July 2006 Blogs

I wasn't really sure what to put up for the July Photo of the Month, and so I just set up the camera atop my stereo which sits atop the kitchen table which has functioned as my writing desk for the past month and a half. I've figured out how to take black-and-white pictures and how to do it in low light without the flash. It gives the picture a grainy quality I like.

Saturday July 29, 2006
Today was one of those painstakingly slow days writing wise. The novel's drawing to a climax, and it has this twist ending where the pieces must come together just right. The problem is, I don't really know what's going to happen until I sit down to write.

I have a very vivid scene I want to get the novel to at the climax, but the stuff leading up to that you just have to work through day to day. All of these threads are beginning to connect in the storyline.

The end product's really neat to see, but making it happen scene by scene takes patience, resolve, and discipline to make it work believably and plausibly.

At any rate, I managed about 800 words, bringing the total word count to 48,494 at 247 pages.

Had a nice walk with Susan and the dogs just now before sitting down to write this blog. We're going out to eat tonight, and our plan is to buy a washer and dryer at Home Depot afterwards.

Stacey

PS I finally worked through a setback on the "Archived Blogs" at the bottom of the page that'll enable me to keep the video clips on the backup. Last month, I hit a snag where it wasn't loading the html code for the videos. Problem seems to be resolved.

Friday July 28, 2006
Well, I managed to write just over a thousand words today on the suspense novel bringing the word count total up to 47,697 at 242 pages.

The end is in sight. It's always fun predicting what the word count will work out to be. Now, that I'm writing my ninth novel I've got a pretty good sense of pacing and how long it will take me to get where I need to go with this novel, and so my best guess is the final draft is going to come in somewhere around 60,000 words.

Had a very nice bike ride this evening from 6:00-7:45 and cooked pork chops on the grill for dinner.

Stacey



Thurday July 27, 2006
Busy day today. I managed to hammer out another thousand words on the new suspense novel, bringing the word count total up to 46,582 at 236 pages.

The move-in is almost done. All that remains is a bunch of unpacking.

This evening I went to the Write to Publish group meeting, which meets monthly at the regional public library where I live. Afterwards, a smaller group of us went out to eat at a pizza joint.

It's ten minutes to midnight, and I've still got a few things I need to do tonight, so I better sign off for now.

Tomorrow, I'd like to do a little more writing on the suspense novel. I don't know whether I'll be able to. Could be a busy day.

Stacey


Wednesday July 26, 2006
Well, I managed to write a few words yesterday on the suspense novel, even in the midst of the continual move-in to the new house. The word count total stands at 45,603 at 231 pages.

It doesn't look like I'm going to get a lot of quality time to work on it today; we're supposed to have a new dishwasher delivered this morning between 9-11 from Sears. After that, we've got contractors in the house this afternoon finishing up a kitchen remodeling we're having done. Also, I need to move the final few pieces of furniture from our rental house to Goodwill, and that's going to take up a big chunk of the afternoon.

At any rate, I'm alive and well, and I should be able to finish up this new supsense novel sometime in the next 2-3 weeks.

SC


Sunday July 23, 2006
Well last night was the first night that I slept in the new house. We had a rainfall overnight, and everything is cool and damp outside this morning. I've made my first pot of coffee in the new house:)

What this means in terms of writing is that I am one step closer to being settled in, and one step closer to getting back to finishing the suspense novel I started earlier this summer.

The word count is currently at 44,979 at 228 pages. If possible I'd like to bring this novel to a close somewhere around 65,000 words because that is a really attractive length for agents and editors to work with.

At any rate, I still have a ton of stuff to move today, and so there's not going to be any writing going on until at least tomorrow. Most likely Tuesday will be the first day back on the novel.

That's a good goal.

SC



Thursday July 20, 2006
I'm alive and back in Raleigh. Susan and I left Chattanooga on Sunday and drove up to her uncle and aunt's place in Pleasant Hill. We stayed there until yesterday. On the way home, we stopped by the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

The agent query responses are rolling in like mad, and I've got a number of manuscripts I need to print up and send out. It's amazing how many positive responses have come in already, requesting a copy of Claws. All this, and I still have about another 100 agents left to query.

