Maestri update

I somehow managed to squeeze in a normal amount of dedicated writing time over the holidays...so far. I did have to stay up late and find some nice, quiet space inside my home to hideaway with my Chromebook but I managed to finish up part 1 of Maestri. It ran longer than I had intended by nearly 10,000 words. I doubt that the second draft will do any kindness to that bloated word count, either. There are still a few parts that I feel the need to flesh out more, in order to properly frame the tale.

Not wanting to write a 200,000 word novel, though, I did revisit my outline. I discovered that I could condense a bit in the next two parts and combine them into one. So, instead of Maestri being comprised of 4 main parts (Prodigy, Apprentice, Maestra, Mentor) I have combined Apprentice and Maestra into a single part and re-titled Mentor into Maestra - with just a bit of plot shifting into the 3rd part as well.

I am hopeful that the finished product will remain well under 150,000 words. Part 1 is outlined to be the shortest section out of the 3, so it will be interesting as part 2 unfolds.

I am already outlining my next project for after I complete Maestri. It is a divergence from horror and into the realm of Science Fiction. Actually, I had already been planning a science fiction book in the universe of David Bennett/Maestri and my next project is a bit of an introduction into that. It will be a series of short stories titled The Parables of Alpha Arteris, which tells folklore from the 5,000 year history of Earth's first off-world colonization efforts.

Cheers to the new year!

If you want to get in on the ground floor of my expanding universe, please check out The Morbid Fascinations of David Bennett. It is the beginning of an expansive, multi-genre tale about the paranormal, things unseen, and the complex world of science.

Enjoy!

Available on KindleUnlimited, Ebook, and beautiful matte finished paperback with cream colored paper: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1701845431

Self Care

Writing is much like any other time demanding occupation. We need time to craft our work and sometimes with non-traditional jobs like that it can be hard for the people in our lives to give us the space that we require for our work. People who are on on the outside looking in really struggle to relate to what it's like for those of us who write. Instead of seeing it as a developing career they see us as pursuing a hobby. They get confused and feel unappreciated when we prefer to work on our craft rather than spend time with them.

Perception is key to this. We, as writers, (or anyone in a non-traditional job struggling to balance work and family/friends) need to communicate and demonstrate to those around us how important and how seriously we take our writing. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't but we need to learn how to communicate that significance. Be direct, explain it to them by relating it to their job or their passion. Let them know that they are every bit appreciated but you really do consider this a job. Tell them that writing makes you feel complete and it makes life a bit more worthwhile for you.

We can also invite friends or family to observe us for a day (this personally makes me really uncomfortable as I hate being watched while I work.) After experiencing a day in our shoes they may be a bit more understanding of exactly how constricting our schedule can be.

On the flip side of this we need to NOT try to please everyone. It isn't a crime to take time for ourselves to write.

With my first novel I constantly felt like I was ignoring my family. To some extent I still experience the guilt but, after my first book was published, my wife seems pretty supportive. Sometimes tangible goals are what it takes for the people in our lives to become supportive.

Many of my friends still aren't on board and think that I'm simply an aloof jerk who thinks he is better than them. It bothered me for a long time. I tried to go out of my way to spend more time with them but my family and writing life also suffered. No matter what I did I couldn't please everyone. Explaining to some of them what I was working on didn't work. In fact, it garnered a few eye rolls. So, I had to cut that guilt cord loose. I still love my friends but I have to take care of myself. It shouldn't be on us, as writers, to cater to everyone in our lives at the sacrifice of our own sanity.

This issue crops up for a lot of us this time of year.

Absolutely, don't feel bad for sitting out a gathering to recover your mental health. I am going to do just that next weekend. My wife's family will be hosting a Christmas gathering. It will be the 4th for our family. I can handle 3, but that's my limit. So, rather than being crammed in a small house with 25 bickering adults and half dozen screaming children I am going to stay home and write. My wife is understanding, not sure her family is but it is what I have to do to maintain my mental health. I am an introvert by nature and that kind of environment is destructive enough on its own -- being the holidays after so many celebrations already makes it that much worse for me.

Don't think for a moment that the people who love you want you to suffer to make them or anyone happy. The hardest thing for many of us to do is let go and learn to love ourselves as much as we love pleasing the people around us. You are just as important as anyone else. Take the time to heal yourself, especially this time of year.

Happy Holidays, and please give yourself the present of mental health.

Demotivated

Not unmotivated; that would indicate that I simply don't have anything pushing me to be creative.

DEmotivated; as in seeing so much negativity in my personal and professional circles lately that it makes me just shut down and not want to function on anything more than a very basic level.

Just a week or so ago I was trying to give advice on how to stay on top of your writing game during the holidays. Boy, I need my own advice at this point.

The bustle of the holiday season seems to have everyone's knickers in a twist over the past several days. Everywhere I go people are being terse and unfeeling in their interactions with one another. People tend to take one another for granted and never fully appreciate what it is like to be on the opposite end of the ferocity emanating from them. Mindfulness goes out the window and the holiday season invariably devolves into a hostile display of how unhappy this time of year actually makes us.

It's not all bad. There are a lot of good times around the holidays -- but it seems that GETTING to that happy place takes and emotional toll on a good many of us.

Social media is a prime example of this. As we get closer to the holidays the different subgroups on Twitter within the Writing Community have completely lost their marbles. Authors and reviewers are at one another's throats. Traditionally published authors and Independent authors are tearing into one another. There is so much punching down that I am beginning to feel like a well kneaded dough. I'm not even taking the brunt of it, because I have pretty much withdrawn into my shell until January.

So what is the point of me writing this meandering post, other than to complain about people being nasty to one another? How about using it as an opportunity to explore what life is like from the perspective of the person on the other side of the conversation. If you feel like someone is being unjustly snarky try to put yourself in their shoes for a few minutes before you bang out that witty retort. Instead of sucking the life out of someone's day maybe you can learn something about yourself and the situation that someone else finds their self in. It only takes a moment to ruin someone's day or week but taking an extra moment to contemplate the situation could save someone's bad day or week, instead.

Happy Holidays.

Be kind.

Limits and Boundaries

It's been a busy couple of weeks of writing. Sorry I'm not blogging more, but while I'm drafting time becomes a precious commodity. My approach is changing, a bit, this time around also.

Writing MFoDB was a lot like guerrilla warfare. I had to take my chromebook everywhere with me and try to find five minutes here and there to bang out a thousand words or so during the day. It was a case of a little here and there adds up to a lot. Unfortunately, this created quite the editing problem for me in the revisions. My writing style was choppy, disjointed, uneven and it took a WHOLE lot of work to piece it all together and make it cohesive. In the end I was very happy with the product but it was forged in fire, blood, and exhaustion.

After my first few days of working on Maestri it became clear to me that this approach was going to be unsustainable. I wasn't going to fight for scraps of time to complete my vision on this novel.

I have set up dedicated time to write and the rest of the world can just function without me for a couple hours per day. My wife has been great about accepting that I need distance and privacy to focus on my craft. I explained it to her like a computer being pushed to the limits of its RAM. That's how I feel. It all loads into my consciousness and any outside influence buffers out important, pertinent data involving my story.

