sinned” just ain’t gonna cut it.

Winds is fiction. It’s a suspense thriller. You can read Winds as a stand-alone novel or as part of a series. The same is true of Abandoned, Darkness, Light, Time, and Stones.

I did something completely different with Spilled Milk. Part of that forthcoming novel is written in first person from a female’s POV. Part of Spilled Milk is written in third person from male POVs. Like the rest of my novels, Spilled Milk is not for everyone. It’s filled with graphic depictions of rape, murder, and mutilation and is meant as a cautionary tale. If you’re offended by graphic violence, please do not read Spilled Milk.

Read Winds instead. Then read Darkness, Light, and Abandoned. You’ll be glad you did.

Kirkus Reviews Review of Light by Paul Dale Anderson

TITLE INFORMATION

 

LIGHT

Paul Dale Anderson

2AM Publications (530 pp.)

$19.95 paperback

ISBN: 978-0-937491-15-7; September 11, 2015

 

BOOK REVIEW

 

The ghost of a murdered U.S. Army Ranger plans to thwart a plot to assassinate world leaders in Anderson’s (Pinking Shears, 2015, etc.) supernatural thriller.

 

Maj. Bill Ramsey is dead, but he won’t go into the light until he completes his mission. He’d been in Pakistan to infiltrate a secret base for training American mercenaries. His spirit guide, Vajrapani, a bodhisattva (enlightened being) tells him how to share a body. Ramsey enters the momentarily unprotected (and orgasmically distracted) body of

ex-Marine Randy Edwards, who’s already being wooed by the Worldwide Logistical Security Consultants and Transportation Corporation. WLSCTC is gathering former military personnel and plotting “something big,” which Ramsey hopes to stop. Fortunately, he has plenty of people and entities to help, including Vajrapani and intelligence analyst Deb Johnson of the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command. There’s a lot to ponder in Anderson’s novel, which blends abstract notions (like the astral plane) with palpable action sequences, but the author manages not to lose the reader. When Ramsey speaks to Deb, for example, it’s perfectly clear that he’s using Randy’s physical body. In the same vein, many characters are, for various reasons, familiar with bodhisattvas and the spiritual realm, making it easier for readers to accept that Deb and boyfriend Bill Porter can spiritually traverse the astral plane and physically teleport. Reincarnation, too, plays an essential part to the tale and explains why 12-year-old sex slave Anong becomes an efficient ally for the good guys. The story is sometimes a little too conceptual, like the description of spirits who’ve learned “how to manipulate the subtle energies from which was woven the very fabric of the universe.” But Anderson adds rousing elements such as gunfights, the suggestion of a mole inside INSCOM, and surprising connections (i.e., Ramsey knows the man whose body is occupied by Vajrapani). There’s also a bit of suspense; Earl Wright is an unmistakable villain recruiting mercenaries for WLSCTC, but the one(s) actually behind the plan for world domination may be something much more than human—and much worse.

 

Renders spirits and the preternatural realm as tangible scenes of action and intensity.

 --Kirkus Reviews

 

What’s in a Name? On Author’s Names and Creating an Author Brand

 

When I taught novel and short story writing for Writers Digest Schools back in the 1980s, many of my students asked me if they should change their auctorial names. Either they had very common birth names that wouldn’t stand out on bookstore shelves or they possessed very unusual names that revealed their religion, ethnic heritage, gender, or were too long to easily fit on a book’s cover and spine. Since I had only recently begun using my own name after employing a variety of pseudonyms on much of my published work for a variety of reasons, I urged students to choose one name, preferably their own name, and stick to it throughout their careers. I had learned that what matters more than the name itself is the quality and quantity of work associated with a name. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but a bouquet of bright-colored sweet-smelling roses matters most of all.

Literary history, like music history, is filled with one-hit wonders. Margaret Mitchell and Harper Lee come immediately to mind. Some writers pen a masterpiece first-time out and never write anything again because they feel nothing else they would write could surpass or even come close to their masterpiece. Some writers have only one story to tell, and that’s okay.

