TEN SHORT ESSAYS ON WRITING

by

David Bain

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Copyright 2013

by A/A Productions & David Bain

Smashwords, License Notes

A/A Productions Publications: http://bit.ly/aaprodu

http://DavidBainBooks.com

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction by David Bain

ESSAYS ON WRITINGTime and the Non Full-Time WriterThe One Surefire Way to Beat Writer's BlockBasic E-Book Self-Publishing Advice for NewbiesOn Revision: Love, Hate, and Saying "Good Enough"The Writing Life Begins at 44For Writers, Social Media Should Be Little More Than PlaytimeWhen "Real Life" Encroaches on Writing TimeYour Assignment: To Be Truly AliveOn Genre, Music and LimitationsYour Dog Need Never Eat Your Homework (or Your Novel) Again

ESSAYS SPECIFICALLY ABOUT MY OWN WORKHow the Will Castleton Stories Got Started...Writing: Art, Business & JimiA Comprehensive Guide to My Fictional Town of Green River, Michigan

INTERVIEWSInterview with C. Dennis Moore: "On Reviewing"Interview with Michael K. Rose

Books by David Bain

Introduction

A few caveats on this little book. It is exactly what the title says: Ten Short Essays on Writing.

Well, actually, there are a few extras – a couple essays about my own work and a couple interviews with writer friends who you should check out.

The caveats: 1. It’s a short book, about 11,000 words. The print version is about 130 pages.2. While talking about writing, I sometimes discuss my own work and provide links to places

you can buy it. It’s what midlist writers do – call that caveat #2.5: I haven’t written dozens of bestsellers, but I have several novels under my belt under my own name and others and have had more than 100 stories and poems accepted by actual editors in the professional world, despite the fact that I mostly self-publish these days. I’ve also taught writing at the college level for … let’s just say for significantly more than a decade…

3. These essays appear for free on my blog if you want to dig around for them there. 4. No book on writing can truly change your writing life. Butt in chair in front of keyboard is

the only way to change your writing life. Books like this can, however, inspire you, point you in a direction, give you a boost on the days you don’t want to write. And that’s all I’m really hoping to do with this little collection. There are many, many days when I don’t wanna, don’t think I can, don’t have the time, and I need to read (or write) something like this first essay here to kick myself into gear…

ESSAYS ON WRITING

Time and the Non Full-Time WriterTime can be a problem for the indie or non-full-time writer.You have kids. You have a day job. Plus maybe a part-time job. Or two!My personal worst timecrunch ever was a 16-week period in which I taught a college class

every weeknight except Friday, plus three online courses. But that was just for starters. I also worked full-time five days a week as an aide in a middle school special education room. Does it sound like I was swamped yet? Well, I also worked 32 hours on the weekends in a group home for the developmentally disabled.

You can’t write under those circumstances, right?Wrong.My goal that semester, in addition to seeing my family every now and then and somehow

grading 140 or so student essays per week, was to write at least 100 words of fiction per day. I

kept a ballpoint pen in the front pocket of my shirt and a small spiral-bound notebook in the back pocket of my Dockers, snug up against my wallet. I wrote in the bathroom. During my breaks. For fifteen minutes before allowing myself to drop, exhausted, into bed.

I wrote a little bit on a novel during that time, but mostly I completed several short stories, all of which were eventually typed up and published. (One of them was “Companion”, my piece in the Dark Highways collection.)

Yeah, you say, but 100 words? Come on! That’s … nothing!And you’re right. That's chump change. That’s five minutes of work, during a bathroom

break.But my spirit wasn’t crushed. Every day there was forward momentum on a piece of fiction.

Every day I could spend my driving commutes and the moments before sleep thinking about the next 100 words instead of feeling miserable about the stagnating work dying of loneliness in a file on my laptop.

Because I had set a manageable goal and regularly achieved it.And, sure, most of the time I got considerably more than 100 words. But if I did get only

100, I was good for the day.Sixteen weeks times 100 words per day = 16x7x100 = 11,200 words.I probably got at least double that.A third of a decent-sized novel.Written longhand, during five-minute bathroom breaks.Keep up my goal of 100 words per day for a year and you’ve got half a novel.That’s just two years for your novel to get written by hand during coffee breaks - there are

plenty of novelists who don’t come out with a novel every two years.And, chances are you’ll do more than 100 words per day.Bump it up to 150 words per day, and your novel, if it’s in the shorter ranges, is nearly

finished in a year.And, chances are you can arrange your schedule to accommodate more than five minutes in

the bathroom to write.If you say you can't write like that, if you need an extended block of time to gather your

thoughts, plus your pristinely arranged desk, your framed picture of Stephen King for inspiration and percolating potpourri wafting around your library before you can write word one, well, I congratulate you on either your success, your spouse's success or your trust fund.

I will maintain that spending ten years as a journalist was the best literary training I ever received. You write under deadlines. You write in a crowded room, with CNN blaring. The story you're still making phone calls on as you're writing it just happened fifteen minutes before, the paper's going to print in ten minutes and the editor's screaming about why he didn't have it half an hour ago. You learn to write fast and under virtually any circumstances.

These days I write on my lunch break between teaching classes.On the deck, while grilling.For ten minutes while the macaroni is boiling.And the hour in the swimming pool lobby while the kids are at practice is absolute gold.I have the computer in the garage when I’m cleaning it. Write a sentence, stack a can of oil,

write a sentence.As a college prof, I’m lucky to have days off. I can squeeze in maybe two entire hours of

straight writing before grading papers and discussion boards, before taking care of personal business, house chores, meetings, phone calls, etc.

Two straight hours just to write! Sheer luxury!

The One Surefire Way to Beat Writer's BlockI’ll say it again: I don’t believe in writer’s block.I used to. But I haven’t for at least twenty years or so.Writer’s block is, for one thing, unprofessional. For another, it’s an affect, a pose. It’s

something you tell your friends, your teacher, fellow barflies, every stranger who will listen. It’s for comfortable people who want to appear to be struggling, tortured artists. Writer’s block is for the effete, the lazy, the inexperienced.

Writer’s block is a luxury, bought by those who can afford it.Writer’s block is, in short, an excuse.What do I believe in?I do believe in procrastination. I most heartily believe in that.But not writer’s block.I also believe in getting stuck.I believe in being out of ideas.I believe in feeling uninspired.I believe in feeling down.All of that.But I don’t believe in writer’s block.

***Here’s what I tell my students who claim they have writer’s block.Write about what you’re writing about.They look at me in apathy, confusion, or, worst of all, horror.And so I repeat it: Write about what you’re writing about.

***It always works.Spend a paragraph, three, five, a page, five pages, fifty, writing about the project at hand.We’re talking freewriting in every sense of the word.Bad grammar. No attention to punctuation. No attention to capitalization, style, form, genre.

No attention, even, to what might actually work, to what might possibly make sense, in context.Don’t let the keys stop clacking, don't let the pen stop moving.Write down shitty ideas. Write down jejune stuff you’re angry at yourself for even daring to

suggest.Then write some more.Write about what you’re writing about.

***This is what I do when I’m stuck:I open a new Word document.I write random crap about what I’m writing about.Most important of all: I totally forgive myself for anything that might wind up on the page.After two minutes or twenty or two-hundred, an answer finally crystallizes.

***I thank the Muses.And then I go on to that day’s word count on the project at hand.

It always works.***

My students look at me in horror because ... how dare I suggest they don’t simply add words to the project at hand, even if their minds can't come up with the words?

Typing time is valuable, man!How dare I suggest that they waste valuable typing time gathering ideas, brainstorming,

woolgathering, instead of slathering on the next load of random required page length? Even if that random page length sucks or isn't readily forthcoming to their already stressed psyches?

Typing should equal production, right?***

Here’s the thing:It does. Typing does equal production. That’s the entire point.First of all, just the physical act of idea-focused typing gets the creative juices flowing.It simply does.Second of all, even if a focused freewriting session doesn’t come to fruition (which never

happens), I still save it. Every single one. (Words actually take up more space longhand than they do on your hard drive.)