Another way in which I have made this book easier on myself is by compartmentalizing it. I have divided the work into 4 distinct sections. This allows me to focus on one part at a time, knowing where my beginnings and endings are so the script doesn't wander away from me. I really hate it when my characters have too much free reign and become uncooperative.

I highly recommend finding a way to communicate to the people in your life that you absolutely NEED SPACE and privacy to work on your book. Writers, if the people in your life care then they will make that small sacrifice for you. Please don't do like I did this past year and run yourself into the ground trying to get your book finished. It really took a toll on my psyche. For a while, during edits, I was unsure whether I even wanted to move forward on book 2.

It's so easy to say "I'm going to write a book" but oh so much harder to actually find the time in your day. Don't put all of the burden of your hobby/career on your own shoulders. It is okay to ask people around you to help you out by giving you the environment that you need to be productive in your literary endeavors.

Take care of yourselves.

The Morbid Fascinations of David Bennett will be FREE in ebook format from Amazon for Kindle to celebrate the upcoming Friday the 13th! Get it free from 12/10-12/13.
https://www.amazon.com/Morbid-Fascinations-David-Bennett-ebook/dp/B07ZG4N2XB

Making Progress

The past ten two weeks have been incredibly hectic here but, somehow, I have managed to make progress on Book 2: Maestri. I'm now over 12,000 words into draft 1. I know, it doesn't sound like much but it actually is. I'm roughly halfway through Part 1: Prodigy. I've also been tweaking the outline for Part 2: Apprentice. The final two parts of this book are pretty much outlined but I am waiting to finish those plots once I see where my characters lead me in the first half of the book.

I wanted to answer a question that I have gotten quite a bit about this book. The title: Maestri - what does it mean? It is the plural of Maestro, quite simply. It seems not a lot of people are familiar with the pluralization of the word. The definition that is pertinent to the usage here is: a great or distinguished figure in any sphere.

I will leave it at that for now. I wouldn't want to give it all away.

My writing has evolved with this second book. I sequester myself much more than I did while writing my debut. The intensity of this novel requires an extreme focus. I owe it to this book to make sure that I bring my vision to life in exactly the way that it deserves to be treated. I will take my time with it, but my pacing is perfect right now. It's not something that I am rushing, nor dawdling around with.

If you want to know more about where Maestri is heading, then check out Book 1: The Morbid Fascinations of David Bennett.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1701845431

Writing Around the Holidays

It's that time of year again. For me, it's a bit different. It's the first holiday season that I have been a writer. The whirlwind that has been 2019 has impacted me in so many ways that I can't even describe it. I want to thank everybody for a great year.

One thing I see mentioned constantly on social media is the amount of anxiety about writing during the holiday season.

So, let's take a collective deep breath and think about how we can approach this.

Everyone's situation is vastly different, but odds are that your free elements of the day are still going to be free. Sure, you might be mentally distracted by the challenges of organizing family gatherings and buying gifts but I'm willing to bet you still have a good 15 minutes when you are getting ready for bed where you could jot down even 100 or 200 words. I know, that's not much at all is it? It actually is, though. Those few words, added up over the next couple of weeks, can actually be a sizable chunk of your manuscript. Beyond that, though, it keeps your brain in the game. You won't disconnect from your story and will find it easier to reconnect to your WIP once all the craziness has settled and we're left with the bleak January landscape looking back at us through the window.

If that is too much for you, then try to just edit a few pages here and there. It keeps you familiar with your WIP and, again, keeps your brain in the game.

If THAT is still too much with your hectic schedule then just try to find some moments here and there to simply READ your WIP. It will help keep it fresh in your head.

Some people may have an easier time of just picking their work up after a few weeks or a month or more off. I'm not one of them. If I have to I will keep my chromebook in the bathroom just so I can escape in there and write for a few minutes.

I hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday season.

If you have any thoughts on this PLEASE feel free to share them in the comments!

The Silence of Trying

After posting the prologue last week, here's the rough draft of Chapter 1 of Maestri:

Chapter 1: The Silence of Trying

It was all too much of a distraction - the too white walls, the maddening flicker of the wonky light overhead, the sleet pelting the large glass window that allowed the whole world to peer up into the practice room. The wide open view down onto the street was the most irritating. She could feel the eyes of strangers looking up toward her as they heard her club the keys on the antique Steinway. They must have thought it sounded like a baby elephant was stomping the poor piano to death.

In truth Arabella was much more talented than she gave herself any credit for. Despite only being able to use the left side of her body she had a way with music that most able bodied people never would, even if dedicated to the craft for a lifetime. The teenage girl had only been playing for four years but had surpassed her teacher two years past. Since then she had studied the great works of composers ranging from classical to contemporary, practiced styles from jazz to death metal to renaissance and beyond. There wasn’t an area of music theory that confounded the astute girl. Then again, she didn’t do much else with her free time. 

Sure, she could go sit out in the living room and watch her foster mother get drunk while watching cooking shows on t.v. Hell, sometimes that was entertaining...for a while. Lynn would get giddy at the sight of new dishes that she longed to try, at first, but as the show progressed and the wine glasses emptied one after another the late thirty something’s mood would deteriorate until she was dwelling on the fact that she couldn’t cook worth a damn and didn’t have anyone in her life to cook for. The next few hours would be spent draining any additional wine bottle unfortunate enough to be located within her pantry while she cursed Amelia for walking out on her five years ago. She had adopted Arabella to fill that void but it took less than four months before that fullness had drained from her now empty heart. It wasn’t the kind of love that the upper class banking executive desired. Unfortunately, Lynn’s reputation as something of a selfish tyrant within the entire Atlan Valley financial industry prevented anyone from taking any kind of romantic interest in her. The conservative community also made it more difficult for a lesbian to find suitable company without being judged and having her professional life jeopardized by a long term relationship. Though Lynn felt inclined toward taking that risk for true love, time after time her partners hadn’t been willing to potentially sacrifice successful careers for her.

Arabella had grown tired of witnessing her stepmother descend into her fugues on a weekly (sometimes more often) basis. She preferred to sit in the large practice room, in full view of the public, and bang away at some random tune. Her own compositions would come out to play at night, never during the day. There was far too much discomfort in knowing that strange ears outside might hear the notes that poured out of her broken heart.

The music stopped and a sigh escaped the young girl’s lips. She turned her head toward the large window and considered wheeling herself over to the edge of it to shut the blinds. It was always such a tangle that Ari usually gave up and accepted the audience of passersby on the street below. Today was different, though. She was in a mood. 

It was the end of Spring break and tomorrow she would have to go deal with people much more up close and actually interact with the assholes. There were few students or faculty at the academy Arabella cared for, and they weren’t worth the effort of dealing with stares and snide comments from the classrooms and halls full of ableds at the school. The mocking was monotonous and unoriginal, anymore. At the beginning of the year there had been some witty new insults, a few that even made Ari chuckle to herself, which then became more fodder for the cretins who made fun of her disabilities.