But the publishing game depends on selling lots of books. Publishers, like readers, seek out brand names they can trust to deliver consistent product each and every time. We choose those brands we know over no-name generics from displays in bookstores, grocery stores, and online retailers. We know what we like and we like what we know.

Two of my favorite writers are Henry Kuttner and Catherine Lucille Moore. Both were prolific authors who wrote under pseudonyms for a variety of reasons. Not unlike Alice Bradley Sheldon who wrote under the pseudonyms of both James Tiptree, Jr., and Raccoona Sheldon, Moore chose the androgynous name of C. L. Moore to disguise her gender in the male-dominated genres of science fiction and fantasy. Moore proved that a woman could write sword and sorcery as well or better than most men regardless of name. But Moore and Kuttner would be better remembered today if they had penned everything under their own names, or one consistent pseudonym, than writing under so many different names.

Some brand-name writers choose pseudonyms when writing outside their genre or writing in styles different than their fans expect. Stephen King wrote novels as Richard Bachman, Dean Ray Koontz as D. R. Dwyer, Leigh Nichols, Brian Coffey, Owen West, and Richard Paige, and Joanne Rowling wrote novels as J. K. Rowling and Robert Galbraith. Their already-established reputations were enhanced when it was revealed they were capable of writing outside their known genres. Though their pseudonymous novels sold reasonably well on their own, they became best-sellers only when the authors’ true names were added to the covers. Brand names sell books. Period. End of sentence.

My own birth name is too long to fit comfortably on book covers. There are far too many Paul Andersons in the world, and I don’t want to be confused with the legendary Poul Anderson (I was once on a panel at an sf convention where Poul Anderson was GOH and I was listed on panels as “the other Poul Anderson”). I have writer friends named Paul Michael Anderson and Paul Thomas Anderson. When I was a kid, I was teased for having the same name as Olympic weightlifter Paul Edward Anderson. I now use my full birth name on books, and my current publishers break up my name into two lines on book covers to accommodate the length. I no longer deal with publishers who won’t.

Friends like Mort Castle call me P. D., and Wayne Allen Sallee affectionately calls me PDA. My parents called me “Dale” or “Paul Dale” because my father was Paul Anders Anderson. Most of my male cousins on the Anderson side of the family were given Dale as a middle name to commemorate our Dalecarlian or Dala heritage from the Swedish province of Dalarna. I set my Instruments of Death series of police procedurals in the fictitious town of Riverdale in Dale County in honor of my Dalecarlian heritage. In Mysterious Ways, the forthcoming sixth novel in the Winds series, I honor Dalecarlian magic and explain the origins of the Dala Horse.

Paul Dale Anderson disappeared completely from bookshelves for twenty-some years while Paul Dale Anderson, MS Ed, MA, BCH, CI did medical research, wrote journal articles, and worked on doctorates. When I reappeared as a fiction author after the death of my wife, few genre readers remembered my name.

That became painfully apparent when I began book tours last year. Although some fans and book collectors asked for autographs on old copies of my published novels and anthologized stories and John Everson and Bill Gagliani even asked me to read one of my published stories at their late-night panel on erotica and horror, some fellow panelists had no idea what I wrote. Despite serving as an elected Vice President of HWA and as a trustee who signed the original HWA charter, HWA members at registration couldn’t find my convention name badge and gave me an anonymous blank attendee badge. My name was misspelled on the mass signing list and on panel placards. It took nearly the duration of the entire World Horror Convention for people to begin recognizing me. Only two people asked for my autograph during the Friday night mass signing, but by the end of the convention a few dozen more asked me to sign copies of my books (including one collector who had acquired copies of all my out of print titles).

I am the invisible man, the man nobody knows. My name is too long and too confusing with other writers to remember. Many of my contemporaries have died or no longer make the convention circuits. I am a ghost.