Then, whenever I’m stuck for an idea, I look over the freewritings.There’s always a germ of an idea there.Or, if not, there’s always another freewriting to be done.(If you have a life free of ongoing concerns to freewrite about … dude!)If an idea seems even potentially worthy, but hasn’t quite gelled just yet, I write about what I

might be writing about…Seriously - using this method, I am never at loss for an idea for perhaps more than a minute

or two.Writer’s block is simply about not wanting to deal with whatever you’re writing about.When in doubt, write about what you’re writing about.

Basic E-Book Self-Publishing Advice for NewbiesIf you're experienced at publishing ebooks, you can move along; there's probably not much

new in what follows. It's just some bare basics about the web sites and tools with which all self-publishers should familiarize themselves.

I'm posting this because this morning a friend's college-age son asked me about the covers to my self-published novels and stories, as he was thinking about publishing one of his own works on Smashwords. I found the specific mention of only Smashwords (as opposed to Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing or Barnes & Noble's Pubit) interesting, so I added in a list of other potential publishing sites and tools. As this isn't the first time someone totally new to self-publishing has asked me how to get started, I decided to make a permanent blog post I can send them to.

Here's a cut-and-paste of the letter (well, Facebook instant message) I sent this morning:Hi XXXX.I made the cover myownself. In fact, until I hit the lottery, I make all my own covers. (Like

that kid who pipes up during the logo after The X Files: "I made this!")I'm too cheap to own Photoshop, so I use the free program from getpaint.net (Many people

prefer GIMP - http://gimp.org )

You can get loads of free or low-priced stock photos from dreamstime.com and stock.xchng - www.sxc.hu/ - and a bunch of other sites. Also, sometimes, if you ask real nice, folks at deviantart.com or elfwood.com will let you use their artwork for just an art credit in the book or for reasonable one-time fees - really depends on the artist: I doubt Clive Barker, who has a Deviant Art account, is going to let you use his paintings for your ebook covers, at least not at a price most of us can afford.

The most important thing you can do is post your ebook to Amazon ( http://kdp.amazon.com ) for the Kindle - that's where most of my sales come from, not Smashwords. Smash is supposedly going to distribute their books to Amazon someday, but they've been promising it for at least two years now and it hasn't happened yet.

Still, Smashwords is great because it converts your ebook into a variety of formats and distributes it to a bunch of other sites - including Barnes & Noble. If you're pricing your work below $2.99, you're fine letting Smash take care of it. (It usually takes a few weeks for it to hit the other markets.)

BUT, if you price it for $2.99 or more, it's probably in your interest to take the time and post it yourself a few other places. These would include B&N ( http://pubit.com ) and kobo ( www.kobobooks.com/kobowritinglife ). You get a better rate of return at $2.99 and up by posting to these two yourself than you would letting Smash distribute.

I also post my stuff at DriveThruFiction.com, but the sales there, for me, at least, are negligible - however, their sales reporting system is instant, transparent, thorough, and super-user friendly, as is their support department. They seem in it for the long haul, and I think they're a real up-and-comer who'll eventually break through. Their main audience right now seems to be gamers interested in PDF format files - it's hard to read a dungeon map on your Kindle - so if your writing leans in that direction, I'd definitely encourage you to go with them.

If you want to do a print version of your book, Amazon's CreateSpace ( http://createspace.com ) is probably the best. (Never, EVER do anything with PublishAmerica - you're much better off self-publishing than touching these shysters with a ten-foot metaphor.) Lulu.com's okay for print books, but CreateSpace is super user friendly and automatically lists your book on Amazon, tying it in directly with your Kindle ebook, if you have one. They can turn anything 24 pages or up into a print book. You need, like, 130 pages before you can have words on the spine, but the resulting product looks pretty sweet. Here's a blog entry featuring photos of the print editions of my books.

There are a number of ebook gurus blogging online. Aspiring self-publishers should follow The Self-Publishing Podcast, period. (The podcast authors’ book Write, Publish, Repeat is essential!) Also author DeanWesley Smith's blog and J. A. Konrath's.

Any of the publishing sites above will convert your Word doc into the appropriate files - be forewarned that Smashwords is quite particular about formatting, but they have a good guide you can download for free. If, however, you want to do the formatting yourself and be assured of exactly how your .mobi or .epub file will look, I've found two free programs helpful. Check out Calibre ( http://calibre-ebook.com/ ) and MobiPocket ( http://www.mobipocket.com/en/downloadsoft/productdetailscreator.asp )

Unless you own a variety of ebook readers, you'll probably also want the free downloads of Adobe Digital Editions (reads PDF, .epub and XHTML) and Kindle for PC (reads .mobi and .prc) so you can preview your ebook in multiple formats.

That's about all the advice I can think of this morning, but if you have any questions along the way (or learn of something neat I don't know about) hit me up!

On Revision: Love, Hate, and Saying "Good Enough"When it comes to releasing a piece of writing into the world, basically one of three things

happens:1) It’s a piece with a deadline. You revise as best you can, the deadline comes, and thus you

must say “good enough” and release it into the world.2) It’s a piece without a deadline. You revise and revise and revise until, eventually, be it in

frustration, workmanlike professionalism, or in ecstasy, you say “good enough” and you release it into the world.

3) You die. Therefore you can no longer revise, but, if your piece is nonetheless deemed good enough, someone releases it into the world.

Notice the word “revise” in each of these.Revision’s been on my mind lately. My English 101 students’ final revision of their first

major essay is due on Monday, and we spent a good deal of the last class session discussing revision. I am myself in the process of revising DEATH SIGHT - the first novel featuring my psychic investigator Will Castleton, who’s previously appeared in several stories.

My experience is that a lot of newer writers don’t think much of revision - or they tend to think it’s about fixing typos and not much more. After all, you’ve already written the piece! Further writing is further work, and why do it if the first draft communicates more or less effectively?

My job as a teacher, I think, is to impress upon students the fact that revision is simply part of the process. It’s what writers do.

At least good writers.One thing I do to convince students of this - and it’s often a revelation to them - is show them

Stephen King’s first draft of his short story “1408” from his book On Writing. King’s four or five manuscript pages have typos, lines and arrows, an entire three-quarters of a page marked for deletion, several new sentences and a small paragraph to be inserted. I use King as an example because every single student I’ve ever had has heard of him. This is a guy with more than 50 bestsellers under his belt, a movie having been made of pretty much every one. He’s been at it for nearly 40 years now. Millions of words. Millions of readers. An icon, an institution. And still his first drafts look like this.

Revision is not just something teachers make students do.I’ll say it again: It’s just what good writers do.It simply never gets to the point where it goes from the brain, into the keyboard, and straight

to the publisher.Doesn’t happen.Which is why newspapers, despite the best efforts of the journalists, the editors and the

copyeditors, are so riddled with typos, be it The Parsnipininnyville Navel Gazer or The Wall Street Journal. Newspapers - I spent about ten years writing for them - are simply written and published too quickly to catch everything. It’s amazing they’re as good as they are with their blink-and-you’ll-miss-it deadlines.

Me, I have a love/hate relationship with revision.If revision were a woman, we’d still be married, but we’d be in counseling. The days would

be hell, but the sex would be great.And in the end we’d stay together for the kids.

No, seriously.I hate the work I have to put into it. The timesuck. I want the novel, the short story, the poem,

the essay, the article to be done and published already.But I love that I’m making the work all that it can be.Still, I hate to find my errors, large and small. I hate to admit I was so goddamned imperfect

on my first pass through.And yet I love that the first draft reads so much better than I would ever have dreamed.

"See?" I tell myself. "You can give that inner critic dude a nice little beatdown. You're not as bad as all that! In fact, you're not half-bad at all!"