It's 11:45 PM local time, and I'm going to get off of this here blog and print up manuscripts to put in the mail.

Here's footage from inside the National Park at Clingman's Dome, the highest point in Tennessee...

Sunday July 16, 2006 Okay, in terms of sheer photographability, today's trip may not have topped the southern funkability of yesterday's to Rock City, but I still managed to get some pretty good footage at the Tennessee Aquarium of some fish... Probably my favorite video clip in terms of the way it filmed was of the catfish. This guy was huge... Another one that filmed pretty well was the Sturgeon. Not exactly the most pretty fish in the world, but slow enough to film (and the light was good in its tank)... By far the most exciting one though was the shark. In the clip, it seems to be coming right at you for a moment... Today, we're packing up and heading out from Chattanooga. Susan and I will be spending a couple days at her Uncle Bill and Aunt Herbie's home in Pleasant Hill. Stacey Saturday July 15, 2006 Yesterday, while Susan was doing conference stuff, I drove up to Rock City Gardens... Rock City Gardens is an elaborate mountaintop garden area that winds all through some pretty spectacular rock formations. Tickets are $15 for an adult, and it takes about two hours to cover the designated trail through the labyrinth of rocky corridors... Some of these are narrow, and it makes walking through them difficult... There are a couple of wildlife exhibits... And a swinging bridge... Where I shot this video... About midway through the tour, you reach an area where they say that you can see seven states... I've saved you the money and the time. Here at staceycochran.com you can see all seven states for free! Here's a picture of me hanging out at Eagle's Nest... And here's one near Lover's Leap... This next one was taken standing at Lover's Leap... Once there though, the real fun of the trip begins. You can see a spectacular waterfall... And the underground part of the tour begins... Legend has it that elves and gnomes live on the grounds. I managed to capture one hanging out by this underground pond... Occasionally, on the undergound part of the tour, you can come out and see the light, like near this 1000 ton balancing rock... The last part of the tour is the most interesting. It passed through an elaborate maze of underground caverns known as Fairyland Caverns... Here's a random picture of your tour guide somewhere underground amidst the caverns... The Fairyland Caverns are filled with a couple dozen dioramas from various well known children's fairy tales. They're all lighted with black lights... Hansel and Gretel was one of the better ones, as was Little Red Riding Hood... And the tour ends in a giant underground room that leads to Cinderella's Castle... It's gonna be tough to top that today, but I'll see what I can do. Stacey Friday July 14, 2006 I am alive and in Chattanooga, Tennessee. This week has been a whirlwind week that has seen Susan and I beginning to move from our rental house in Raleigh, North Carolina to the home we closed on last Friday (also in Raleigh). Also, this week Susan's dad, two uncles (Gary and Bob), and aunt (Vangie) visited us in Raleigh, and then we all got together at the Angus Barn for dinner Wednesday night with my parents who drove up from Pinehurst. On top of this, 98 queries went out to literary agents last weekend, and so the first barrage of responses came in the past few days. Because everything is getting packed and is between houses, it made responding to the agents difficult. All of this is fun, mind you. I much rather prefer having to figure out how to print up a 350-page manuscript without a printer than not having any agents responding to my queries at all. And so yesterday, Susan and I got underway early driving from Raleigh to Chattanooga in about twelve hours with a couple hour stop in Greensboro and about an hour stop in Alcoa at Susan's Aunt Beth and Uncle Joe's place. Right this moment, I am in the hotel room at the World Famous Chattanooga Choo-Choo Hotel and Convention Center, where free wireless is available. We are here for the WPA Convention, which is being held until Sunday. I found out this week some more good news that I may be able to sell an interview I've been working on, off and on for about a year. More on this later, when the details are worked out more firmly. At any rate, it's been a great week, and I'll try to get some photos today from around Chattanooga. For now, all we have is a rather "Godfather"-esque photo of Uncle Gary working the crowd inside Greensboro, North Carolina's Yum-Yum restaurant. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present Don Corleone Gary... Monday July 10, 2006 I put another 23 queries in the mail today to literary agents. That brings the weekend total up to 98. That should garner some kind of response (even if it's nothing more than 98 rejections), and I still have about another 100 agents left. And I got this really cool goat video... Sunday July 9, 2006 It is Sunday morning, and I've managed to put together another 14 queries for agents regarding my suspense novel Claws. That brings the total up to 75 letters that will have gone out over this weekend. Susan and I are going to spend most of the day today continuing to prep the new house (yard work, painting, light moving), and so I'll most likely not be able to add too many letters to what have already been sent. The cool thing about doing a mass agency query like this, is that it ensures you'll be getting some mail and some responses in the weeks ahead. It activates things. Ideally, I'd like to get to where I have a couple hundred queries out every month. Then, I'm constantly sending and receiving feedback from folks in the business. Having a permanent address helps get things started. Stacey Friday July 7, 2006 Well, it's official, folks. Susan and I have closed on the purchase of our new home! I've hesitated to put any news about the home on the blog, but we signed the paperwork this morning and we'll pick up the keys sometime this afternoon. Based on the knowledge that I will finally have a permanent address, I began the agent query process again. Here's a couple of pictures of me this morning stuffin' envelopes with the query letter and SASE... As far back as March of this year, I had figured out a system by which I could send out several hundred queries per month, but I ran into a roadblock with moving across the country and not knowing exactly where I'd be living. Last night and this morning, I put together 61 queries addressed to literary agents regarding my novel Claws. So, as of today, Claws is now under submission to 61 literary agents, and I'd like to put another 39 letters together this afternoon and evening to bring the total up to 100. This is in addition to the 74 literary agents queried last year, and it would bring the overall total up to 174 literary agents who have been queried for this novel. After that, I still have about 100 more agents to go, and then I'll begin querying editors again. My goal is to work up to being able to knock out 500 submissions over a weekend. Stacey Wednesday July 5, 2006 For the 4th of July, my wife and I drove over to my parents' house in Pinehurst, North Carolina. It's about an hour's drive from Raleigh. Here's a picture of Susan and I just minutes before leaving... Once there, I was able to shoot this video in the driveway in front of their house... For dinner, we had Bar-B-Q at the Pinehurst Country Club, where this blue grass band was playing... Afterwards, I had the opportunity to take some photos of Mom & Dad clowning around by the statue of Payne Stewart, winner of the 1999 U.S. Open. Talk about fun!... The fireworks display was visible from the porch out by the Pinehurst Country Club, so after the "photo shoot" we set up a table, played a game of Scrabble, and waited for darkness to settle in... And for the show to begin... Happy 4th of July, everyone! Stacey Tuesday July 4, 2006 Happy 4th of July, everybody! Well, it's been a busy couple of days. We have a new winner in the final Amber Page free T-shirt Give-Away. Diane from Iowa was the lucky winner, and you should be able to see the video of the drawing at the top of the this page. We had six total entries in this latest drawing, from as far away as the Netherlands, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Arizona. Thanks to all who entered. For the next T-shirt drawing on September 30, 2006, I'm going to start giving away merchandise for The Colorado Sequence, the new action-thriller I plan to publish this fall/winter. As long as we get more than three or four entries each quarter, I'll keep doing a give-away. They're fun, and it's a good way to connect with folks who are coming across this site. Feel free to go ahead and enter now for the September 30, 2006 drawing. The snazzy black T-shirt featured at the top of the page will be the prize. Pretty cool! Well, have a fun and safe 4th of July. Susan and I are heading down to my folks' place in Pinehurst for Bar-B-Q and fireworks. If I can remember it, I'll try and take my camera. Maybe I can get some footage of the fireworks tonight. That'd be cool to have on the website. Stay tuned... And thanks, as always, for reading. Have a safe and happy holiday. Stacey

June 2006 Blogs

The June Photo of the Month comes from my last day in Gold Canyon, Arizona. That's Dinosaur Mountain behind me in the background. While living in Gold Canyon, I got married, wrote five novels, got a literary agent, got a novel manuscript in front of some of the best editors in the business, and generally managed to not have a nervous breakdown in the process (well, there was one nervous breakdown, but who's counting?). I'm going to miss this place.