Part of the problem is I’m shy. I’m a writer whose comfort zone is sitting alone at the keyboard. I don’t aggressively ask people to buy my books. I’m the quiet guy who observes. I know you, but I don’t want you to know me.

I write about you. Sure, some of me appears in my writing, but I’m really writing about and for you. See if you don’t recognize yourself in my stories.

 

            I’ll be signing trade paperback copies of Abandoned and Darkness at the Nebulas in Chicago next Friday and at the Printer’s Row Lit Fest on Saturday. Paul Dale Anderson is prominently displayed on the covers of both titles. I don’t care if you remember my name. I do care that you read and remember my stories.

Buy My Books

My passion is reading and writing. I love to read more than anything else in the world, and I love to write just as much. I love to read my own stories as much as—often more than—I love to read stories written by other writers. That’s incredibly helpful when I revise a story for publication. I read the story over and over again, revising as I read, until the whole story feels right to me.

 I always purchase copies of my own books to hold in my hand, sniff the paper and ink, and treasure the words. I’m always amazed at what emerges from my imagination. Did I really write that? Is the writing as good as other works I’ve read? Does it hold my attention from page one to the final “The End”? Am I as passionate about the story on the last page as I was on the first? Will I do as well or even better with the next novel I write?

            If you’re a writer, you know what I mean. When one of my stories brings tears to my eyes and a satisfaction to my heart, I know how a genii feels when he grants three wishes to someone.

            What makes passion meaningful is the combination of suffering and ecstasy inherent in all worthwhile human endeavor. You’ve got to be willing to endure the bad along with the good. We learn by doing. We grow by choosing. We live by gaining and losing. We evolve by being involved. There is great risk to life. The greater the risk, the greater the reward. Passion means giving it all or nothing with no holds barred. Grab onto the golden ring and never let go. Follow your dreams through hell and back. Love every minute of the struggle. Persevere. Go for the gold. Dive right in and become immersed. Emerge scarred but exhilarated. Be willing and eager to do it again.

            Imagination is so wonderful and powerful that it carries us away to other worlds. It enables us to be many different people at the same time. It allows us to enter the hearts and minds of beings so completely different than us that we can barely comprehend their alien reasons for acting as they do until we realize that a part of them is a part of us and vice versa, and maybe they aren’t so different after all.

            Reading and writing are my passions. Telling stories is my purpose in life. Some of my stories satisfy one type of reader and have no salience for other types of readers. My Winds series (Abandoned, Winds, Darkness, Light, Time, Mysterious Ways) offers novels of supernatural suspense to readers who wonder about the meaning of life and death, who peek at the past to understand the future, and who seek truth in fiction. My Instruments of Death series (Claw Hammer, Daddy’s Home, Pickaxe, Icepick, Meat Cleaver) offers fast-paced pulp-style murder mysteries with dedicated detectives and modern forensic scientists to readers who worry about the here and now. My stand-alone novels and short stories are hard looks at flawed characters. There’s something for everyone in what I write, but not all of my novels and stories will please everyone. Pick and choose what you like.

 Buy my books and share the passion. Claw Hammer is on sale for Kindle this week. Only 99 cents for a good read.

           

           

The Real Secret to Success as a Writer of Fabulous Fiction

The way this whole writing thing works

© 2015 Paul Dale Anderson

 

If you haven’t figured it out yet, let me save you time and heartache. There is only one way to get rich as a writer.

Well, actually, that’s a lie. Writers tell lies for fun and profit, you know, and I’m no exception. There are probably as many ways to get rich as a writer as there are ways to win the Powerball Lottery.

But there is only one quick, easy, and sure way to get rich as a writer.

I’ll reveal that secret to you shortly. It took me nearly seventy years of writing in multiple genres and writing under multiple pseudonyms to learn the secret.