But then I read the piece yet again and I hate that the inner critic was indeed right and the thing’s going to remain forever imperfect despite my best efforts. I hate that the work will never truly feel finished. At least not until #3, above, happens.

But, hey, I love that, in a few minutes, a few hours, a few days or weeks, I’ll be able to say “good enough” and release it into the world.

No, scratch that.Actually, I hate that part.Love it!Hate it.(I need to revise that last part. No I don’t. Yes, I do. Good enough, says I.)

The Writing Life Begins at 44For the first 42 or so years of my life, I found the old saw about how “life begins at 40”

downright offensive. Youth has a lot to offer; young people - in every guise from musician to athlete to computer geek - can, and do, transform the world.

But with my 44th birthday just around the corner, I can see how the term came to be.I’ve considered myself a writer for 25 years, since I was 19 or so. But in many ways, despite

several million words under my belt, I feel like I’m just getting started - like I haven’t even, in fact, actually started in earnest just quite yet.

I was a community college student the first time I got paid for my writing, and I regularly sold poems and stories throughout my twenties and thirties - I stopped counting at about 120 publications. I’ve edited a poetry magazine lauded by Writer’s Digest. I supported myself and my family by writing for newspapers for ten years. I have an MFA in creative writing. And doing a little math tells me I’ve taught writing to about 1,500 to 2,000 students … and counting: I have about 130 students this semester, and I’m teaching one class less than usual.

And yet I’m just getting started.Some food for thought:Robert B. Parker wrote 40 Spenser novels, publishing his first novel at two years younger

than I am right now. He wrote a total of 66 novels. (I have one novel available - Gray Lake, a horror and crime novel, published a year ago. Death Sight, the first novel in my Will Castleton series, comes out at the end of October. By this time next year, there should be at least five of my novels available, likely six.)

And Elmore Leonard is exactly TWICE MY AGE and still going strong. He'd only written five short Westerns, (novellas, by some standards) by my age. Since then, he’s written 44 novels, an average of one per year.

It’s taken what many might consider a lifetime of experience to get me to this point.

But I’m only getting started…

For Writers, Social Media Should Be Little More Than PlaytimeWriters need to understand this:Social media - your blog, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, Pinterest, etc. - is playtime.It does not significantly affect your sales.Actually, it might affect your sales a little if you’re already established somewhere beyond

the small/indie press. And getting listed on a popular book blog, for instance, will definitely affect your sales (at least temporarily).

But for the bulk of us, it’s playtime.Yesterday, I hit 35,000 followers on Twitter.I’m in awe at that number. That’s as many people as live in my smallish Indiana county!So I tweeted these words in celebration: “Hey! 35,000 followers! Hi to 35,000 people! Here's

a test: How many of you will say ‘hi’ back?”The first ten minutes generated exactly 28 responses.Including exactly one guy who told me to “go fudge” myself.There were only about a dozen more responses over the course of the next hour or two.I love all my Twitter followers - seriously, even the ones who tell me to go fudge myself …

because, hey, we all need to be humbled from time to time - and it was fun seeing the initial flood of responses (thank you, everyone who responded!) but let’s face it. If you're thinking of using Twitter as effective advertising instead of just a fun means of communication, that’s a pathetic response percentage.

28/35,000 = .0008That’s not even a real percentage in my book.I don’t even want to comment on what that percentage might mean.Okay, actually, I do:What it basically means is that if I tweet about my thrilling new novel, DEATH SIGHT (due

at the end of October), to 35,000 people, I can expect that only about 28, if that, might actually act on it and click the link and check it out.

Your guess is as good as mine as to how many of those who click would actually buy it.This is out of 35,000 followers.Translated to the non-electronic world: You put an ad in the newspaper about your book

signing, and it goes out to every resident of your small Indiana county. Twenty-eight souls show up. And some number significantly less than that leave with your book in hand. (Twenty-eight people would probably be a decent number, in reality. I've seen less show up for instantly recognizable authors speaking at big city book festivals.)

Not to reduce people to mere numbers - I really do like the connectivity aspect of social media - but I’ve amassed this follower total in a little over a year (about 13 months). I have a feeling it would have taken Stephen King just a little less time to amass as many, would he care to directly join the Twitterverse firsthand.

But I also bet that, given the same number of followers, he would also have achieved a slightly better response percentage in the first ten minutes.

The point I take away from this: Keep writing.Nothing else, no other self-promotion unconnected to a larger, established advertising-based

network, really works.

Period.Oh, I’ll keep doing the social media thing, sure. Of course.Because I enjoy the hell out of it. Interacting with what few fans and active followers I do

have is one of the daily joys of my waking life. I’ve had some wonderful experiences via Twitter. For instance, although I’ve solicited none of them in advance, all the five-star Amazon reviews for my first novel, GRAY LAKE are from strangers whom I’ve come to know on Twitter after they’ve either read the book and posted their review or tweeted me, letting me know how much they enjoyed it.

I can’t deny that Twitter has certainly resulted in a few sales for me.But only a few - probably not even the majority.I still think only my writing itself - my writing, my constant labor, and whatever luck might

erupt into my life - will be the only factors to give me anything approaching a break-out bestseller.

Thus, my focus remains on writing - on novels and stories and essays and the occasional poem - not social media.

If you see me here on my blog, on Twitter, on Facebook, you’re seeing me having fun.One more time:Social media is playtime - it’s a sparkly pastime, a great way to connect and interact - and I

love you dearly for choosing to spend your time with me in this manner.But it’s hardly the key to success, and should not be treated as such.

When "Real Life" Encroaches on Writing TimeI currently have a bad case of the don’t wanna’s.I wanna write. Really, I wanna finish editing my novel Death Sight. I’m about seventy-five

percent finished, and it would feel great to finish things up this weekend.I have a bad case of the don’t wanna’s because … real life is encroaching upon my writing

time this weekend.It’s 9:30 a.m. on Saturday, and I have to grade, at the very least, three writing classes worth

of stuff by 8:30 a.m. on Monday.I’d be better off if I graded four.And I have to grade another class by 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday.Plus, this particular weekend, I also have to write a grant for a charity organization I’m

working with (Blessings in a Backpack - check it out, donate).The truth is I’m using this blog post to procrastinate.Also to clear my head as I wake up, even though I’ve been “awake” for about two hours now.

(It’s amazing what a session at the typewriter will do to clear the cobwebs - way better than coffee.)

Mornings like these are, I think, the biggest struggle for the non full-time writer.The problem isn’t finding the time or making the time to write. (I’ve addressed that

elsewhere.)The problem is having a day job (or two), a family, duties, etc., and allowing yourself to slip

into the thought pattern that the writing is the “real” work.But it’s not the “real” work. Writing’s just a facet of the big picture.Yes, it might be all you’re ever really thinking about, even when you’re intently focused on

something else - because everything in your life, is, after all, potential fodder for the writing.

But inattention to the day job, inattention to the bills, inattention to the family, inattention to the laundry, the broken lawnmower, the cat litter that needs changing, these will lead to you being an unhappy writer. You might wind up with more time to write, but you’ll be feeling guilty and distracted while you’re doing it.

“But I feel guilty and distracted when I don’t write!” you say.Well then, says I, you pick your guilt and deal with it.There are days when, because of your day job, family has to take a back seat.Other days, family issues come up, and the day job has to wait.There are rough patches that need to be worked through.Heck, rough years that need to be slogged through, struggled through, wept through.Some days you might only write a scribbled sentence or two in the notebook by your bedside

as you drop off to sleep, utterly spent.But mostly you’ll have days like today, when I have the luxury of sitting in my office with a

cup of coffee, debating with myself whether or not I should write today and make tomorrow a hectic grading and grant-writing day, or maybe write a bit today, then squeeze in some grading, repeat tomorrow - which sounds awfully good, but I know I’d give in to the writing longer than I should and grade too frantically.

Or, third option, I could spend a blissful hour debating with myself as I check Twitter, Facebook, the headlines, etc.

