I

have an exciting announcement: I am about to release my fantasy novel Paw within the next couple of weeks, a book that combines my love of the fantasy genre with my well known fondness for cats. The edits are done. My Amazon file exists. It is around 200 pages and it is ready to go.

Publishing Paw is a big change of my original plan to release my other novel The Ghosts of Chimera first, a 600 page manuscript that was accepted by a small publisher over a year ago. I had major creative differences with my editor and I backed out of the deal so I could self-publish it as I saw fit, but I am not totally satisfied with it yet; getting all the kinks out of a 600 page book is going to take more time than I thought, so I am releasing Paw first.

Paw is about a slave who struggles to survive and protect her family as she works to escape a desert mining camp. The slave also happens to be a cat – a highly intelligent one with speech and bipedal locomotion. Actually, she prefers not to describe herself as a cat at all. This is what she has to say. Continue reading →

There is no good reason for me to ever be bored. I live on a rock that is hurtling through space at 30 kilometers per second; I am technically on a thrill ride every day of my life, soaring through space and time, a ride that like any roller coaster will someday end.

So why is it so hard to know it at every moment? Why does life ever seem dull? Why do I obsess over trivialities? Why do I grumble when I lose a sock in the dryer? Why do feel angry at life when I am unable to find the lead on a roll of paper towels?

I lose perspective. However, when I write, I try my best to regain it. As a writer I am constantly trying to wake myself up from the illusion that the world is a tedious, permanent, and predictable place; this is partly because I hate being bored, and partly because stories that assume life is inherently dull are unlikely to move anyone, including me. When I write, I want to go where the passion and the awe is.

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Both my mind and my eyes routinely deceive me.

Though this sounds like the definition of insanity, it is also an explanation for phenomena like optical illusions, or why we perceive that the sun is sinking below the horizon when actually the Earth is moving.  Sometimes my mind is right. Other times my eyes do a better job at getting at the truth.

When I draw, I depend exclusively on my eyes, even when I know they are lying. I recently considered the many ways my eyes deceive me when I am trying to render objects from life. Giant faraway objects like trees appear smaller than tiny objects like an apple that is right in front of me. Distant objects appear bluer than close ones.  If I want to create a convincing illusion, I have to go with what my eyes tell me, even if my mind correctly argues.

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Every time I begin a new novel, I feel like a beginner again. In a panic I worry I have forgotten everything I have ever learned about the craft. I search my mind for the encyclopedia of writing techniques that are supposed to be stored in my library of knowledge, but the screen of my immediate consciousness has limited space. Instead of finding knowledge, I find thoughts like this:

You don’t know enough about warfare to write traditional fantasy!

Your last book was pretty good but this one won’t be!

You’ll never finish! Continue reading →

Since I have realized I am only dreaming, my relief has been immeasurable.

Not that my dream is all bad. I am dreaming that I recently moved to a place called Pompano Beach. I am living in an apartment with a balcony overlooking a lake, a place where I like to write.

I must have been having this dream since the last day of December. It cannot be real because this place I love is overshadowed by a dystopia, an alternate America presided over by a xenophobic demagogue whose rallying cry is Bring Back Torture.

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I.

I have made friends with darkness. There is a warmth in it, the dusky comfort of a plush teddy bear or the soothing delight of just-baked brownies.

I discovered the warmth of darkness two years ago when, at age 25, I lost my vision to a degenerative disease.

At first the darkness scared me. I opened my eyes wide as the color drained slowly from my life. It was like death was coming early, encasing my brain in a deeply buried coffin, isolating my mind as the world around it faded away.

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As a fiction writer, I often wonder what kind of character I am. Am I a sympathetic character, or are there scenarios in which I could be a villain? Most people, I suspect, could be either in extreme situations. But my introspection regarding stories goes beyond good and evil. I wonder if I am a passive character or an active character.

I know which I would rather be. It seems like a choice between being interesting and being boring. Of course, the reality is that in some situations I am passive, and in others active. No real person is entirely one or the other, just as no one is totally a villain or a hero.

However, for stories I always prefer active main characters. But what exactly does being active mean? Does it mean characters should charge at each other across fields brandishing swords? Dash into burning houses to save children?

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Months ago I received a letter from my sanity imploring me to go off Twitter. It was delivered first class, so it must have been an emergency.

However, I wanted to stay on Twitter, so I just filed the letter away. In recent days, however, my sanity began blasting me with emails ordering me to go off Twitter, or else it would pack its suitcase and move to Australia. I have bipolar disorder. When my sanity delivers ultimatums, I listen.

I complied by vacating my Twitter account, walking away from over 50,000 followers. i have not checked my notifications since December 16. I emailed my sanity to ask if Google Plus and Facebook were okay. My sanity wrote back and told me to go stare at a lake or a tree.

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I am moving to Pompano Beach this month. Good thing I do not have a “real” job to quit.

The awesome thing about being a novelist is we are infinitely portable. Fling us across the globe and we will write just the same, continuing to spin words into imaginary worlds as if nothing has changed.

Ship me off to a planet on another solar system, and I will happily write by the light of another star. I sometimes feel like I travel through life inside a word bubble, or an imaginary space ship, that goes wherever I go.

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For too much of my life I had the impression that writing was something that happened to you because the gods of inspiration had chosen you, not something that you did.

The result was helpless frustration. I sought ways to make my elusive moments of inspiration visit me more often. I wanted to know how to trick, entrap, and seduce them into being my servants, not coy and elusive ghosts.

The culture of writing fueled my obsession with mystical phenomena like talent and inspiration, but there was too little mention of a greater power which is entirely controllable: process.

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