The chair moved quickly over to the wall next to the window. Navigating the unwieldy contraption close enough that she could reach the blind cord was a challenge and Ari accidentally scuffed the eggshell paint next to the window with a grey smudge from the rubber of the front wheel. Whoops. Lynn would notice it and be sure to lecture the poor girl yet again about how she had no business trying to do things for herself. Then the lecture would devolve into a guilt trip about how thoughtless Arabella was to deprive Lynn’s prized ficus of its much needed sunlight shining through the oversized window.

Half lifting herself with her good leg, Ari grabbed the cord to the blinds and tugged on it hard enough that the blinds obediently flopped closed. The room was bathed in refreshing darkness but now she had to roll herself over to the opposite wall to flip the lights on so she could see her sheet music. Another sigh.

Arabella turned her chair and pushed with her left arm, aiming herself toward the darkened doorway that lead to the main living room. The switch was low enough that it would be a quick trip. About halfway across the room a motion in the darkness caught the girl’s attention. She turned her head and allowed the chair to roll to a gradual stop. Ari swore that she had seen some motion on the stairs the made their way up to the third floor. Something beyond the white bannister and between the bars had most certainly moved. Hallucinations weren’t a part of her disability and Ari was quite keen about sensing things. It seemed to be a heightened sense that compensated for a blind eye, deaf ear, and half of a paralyzed body.

There it was again. Ari was unsure what she was seeing but it was definitely something. Her skin prickled at a slight cold breeze blowing over the hair on her arm. She could only describe it as a darkness within the darkness, like there was a shadow hiding within itself on the steps. 

For a moment the girl wheeled herself back, slightly, then actually pushed herself forward in the direction of the stairs -- curiosity getting the best of her, despite a growing concern that someone was in the room with her. Arabella pushed her chair a couple of times then allowed it to slow. From a distance of just a few feet she now looked carefully between the rails of the banister. She didn’t see anything yet there was a motion there. Something moved! What the hell was it?

Ari pushed her chair again closer to the railing. There was a movement on the fourth step up, nearly at level with her face. She could see through it but it was almost like a darkened silhouette that followed her movements. It wasn’t tangible, yet it was there in front of her.

The temperature was dropping in the room by a marginal amount. Arabella wasn’t sure if she should be scared. The one emotion that had been missing from most of her life was a sense of fear. It came with the territory for someone who has spent considerable amounts of time plotting ways to end her own life. A bit of warm breeze seemed to waft up from the shadow within a shadow on the step, brushing Ari’s hair in such a way that it felt a bit like the warm caress of a hand on the side of her face. The sensation was so utterly alien that she shook in her chair. It was at that moment the panic hit and she tried to wheel herself backward. The chair wouldn’t move. Ari reamed hard on the wheel but it wouldn’t budge. The brake had somehow locked on it and she couldn’t move! She struggled and gasped for help, trying to climb out of the chair to get away from whatever was in the room with her. The chair flipped over, and Arabella with it. The resulting thud on the floor resounded throughout the entire second floor of the home. 

The presence seemed to move off the stairs, through the rail and down toward Ari’s face. She tried to scream, but of course no sound escaped her paralyzed vocal chords. All she could do was flail and try to drag herself away from the malice. She felt the presence descend upon her. The heat of it approached her back as she pulled her body toward the door.

The living room door opened and light flooded into the room. Lynn gasped in shock as she flipped the light on, quickly making her way over to her distressed foster daughter lying on the floor. Reaching a hand down to help scoop the girl up while using the other to right the chair, “Oh, Ari! You’re going to scratch the hardwoods! Are you alright?” 

The concern for Arabella genuinely seemed secondary and the girl reacted as such. Instantly gone was the panic of whatever had spooked her, replaced by the massive inferiority complex that always manifested within her anytime her foster mother was near. Ari let her body go boneless, it was about the only way she had of being passive aggressive with the older woman.

Once Ari was back in her seat, Lynn quickly inspected the maple hardwoods in the room while her foster daughter plaintively flailed for her attention. Lynn barely even noticed.

Exasperated, Arabella wheeled herself back over to the piano and slammed her hand down on a chord so dissonant that it made Lynn jump to her feet. “What the hell is that for?”

Grabbing a pad of paper and her pen from atop the Steinway, Ari scribbled out as best as she could with her left hand. She didn’t know whether it was her naturally dominant hand but her penmanship raised serious doubts about it. After completing her scribbles she tossed the notepad over to Lynn, who spent several seconds deciphering the scratches.

There was something on the stairs. It scared me.

“What? No, there’s nothing on the stairs. Crazy girl, there’s nothing there at all.” Stamping her heels across the maple wood, Lynn likely scuffed the floor far more than Ari may have during her fall. She walked up the first few steps and looked around the room. 

Arabella wheeled herself over to the edge of the banister and pointed to where she had seen the shifting darkness. Her emphatic gestures were nothing more than wasted energy in Lynn’s presence, and Ari quickly quieted her motions. Another sigh. It was so damn hopeless. Despite the years together she could never get through to her foster mother. It didn’t matter what the topic was, Lynn’s personality existed solely to dismiss any matter that she didn’t want to put the energy into dealing with. This time was no different.

“Well, Ari, there’s nothing here at all.” Lynn studied the girl in the wheelchair from her vantage above the banister, gazing hard at the child. “Is this because you have to go back to school tomorrow?” 

Ari’s disdain for school was common knowledge to most of Atlan Valley at this point. She proudly owned the record for most suspensions by a disabled student in the school’s illustrious thirty year history. The previous record was zero, but Arabella was setting the bar high with a running total of four. She looked down, now realizing that it was pointless to waste the effort on trying to express herself to the older woman.

Lynn eventually wandered back out of the room, closing the door behind her but leaving the light on. The aroma of merlot lingered well after she was gone.

Left alone, yet again, in her silence Arabella went back to the piano and began to play one of her own compositions. It wasn’t her best. The notes were slow, sad, meandering, and rhythmless. The song was a perfect reflection of its creator.

_____________

Interested in knowing where this story is heading? Look for Maestri, available on Amazon around August 2020.

Want to know the beginning? Check out The Morbid Fascinations of David Bennett on Amazon now available in kindle (unlimited) and paperback. https://www.amazon.com/Morbid-Fascinations-David-Bennett-ebook/dp/B07ZG4N2XB

A Single Drop In a Sea of Moments

The opening prologue to Maestri (rough draft)

The patter reminded him of another place, in another moment forever trapped behind the wall of entropy. He could watch it again and again but never again would he be able to actually feel the cold Spring rain upon his skin. That momentary stinging shock of condensation used to irritate him when he would run about his business among the living world but now oh how he longed for the embrace of it. 

Leaning against a bus stop shelter somewhere on seventy eighth avenue, a figure hidden beneath a brown jacket gazed longingly at the sidewalk before him. Just thirteen years ago he had first arrived at this very spot, his first time in New York City after wandering the Earth for thousands of years. Gone was the sense of awe, or even hope - replaced by visions of what was to come and the knowledge that he was absolutely impotent to stop it.