But in the end, I know that “real life” has to come first.Writing is what grows in your garden.But you have to make sure you have a garden to hoe in the first place.

Your Assignment: To Be Truly AliveThere are four occasions during which I feel totally alive.One is when I’m with my family and we’re doing something - it could be something as

mundane as making soup or doing homework or something as thrilling as going camping, traveling to a swim meet or the infrequent vacation.

I feel alive, I suppose, because I’m immersed in that which the average man is meant to be immersed at my stage of life.

I know it’s precious. It could all disappear in a second.And thus I am alive.The second occasion during which I feel truly alive is when I’m teaching a group of receptive

students. Lackadaisical or simply “present” students can kill this, but there are moments when you know someone’s getting it, when you know the knowledge you’ve spent the better part of your life amassing is actually being transferred, when you know something lasting might have come of you, something that has a hope of sticking and perhaps being passed on to yet another generation after you’re gone - my teaching voice was, after all, influenced by several of my own teachers, who were surely influenced by voices long gone. (And you certainly don’t have to be a classroom teacher to experience this - the same thing that I’m talking about also happens in garages, in factories, in backyards, in business offices.)

The third occasion during which I feel truly alive, well, I’ve honestly only experienced it a few times: a true runner’s high. I’m not talking about the jazzed feeling one gets from a good workout or from being healthy. A true runner’s high is much more than that.

And the truth is I’m not a runner anymore - though I should be. But in several years of daily running there were a very few times when the right mix of physical exertion, adrenaline, endorphins and … who knows what else … resulted in experiences I can only describe as spiritual. A true runner’s high is an utterly physical, utterly ecstatic buzz, with sex its only rival.

But the fourth, and most quizzical way I’ve known to make me feel totally alive is a good writing session.

I say it’s quizzical because, in truth, I barely remember my writing sessions.For instance, today I spent an hour working on the outline for GREEN RIVER BLUES, the

second Will Castleton novel. (The title’s since been changed to PURGATORY BLUES.)I can assure you it was pure bliss.And I can assure you I barely remember a single god-damned minute of it.I can’t speak for anyone else, but, for me, writing’s this blissful timewarp.I am elsewhere when I write.And yet, while I’m elsewhere, I’m utterly present, utterly engaged - assimilating everything I

am, everything I know, everything I’ve experienced, everything I’m in the midst of experiencing, everything I think I might potentially experience.

And, as a writer of the fantastic - as a hunter of horrors, a sojourner taking forays into fantasy, sorties into science fiction - I feel I’m alive because I’m using what little I know of life to move beyond the boundaries of everything I can expect to physically experience.

Is anything more strange than this?All I’m doing is sitting at a desk, my fingers moving, my mind moving, everything else

utterly still.To the world, I’m an utter blank.And yet I’m as alive as I’ll ever be.Several years ago, after going over strategies for descriptive writing with my students, I gave

them what I thought was a relatively simple assignment: I asked them to write a two-page essay on the last time they felt truly alive.

Many struggled with it.Many of them turned in essays which were obviously just phoned in. They went to the beach,

had a nice cookout, saw the sunset, got away from work for a while, description, description, yadda yadda.

What got me was many of them admitted they really had no idea what I was talking about, what I wanted from the essay other than some descriptive sentences.

Many of them admitted they simply didn’t know what I meant by that: feeling truly alive.I can’t imagine life as such a slog.Given: I’m often bored or jaded. I’m victim to frequent black funks and dark depressions. I

have, in my time, been mean, surly, uncommunicative, grumpy and withdrawn, not to mention a drunken asshole (I’ve tried to avoid that in recent years).

But to live a life where I never feel alive?That’s simply unfathomable.But perhaps that’s the artist’s gift.Since giving that assignment, I’ve seen my mission more clearly.If you’re lucky enough to consider yourself a writer, a teacher, an artist of any sort - and

many athletes and businessmen transform their sport, their profession into an art form - that’s your job, right there: To work to remind your readers, your fellow humans - and, perhaps most

importantly, yourself - what it feels like to truly be alive despite the struggle, the grey slog and encroaching darkness of everyday life.

On Genre, Music and LimitationsAs a writer of horror and supernatural fiction and an unrepentant lover of modern music, I

am apparently supposed to like death metal and The Cure and all things Goth - and I do - but I'm apparently supposed to like nothing else.

For instance, at a weekend-long family reunion a few years back, I mentioned my horror short story publications (for I had not yet self-published GRAY LAKE or DEATH SIGHT or any of my story collections) to a distant teen relation. He immediately proceeded to ask if I had heard of HIM. Indeed I had. But did I own any HIM? Well, maybe two songs. So he proceeded to load every possible thing by Ville Valo and the band onto my laptop.

Because, as a horror writer, how could I not yet have devoted my life to wearing t-shirts that would have caused the general public to mistake me for a die-hard Bam Margera fan?

What a limited life it would be if that were the case.Truth is, at the time - because I keep journals - I was listening to a lot of Los Campesinos, but

also YES and John Mayer and James Taylor. And, because I never stop listening to him, Jimmy Buffett. And I was putting the instrumental “James” by The Bob James Trio onto every single mix-CD I made.

And also a lot of post-Gabriel Genesis, because I was lame like that.And The Replacements, because it was summer and The Replacements are my summer band.And The Hold Steady, because, um, anyone who follows me on any social media whatsoever

will notice I’m a slightly rabid fan and barely a day goes by without a run of their songs emanating at top volume from my computer.

You get the idea.But, lo and behold, I fell for HIM, hard - several of their songs became essential to the

writing of GRAY LAKE. (Although, for some reason, “Run” by Snow Patrol, on endless repeat, drove the entire last quarter of the book. Seriously, I was OCD about that song for several days - see my companion chapbook THE ROAD TO GRAY LAKE for complete details - and an official soundtrack to the book.)

I might tell my students it’s bad form to bury a thesis statement this deep into an essay, but, hell with it, I AM THE MASTER, THEY ARE THE PADAWANS, right?

The point is such thinking - if you like x, you must listen to y - leads to utter stagnation. If the music must be Goth, so must the writing. If the fiction spurts blood, so must the music, yes?

No. Emphatically.Similarly, when I mention the crime aspect of my writing before the horror, people assume

there must be a pint of hooch in the bottom drawer of my desk. (Well, no comment on that.)And they also presume I must listen to, I don’t know, smoove lonely back-alley saxophones

sobbing out the delta blues or something.Sure, I’m a John Lee Hooker fan - no saxamaphones, I know - onwards - but Springsteen,

The Rural Alberta Advantage (which just came up at random on my Windows Media Player), Green Day, or Spinner’s Mp3 of the Day is just as likely.

The point is-(Wait, is this the thesis statement? One of those end of the essay things? Hell, I’m the Jedi

here and I can’t even tell.)

The point is horror, crime, any genre stagnates once we presume to set music to it.I mean that both literally and figuratively.Heavy metal-ethic splatterpunk was cool, but is old hat.The rock opera, once so daring, so revolutionary, is simply a form these days. Seems any

band worthy of its ego still gets around to it - if they feel like it.Next?Lovecraftian Country and Western?Emo cozies?Jazz gore?Who knows? But there's simply more possible than I could dare to think of.I tend to write about writing, but, even if you don’t write, mix what you’re writing.Yes, embrace what you love. Tattoo it on your body. Wear the t-shirt. Try to convert the

uninitiated.But listen to and fuse everything you come into contact with. Give it a chance at least.Simply because you can.Sure, some of it will be utter shit - hell, most of it - but the great songs, no matter their genre,

always point to so much more than themselves.Genre doesn’t hold you back one whit - it does only if you let it.Music should inspire, not limit.

Your Dog Need Never Eat Your Homework (or Your Novel) AgainMy students come up with all sorts of excuses.It has literally gone from “My dog ate my homework” - which I actually got once (the dog

ripped it up or some such) - to “My dog ate my flash drive” - which happens more often than you’d think. (Flash drives apparently smell like bacon and make wonderful chew toys.)