I read every writing manual and book I could find. I attended every writing conference I could afford. I wrote my heart out religiously every single day, and when I wasn’t actually writing I was thinking about writing. I became a master craftsman. I communicated with other writers and with editors in person, by snail mail, and via e-mail, telephone, and IM. I became an editor myself for both major and small press publishers. I submitted manuscripts via slush, agents, Submittable, and in person. I pitched in elevators, over lunch, and in bars. I became an active member of SFWA, MWA, HWA, ITW, and the Author’s Guild. I participated in panels and workshops at Worldcons, regional cons, and prestigious conferences. I was a Guest of Honor more than once. I earned my living as a professional writer who waited patiently for advances and royalty checks to roll in so I could pay rent, buy food, and make monthly health insurance premiums or pay medical bills. I dutifully filled out my Schedule C every year for forty years and even incorporated and filled out a separate annual return as a subchapter S corporation. I knew the writing business like the back of my hand. I weathered the death of a spouse, the death of a beloved agent, the deaths of friends and family members and mentors, and I personally survived a diagnosis of a deadly cancer that should have killed me decades ago and didn’t because I hadn’t finished writing the Great American Novel yet. I survived the digital revolution and learned to use Word and Scrivener and Adobe Creative Suite In-Design. I learned to create and market e-books and audio books as well as how to write fabulous fiction.

So what is this valuable secret I learned along the way? What is the one, sure way to get rich as a writer?

Stephen King knows this secret. So does Dean Koontz. So do I. And soon you will, too.

During recent book tours for my Winds series of supernatural thrillers and my Instruments of Death series of police procedurals, I met thousands of successful writers doing mass signings in bookstores and at conventions. I appeared at workshops and on panels alongside NY Times Bestselling Authors. I attended the Bram Stoker Awards, the Nebulas, the Hugos, the Anthony Awards, and the World Fantasy Awards. I spoke with thousands of professional writers and hundreds of thousands of dedicated readers and wannabe writers. What was the single stand-out factor every one of those people I met had in common?

Few had either the time or cash to pay $24.95 for six hundred plus pages of well-written fiction, but they were all eager to devote more than twice that to attend week-long conferences where they readily purchased non-fiction about the art and craft of fiction writing. They spent hours combing blogs and websites of well-known authors searching for clues to success. They bought multiple fiction books by writers who had published short articles or short books on the art and craft of writing and didn’t buy the books of authors who had not. Not only do successful authors make lots of money from writing about writing, but they make money from selling their fiction to people who have read those non-fiction works and personally identify with the author.

Not only does writing a book about writing generate significant revenue from that title alone, it makes your novels sell like hotcakes. Many mid-list authors earn more from their non-fiction books on how to write than from sales of their multiple novels. Combining both works magic. I’m willing to bet that Stephen King earns nearly as much from On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (which is superb, by the way, and every writer should read it) than he earns from novels that have not been made into motion pictures. When Steve was just starting out and not yet a household word, he regularly contributed articles on writing to Writers Digest and The Writer. He shared what he learned as he learned it. It was a kind of Pay-It-Forward type of thing. And it worked. It helped establish Stephen King as a brand name.

Don’t get me wrong. You still have to write great fiction and plenty of it to become a best-selling author and stay at the top of the charts. But thinking about and writing about the process of writing is an important part of the process to becoming a successful author. Writing success doesn’t manifest until your words appear on paper or are otherwise published. The more words you write the better your writing becomes. The more works you have in print and available for sale, the more you sell. It’s really as simple as that.

But, first, readers need to know your name and know what to expect from you. Writing about what you go through to produce your fiction gets your name out there and also tells readers what to expect from your fiction. It’s a win-win for everyone. Name recognition goes a long way to establish you as someone worth reading.

I’ll tell you more secrets in upcoming blog posts. Here are a few hints of what’s next to know if you want to be a best-selling author.

