Category: Writing

Inspiration In The Unlikeliest Of Places

Writing

First of all, I’d like to apologize for my seven month sabbatical from posting here.  Things have been really hectic in both good and bad ways. In the bad category was B’s grandmother (Mimi) passing away due to ALS (more on that later) and her father needing open heart surgery. In the good category, my oldest (NHL) had a fantastic first year in high school. He’s really making us proud with how amazing he’s doing. JSL is doing wonderfully also, having graduated from elementary school. He’s also turning into quite the writer. He even bought a Chromebook with saved birthday/Chanukah money to better write his stories.

Now onto the topic at hand:

When writing stories, inspiration is both the most important component and the hardest to obtain. You can spend months unable to think of anything to write. Then, out of nowhere, you can get ideas for a dozen stories.

I’ll often read through Reddit’s Writing Prompts subreddit. There, people will post ideas for stories and other people will write short stories based on those ideas. I’ll admit that I don’t often write stories there, but the story prompts are great. One day I’d love to do a series of short stories based on Reddit Writing Prompts. Unfortunately (or fortunately), my writing schedule is booked.

Awhile back, I wrote a short story based on a Reddit Writing Prompt: Ding Dong Demon Ditch. In it, a demon needs to deal with the fact that he was summoned and the kids who summoned him ditched him. I liked the story, but felt like there was a bigger tale to tell there. Still, I was working on the sequel to Ghost Thief.

Around this time, I was getting ringing in my ears. I found out that this is due to hearing loss and I might need a hearing aid. It turned out that I didn’t get one. A hearing aid would have cost me over $1,000 and wasn’t guaranteed to stop the ringing. The audiologist explained that the hearing aid would play white noise to help my brain filter out the ringing. I countered that my phone had a free app for that and I could buy a $30 Bluetooth headset to use instead of a $1,000+ hearing aid.

So I did just that and it did help. The ringing would annoy me until I plugged my headphone in my ear. Then I’d get the sweet relief of white noise stopping the ringing.

That’s when it hit me. What if there was some kind of noise that made people happy? Not just normal happy either, but insanely, drop everything and listen to this 24/7 happy. From that humble white noise beginnings, a story began to take shape in my mind.

At first, it was a technology based story. I had the basic idea but no real plot or characters. Then, I had another breakthrough. I realized I could use characters from my Demon story in this. From there, not only did a story quickly form, but an idea for a full series of stories.

These aren’t going to be novels like Ghost Thief, though. I figured that potential Ghost Thief readers might want to see other writing I did to decide whether they want to put down money on my book. Therefore, these are going to be novellas. I’m going to release them in weekly chapter installments. When the entire story has been released, I’ll post a full version to more easily read the whole way through. I’m juggling the Ghost Thief sequel and this tale, so I don’t know when it will be released. It shouldn’t be too long, though. Keep an eye out for my short story series: Demon Investigations.

Short Story: Ding Dong Demon Ditch

Stories, Writing

Before I get to the story, a little introductions and credit where credit is due. There’s a forum on Reddit where people post prompts to get people writing. This subreddit is aptly named Writing Prompts. Yesterday morning, I saw the following prompt by “actually_crazy_irl” and it got my creative juices bubbling:

Summoning a supernatural entity and then running before it manifests becomes the new teenager craze. All the cool kids are ding-dong ditching demons.

A story started forming in my head of a freelancer demon summoned by some kids who ditched him. That day, I had to have an MRI. As I laid in the very enclosed tomb… I mean, tube, unable to move, with loud noises surrounding me, I was perfectly calm. Partly because I found the noises interesting and keeping my eyes closed kept me from being claustrophobic. However, part of my calmness was that I was able to mentally escape from that tight space and soar with the demon as he hunted down those who wronged him. So thank you, actually_crazy_irl, for helping me keep my sanity.

