Beyond the Darkness 8
I wasn’t even sure if I was going to get anything out this week at all.
To say it’s been a trying year and a half would be understating just how hard life has gotten. On top of the pandemic, multiple deaths in the family, and general world shittiness, my wife and I welcomed our first child into the world. He was a surprise to both of us. My wife, God bless her, never wanted children. I, on the other hand, have always wanted to be a father. The idea of parenthood had always seemed like such a magical endeavor to me, raising a little one, teaching them about the world, introducing them to food and music and culture and love. After years of talking about it, I was honestly reserved to the fact I probably wasn’t going to be a parent. It sucked, but it was what it was. Then an oopsie occurred and suddenly the second half of 2021 became a race to get ready for 2022. Our son is the greatest thing that has ever happened to us. I am absolutely in love with my kid, head-over-heels, and I would take a bullet for him, would give up everything for him. My wife, not so much (I kid, I kid! Relax!).
But now the problem is…I don’t have time for anything these days. There truly isn’t enough time in the day. Between the baby and my day job treating us like on-call doctors, my free time has gone caput. Look, I’m not necessarily complaining. I’m eternally grateful to have a healthy, happy child and family, and I’m happy to have a fairly stable day job, but as far as my writing career is going, it’s not. I’ll be truthful with you guys: I haven’t written a meaningful word of fiction in nearly a year. Sure, I’ve stopped and started numerous projects, but nothing has gotten as far as typing THE END. It’s been incredibly difficult to say the least.
It is getting better though. Our son is a little over a year old, now up and walking, and he’s getting to the point where he can entertain himself. Though work remains a mental drain, personal time is starting to show itself in small pockets, mainly after the baby goes down at night and my wife also hits the hay. I’m left with a small amount of time to tickle the keyboard and try to urge the creeps across the page.
I guess what I’m trying to say is please bear with me. I know it seems like you guys haven’t seen a whole lot of brand new fiction from me for a while and it appears I’ve been pushing older titles and rebranding prior books, but it’s all I’ve got at the moment. While the time to concentrate on newer work has been hard to come by, over the last year I was able to complete a myriad of other projects such as getting more audiobooks made, opening a webstore for my readers to buy signed books direct from me, signing foreign rights away for certain books, getting a short story optioned for film, started a publishing company, hitting the convention circuit, and making better connections with my readers and peers. Despite not having any actual new fiction completed, the side work never really stopped.
New work will come, I promise. If all goes according to plan, I hope to have three books out this year, all novella length. I can’t give you any hard promises, but I can try, right?
(Photo by Brian Keene)
Last night (Friday), author and editor Jeff Burk and his partner Liz came out to the East Coast to visit for the first time in a while and they were able to stop by the area for dinner. Myself, Jeff, Liz, Brian Keene, Mary SanGiovanni, Brian’s son, Mike Lombardo, and his partner Lex spent a lovely evening at Olive Garden, where we all got a bit too loud about our love for the movie The Sadness, as well as general catching up. I actually haven’t seen Jeff in nearly four years, and this was only actually the second time I’ve ever gotten to spend time with him. Jeff used to be head of Deadite Press and he published my novella One For The Road, essentially giving me a career. We were able to speak at length about that for the first time, which was so nice to finally do. Hopefully it won’t be another four years before we see each other again.
My Tales from the Crypt full series re-watch continues…
Top Billing (S3, E5)
An unattractive and unlucky actor can't get a role because of his looks. His agent and girlfriend leave him. But he doesn't intend to give up―he wants the role of Hamlet. This episode was quite silly, but when you have Jon Lovitz as your lead, you get what you get. I spent most this episode rolling my eyes, wondering just what the hell this actually was. Most of the acting and dialogue was painfully corny and over-the-top and I was close to turning it off all together…but the end made up for all of that. When the big reveal happened, I was actually quite surprised I didn’t see it coming. And the last shot of the episode was pretty nasty. All in all, I think this was one of the better episodes of season three so far.
Unfortunately, this was all I was able to watch this week. Hopefully I can knock out more for next time.
As you can guess, there isn’t much to report as far as writing updates. I had previously told you guys about a book I was working on with author Wile E. Young. Though I don’t want to reveal too much about it, I can say it will be composed of two novelettes, one from both of us, and they will revolved around a specific theme. We originally planned to have this out for AuthorCon, but we’ve decided to delay it until after. Wile E. already has two books coming out that weekend and three might be a bit overkill. This will also give us a bit more time to work on our stories and make them the best they can be. Our plan is to release the book sometime in mid-April, so be on the lookout.
Currently reading: A Little White Book of Ghost Stories by Rick Hautala (Such an underrated author. Always loved his short fiction.)
Currently watching: The Last of Us (Oh my God, how good was episode 5?!), Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Damn good film.)
Currently listening: In Flames “Forgone”. (Oh man, this album is absolutely incredible! Totally worth the wait.)
As a thank you for subscribing to this newsletter and for your continued support, I am offering a 15% off discount at my webstore on all signed books and book bundles. Just use the code “HORROR” at checkout to apply the discount. Everything gets shipped out the next day. Code expires on Saturday February 18th.
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And that’s it. Thanks again, everyone. See you next week!