I loathe flash drives. As a rogue, wandering adjunct community college prof, teaching at three different locations any given semester, I lost flash drives galore, forgetting them in this computer or that farflung corner of the tri-county area. They got left in my pocket and cycled through the wash. They fell off my keychain. My dog (or maybe it was my chinchillas) even ate one.

I once heard of a writer who would save his work to his flash drive, then run out to his barn and put the flash drive in the glove compartment of his pickup - in case his house blew up. (If I were using that in a story, I’d have his barn blow up too, just for spite.)

My English department’s standardized syllabus requires that students have a flash drive. I used to have to explain what one was (a flash drive, not an English department or a syllabus) on the first day of class. Not so much anymore.

But these days I scratch out that requirement - well, okay, I use the delete or backspace button - and ask all my students to get a Dropbox account.

Every writer, every teacher, every student, every human who uses electronic documents of any sort needs a Dropbox account.

If you don’t know what Dropbox is, follow the link and check it out. It’s super-user friendly and it’s a lifesaver. Basically, it creates a folder on the desktop of your computer. Anything you put in that folder automatically gets backed up online. Furthermore, you can put one of these folders on any device you have. Anything you save to one folder automatically shows up in your Dropbox folder on all your devices. And furthermore, you can access your secure Dropbox

account and download and upload files from any computer with an internet connection. It’s a lot like emailing your work to yourself, but a lot less hassle.

Every semester I have several students, even computer geeks, who come up and personally thank me for turning them on to this simple but awesome tool.

I have three novels-in-progress, several semesters of work and grading, all the files for my ebooks, including text and cover art, all my family pictures, and endless music files backed up in my Dropbox. I need never be in fear of losing any of that - even if my house, barn, pickup, dogs and chinchillas blow up.

I’ve even used Dropbox to store a few free ebooks for my adoring public to download - The Whispering Worlds Horror/Fantasy/Science Fiction Poetry Anthology and The Road to Gray Lake. (Links to your Dropbox files are secure unless you decide to make individual ones public.)

And, best of all, your dog can’t eat your Dropbox.Unless he eats your laptop, I guess.(So tell me again, why, exactly, did you wrap your laptop in bacon?)(Note that Dropbox is the one that I use, but there are dozens of sites and services like this.)

ESSAYS SPECIFICALLY ABOUT MY OWN WORK

How the Will Castleton Stories Got Started...This is a note I added to all the ebook versions of the existing Will Castleton stories just

before the publication of DEATH SIGHT, the first Will Castleton novel in December 2012, explaining the origins and background of the character.

Dear Reader:I hope you enjoyed this Will Castleton adventure. If you’re reading this, it means you’ve

finished one of the four stories currently available in ebook format. Obviously, Will travels a long way - physically, mentally and spiritually - between the events detailed in “Island Ghosts”, “Samantha”, “The Bridge” and “Nighteyes”.

I’m excited to announce that the first full-length Will Castleton novel - DEATH SIGHT - is coming out on or about December 4, 2012!

I wrote the original four Will Castleton stories back in the early 2000s for small press magazines and anthologies.

The first, “Island Ghosts”, came pretty much out of nowhere and was simply an exercise in speed, movement and suspense. It appeared in a Future Mysterious anthology simply entitled DIME - a collection of hard-boiled private eye stories. Thank you, Babs Lakey, for taking a story that technically didn’t even feature a private eye! But Lakey apparently saw potential in Will Castleton, and, eventually, so did I.

The first two Will Castleton novels, DEATH SIGHT and GREEN RIVER BLUES, both take place before the events detailed in “Island Ghosts.” DEATH SIGHT details the accident that led to Will’s becoming psychic - with a serial killer, a ghost from a cold case murder, some very nasty bikers and a fugitive apprehension that goes very, very wrong all thrown into the mix. GREEN RIVER BLUES involves Will investigating a series of devastating murders in his hometown, as well as the confrontation which leads directly to the little vacation highlighted in “Island Ghosts.”

But back to the short stories, if you’ll indulge me for a moment. After writing “Island Ghosts,” I hadn’t thought much more about Will Castleton until an editor friend asked me for a story to include in an anthology about ghost hunters. I thought Will would be perfect. So I moved him forward in time a bit and wrote “Samantha.”

The third and fourth Will Castleton novels - MENGER (featuring the fate of a certain orally-fixated, nefarious, burn-scarred bad guy known to readers of my crime/horror novel GRAY LAKE) and RUNNING - both currently little more than outlines, further explore Will’s coming to grips with the spirit world and his move from U.S. Marshal to private investigator. In these novels and beyond, we’ll fill in events merely hinted at in “The Bridge” (the only one of the original Will Castleton stories not written specifically at an editor’s request, it was accepted by a small press mystery magazine) and, in time, we’ll see Will combat the cosmic enemy of whom we see only the first vestiges in “Nighteyes” - a story which, though it doesn’t feature any form of the word “vampire,” was originally published in a collection of stories about vampire hunters.

I foresee myself spending a lot of time with Will Castleton - maybe to the tune of a dozen or so novels, maybe more - Robert B. Parker started his Spenser novels when he was my age and wrote forty of them! However far we get to go together, I’m thrilled to be writing Will’s extended story, seeing him through the long haul. I officially welcome you along for the ride!

Thanks again for reading!Dave Bainhttp://DavidBainBooks.com

Writing: Art, Business & JimiWriting: Art or business?Both, of course.If you’re a writer, most likely you didn’t have much choice in the matter. If you’re a writer,

the signs were there early on, and it was simply a matter of discovering your craft, then taking off on the lifelong journey of honing it. Maybe you were smart and got a medical or business or law degree on the side to support yourself. Maybe you were lucky and have a supportive spouse. Maybe you were neither and are struggling at three other part-time jobs, squeezing your words in edgewise. But in any case, you probably didn’t have much of a choice about the “writer” part. You’re driven to do it, and you feel it’s at least one of the major reasons God put you on this earth.

But in your heart you still ask yourself: Art or business? For the love or for the money?You’ve had dreams of Stephen King or J.K. Rowling cash. You’re inspired by J.A. Konrath

and Dean Wesley Smith. So, business.But you love Kafka, who starved in a garret. You don’t understand why Charles L. Grant, a

grand stylist, master of so many genres, his prose both prolific and beautiful, died without health insurance.

You feel somehow cleaner, emptied, exalted, in touch, having written.So, art.What it comes down to:You’re working on your novel for art’s sake. Because you’re driven to write it.An editor emails on Friday, says I’ve got a last-minute slot in my monster anthology for a

4,000-word story about goblins. Here is a paragraph describing the abilities of my goblins. I need this story no later than Monday morning.

So you abandon your novel for the weekend, you write the story, done by midnight, Sunday.You go back to the novel Monday morning, the novel which might never sell, but which has

been nagging at you to write it for months - the idea has pitbull jaws and won’t let you go no matter how hard you try to shake it off.

Is the goblin story hackwork because you wrote it quick, for cash?No.Even though the idea wasn’t there an hour earlier, even though it wasn’t an idea that had

been demanding to be written, it combines elements of your life, observations you’ve made, things that you’ve been ruminating about, and it does so with a respectable amount of success.

A writer learns to trust the muse. Trust her without fail.You became a writer because she was ever-present, pushing the art; but she will also

faithfully provide when it comes to business. You don’t need to train her; she is the one who trains you - trains you to trust her.

Art can be enough to sustain the work.But, obviously, most of us also seek success.And success is mostly luck.

***But, with all that said, this is also true: good business makes its own luck.Example:The story above is true. It happened, God, almost a decade ago now.The novel is my crime/horror novel GRAY LAKE. I wrote it for art. It was almost published

by a small press before said small press went under. Small press because every agent I sent it to said, "So close, but no cigar. No one's buying horror anymore." (Really? I eventually self-published the book, with mostly steady sales and what Metacritic would probably call generally positive reviews.)