His head lifted and what once were his eyes focused on the pale city light reflecting off the belly of clouds. He used to peer out his window for hours at the storms when he was alive. They brought a sense of power and chaos that oddly calmed him. If he had only known what pure chaos was, back then, he wouldn’t have admired it nearly as much. One such memory flitted through his mind, holding her and gazing into the midnight frenzy of an electrical storm. The thought only drove him further into the depths of despair. It was all gone. This world around him was merely an echo of what had already been. Unblinking eyes stared into the maelstrom writhing above as he stood still beneath it, hoping in vain that some force would wield an electrical current in his direction that was somehow strong enough to blow his atoms apart and grant him the peace that he had spent millenia searching for.

Instead, he stood calmly beneath the flickers and echoing roars of a storm in the city while the few people who had been in the streets fled indoors. In a few moments a bolt of lightning would strike through an open window in an apartment two blocks from here, killing a mother and her three month old daughter that she was trying to calm after waking from the thunder. The man had already seen it happen. He had bore witness to a thousand moments such as that in the time that he had walked the world. In the beginning he believed he could change things like that. Several frustrating attempts taught him that it was impossible. Time was not fluid about him. He had lapsed beyond that dimension of existence. No matter what he tried it would simply unwind and correct itself as if he had never been there in the first place. He had even attempted to correct a tragedy from his own life, only to watch the very dimensions of existence splinter into a near infinite number of pieces in an explosion of such magnitude never before experienced in the linear universe. It had taken him and his gifts thousands of years to reassemble existence back into its former form. Never again did he attempt to correct another moment. His fate was simply to wander it and learn.

Learn, he did. He stayed in the shadows and watched the great Priors teach their acolytes far from the eyes of skeptics. For hundreds of years he followed the secret and those who knew how to unlock it until he began to understand the subtle nuances of what he carried around inside of him. He was different from everyone else who had ever lived. Some carried talents that he also possessed but many of his gifts had never manifested in any of the great Maestri in the living world or beyond. His ability to look beyond the dimensions of creation and into the very tendons that held entropy together, for example, was an ability beyond the comprehension of any who had ever wielded the Art. Yet, frustratingly, he had never learned what to do with it or how to undo what was coming. There was a storm approaching and he played no small part in its creation. It made the swirling chaos in the black sky above seem like a drop in the ocean compared to the unraveling of reality that was approaching. Despite his deep knowledge of the living All, he still couldn’t comprehend the desire to perform such an act as great and terrible as the One who also wandered the Earth was planning.

His life had ended in a sacrifice to save the universe, but what he never realized until it was far too late is that it had all been a distraction. The true evil had lurked within him all his life, and had been set free in a sunny meadow on the other side.

There were no more places left to wander to. There was no absolution coming, no way to change what had already unfolded. Once he had left this plain of existence that power had been stripped from him. There was no hope.

Yet, there was a hiccup in the universe that he couldn’t ignore. Something powerful, dangerous, lurked out there somewhere. He knew not where, only able to vaguely feel it. It was a part of time that he couldn’t navigate toward. It had been hidden from him by one of the others. He turned his head toward the west and tried to peer through those fractal barriers between realities and dimensions of existence but his mind couldn’t navigate toward that ripple in the very fabric of existence. It wasn’t his story. His part in the tale was over, and it was time to go back.

He looked down at the sidewalk, again, and watched the drops of water flow and slip into the cracks of the concrete. He focused on the drops so closely that he could see the atoms of oxygen and hydrogen bouncing off one another. Further yet, he could see inside the very fabric of this world and, eventually, the cracks in it that lead to the other places beyond the world of the living. His mind drifted into them and he disappeared from existence.

______

Read the 1st book before the sequel comes out in 2020!

The Morbid Fascinations of David Bennett. Free with Kindle Unlimited of $2.99 on eBook, $12.99 paperback https://www.amazon.com/Morbid-Fascinations-David-Bennett-ebook/dp/B07ZG4N2XB

Brain Freeze When Asked About My Book

"So, you wrote a book! That's great! What's it about?"

"Uhh...well, there's this guy and it's a haunted house story... You'd have to read it to understand."

That is me nearly every single time someone asks me about my book. I hear this from other authors, too. Friends or family ask me about my writing and I totally seize up. It's like I completely forget about the 92,000 word work of fiction that I spent seven months writing.

Why is it so hard to explain to someone what my project is about? The plot is there. The characters are there, defined, in text. IT'S ALL THERE!  So why can't I answer?

I think it's because there is just too much packed into there. I can't just call it a haunted house story, because it is and it isn't. I mean, it's part of it but there's so much more. Nothing is really what it seems. There's love, loss, hope, anguish all compacted within those flattened sheets of cream color paper. My book is about moments to make you chuckle and instances that will freeze your soul.

How do I describe that to someone?

In the end, I realize that it's because I am simply too attached to my project to summarize it in a few sentences. There is so much emotion, not only in the work, but in the time spent writing it that I can't just give a simple answer.

It's about sacrifice. It's about a man sacrificing half a year with his family to achieve his goal. That's not the character in my story, though. That's about the dude who wrote it. My character's story is also one of sacrifice, though of a much more personal kind.

...personal... maybe that's why I can't answer the question so easily.

This writing is my heart and soul poured out into words. It is so extremely personal that I just can't talk about it. Sure, I can rip my heart out of my chest and toss it on the table for everyone to inspect - but please don't ask me to analyze it.

I guess it's just a weird quirk that I possess. Maybe the next time someone asks me what my book is about I will simply say "Well, you just have to read it to find out."

_______

The Morbid Fascinations of David Bennett
free with Kindle Unlimited
$2.99 ebook
$12.99 paperback
https://www.amazon.com/Morbid-Fascinations-David-Bennett-ebook/dp/B07ZG4N2XB

The Discomfort of Uncertainty

In my research of the paranormal I am always amazed to find out what scares people. I'm sure that sounds plenty morbid and a bit...touched...but it is fascinating to learn exactly what it is about a hypothetical haunting that makes an individual feel off balance and skittish.

Surprisingly enough, it isn't the banging or even seeing a spirit that tends to set many people off. It's the uncertainty of the invisible lurking around them that really makes them squirm. Most people that I interview would rather have a ghost manifest in front of them rather than sit in the middle of a room and just feel like they are being watched by some invisible entity.

Why are we so terrified of uncertainty in our lives? It goes far beyond the paranormal. We humans are so driven to find answers to any question that we stumble upon that it can quite often lead to obsession.

When I was young one of my cats came up missing. He had been rather sick the last time I saw him and then suddenly he was gone. His name was Bandit. He was a rather plump, tiger striped fellow with an absolutely adorable personality. I was eight years old. I spent nearly a year looking for my missing kitty, trying to find out what happened to him. I would routinely check with neighbors, ask my parents if they heard anything. It drove me insane to lose my best buddy.

It wasn't until years later that my parents admitted that my dad took the sick cat and dumped him in the field behind our house to die.

Christ, that made me furious - for so many reasons. Aside from them tossing out my pet like trash, they let me just wonder for a decade what had happened. They had absolutely no idea that the uncertainty of not knowing Bandit's fate just ate at me day after day.