Friday June 30, 2006
Hey, folks, I've got a lot to report from the past two days. First up, I managed to bang out a couple more thousand words on the suspense novel bringing the total up to 43,611 at 219 pages.

Secondly, I went to a meeting last night at the Cameron Village Regional Public Library in Raleigh for the "Write to Publish" group that meets monthly with a guest speaker. The guest speakers, interestingly enough, were representatives with Lulu Press, the print-on-demand service I've used to publish my first three books. The turn-out was positive with about 30 attendees, and I met a number of other fellow authors. Afterwards, a smaller group went to a local pub, and I had a lot of fun getting to know everybody there.

I can't recommend this enough, and I don't know why I haven't thought of doing stuff like this before. A lot of bookstores have groups like this, and it's really just a very positive experience to get out and meet and talk with fellow writers about getting published and getting your work to literary agents and publishers. I had a great time.

Thirdly, I got my hotel booked for Bouchercon, the World Mystery Writers Convention, which will be held this year in Madison, Wisconsin the last weekend of September. Damn near every hotel (including all of the conference-recommended hotels) were booked solid, and so I had to find another one not listed via the conference website.

Fourthly, I finally registered for the World Science Fiction Convention, which will be held in Los Angeles this year August 23-27. I already have my hotel reservation, and I'm planning on staying with my friend Matthew Peterson who has just recently found a publisher for his Paraworlds Series.

Tonight, Susan and I had dinner at an Indian restaurant in north Raleigh, and afterwards, we went to a Barnes & Noble where I found out about another Writing Group. This group meets monthly at the B&N, and I also obtained the Community Relations Manager's business card. The CRMs are the folks who put together events for B&Ns, though not every store has a designated CRM. They're good people to know if you want to get involved in community events at your local Barnes & Noble.

I also registered my vehicle today in North Carolina, and I got my new driver's license.

Tomorrow, I'd like to get up and bang out a thousand words or more on the suspense novel early because I think Susan and I may do some kind of roadtrip later in the afternoon.

Take care, folks, and feel free to drop me a line.

Stacey

PS I'll be getting the results of the T-shirt give-away up on the blog here in the next day or so. Stay tuned...


Wednesday June 28, 2006
Well, I managed to hammer out a couple thousand more words today on the suspense novel to bring the total up to 42,051 at 211 pages. It's really beginning to add up. I just want to make this novel the best damn novel that I can, and I want to have fun doing it.

Susan and I have found our rhythm together, now that we've both been living in North Carolina for a couple weeks. The place where we're living is small (about 800 square feet). I write most of the day while she works on grading for her classes. She usually runs errands in the afternoon.

I can't hardly believe that I'm going to be a father. It hit me today at one point, when I was holding Susan and I said to myself, You're starting a family. I didn't say anything out loud to her about it, but it just came over me. I'm a writer, and I'm actually going to have a family: a baby, a wife...

I told Susan that it feels like we're living the American Dream.

We both just feel very, very lucky to be grown and to be doing the things we love.

The baby is due in December.

Stacey

Tuesday June 27, 2006
Not the greatest photo in the world, but I took this one this afternoon while on my walk between writing sessions...



Where I live in Raleigh, it's not unusual to see several deer in the course of a day. So, I've started carrying my camera with me when I go for a walk or bike ride.

So far today, I've written about a thousand words on the suspense novel. I think I'm gonna take another walk right after posting this blog, and then I'll try to hammer out a couple more hundred words before it gets too late.