And now, here’s my new short story, “Ding Dong Demon Ditch”:

» Read more

One Year Novel-versary

Anniversary, Writing

One year ago today, I hit the publish button on my novel, Ghost Thief, sending it onto Amazon for the world to read. It was a wild ride getting my first book published. From completing the first draft, the nervousness of giving it to my beta readers, seeing the manuscript printed out for the first time, seeing the first draft copy, to finally getting a box of the books that were to go on sale.
I’ll admit that the book didn’t sell that many copies. Part of that was my fault. One of the big advantages of self publishing is that I don’t have an editor insisting on big changes to my story. The downside is that I don’t have a publishing company advertising my novel. This meant that I had to figure out how to get the word out about my novel – a task that I stumbled at doing.
Of course, one of the reasons that I dropped the ball on advertising my first book was that I began writing my second book. I began with what I assumed would be two short stories to bridge the gap between books one and two. As I wrote the second story, however, I realized I was writing the opening chapters to Book 2.

So I began writing Book 2 in earnest. In the past 10 months, I’ve written over 78,000 words for Book 2, making it much longer than my first book. At that pace, it’s about one printed novel page written per day. I estimate that Book 2 will be about 90,000 words when it’s done. Then again, these stories have a history of laughing at my estimates. They finish when they want to finish, not when I think they’ll be done.

So when will Book 2 be published, you might ask. Well, if everything goes as planned, I could be looking at a May/June publication date. Of course, my previous statement about the story taking its time applies here as well. I could have a burst of writing and editing that cuts the time down, or I could wind up taking more time to get the story just right for publication.

No matter what happens with my second (and third and fourth books – yes, I have ideas for those already), Ghost Thief will always hold a special place in my heart as my first published novel.

Happy anniversary, Ghost Thief!

To celebrate, I recommend downloading the first three chapters for free and, if they intrigue you, buying the book in paperback or Kindle.

Celebrating My Birthday With A 42 Hour Ghost Thief Sale

Birthday, Books, Writing

42. Fans of Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy know this as the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. Well, as of tomorrow, it’s also the answer to “Hold Old Is Jason?” Yes, tomorrow is my birthday. I’m leaving 41 behind and adding yet another year to my age. Still, 41 was a pretty good year. After all, that’s when I finally published my first novel – Ghost Thief. For those who might have forgotten, this is a science fiction tale of a thief who gains mysterious abilities and the adventures he has. Here’s a longer description:

Murray Gastev is anything but ordinary. He’s a thief for hire and a good one at that. He completes his latest job but ends up with far more than just the cash he expected to receive. He finds he now has the ability to pass through walls and float. There are just two small problems: He can’t breathe while he ‘ghosts’ and he can’t control where he floats to. With the help of some new friends, Murray might learn to control his powers and may even pull off his biggest heist yet. If he doesn’t end up being sliced to ribbons first.

Usually, when you release a novel, you make a big push to spread the word. Unfortunately, this being my first novel and me being horrible at self-promotion, sales have been stagnant. Well, there’s another reason also. You see, Ghost Thief is going to be a trilogy that also leaves room for short stories within the same universe. I started writing two of those short stories and suddenly realized that this was actually the beginnings of Book 2. That beginning expanded and has blossomed into over 56,000 words. My first book was only eight thousand words longer and this one isn’t even close to finished yet. (Though part of me hopes to hit 100,000 words, I’m thinking it will more realistically end at around 80,000 words.)

Given my upcoming birthday, I wanted to do something special. I decided to cut the price of the Kindle version of my book to 42 cents to celebrate my 42nd birthday. Unfortunately, it turns out you can’t do this. When you set a sale price, it needs to be in $x.99 increments. (Meaning $0.99, $1.99, etc.) So I’ve done the next best thing. Instead of my book being 42 cents for one day, it’ll be $0.99 (the lowest I could make it) for 42 hours. Yes, you have nearly two whole days to grab my book for just under a dollar. This starts at midnight tonight Eastern Time and extends to 6pm Eastern Time on August 4th. After that, the price will rise to $1.99 (still a 60% saving) until 3am on August 9th. (There’s no special significance to that day/time. That was just the longest I could make the sale run for.)