This is why some of us are so drawn to the paranormal. It is the skepticism and uncertainty of exactly what it is that may be haunting our lives. Is the spirit of a restless person really roaming my halls or is it the winter cold making the old building's frame creak?

Would we be able to rest much easier if the science of the afterlife is ever established and we can just hear a bang and say, with certainty, that it is the ghost of Bob, who hung himself in the attic back in 1983? I'm willing to bet that concrete knowledge would actually make many people more comfortable than the simple wondering whether some echo of the past lurks their halls of if they are just losing their mind over nothing.

What about you? Would you really like to know what those little bumps are that you hear in the middle of the night?

FREE with Kindle Unlimited:
https://www.amazon.com/Morbid-Fascinations-David-Bennett-ebook/dp/B07ZG4N2XB

Also available in Paperback for $12.99 prime on Amazon or contact me directly at sofaslug@yahoo.com for a signed copy at the same price, while supplies last.

Desperation in the darkest hour

David wants to leave the house on Shenker Road. He tries, but it calls him back. If he ignores it then the house just tries harder to reclaim him. Something inside of him won't let David just walk away, either. What is it that drives him back through that door time after time?

Knowing his history with the house, why would Melissa ever steer him back into that abyss in the first place?

Why do characters in horror stories always make such poor decisions?!?

We have to look no further than any given newscast to see a myriad of people being arrested and locked away as a result of their poor decision making skills. I think that it's extremely easy for people on the outside to criticize or 'Monday Morning Quarterback' the decisions that people make in stories because they don't fully understand what someone who is desperate, broken, hopeless is capable of rationalizing. Someone who is in that dire of a situation tends to become singularly focused on a goal and, not only ignores more rational means of attaining the goal, is completely unaware of such a possibility. The human psyche is hardwired with several survival mechanisms. A fine example is the fight or flight response. If cornered, an animal (yes, at the end of the day humans are animals driven by instinct) will either lash out at an aggressor or run like heck away from such threat. It doesn't consider the other possibilities such as trickery or submissiveness in the face of danger. There is simply a need to attack or escape.

Teens in a horror movie will run to a basement and hide rather than run screaming out into the night because there is an instinctive safety in finding the darkest, least explored area to hide in. The brain recognizes that it is not a well traveled area and the mind, in panic, finds comfort in having two walls behind it to brace for an impending attack. Running out into the open makes you an open target, like a gazelle on the open Serengeti. It's easy to sit back and say "JUST RUN OUT OF THERE!" without realizing that, if faced with a similar situation, your body would probably flip to autopilot and do the exact same thing that exasperates you when a fictional character does it.

I was really conscious of reactionary behavior like that in my book. David isn't prone to panic, but he definitely has a fight reaction, versus flight. He views the only way out as being through his target rather than around it. There are other forces in David's head, and he is even aware of them, but can't bring himself to quite break completely free of it. Does he make poor decisions? Oh, yes - many. Are they decisions that any of us might also make under similar duress? You may surprise yourself.

Give it a free read on Kindle Unlimited and ask yourself, what would you do in David Bennett's shoes?

The Morbid Fascinations of David Bennett.
https://www.amazon.com/Morbid-Fascinations-David-Bennett-ebook/dp/B07ZG4N2XB

Can Going Bleak Actually Be a Good Thing?

It's no secret that the world can be a pretty bleak place. Every day we turn on the news and see how it is being torn apart. I used to watch the local news in the mornings but now I just sit in silence or read until my 3 year old gets up. Even the local news has become so saturated with the negativity in the world that it is extremely hard to find the positives in it.

I suppose that was a big factor in my return to writing after a nearly thirty year absence. I wanted to fill the time that I used to spend concerning myself with the outside world with something that I find enjoyable, and can also serve as an outlet for my pent up rage toward the people running our country into the ground.

When I decided to focus on bleak horror I really wasn't sure if it was a great way to contribute to a society already on the brink but, honestly, I have always felt that reading or watching horror is a great way to build appreciation for the positive aspects around you.

When you scare yourself after reading a terrifying book or watching a horror film do you sit around and dwell on the things that may be lurking in your closet or under your bed -- or do you turn on something funny and laugh along. Knowing the darkness tends to make people drift toward the light. It's a basic human instinct to look for security in the face of impending harm.

Maybe, just maybe, people need to have the living crap scared out of them on occasion in order to appreciate the things they do have in their lives.

Of course, it's not the same for everyone. Some people don't like to terrify themselves or read really hopeless literature. That is completely fine. Everyone is different. Frankly, the world would be a much better place if we learned to embrace our differences rather than use them as a wedge of divisionism.

If you're one of the folks who loves bleak, then by all means check out:

https://www.amazon.com/Morbid-Fascinations-David-Bennett-ebook/dp/B07ZG4N2XB
$2.99 or free with Kindle Unlimited!

The Solitary Man

David Bennett came from a traumatic background. His parents died at a young age and he never quite found his place in the world. His unspoken childhood and early adulthood obviously left him scared and severely introverted.

In The Morbid Fascinations of David Bennett we see a main character with severe personality 'flaws.' He can't seem to commit to a singular course of action and never feels quite in control of his own mind. Is David insane? Are his experiences embellished by the traumas of his youth? What exactly is going on with him? He is a recluse who, at times, severely resents his way of life - and on other occasions revels in his lonely life.

Some readers may look at this character with pity while many will be able to identify, to an extent, with someone who has been through so much in life that they are just tired and want to be left alone - no matter how solitary and lonely that life may become.

David has only been able to trust a few people in his adult life, and has found a way to alienate the ones who haven't passed away.

What drives David the most is a fear of losing those in his life. His family, and his only close friend, died years ago. He is scared to get close to anyone in fear of being hurt again.

His relationship with Melissa is complicated, but he does love her. David has always felt happy keeping her at a distance, only rekindling their relationship when common tragedy brings them back together.

I felt it was important to have a character at the front and center of this story who is far from perfect, mentally disturbed by his trauma, and unsure how to function in the world anymore. There are a lot of us out there who can relate to that way of thinking. We hit a point in our life where we just sigh and wonder where it all went wrong and why we're so introverted and can't open ourselves up to people.

It is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. Our experiences shape us and all that we can do is function within those boundaries that are built within our brains. David is barely likable, curmudgeonly, and antisocial because he has always felt that he was different - with an ability that others have repelled others on top of everything else.

I think more than a few readers might just find a way to feel sympathetic for this poor guy as his life descends into complete torment.

Available now on Kindle Unlimited, or just $2.99 for purchase on eBook/$12.99 in beautiful matte covered paperback.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1701845431

"Big Things Have Small Beginnings"

When I set out to write my debut novel I knew that there was going to be an incredible learning curve for me. All my life I had been used to writing short stories of 8,000 words or less. The only other time I attempted to write a full length novel I got hung up around 42,000 words and the manuscript is still tucked away in a closet.

Morbid Fascinations of David Bennett takes place in a very limited environment, not only because I wanted to keep things small scale and well paced, but because this introduction to a greater world was meant to feel like someone making a gradual transition from our world into a universe much greater in scale than he could ever imagine. This novel is a bit like uncorking the bottle. Maestri will see the genie set forth. The scale of the follow up will be incredibly vast in scale, by comparison.