There's good news on the job front. NC State has offered me a Lecture position in the First-Year Composition Program. That means I'll be teaching this fall. Really great news!

Stacey


Sunday June 25, 2006
Okay, I've figured out the video clip problem. It actually had to do with my browser. For some reason, when viewing the staceycochran.com site in Mozilla Firefox (the browser I usually use), it is not showing the video clips. However, in Internet Explorer, with the latest Macromedia Flash player now uploaded, the video clips seem to work just fine.

So, if you see a video clip under the June 23rd post below, then everything's cool. If you see a large blank space (like I was seeing for the past day), then you might need to update to the newest browser.

I'll just get in the habit of posting an actual html link in addition to the embedded video clips.

Stacey




Saturday June 24, 2006
It looks like we might be experiencing technical difficulties with some of the video clips not loading on the page here.

I'm getting ready to head out the door, but I'll try to get to the bottom of this later this evening or tomorrow.

Sorry for any inconvenience.

Stacey

Thursday June 22, 2006
This is one of those evenings when I just feel very happy and content. It's been a full day. I got some more writing done on the suspense novel. Susan and I had a nice afternoon together; we went to Cameron Village.

This evening I had a good jog with the dogs through the state park, and I just feel happy. Peaceful.

Stacey


Wednesday June 21, 2006
It was a difficult day writing-wise, but I chiseled out a few hundred words to bring the total up to 38,335. This is novel #9. It is, without a doubt, the most horrifying novel I have written, and the ending that I've set up for myself is plausibly grisly.

It is remarkable to consider this current novel in the context of my body of work as a whole. Compared to novels like Amber Page and the forthcoming The Colorado Sequence, it's almost like it's written by a different person. This one's dark, folks.

It's dark, and it has a twist ending.

Stacey


Tuesday June 20, 2006
Today was an unusual day. I spent most of the afternoon in downtown Raleigh, where from 1:00-2:00 PM I sat in on the Raleigh City Council Meeting, and then from 2:00-4:00 PM on the General Assembly of the North Carolina House of Representatives. I learned a lot about how both work just from attending, and I got the opportunity to see one of the state legislators whose book I bought yesterday.

Tomorrow, it's back to work on the suspense novel. I'd like to get started early.

Stacey


Monday June 19, 2006
Hurricanes Win!

It's been a full day. I got started early on the suspense novel, cranking out a few hundred words, bringing the total up to 37,754 at 189 pages. This afternoon, Susan and I had dinner with my parents over at Durham's Streets at Southpoint Mall, where Susan snapped this picture after dinner...



Tomorrow, I'd like to bang out some words early because I'd like to make it downtown for the Raleigh City Council Meeting at 1:00 P.M.

Stacey


Sunday June 18, 2006
Kind of a strange day writing wise... I actually woke up pretty early, determined to get a good start. I hammered out a thousand words before noon, but then I just stopped and took the afternoon off.

Susan and I went to a county park where we rented a sailboat, and I took her for her first sail. Then, we drove over to a Baskin Robbins in Cary for ice-cream. We drove around downtown Cary and some of the older sections. Tonight, we ate Mexican and set up a membership at Hollywood Video, where we rented Good Night and Good Luck and Capote. Then, to the grocery store for groceries, and then finally home around 10:00 PM (just a few minutes ago). I'm so sleepy I don't really feel like staying up to watch either of the movies.

Word total on the suspense novel: 36,897 at 184 pages.

Stacey



Saturday June 17, 2006
The weather has just been gorgeous the past few days. This morning Susan and I went to the pool with a couple of friends, which is where we snapped this video of me taking a dive...

On the writing front, I've chipped out a few more hundred words on the suspense novel, bringing the total up to 35,772 at 179 pages. I also received my Bouchercon confirmation in the mail yesterday, and then today I received an email from the programming directors. I'm really excited about attending this year.

Two days ago, I received my first copy of The Colorado Sequence...



And today, I received my first T-shirt...