Sleep and wake up with ideas – the silver dollar trick of Tom Edison.

The marketing rat race.

Selling yourself – Isn’t prostitution illegal?

Becoming a brand name.

Only 2 ways to get rich as a writer: sell to the movies or write about writing.

The difference between being a great writer and a successful author.

How to use the trance state to write great fiction and entrance your readers.

 

Shedding Light on Darkness

My Winds series of occult thrillers are upsetting some people. Because I deliberately chose to reveal arcane secrets of alchemy, witchcraft, and tantra, I expected a backlash from evangelicals. Surprisingly, a number of evangelicals have purchased Abandoned, the first book in the Winds series, and read the entire novel from cover to cover. I’ve enjoyed some very interesting discussions with Christian evangelicals about the end times and how my books dramatically differ from the Left Behind books. What I didn’t expect was a backlash from the esoteric community for revealing secrets some felt should remain only in the hands of adepts.

            The complete series of novels—Abandoned, Winds, Darkness, Light, Time, Mysterious Ways, and their sequels—are filled with accurate arcane lore that many adepts believe must be kept out of the hands of ordinary mortals and wannabe practitioners. Although the novels are fictional with fictional characters, the principles of practice are spelled out in enough detail to be dangerous. Anyone with an ounce of sense and the ability to research can decipher the clues I’ve embedded in the stories.

            It has been wisely said, “When the student is ready, the teacher shall appear.” It you’re not ready to receive this knowledge, my words will have no special salience. You can read my novels solely as fast-paced thrillers and love these books only for the interesting characters and the epic battles. You may never see links to hidden knowledge, and that is as it should be. But, if you are ready to learn, attend to my words.

            Darkness should be available as an e-book from Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com by early May. Each of these new novels is a stand-alone story, and you may read them in any order. Winds will be out in July. Light should be out sometime next year.

            We begin with the breath. I teach you to raise the Kundalini power through pranayama alternate-nostril breathing and Vajrayama tummo breathing. Unlike Larry Darrell in Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, you don’t need to travel to Tibet and complete a hermitage in the Himalayas to gain this knowledge. Darkness teaches how to remember your past lives. Winds teaches how to master earth, wind, waves, and flames. Light teaches the secrets of the Pho-wa hinted at in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Shall I go on?

            Most of you know I am an accomplished hypnotist and practiced and taught hypnosis for many years. I am certified in past-life regression techniques and have regressed hundreds of people who re-experienced past lives. I did my doctoral research on changes in consciousness and cognition using techniques to alter respiration, and my master’s thesis was titled States of Consciousness and Cognition: a study of state-dependent learning. Few people know me as an acknowledged master of the Craft or as an elder in certain circles. I know secrets that have remained hidden for millennia. Rest assured those secrets will remain hidden until you are ready to discover them. I’ll provide the key to unlock many mysteries, but you are the one who decides which doors to unlock. I’ll shed no light until it is time.

 

Many of my novels have ensemble casts of characters. I group the twenty-some novels of the Instruments of Death series together because Carl Erickson, Tom Wesley, Troy Nolan, Andy Sinnott, Sally Brightson Nolan, Marsha Wade, Danny Wesley, Rat, George, Connie Kelly, Linda Davis, and a host of others are recurring characters. Both author and reader know and love those characters. We care about what happens to them. Our lives are intertwined.

            As I edited page proofs for Darkness and Winds, I fell in love with some of my favorite characters all over again. The Ranger is my ideal of a perfect action hero, plagued by guilt and seeking redemption for his own actions that resulted in myriad deaths over millennia. Biegolmai Daavvi and Lokesvara Sailendravarman are my ideals of supernatural forces for good. Udug Hull is the perfect mysterious stranger, part fallen-angel and part demon, who is bound by unbreakable laws established by the elder gods. He has little sympathy for the foibles of humanity for he has never been human.