This takes absolutely nothing away from MFoDB. It's a taught, closed quarters, slow burn suspenseful horror work in the vein of H.P. Lovecraft and evolves a bit toward a more Clive Barker influenced work near the end of the 3rd act. That really sets the tone of what we can expect in the next chapter of this tale - of which David Bennett is only a small part.

The Morbid Fascinations of David Bennett, now available in paperback, ebook, and free with Kindle Unlimited!

Take a chance, and read a few pages. I bet you just might be enticed to read further.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1701845431

Becoming the Thing I Hate

Confession time:

I used to be a salesman.

A Schwann's salesman.

I hated it.

I hated myself.

I'm not a salesman. I have a real hard time interacting with people. I am about as introverted as it gets. I come across as cold and aloof and people think that I hate them and it really bled through into my somewhat brief career of selling frozen treats door to door. I don't hate people. I hate talking to people. Does that make sense?

So, I am still a salesman.

I make chain mail armor and jewelry and sell it at craft shows around the Midwest. It started out as a necessity for income ten years ago. It quickly grew into my main job.

I. Still. Hate. Selling stuff.

So, it's that time in my life where I get the joy of learning how to sell a new product. I have ordered my first shipment of author copies and already called local libraries and booked a craft show in December in which I will be selling my books.

Whoa boy. Hyperventilating. People interaction while trying to teach myself how to sell books.

Unfortunately, in the modern world, an author has to be willing to step outside their sphere of comfort to succeed at their craft. It doesn't matter whether you are self published or signed to a traditional agency - odds are you're going to be responsible for doing a lot of your own marketing to get copies of your book moving off shelves.

So, next week after my books arrive, I will force myself to become more social and more visible...for a while. I will begin offering a few copies out there for honest reviews, and awkwardly calling bookstores in my area to see if they would be willing to meet in person to discuss the possibility of stocking my book. The entire time I will be staving off anxiety attacks. It's a sacrifice that I, as an author now, have to be willing to make.

Life would be so much easier if I could just pay someone to go out and do this for me. I asked my daughter if she wanted to do it and she just stared at me over her sketchpad. My son enthusiastically volunteered to go out and sell my book for me, but I had to remind him that he's only 3. He eventually conceded that point with great reluctance.

You're not alone if you are struggling to sell your book out there. Just don't psych yourself out. Don't think that it is easier for some people than it is for others. It really isn't. Everyone walks through the mud to get the gold at the end of the rainbow. If anyone takes anything from this rambling post, I hope it's that your misery is shared. Keep on trying to market, writing, and eventually you will get to where you want to be. The world can't ignore you forever.

Speaking of marketing...please check out my book!

The Morbid Fascinations of David Bennett, available now in Paperback and Kindle (included in Kindle Unlimited) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1701845431

The Easy Way Out (World Building)

When I set out to write Morbid Fascinations of David Bennett I knew that I didn't want to bite off more than I could chew. I was going to be pressed for time and suffering through a myriad of distractions and the last thing that I wanted to do was find myself in over my head and frustrated to the point where I would abandon my manuscript.

One of the first things that I decided to do, with world building, was set the story in a mostly real environment. Thus, northern Michigan, I apologize for inflicting this tale upon you.

Oh, I knew there were dangers in doing something like that. I have fictionalized street (and some other location) names, but anyone familiar with the area is going to know exactly where this book takes place.

This approach became a double edged sword because it freed up my time to dedicate toward character and story development without having to create and learn an entire new world, but it also influenced how my character treated his environment. In the original draft, David had much more contempt and loathing for the particular area in which he found himself. He considered it a hillbilly haven and didn't want anything to do with the locals.

Realizing that I would be offending a whole geographic location of people with this approach I tamed it down quite a bit. Basically, David really doesn't interact with locals beyond a basic need to. It's too difficult for him to come back to this place that he once called home and face the memories that he associates with the area. He felt used by so many people and dragged down into the seedy lifestyle that is all too common in that area. Instead of dwelling on it, he ignores it.

It's an artistic sacrifice that I felt was worth the cost of giving myself a relatively easy canvas to paint upon with my debut novel. In the end it was a successful approach.

The sequel is much more fantastical and fictionalized. I don't plan on holding back too many punches in the next round.

Now available with matchbook! Buy the paperback and get the kindle edition for 0.99.

https://www.amazon.com/Morbid-Fascinations-David-Bennett-ebook/dp/B07ZG4N2

Atmosphere and Immersion

One of the questions that I get all the time is 'Where do you write?'

It's a good question, considering that I share a 2000 sq ft house with two children, a patient spouse, and 3 cats that don't know the meaning of 'personal space.'

First of all, I'm not the kind of writer who blocks off 6 or 8 hours a day to write. I'm lucky if I can find 45 to 60 minutes in a day to write. Usually I wait until my wife is putting our 3 year old to bed and I just grab my Chromebook and plop down on the couch to bang out 1200-1500 words per day. That's not a lot but I aim to write at least 5 days a week and NEVER take more than 2 consecutive days off, because I feel like it really causes me to detach from my story. I don't like that feeling of being behind in my own story and needing to get back inside the characters' heads.

Once in a while when I get to a particularly challenging or intense scene I will waddle up to my theater and enjoy the silence for a while. Sure, I write better when I'm in that kind of environment but usually it isn't a big enough difference to warrant setting up a home office, again. I had one of those once. It was grotesquely underused and my cats eventually claimed it as their own. The room was eventually converted into a movie theater. Much better use of the space.

On occasion I will also plug in earbuds and listen to recordings of thunderstorms while I write. For me, it is an excellent way of blocking out the noise of the world around me and setting my mood for writing some proper horror.

Does it work? You be the judge.

Available in paperback or Kindle (included with Kindle Unlimited for free!)

https://www.amazon.com/Morbid-Fascinations-David-Bennett-ebook/dp/B07ZG4N2XB

The paperback turned out beautifully done, with a soft matte finish cover.

The More They Overtake the Plumbing...

This post is just a bit of a rant, to start with.

I have been learning the ropes with advertising and my first effort was met with a high degree of failure...complete, really. I built my ad on Amazon and let it run for three days without a single impression. I kept checking my budget, including my ad bid rate and dynamic adjustments. Nothing was helping. This morning I finally decided to do the proper research that I should have done a few days ago. It turns out that Amazon's system is really horrible at automatic keyword matching. Amazon's system decided that my ad only needed two keywords: 'David' and 'Bennett.'

...........so... that was definitely an issue. There aren't many people who go on amazon and search either of those two words.

This morning I did what I should have done in the beginning and taken the time to create a manual ad and select my own keywords. A few dozen proper keywords back in the system and we will see how it rolls now. Too bad I likely have to wait several hours to a day or more for moderation on the new campaign.

Our world has become so Automatic that it feels like what should be the easy, time saving solution actually blows up in our faces. I think a good analogy is the 'automatic' setting on your microwave for cooking things like popcorn. Has anyone in the history of microwaving EVER been able to successfully use that button to properly pop a bag of popcorn? My own experiences have ranged from ending up with a quarter cup of unpopped kernels to "holy crap, where's the fire extinguisher!"