The black tees look really cool. If you'd like to buy one for yourself, visit here.

Stacey


Wednesday June 14, 2006
I hammered out another thousand words or so today on the new suspense novel, bringing the total up to 34,560 at 173 pages. This while we rode out the remnants of Tropical Storm Alberto. Aside from some road flooding, there was not too much damage from the storm. Some parts of Raleigh received over seven inches of rain.

Tonight, Susan and I met with some friends to watch the Carolina Hurricanes Stanley Cup Game at Raleigh's Upper Deck/Profile Pub. 'Canes lost in overtime, and so it's back to Edmonton for Game 6 on Saturday.

Tomorrow, I'd like to bang out another thousand words or so on the suspense novel.

Stacey

Monday June 12, 2006
Well, I didn't waste any time getting back into the new suspense novel. I hammered out about 2,200 words today bringing the total up to exactly 33,300 words at 166 pages. It has the feeling of a thick brew of elements, and I've decided on a twist ending that I've begun working toward.

I've got to hit the Department of Motor Vehicles tomorrow to register the truck in North Carolina, so my challenge is going to be to get up and get some work done early, before heading out to run that errand. Otherwise, I'll get behind pace and have to make it up in the afternoon. We'll see what I can do.

I went for a 45 minute run this evening.

Stacey



Sunday June 11, 2006
Well, Susan and I have made it home. From Wytheville, Virginia, we drove down to Galax yesterday afternoon, then to Pilot Mountain in North Carolina, and then home to Raleigh. In Galax, the downtown streets were filled with the Leaf & String Festival, which is where I snapped this video of a blue grass band.

This photo was taken atop Pilot Mountain looking back toward Big Pinnacle. Pilot Mountain is located about 25 miles north of Winston-Salem, North Carolina.



Tomorrow, it's back to work on the new suspense novel. I've got about 31,000 words (150 pages) written so far.

Stacey


Saturday June 10, 2006
Tonight, Susan and I are in Wytheville, Virginia. We had dinner on Main Street in the Log House 1776 Restaurant, which was an actual log house, part of which was first built in 1776.

Couple of photos from Virginia's mountains...



These two are from Big Walker Mountain.



And this one is of Pine Grove Methodist Church, which was established in 1866...



Tomorrow, we're going to drive to Raleigh, North Carolina.

It's beginning to feel like we've been on the road for a while.

Stacey


Friday June 9, 2006
Susan and I are in Lebanon, Ohio. We're staying with Susan's Uncle Gary and Aunt Vangie, and last night, they took us out to eat at The Golden Lamb, Ohio's oldest inn. Twelve U.S. Presidents have stayed at or visited the Golden Lamb, including, J. Garfield, W. McKinley, J.Q. Adams, B. Harrison, W.G. Harding, W.H. Taft, W.H. Harrison, U.S.Grant, M. VanBuren, R.B. Hayes, R. Reagan, G.W. Bush. The inn was also where Charles Dickens stayed when he was visiting the area on his U.S. tour in 1842. They have rooms upstairs designated for these famous people, and visitors can see the actual room in which Dickens stayed.

I love this country!

Today, Susan and I are going to drive across southern Ohio, West Virginia, and Virginia. We may stay in the mountains near Fancy Gap.

Stacey



Wednesday June 7, 2006
Susan and I have reached Carmel, Indiana. We drove yesterday from Olathe, Kansas through Missouri, Illinois, to Indiana. I love this part of the country, the American midwest.

Not a lot of photos, but we did stop in St. Louis at the famous Gateway Arch. There's a park at the arch, the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, which is right on the Missouri River. In fact, Susan and I bought lunch on a riverboat that was on the Missouri. I had Bar-B-Q. She had a hotdog.



Tomorrow, we're going to drive to Ohio.

Stacey



Monday June 5, 2006
I am in Olathe, Kansas at Susan's mom and stepdad's house. We had dinner tonight at the Cheesecake Factory.