The story is “Those Who Can, Help.” I wrote it for business. (And the story still earns me a little, most months, both as an individual $.99 ebook and as part of my collection NIGHT WRITING.)

The editor of the anthology was C. Dennis Moore, artist, businessman.At the time, back in spring of 2004, I only knew Dennis through a story he’d submitted to

something I’d edited. I believe I had, in fact, turned his story down. But I must have done something right in that rejection, because, out of the blue, he asked me for the goblin story for THE BOOK OF MONSTERS (which is apparently still available and selling reasonably well, even though the publishing company (Scrybe Press - avoid like the plague!!!) hasn’t paid Dennis or anyone else in literally years … hmmm - seriously, if you want the story, please don't buy it from this scummy publisher).

Being the absolute bastard that he is, Dennis made it a competition, no less. He also solicited a goblin story from at least two other authors. Mine apparently won out.

But here’s what I’m saying about business, about trusting the muse:I quit the novel for a weekend, accepted the challenge, business first.And it’s paid off in so many ways.Yes, I wrotes me my story and I gots paid. Gotta gets paid. But, as a result of that story, and

various emails about it, Dennis has become one of my best online friends. The muse knew what she was doing by working with me on that "business" project. For almost a decade now, we’ve shared almost daily emails about, well, everything from music to the major concerns of our lives. There’s not much I wouldn’t be able to tell him.

And many years of that decade have been lean in terms of writing success.We were there for mutual support because of that business decision I made that long ago

Friday night. This support has been invaluable. I would have missed out on so much had I been in it just for art.

And, at last, Dennis has, lately, started finding some major success, especially with his latest novel, THE THIRD FLOOR, a killer haunted house tale which has topped the Amazon horror charts. I’m chasing at his heels, with Kindle sales that are promising, but what I’d call midlist at best. (Do I begrudge Dennis his success? Hardly. Even though we’ve never met in person, we’ve carried each other through some extraordinary lows, and he deserves every sale he gets.)

So, all this past decade, Dennis and I have talked genre, we’ve talked art, we’ve talked business - we’ve talked writing. And now he and I have come full circle with a couple collaborations: one for art, one for business.

The one we’ve done for business is already available. In TERROR IS OUR TRADE, a full book-length (70,000-word) collection of short stories and novellas, Dennis and I trade stories back and forth - we realized we each have five short story collections, so, in this book, we both included one story from each of our collections. It’s an Amazon exclusive for now, and at just $1.99 it's less than you'd pay for many lesser collections. I think our motivations are pretty transparent - two names on the spine of the book introduces us to each other’s readers, and if they like a story from a particular collection, maybe they’ll buy that book. Business.

As for art, well, Dennis and I are both rabid music fans. Nearly every day for the past decade we’ve discussed everything from classical musicians to some kid one of us discovered somewhere online who recorded this awesome mp3 in his bedroom. And we agree wholeheartedly that Jimi Hendrix was perhaps the most inspiring, unique and revolutionary musician of the twentieth century. No one was quite as completely, out-of-nowhere alien as Jimi.

Then, one night about a year ago we started kicking around the idea of working together on something with a music theme. Combining some of our discussions with a dream I had way back in college - a dream that had always demanded to be written, but had never, until then, found its full story - I sent Dennis the opening paragraphs of a story, just asking what he thought of it. He responded with some ideas. I asked him to write them up. Thus was born the collaboration which resulted in our forthcoming novella BAND OF GYPSIES. It’s a musing on the true fate of the first master tapes of Jimi’s album Axis: Bold as Love, which legend says he forgot in a London taxi - to date, the tapes have never been found.

Will it sell? Some, I expect, but I doubt it’s going to rival THE THIRD FLOOR.We wrote it for fun. For art.Art is, after all, what this business of writing’s all about, right?

A Comprehensive Guide to My Fictional Town of Green River, MichiganA large percentage of my stories and novels take place in the fictional town of Green River,

Michigan. (The mayor, Michael C. Norton, would call it “a small city.”) The town is an amalgam of places I’ve lived. It’s nostalgic, quaint, dark and deadly. It’s home to every strata of society - look into the stories below and you’ll find the town’s filled with working class folk … but also men and women who’ve grown rich and powerful beyond their wildest dreams: people who will do anything to protect the success they’ve either earned … or fallen into. You’ll encounter socialites, street punks … and specters. We'll look at the town's teens, its troubles, it secrets, its terrors. We'll look at prominent citizens and forgotten souls. We'll look at the bright veneer and the dark underbelly. You'll find love - and seething hatred. You'll find fun, angst, action and

tears. You’ll find the town has a history … and that a lot has been left out of its history books. But mostly it's my hope that, like me, you'll find the town has a reality all its own. Welcome to Green River...

My colleague, Daryl Burns, a fellow community college instructor and former police reporter is now hard at work, writing short crime novels set in Green River. The first, Weed, is already available, to be followed shortly by Meth. (Hmm, do we see a pattern in the titles?)

Links are provided for stories that are also available as individual ebooks and print chapbooks.

(Note: This entry will be updated as more works featuring Green River are created.)

NovelsGray Lake: A Novel of Crime and Supernatural HorrorThe Care and Feeding of Michael Anthony Zee (Coming Soon)Death Sight (Will Castleton)Green River Blues (Will Castleton) (Coming Soon)Homeward Devils (Will Castleton) (Available in The Castleton Files)

Short StoriesStory titles with an asterisk (*) are also available as separate stand-alone ebooks and/or

chapbooks. The stories are shown in the order in which they appear in my various collections.

Dark Higways: Five Road Trips into Terror• Companion

Darker Corridors (Coming Soon)• Bearing Bad News• The Demon Wind• First Punishment• Phone Sex on the Nightside• The Salesman• The Trunk: A Killer Ghost Story

Night Writing• All Over Your Face• A Deeper Level• Fifteen Minutes• A Pleasure to Burn• That Enveloping Darkness• The Night Darwin Corso Left Green River• The Night We Killed Howie's Uncle• Those Who Can, Help• Shadows and Ice• Vigil

The Road to Gray Lake• Stuckey Makes a Sale

Shadows, Whispers, Shivers• Dark Blue Shadows: A Children's Campfire Ghost Story• Faith: A 9-11 Ghost Story• House Cleaning: A Messy Ghost Story• A Letter to the Ghost Hunter• Something Clean, Something Pure

Short Green River Crime Novels by Daryl Burns• Weed• Meth (Coming Soon)

INTERVIEWS

Interview with C. Dennis Moore: "On Reviewing"

I recently conducted an interview with C. Dennis Moore, author of the novel Revelations, several story collections (including the free sampler Welcome to The Trust) and the recently released C Dennis Moore Horror Movie Guide, Vol. 1. An inveterate consumer of pop culture and all things horror, Moore has written well over 1,000 reviews.

You just released Volume 1 of your horror movie reviews. Can we expect more volumes? How about collections of your other types of reviews (music, books, etc.)?

I certainly PLAN more; I have almost 1100 reviews, after all (plus I have actually reviewed GOOD movies, too, and would like to send some attention their way as well). I think for the most part I'll stick with movie reviews, though. There's the entire Horrofest After Dark series--4 volumes--50 Classic Horror movies, 50 Classic Sci-Fi movies, the Decrepit Crypt of Nightmare series, and those are just the ones I have already written. And I have hundreds more to come. I've got enough movies in my office that I haven't reviewed to keep me reviewing a movie a week for a few years. I'd like to do a true Halloween Movie Review collection with all the great slasher films, the Fridays, the Nightmares, the Halloweens, the Saws, the Chainsaws, etc, almost all of which I have, but haven't reviewed yet. I probably won't be releasing the music reviews because I tend to do those in sets. I started reviewing the entire Prince catalog, then moved to Bowie, and Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson and Ani DiFranco. I then spent about a year or so

reviewing movie soundtracks before moving onto my considerable collection of Greatest Hits albums, but I quickly got burned out and have only done one music review in the past year. I'm just not as comfortable with music reviews; I understand story a lot better than I do melody. Plus it's much easier to rip into a bad book or movie than it is a bad album.