I feel like that is my experience whenever I try to use any website's automatic function. It leads me to believe that the function is only ever put there to make someone feel like they are actually being productive when the truth is that they are pretty much sending a digital dog to chase its own tail for a while.

Okay, rant over.

What are your experiences with automation technology?

Self imposed hiatus

Yesterday was a very odd day for me. It was the first day that I took completely off from anything to do with my book in more than 7 months. I have to say, the house is much cleaner now. I honestly feel more stressed out now, though.

My book is now in the hands of Amazon and it has been slowly rolling out for sale. I have some advertising in place for it, mostly with Amazon ads, but I'm taking a few days off before I ramp up my efforts to market my work. I have spent so much time with my book, in its various stages, that I want to mentally detach from it as an author and reconnect with it in the role of marketer and salesman. I feel that to succeed at it I need to have a clear head and not take the forthcoming rejection personally. Failure is part of the learning experience, especially for writers. I want to learn from it, not get mentally beaten down by it.

So I am going to take a few days off from all of it and then, once I have a chance to go over my proof copy, go back and form a game plan of how to market it - including giveaways, searching out review groups, etc.

One thing I won't be doing during this initial push is writing. That is going to be the hardest part of all of this. I already have my next book fairly plotted out and I am eager to get to it. Part of me is worried that in the intervening time spent marketing that I will lose my fire for the next book and have a hard time getting into it. I am just going to have to accept that.

I want to give my marketing campaign a solid month to really ramp up before I go back to spending a decent amount of time writing, again. So the plan is to begin my next novel on December 1st. That should be interesting with the holidays rapidly approaching at that point.

In the meantime, feel free to browse both versions for sale on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1701845431 for paperback
https://www.amazon.com/Morbid-Fascinations-David-Bennett-ebook/dp/B07ZG4N2XB for Kindle (yes, it is also on Kindle Unlimited.

I appreciate everyone sharing those links, too, even if you have no interest in reading an intense horror novel.

Thanks for reading. I look forward to updating you all on my successes and failures during the marketing phase of Morbid Fascinations of David Bennett.

Surprise!

After nearly 8 months today is finally the big day! I am proud to introduce you all to my brand new bouncing baby ebook. The paperback version will be available in the coming weeks. If you buy it, thank you very much. Honest reviews are appreciated. They are a great opportunity for me to learn what I did right and what I did wrong.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZG4N2XB/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=morbid+fascinations+of+david+bennett&qid=1571781352&sr=8-1

Enthusiastic Focus or Unhealthy Crunch?

The past couple of weeks have been...different...around here. Whirlwind that is my personal life aside, I have been closing in on the final edits of Morbid Fascinations of David Bennett. Today I find myself with 9 pages left until I let my book go out into the world to see if it will find its footing.

Around the beginning of October I began to feel the pressure. I wanted to get this book done this month. The holidays are coming up and the last thing I wanted to do was fall off my schedule and end up secluded in a dark corner of my house while family and friends are wondering what the heck happened to me? (Most don't even know that I've been writing a book.)

So I started staying up later, working longer, but I never thought of it as 'work.' I was immersed in it and enjoying the journey through these final edits. I had heard the term 'crunch' many times, even working through a few on previous jobs, but I never for a second considered what I have been doing over the past couple of weeks to be a crunch.

That is, until the end of last week when I took a 2 day break from editing and realized that things weren't completely rosy around here. I had been neglecting my health, skipping a few meals, and it threw my blood sugar completely off. My 3 year old was becoming a bit extra clingy since I had been isolating myself a bit more to complete the work. It occurred to me that I may not consider it a crunch but I'm sure those in my life definitely did.

It's so easy to get lost in something that I enjoy, though, that I never considered it a strain! I probably would have kept on in the same routine until I eventually flopped over into a diabetic coma. The descent from enthusiasm for a project into unhealthy crunch is a seamless transition. That's the trap of it for those of us who control our own projects.

Make sure to pull back every so often and take a breath. It may feel embarrassing but don't be afraid to ask the people in your life if you have been ignoring them or unintentionally contributing to tension in your household. It can be all to easy of a thing, neglecting other responsibilities while enjoying the adrenaline rush that comes from finishing a huge project.

Remember to be kind to yourself, and those around you. The destination is completely worthless if we sacrifice everything else that we love along the journey.

Art Kills

One of the subjects that I have been tiptoeing around ever since I wrote the opening paragraph of MFoDB came creeping back to haunt me during my editing phase. There I was, staring at a page and trying to make a difficult decision. Do I re-write a scene to make it more socially acceptable or do I leave it as is because it is a part of the story, no matter how unpalatable the subject matter?

Before I go any further I must preface this little conundrum with my perspective on social issues within our society. Yes, there are a lot of terrible things out there and we all bear a responsibility to improve the world around us.

...but where do we draw the line with art?

There are a lot of unsavory aspects to society. Do we chronicle them, acknowledge them, ignore them, change them within our stories to negate their impact upon a reader who may be particularly vulnerable or scarred by something they may read? Do we attach a warning inside the cover that there may be scenes of particular brutality or questionable ethics in the following pages?

...or do we simply let the work speak the words and support the reader if they find something objectionable within?

I fully expect many readers to be downright offended by some of the content in my book. It's a story of people pushed beyond their psychological limits in a fight for self preservation. What would you be capable of doing to save your own life or sanity?

So there I was, trying to determine if I needed to pull back and edit some of the character qualities and scenes to make it less shocking. In the end I did compromise and altered a few paragraphs to make it a bit less paltry. In my own opinion it went a bit far. Did I do it because of outside pressure from the world that we currently live in? Not really. In this particular instance I edited the character/scenes because I thought it would distract the reader and draw too much attention to this one aspect/scene and put the focus on the wrong part of the story.

In another scene I faced a similar quandary. This time I let it be. I know the scene is going to get me some negative feedback but I feel it is integral to the tale that I am telling. So it is going to stay there. If someone reads it then tells me off and calls me a monster for writing that then I will completely understand the offended party and support them.

It's a complicated world to navigate for an artist. Obviously, there is no way to please absolutely everyone and someone is always going to hate our art. What do we owe more to society through our art? Do we owe it an effort toward improving cultural issues through our work by setting positive examples or do we owe it to society to be brutally honest about a subject and let the reader be appalled by it? Is it a hill that you, as an artist, are willing to die upon for your creation?

I have decided to let my art speak for itself and not water it down for a contemporary audience. Will people read my work and get a poor impression of who I am, as a person, from the words that I put down on paper? Probably. I believe, however, that my stories shouldn't be compromised by not wanting to push the reader far from their comfort zone. I will gladly fall on that sword if it is for an element within my story that I feel is necessary to the tale unfolding. Just know that if you hate my work I completely understand and support you for feeling offended by it.