I managed to write another 1900 words on the suspense novel today, bringing the word count total just over 31,000.

Tomorrow, we're heading to Susan's brother's home in Carmel, Indiana. It's supposed to be a stormy drive, according to the weather forecast.

Stacey


Saturday June 3, 2006
Today, Susan and I drove from Santa Fe, New Mexico to Denver, Colorado. We snapped this photo about an hour south of the Mile High City at a rest area...



For dinner, Susan took me to this crazy place called Casa Bonita in Denver where they had cliff divers and an artificial lagoon diving pool with waterfalls. It was like a dinner theater/theme park/Mexican restaurant. Weird. After dinner, we worked off the calories playing skee-ball in the arcade...



Finally, we headed across town to Denver's Tattered Cover Bookstore, one of the most successful independent bookstores in the country. This is one of those stores that all the writers try to hit when out on tour...



Tomorrow, we're going to try to make it to Kansas City.

Stacey


Friday June 2, 2006
Today, Susan and I drove from Sedona, Arizona to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Along the way, we stopped at Meteor Crater in the northern Arizona desert. There's a museum and an indoor movie theater that shows a movie about the crater. Here's a picture of me standing in front of a fragment from the meteorite that struck the earth some 50,000 years ago...



And here's a picture of me standing on the north rim of the crater...



Other than the crater, there's not a whole lot out there. I took a pan-around video, but it sucks. So, you may not want to watch it unless you have a high-speed internet connection.

Tomorrow, we're going to try to make it to Denver, Colorado.

Stacey


Thursday June 1, 2006
Susan and I are officially on the road from Arizona to North Carolina. This is going to be quite the roadtrip, with many stops, so I am sure to be posting lots of photos on the blog the next few days.

Our first stop on the way across the country is Sedona, Arizona.



The picture up above was taken at the Chapel of the Holy Cross. Upon arriving at the Chapel, we saw a wonderful parking space, but just as we pulled up to it, a cowboy (pictured in shade) jumped out from the shade and plunked this cone down in front of us.



I asked him if he was reserving it for us, and he said, "No."

Here's a picture I took of Susan standing on the balcony of our hotel room...



There's a roof-top patio area at the hotel. I also took this picture of a fire just over the hill from our hotel...



Tomorrow, we're going to try to make it to Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Believe it or not, I actually managed to get some writing done on the new suspense novel the past three days, bringing the word count total up to 29,145 at 147 pages. I'm going to try to do a little writing as soon as I get off of this here blog, so let's see what I can do.

Stacey


Tuesday May 30, 2006
I am back in Arizona.

For whatever reason, on my early afternoon walk today, I found myself thinking very clearly about the path that led me to where I am as a writer. For those of you who’ve read this blog or followed my career the past few years, you’ve heard me talk a lot about how much I’ve written.

While it’s probably true that I have written a lot, the timeline that has gotten me here is reasonable. For my own sanity’s sake (and for the sake of writing today’s blog), I’m going to try to give as accurate a rundown as I can of that timeline.

I really mark my “career” as beginning over the Christmas holidays of 1994. I was in my third year of college, and I had to declare my major. I decided to major in English, and over the break, I wrote a short story. It was a suspense story, and it was really bad, but it had a beginning, middle, and end, and the reason I remember this story so vividly is that I gave it to someone on our dorm hall to read. I remember her reaction.

Not good.

There were other stories prior to that, and I should say that I did actually send out my first submission back in 1990. I sent a poem to Bantam Books by reading the copyright page of a book and getting the publisher’s address there. That I actually received a rejection at all for this submission is amazing because I didn’t know anything about SASEs, the poem was written with a typewriter, and it had to have obviously looked like something submitted by a high school sophomore. Bantam’s a big damn publisher, and either it was standard practice to respond to all submissions in those days or somebody was just being kind.