            I first introduced Lokesvara and the Ranger in Abandoned, and Lokesvara also makes important appearances in Winds, Darkness, Light, Time, and Mysterious Ways. He is a driving force for good who usually acts behind the scenes. Yet Lokesvara Sailendravarman, too, is a fierce warrior. He is one of the Eight Great Bodhisattvas.

            Biegolmai is a shaman, part of an ancient tradition that heralds back to the beginning of time. What ties many of my characters together is that they are all wounded warriors who have made horrible mistakes in the past and often suffered and died because of their actions. It is said by shamans that before the physician can heal others, he must first heal himself. Karmic burden can be a real bitch. In Darnkness, the bitch’s lapdogs are the Erinyes, the daughters of Nyx. Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone are also recurring characters in my Winds series which marries shamanic tradition with traditional mythologies from the north, east, west, and south.

            This is the kind of epic fantasy I love to read and write. I hope you like Winds and Darkness as much as I do.

 

     

Bah! Humbug!

I hate winter.

As each day gets shorter and nights get longer and increasingly colder, people around me die. That, dear reader, is a fact.

It seems like all my good friends and close family members chose to die between November 1^st and March 1^st: President Kennedy in November; my mother and my wife in January; my father, my nephew, my aunts and uncles in December; Rocky Wood and Chellis French last week; just the night before last there was a fatal automobile crash directly in front of my house that distracted me from writing with dozens of red and blue flashing lights and wailing sirens; Elizabeth got a phone call yesterday that the pastor of her church passed away; and early this morning I was awakened by more sirens because the old guy across the street kicked the bucket. I was once again reminded how fragile life can be as winter steals precious time from my life and the lives of others.

 I have tried to protect myself and my house from death’s intrusion by surrounding the place with huge living trees and a berm of thick bushes. Twice in the twenty-some years I have lived here those trees and bushes intervened to save my life by stopping careening cars from crashing through the front of my house. I live on one of the busiest east-west thruways connecting the city of Rockford with Chicago, and cars daily race past my house at dangerously high rates of speed. I have witnessed automobiles crash into my big magnolia trees, and I have had my picture window punctured by bullets during drive-bys while I sat near the window writing. Not all of these things happen only in winter, of course. But it seems attempts on my life happen more frequently between the first of November and the first of March.

My thesis and dissertation advisors insistently reminded me throughout grad school that correlation does not prove causation, and I rationally realize that darkness alone does not cause death. After all, Elvis died in August, and plenty of people do die during daylight hours. But I see the grinning spectre of death hanging around my house during the darkness of winter, waiting patiently for me to emerge from my fortress. Let him wait, I say. I don’t plan to venture out into that long goodnight anytime soon.

This is the mood that infects my writing in winter. I have half a dozen short stories currently in progress, plus three new novels. All focus on death and dying. Come spring, my writing will focus on rebirth. Writers cannot help but be affected by their environment, and that includes weather and diminished daylight. Several of my writer friends have found their output in winter adversely affected by bouts of illness. Other friends have mentioned debilitating depression. I empathize with them. Winter takes its inevitable toll on all of us. I hate winter with a passion.

My protagonists are survivors who battle darkness to emerge victorious from winter, and the eight protagonists of my upcoming Abandoned-series of novels are able to consciously choose when to die. They cannot escape death entirely, although some of my antagonists try. Only one of the Abandoned novels was written in winter. It’s titled Winds. It’s followed by Darkness and then by Light. The fifth novel is entitled Time.  Abandoned will be published next March by Eldritch Press. They are all stand-alone novels with some recurring characters. Each is around 120,000 words.  That’s nearly a million words devoted to the themes of death, dying, and rebirth.

In each of those novels, a primary protagonist dies. I want readers to know that death is not the end of the adventure but the beginning. Yes, dear reader, there is light at the end of the tunnel, and day always follows night.

So be of good cheer, and don’t let the darkness get to you. Celebrate the holidays and the return of the Light.