So set a reminder to go to Amazon.com tomorrow and pick up a Kindle copy of my book. The sequel is coming along nicely and – with luck – will be out later this year or early next year. Finally, if you’re not sure if the book is for you, you can download the first three chapters completely free. If you do buy my book and read it, let me know what you think. You can message me on Twitter, Facebook, or via my contact form.

Happy reading, everyone!

Busy Real Life

Life, Writing

I recently realized that I haven’t been blogging as much as I’d like. Real Life seemed to keep throwing curve ball after curve ball – derailing any blog ideas that I might have.

First up was B’s mother’s open heart surgery. We had known this was coming for some time, but a recent checkup turned it from “some time in the future” to “in the next three weeks.” The surgery itself went smoothly, but B’s mother was very weak and in a lot of pain afterwards. This was normal – the nurses described the procedure as if you were pummeled by a professional boxer inside and out. Still, B’s parents needed as much help as they could get. Understandably, B wanted to be with her mother every second she could. It fell to me to juggle working my day job with taking care of the day-to-day parenting tasks that B normally does. Of course, I had no problem with this, but I was exhausted at the end of the day.

Of course, during this time was when I blogged last about my computer being fried. I got a new computer (a nice touchscreen model from Dell) and took some time to set it up. Luckily, my old hard drive wasn’t fried. A quick USB enclosure purchase from Amazon and I have an external hard drive with all of my old data. Of course setting up this new computer took days and contributed to not-blogging.

After B’s mother improved, things slowed down a bit, but by now Passover was on the horizon. Passover is the Jewish holiday that requires the most work. I need to clean the kitchen entirely from top to bottom, put all non-Passover utensils/pots/appliances/food away, and take our Passover supplies down from the attic. Complicating matters was a visit by some of B’s family the weekend before Passover. Though it was busy, Passover went by relatively uneventfully – except for the last day.

I was sleeping late as I was off of work when I was woken up by screaming. My kids were yelling at me that B needed me. As I became aware of what was happening, I first figured out that B was in the basement and feared she had fallen and hurt herself. Then, I heard her mentioning a flood in the basement. We have a utility sink down there that floods if it’s not cleaned out. My first thought, as I put on clothes and shoes, was that the sink overflowed and I’d need to stick my arm into that disgusting water to clear it out.

Oh, how I would soon wish it was that.

Turns out that our pipes had backed up and sewage was running in from a drain we have in the center of our basement. Specifically, a combination of sludge, toilet paper scraps, and feces. There was a lot in there and the smell was awful. B called a plumber and I opened the basement windows – at least the two that I could open without crossing the nasty pond. The plumber came by and figured out immediately what was wrong. Within a half hour, he cleared a U bend pipe of build-up and all of the water flowed back down.

Notice, I just said “water” and not “everything.” When the water went down, a lot of other stuff remained. His portion of the job done, the plumber left this for us to clean up with the wet-dry vacuum. Now, having handled diapers for two kids, I thought I had been toughened up in handling this type of stuff, but nothing could have prepared me for this. I used our wet dry vacuum to suck it up, but the combination of the smell and sight of what I was vacuuming threatened to make me hurl. I put on headphones, cranked the Hamilton soundtrack as loud as it could go, tried not to look (as much as was possible) as I waved the vacuum around the ground, and held my breath. This helped and I soon cleaned up as much as I could.

Then, I had to take the wet dry vacuum outside, empty it into a garbage bag, clean it off, and spray the basement floor like crazy with a bleach-water mixture. I also went to Home Depot and got a few big tubs filled with crystals that absorb water from the air. This helped to dry the basement up more. That night, despite being exhausted, I had trouble sleeping. Any time I closed my eyes, I was back in the basement looking at – and smelling – everything that was down there.

In between all of these events, I’ve been working on my Ghost Thief sequel – tentatively titled “Outcasts and Artifacts.” I’m up to 41,000 words now and the story is just getting started. I’m juggling a lot more plot threads than in the first book and a lot more characters. It’s slow going, but I’m making continual progress.

NOTE: The “Busy desk” image above comes from Wikimedia Commons` and is in the Public Domain.

1 2 3 4