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How Books Scare Us — or Not
I’ve always loved a good horror story. While I don’t always write horror, when I do, I try to emulate masters of suspense like Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Thomas Olde Heuvelt. I’ve been told the Amelia Doss series, written by my co-author Andre Gonzalez, and me, is pretty darn terrifying. When I wrote Amelia, I really tried hard to…
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Lessons Learned From a Writing Life Part Two
Be BOLD – Don’t censor your thoughts and ideas no matter how outside the mainstream they are. Playing it safe doesn’t bode well for a writer. Be FEARLESS – Don’t be afraid to try new things, embrace new technology, or hit publish on that novel you’ve had sitting in your desk drawer collecting dust for all these years. You never…
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Lessons Learned from a Writing Life Part One
Some readers can be fickle and fame fleeting Your latest novel will be the most popular thing since sliced bread one minute, but the second the next trend hits, most readers will forget you ever existed. Fame is fleeting. Do what you do because you love it. That passion and love will attract loyal readers and super fans who will…
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Behind Every Great Magician is Not-a-Magician (or a magician who doesn’t mind staying in the background).
People are often surprised when they learn that I didn’t marry a Daemonolater or occult practitioner of any ilk. My significant other is a proud, but open-minded atheist. Meaning, he can understand why people have religion and spirituality, and he’s open to having a religious/spiritual experience. But, being the pragmatist he is, he would need scientific proof of the spirit…
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Impostor Syndrome – Reflections
For years I avoided teaching at writer conferences because I didn’t think I was good enough. I thought getting a contract with a publisher on my first novel was just dumb luck. I was so terrified to be around other, more experienced writers because I feared they would find out that I was just pretending to be something I wasn’t.…
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What Makes a Good Friend?
I was actually on social media earlier when a post came across my feed where one person was accusing another person of not being a good friend because that person wasn’t constantly over at the other person’s house, or constantly calling the other person. Needy much? I have a theory about this and perhaps I’m a giant asshole for saying…
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Choosing Kindness (Or Not)
Over the past week I received three emails from different people asking whether or not the Zagan Rite was for them. Now, normally I’m pretty honest. I will tell a person my thoughts on their use of magick for personal issues and hold nothing back. After all, they need to know up front the potential pitfalls of every operation they…
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The Whiny Entrepreneur
We all know these people. They wake up one day, decide to start their own business, and when it doesn’t pan out immediately, they start whining how hard it is to be self-employed. I get it! I’ve been there off and on in my 27 years as a writer trying to make my living from my creative work. There are…
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Truths About Self-Publishing #writing #indieauthor
I recently had the unfortunate opportunity to run across another “old timer” who is under the erroneous assumption that traditionally published = better authors and better quality books. This antiquated idea is still perpetuated by those who make their living, somehow, through the big-five, or other large presses. They’ve likely been told by a publisher representative, agent, old-school author, or…
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When Networking Starts Impeding Progress
My key phrase for the last month has been: Writing the next book is a writer’s first priority. This weekend, while at lunch with a fellow writing friend, we talked about volunteering for writing associations at which time she let it slip that she was involved in three other writing groups aside from the one we were both in. At…