Why did you start reviewing? I got into it because I was in a literary guild and thought it would be a cool addition to the

monthly newsletter. I kept at it after that because I found it to be a very valuable tool in my own writing. For years I only reviewed books and I tried to review them with an eye toward what I was able to take away from it as a writer. What did this book teach me to do, what did it teach me to avoid? That carries over to movies, too; I've discovered a ton of cliches and story models that just don't work for the stuff I want to do just by watching a ton of bad movies. Also, movies help you develop a better ear for dialogue, I think, than books, because so many of them are crammed with things people just wouldn't say in those situations.

Who are your favorite reviewers, movie and/or otherwise?I actually don't read a lot of reviews, but I think Mike Bracken is a hell of a movie reviewer.

He makes me feel like I've just written my very first review ever, every time. He's very knowledgeable about the genre AND movies, while I'm just reporting what I liked or didn't and why I did or didn't like it. Roger Ebert is a genius, even if I don't always agree with him. Craig Clarke seems to really cut to the heart of whatever he's reading, and I don't say that just because he liked my collection TERRIBLE THRILLS. Whether he had reviewed it favorably or not, I came away from his review feeling like he actually GOT it, and that's so important.

How much time do you spend watching the movies, reading the books and listening to the music you review?

With music I try to spend a week listening to it over and over, usually at work because that's when I listen to music, but I'll give it a listen or two every day from Monday to Friday and then usually do the review on Saturday--when I'm reviewing music. With books, I take as long as it takes to read it, then I usually try to do the review as soon after finishing the book as I can, while it's still fresh in my mind, although I always find that waiting a day usually makes for a more complete, well-rounded review. But then again, I don't let myself start reading something new until the review for that last book is done, and I really like to read, so I try to move on as soon as possible. Movies I watch in the morning and do the review immediately after, again, while it's still fresh. If there's a commentary track I want to listen to, though, I'll do that the next day, and THEN do the review. I try to watch all the DVD features, if they're included, to get a more complete picture of the movie. Those are easier, though, to let rest a day and write a more thorough review the next day, because if I forget something, it takes a few seconds to find the scene and watch it again or, even easier, look it up online.

Gimme some bio stuff!My website is www.cdennismoore.com. My novel is REVELATIONS. My short stories,

novellas, collections, etc, are all available on my website. So's my novel.

Interview with Michael K. Rose

Michael K. Rose is primarily an author of science fiction who also dabbles in horror, fantasy and paranormal fiction.

His novel Sullivan’s War has been called "...a sci-fi thriller that definitely delivers!" and his collection Short Stories has been praised as "...the purest form of literature, as rich as a bottle of Montrachet 1978 and as tasty as a generous cut of Wagyu beef."

Tell me about your newest release.Chrysopteron is about a mission to discover the fate of one of five generation ships which

left the Earth centuries earlier. The crew of the Chrysopteron had successfully colonized their planet, but less than a hundred years later, all contact was lost. It deals with issues such as faith and self-determination, and explores human nature—both the positive aspects and the negative.

Tell me about your decision to release the Sullivan's War books as a serial.I suppose impatience is the best reason. Initially, I had intended the events that take place in

Sullivan’s War to take up three full novels. After I’d written the first and realized I only had a novella on my hands, I decided I’d release them as such then combine them after they’d all seen publication. I think it was a good decision for me as it allowed me to have a steady stream of new material to release for the first half of the year, and that gave me increased exposure. It also meant that there was a lot more of Rick Sullivan’s story to tell. I have three more books (full-length novels, this time) planned. The sequel to Sullivan’s War, Sullivan’s Wrath, is already written and will see release in early 2013.

Discuss short stories vs. long form fiction.I began writing short stories mainly because I didn’t know how to take on a full novel. I’d

begun and abandoned several novels over the past decade or so, but I liked being able to tell a complete story, from beginning to end, without having to spend months at it. Now that I am a more mature writer and have the first Sullivan book under my belt, I am much more confident writing long form. I still love writing short stories and will continue to write them, but readers are generally more interested in novels, so that is where my focus is right now. I do have a collection out called Short Stories which has been getting great reviews. Even though it doesn’t sell as well as my novel, I’ll definitely put out another short story collection in the future.

Why genre?

It’s what I love to read. I do, of course, read mainstream literature, and am actually quite fond of 19th century literature, but genre, especially science fiction, has always appealed to me. I love asking the “What if?” questions and then answering them with no constraints except what my imagination can conjure.

Discuss your attitudes toward and perhaps methods of using social media for marketing fiction.

Well, I do use it. When I make a blog post, for example, my connections on Facebook and Twitter mean that a fair number of people will see it. And I have been pleased with sales of Sullivan’s War so far. But since that book was initially released as three separate novellas, I never got the high sales impact of a brand new, full-length novel release. With Chrysopteron I’ll find out how effective my social media network really is in creating sales.

Tell me about your 12 novels in 12 months thing.I decided back at the end of September that right now, since my personal circumstances

allow me to write full-time, there was no reason why I shouldn’t be taking full advantage of that. I knew that by making my goal to write 12 novels in 12 months public, I would be better motivated to do so since people were watching. I completed my first novel in October (Sullivan’s Wrath) but unfortunately, due to an illness that put me out of commission for almost a week, I fell short in November. However, I will not give up on completing the twelve novels by the end of September of next year. Even if it some of them take me a little bit longer than a month to complete, I will get them done. By the end of the project I’ll have a stockpile of manuscripts to revise and edit and that will allow me to keep releasing new material at regular intervals through at least 2014.

Links:Michael's Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/Michael-K.-Rose/e/B0062EIPN2/Facebook Author Page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Michael-K-Rose-

Author/291149020948554Twitter: http://twitter.com/MichaelKRoseBlog: http://myriadspheres.blogspot.com/Website: http://www.michaelkrose.com/

***WHY I GIVE AWAY SO MANY FREE STORIES(& How You Can Grab Them If You Haven’t Already) by David Bain

“Give it away now!” – The Red Hot Chili Peppers

First off, if you paid for this story – thank you! Thank you! Thank you! And if you grabbed it while it was free, I thank you every bit as much!

I give away a lot of stories, and you may wonder why.So let me be totally transparent, right at the beginning here: I give so many stories away

because I want you to enjoy them and learn to trust my storytelling enough that you’ll eventually buy my books and collections. There’s no subterfuge here. I simply want to give you the repeated opportunity to read and like my work.

I have a few permanently free ebooks out there – like Island Ghosts, an introduction to my Will Castleton series – plus I give a series of twenty of my short stories and story samplers away free, each for five days at a time, on a rotational basis, over the course of every ninety days on Amazon.

I also give away a brand new, freshly written free story every 90 days to all members of my newsletter, The Friends of Bain. Signing up is quick and easy – you type in your name and email address at this link and you’re in! (Even if you don’t want to join The Friends of Bain you can still vote for which story I’ll write next at http://smarturl.it/VoteForBain – the stories also become available at the regular price at all the ebook stores.)

Plus I give the Friends a new story from my Will Castleton series every Christmas, and it remains a newsletter exclusive – you get it when signing up – for an entire year. (The current member-exclusive Will Castleton is PHOENIX BLOOD, a prequel to ISLAND GHOSTS.)

The freebies currently add up to more than two-dozen of the tales I’ve produced since I started writing professionally about twenty years ago. A few friends have seen what I’m doing and accused me of not valuing my work. They say: “So those stories you’re handing out, they’re just the throw-aways, right? They must be, if you’re giving them away free!”