An Echo From the Past: A Tribute to a Little Voice Forgotten

There's a moment in Morbid Fascinations where David discovers a wood board with a child's scribbles on the backside of it. This is one of the experiences I had in the real life house that the story is inspired by. In the book it is part of a creepy discovery while my main character is inspecting a suspicious noise from upstairs. The real story is a bit more mundane.

In the winter of 2004-2005 I was awaiting the birth of my first child and converting a small bedroom in the upstairs of the house into a nursery. There were built in drawers and a cubby hole that had previously had a television sitting in it. It was a recessed shelf sitting about 32" off the floor. I was preparing to paint this small alcove and lifted the television to move it to another room. There was a piece of loose, thin wood stuck to the bottom of the appliance and I wasn't even aware that it came loose until it fell on my foot while I was walking between rooms. After I set the television in the other upstairs bedroom I came back and picked up the board. One side was painted in this sad, pale mint green color generally reserved for a great grandmother's living room walls. On the back side of it were a bunch of doodles in pencil. There were quirky little poems and random phrases scrawled on the board but one little phrase from the author stood out; "Nixon Was Here."

At first I thought it may have been a joke from someone regarding our nation's rather infamous presidential history. As I painted I inspected more boards and drawers and discovered more doodles and images on the undersides of many things. Some little hands had been bored. Many of the pictures were of the yard and people playing. They were fairly typical except that they were all drawn from the perspective of someone in the house looking out. I figured it was probably a child who had been bored on a rainy day or two or ten and decided to pass the time by being a bit mischievous while left unsupervised.

Time passed and it wasn't until a couple of years later, in the summer of 2007 when my toddler and I would go for walks through the shady lanes of the cemetery across the way that I stumbled upon something a bit more interesting. I had limited information about the history of the house but I knew last names of some of the families that had lived there over the years. I stumbled across a headstone in the cemetery with the family name on it. While my two year old spun around in circles with a dandelion I looked over the family names. One of the stones belonged to an 11 year old child named Nixon. I stood there, looking down at this stone and the dots all connected. Most likely he was ill and didn't go outside a lot. He passed the time by watching his family out in the yard from his bedroom window. The view was his escape and he chronicled his little fantasies of playing in the backyard with them on what may have been the only available surfaces. He hid them on the undersides of boards to avoid getting in trouble.

Nixon is a character in Morbid Fascinations of David Bennett. He is a lonely, frightened soul desperately seeking escape from the cruelty of his world. It is a small tribute to a little boy that I wish I could have known in life. His quiet, brief time in this world forgotten by all nearly a century later can finally have a fraction of his own tale told.

The Phases of Self Editing

About four days after I typed the last words in draft 2 I decided to get my MS back out and give it a run through to edit for punctuation and grammar. At first it felt like an intimidating mountain to ascend but once I put myself in the mind space for it I was pleasantly surprised at how doable it was.

For me, the key is to take it in small chunks. A couple of times along my editing journey I have tried to push myself to look at more pages than what I really should have. Not only did this bog me down and wear my brain out, but I later caught myself having missed a couple of glaring errors. So, for me, I take it about five pages at a time and repeat the process a few times per day.

Everyone is different and some people definitely have more ability to focus for longer periods than I do.

As I have been editing, I did notice that I have experienced different phases, in relation to how I view my own writing abilities.

While editing;

 pages 1-50: "Hmm. You know what? I'm not bad. Wow, I can't believe I wrote some of this. It's pretty good!

pages 51-75: "Okay, it's still decent but feels a little flat. Let's just punch it up a bit...and...we're good!"

pages 76-100: *sigh* "Alright, I really should have re-read some of this. HOW MANY TIMES ARE YOU GOING TO USE THE WORD 'AND', DUDE?!?"

pages 101-130: "Are you kidding me?!? A monkey could crap on a typewriter and make more sense than this garbled crap!!! Did a cat walk across the keyboard while you went to get a snack? Seriously, a 3rd grader could do better!" *throws Chromebook out the window.*

Between Darkness and Light

When I set out to write MFoDB I knew immediately that I wanted to approach it in a way that reflected the world that we live in. In a lot of literature there is a lot of conflict between good and evil and, to me, it takes away from the believability of a horror story. Don't get me wrong, I love a good super hero movie and sit in awe of a character who can be fundamentally pure, but in the real world there is rarely a clear line between a good or evil act. It comes down to intent.

In my novel the characters are all deeply flawed, broken individuals who arose from traumatic pasts. How they respond and mature into their present form depends on the influences in their lives, less than on their base character. The characters evolve and may appear to be moving in one direction when they are actually stepping closer to a precipice. One may think that they are acting out of love but may be, essentially, doing all the wrong things for the right reasons.

Writing characters like that is so incredibly dangerous because an author risks alienating the reader. Personally, I have been put off from books or movies over how characters are written like this. There was a movie that came out a few years ago called Splice that immediately comes to mind. There were absolutely no likable characters in the film. There wasn't an anti-hero, just selfish people doing selfish things. There were no acts of good intent, or even malice -- just selfishness for the purpose of self gratification. It made me hate the film. The last thing I want to do is present a cast of characters who act only in their own self interest. The most sympathetic heroes and villains are often those with whom you feel are trying to do the right thing, but completely screwing up in the process.

My characters do exist firmly within the grey area, between darkness and light. I don't think I would want to write a character in any other way. We all have our dark chapters in our psyche, and MFoDB exposes that festering sludge in full display for the reader to experience.

The Origins of David Bennett

In the three years since I first began to flesh out the concept of The Morbid Fascinations of David Bennett, the story has gone through quite the evolution. Originally envisioned as a character piece that centered around a man who was so obsessed with death that he became a serial killer just to get a glimpse of what happens to people in their dying moments. This gradually transformed into a less heavy concept. I feel like that story still has a place to be told, perhaps even as part of this character's arc through future novels, but it was pretty heavy subject matter for a debut novel.

I also had this concept rolling around my mind of creating a novel that was a fictionalized account of what a paranormal investigator may experience while working a particularly dark case. Over time I began to realize that I could push both of these concepts together and form a coherent story that would eventually open up an opportunity for incredible world building.

So we have The Morbid Fascinations of David Bennett.

The locations are (mostly) real in the novel. Almost the entire story takes place in northern Michigan, a territory where I lived for more than a decade. The street names have been changed to protect the house upon which this story is loosely inspired. I think anyone who is a local to the area really won't have much trouble figuring out exactly what house I am talking about.

The real house that inspired this tale was one that I owned for six years before turning it, briefly, into a rental before eventually letting it go to foreclosure. I couldn't sell it. Anyone who set foot in that house instantly hated it. It was probably what actually attracted me to it in the first place. It was a dark place, full of anger. There was a history of bad people living there who did bad things within the house. As I learned more of the history of the house I became determined to get my family out of there. Some of the paranormal incidents my family experienced there are chronicled and embellished within the novel. In future blog posts I plan to elaborate on some of the real life episodes from the house.

David escaped from the clutches of the house once, but finds himself ensnared by it once more upon a series of freak accidents. He tries to leave repeatedly but something won't let him.

I hope you continue to join me in our explorations of the forthcoming novel, and themes within it.

Enjoy the ride!