First of all: Hell, no!Secondly: Hell, no, again!Yes, I give away a lot of my stories. But this is an important point: I’m not giving away the

losers or dregs. Truth is, I don’t have any half-assed attempts out there to give away in the first place. Yes, I experiment and take chances. Yes, you’ll like some stories better than others. Give them however many stars you want on Amazon, just know I’ve never phoned it in. I’ve always punched it as hard as I could for each and every story, using everything I have in my writing arsenal.

Because I owe that to you.And I owe it to myself.That said, it’s true I don’t give my novellas, collections or novels away like I do my short

stories – but it’s not that I value them more. I value every single word I write, whatever the final tally – and I want to prove that to you, more than twenty times over the course of 90 days, as you get to know me. The Friends of Bain newsletter – http://smarturl.it/FriendsOfBain - gives you a quick reminder every time a new story becomes free, plus you get that exclusive Will Castleton adventure just for joining. I hope that, by the end of that 90 days, you stay on and receive the additional five brand new stories from me per year .

As for my business model, simply put … well, free is the way things work these days. Let me use a music analogy. I grew up on FM radio, but I love that the internet allows you to find awesome bands the radio won’t even touch. For example, back in 2005 or so, one of my now-favorite bands, The Hold Steady, allowed free downloads of their song “Your Little Hoodrat Friend”. I’d never heard of these guys but downloaded the song on a whim at the suggestion of a music blogger. I thought it was a killer rock tune, so I Youtubed a few more by THS, and then a lot more, and I soon discovered this band not only brings it - they bring it hard every single time, plus they show an almost ecstatic love for their audience. I bought their album Boys and Girls in America and that simply sealed the deal. I now own every album and pre-order the next, plus I have everything the band members have done solo or in former bands and side projects. I drive three hours or more to see their shows every year, buy their t-shirts and swag, and allow their official fan group, The Unified Scene, to automatically post band announcements directly on my Twitter account.

All because I once download a free song.I would never have chanced upon The Hold Steady on the radio, at least not out here in the

Indiana boondocks where Toby Keith is the radio’s poet laureate. (Don’t get me wrong. I can abide some country music – and I actually own every volume of Toby’s Greatest Hits – but for me a little country radio goes a long, long way.)

Similarly, while a few stories I’ve had published in anthologies and even a book or two of mine sit on the shelves of a used bookstore somewhere or a couple libraries here and there – good luck locating which ones, and if you do, you might have to drive a few times farther than even I would for a Hold Steady concert. I’ve also heard a report that someone once spotted an anthology I was in at an actual brick and mortar bookstore, but they didn’t take a picture, alas, so I still have no concrete proof.

It comes down to this – as a grassroots, by my own bootstraps indie writer, the free stories are my radio songs, my mp3s, my library reads, my used bookstore finds. I know there are people out there content to just listen to their favorite song when it pops up on the radio, people whose iPods are filled with pirated songs, people who don’t own a single book but raid the library like I raid the buffet at King Dragon. And, really, that’s fine. Because if you like my stories enough to sign up for The Friends of Bain, and you grab your twenty initial free ebooks, then just kick back and collect your five free stories per year and don’t ever buy a thing, well, at least maybe you’ll leave some reviews or tell a friend and they’ll buy something or tell another friend and – hey! We’re both still getting something out of this, right?

The truth is, whether or not you’re giving me money, I want you to enjoy the stories. I’ll keep cranking on them, hard as I can, for as long as I can.

But I couldn’t do this without you.Thank you, sincerely, for being a part of it.

Dave Bainhttp://DavidBainBooks.comhttp://smarturl.it/FriendsOfBain

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Connect with David BainWebsite: http://DavidBainBooks.com

Twitter: http://twitter.com/davidbainaaFacebook: http://bit.ly/DavidBainFB

The Friends of Bain: http://smarturl.it/FriendsOfBain

***Visit Beautiful Green River, Michigan!

http://bit.ly/GreenRiverMichigan

Other books by David Bain(All titles also available in print)

For an up-to-the-minute current list (some books listed as “coming soon” might be available now, for instance) check David Bain’s online catalog.

Boxed Sets – 33% to 66% or more off combined price of individual volumes

The Green River Crime/Horror Boxed Set: Contains Death Sight, Gray Lake, Welcome To Green River!, Weed, While The City Sleeps and The Castleton FilesUntil You Can Scream No More: Contains Night Writing; Shadows, Whispers, Shivers; and Darker CorridorsTerror x 3: Contains Forbidden Texts, Sword & Zombie and Dark HighwaysBlood Tracks: Five Furious Novellas with Rock n' Roll Attitude: Contains Band of Gypsies by David Bain & C. Dennis Moore, The Scarlet Sponge by Wayne Allen Sallee, 'Vette Fever by Ken Goldman, Weed by Daryl Burns and The Girl with the Honey Hair by Brad Kane

NovelsGray Lake: A Novel of Crime and Supernatural Horror Also available: The Road to Gray Lake (Free on Amazon - companion book to the novel - 15,000 words of extras)The Care and Feeding of Michael Anthony Zee (coming soon)Riders Where There Are No Roads: An Exceedingly Weird Western Novel (coming soon) Will Castleton Paranormal/Psychic Detective AdventuresDeath Sight: A Will Castleton NovelPurgatory Blues: A Will Castleton Novel (coming soon)Return to Angel Hill: A Will Castleton Novel (w/ C. Dennis Moore) (coming soon)The Castleton Files: Five Adventures which contains the following stories: Island Ghosts (available free online and at Amazon) The Bridge (also available separately) Samantha (also available separately) Homeward Devils (not available anywhere else) Nighteyes (also available separately)Phoenix Blood (prequel to Island Ghosts exclusive to The Friends of Bain)The House in Cyrus Holler (coming in 2014 in the Necro Press charity anthology Piercing the Darkness)

With C. Dennis MooreBand of Gypsies: A Short Rock n’ Roll Horror Novel

Green River Crime (Short Novels by Daryl Burns)WeedMeth (Coming Soon)Arson (Coming Soon)

Short Story CollectionsNight Writing

Shadows, Whispers ShiversDarker Corridors

As EditorForbidden Texts (featuring James Newman, G. W. Thomas, Rick Kennet, Bryce Stevens & Christine Cornell) Sword & Zombie (featuring William Meikle, Eric S. Brown, G. W. Thomas & Rebecca L. Brown)Dark Highways (with Michael A. Arnzen, John A. Burks, C. Dennis Moore and Lorelei Shannon)Dark Highways II (with Scott Nicholson, Jon F. Merz, Steve Vernon and Wayne Allen Sallee) (Coming Soon)

As Contributor"Phone & Games" in Into the Darkness (Necro Press) "Companion" in Dark Highways (with Michael A. Arnzen, John A. Burks, C. Dennis Moore and Lorelei Shannon)"Under an Invisible Shadow" in Dead But Dreaming: Tales of Cosmic Horror "American Dreamers" in Dark Highways II (with Scott Nicholson, Jon F. Merz, Steve Vernon & Wayne Allen Sallee) (Coming Soon)

EssaysTen Short Essays on WritingBeing Buried: An Essay Exploring the Darker Origins of the Author's Love/Hate Relationship with Alcohol

Specially Priced SamplersTerror Is Our Trade (w/ C. Dennis Moore)A Chill in the AirDavid Bain’s Grindhouse Quintuple Feature: Five Novelettes Inspired by B-Movie CinemaTwo Killers (w/ Wayne Allen Sallee)Double Dare (w/ Wayne Allen Sallee)While The City Sleeps: Crime and Ghost Stories from Green RiverWelcome to Green River!UnderdogsFour StoriesStreetlights Filled with Flowers

Select Short Stories & NovelettesThe Cowboys of CthulhuThe Demon WindA Pleasure to BurnThose Who Can, HelpWar Wounds: A Civil War Ghost StoryHouse Cleaning: A Messy Ghost StoryThe Trunk: A Killer Ghost Story

About the Stars, About the Rain