At any rate, I didn’t really start writing until 1994-1995. It didn’t take me long to try and write a novel. It was titled “Third Son” and I got about thirty pages of it finished on my Brother WhisperPrint Word Processor before the plot became too convoluted for me to make sense of. What I can say of this early “novel” (which still exists because I’ve lugged that Word Processor around with me all these years) is that it was a crime novel. It was driven by a grisly murder, and the protagonist was a happily married man with a couple kids. The first page or two is actually pretty good, but it quickly goes downhill because I didn’t know what I was doing.

Between January 1995 and the summer of 1997, I wrote a lot. Most of it was really bad. Most of it was short fiction. There is maybe one story from that period that I would consider re-printing. One.

But I was writing a lot, and I was learning the basics of grammar, spelling, punctuation, sentence structure. I was learning about genres, tone, and style.

Things like voice and character were still a few years down the road. It was enough that I could put coherent sentences together in those days that weren’t filled with misspellings and grammatical missteps.

By the fall of 1997, I had the basics down. That summer I had tried my hand at another novel. I was now writing on a computer in Word, using Times New Roman, double-spaced, font size 12, etc. The novel that I tried to write is in my collection The Kiribati Test. It is titled “The Drunk.”

It’s probably the worst story in the collection, but one chapter of it was selected as a finalist for the 1998 Isaac Asimov Award (since renamed the Dell Magazines Award), and I managed to put down over a hundred pages in one story.

Though the story is almost incomprehensible, it was a major achievement to me personally, and the stamp of approval from the Asimov contest sealed my fate. I was to be a writer. As a result of the contest, I went to a conference where I met Peter Straub, Ben Bova, Joe Haldeman, Sheila Williams, David Hartwell, and a number of other science-fiction writers and editors.

Still, I had not really written a novel. I mean a real novel, man, one with hundreds and hundreds of pages. A stack. That’s what I wanted, a friggin’ stack.

Between January 1998 and July 2001, I wrote a lot of short stories. Several were published in the university literary magazine. One or two won first prize in the student contest.

I wrote for a year as an Opinion Columnist for the university newspaper, and I worked for three years as an editor on a scholarly journal called The Concord Saunterer. This was an important job (I would realize later) because it taught me how to put a book together from a technical point of view in terms of layout, headings, font, print, bindings, covers, ISBNs, copyrights, etc.

Several years later, when I absolutely could not find a publisher and had to begin publishing my novels on my own, the experience that I’d learned in college served me well. I didn’t feel totally like a fish out of water putting a book together.

In December 2000, I learned that my first professionally published short story would come out that next spring in CutBank, a literary magazine published by the University of Montana. I had sent out the story in a manila envelope, paper-clipped, along with eighteen other submissions of the same story to other magazines. The story was published in the spring of 2001, and I graduated with an MA in Creative Writing in May.

From the summer of 2000 to the summer of 2001, I had tinkered around with another novel. It was a literary novel that was trying to be a horror novel, and by the summer of 2001, I had about 200 pages.

After graduating, I moved to Arizona to write full time. Mainly, I wanted to force myself to finally finish my first novel. I had two other aborted attempts, and I didn’t want to make it three.

So I rewrote the horror/literary novel from July 2001 through March/April 2002. What I had when I was done was a 130,000-word literary novel, which I titled The Band. In manuscript format it was about 600 pages long. A stack.

It was my first completed novel.

I tried to find a publisher for it, but it didn’t take me more than a year before I realized that no publisher in their right mind was going to publish it.

During that time, I kept writing.

From June 2002 through October 2002, I wrote my second novel. It was a PI novel which lapses into science-fiction and fantasy in its last 100 pages. I really thought I could publish this novel titled Culpepper because it was fun, fit a pretty clear genre, and had all the basic ingredients that a novel has to have. I submitted it to a lot of places, tinkered with different titles, but I just couldn’t find a home for it.

Two years later, in October 2004, I learned that it was selected as a finalist for the St. Martin’s Press/PWA Best Private Eye Novel Contest. This was a big deal for a young writer, looking to get his first break.

St. Martin’s Press has a history of publishing writers’ first novels, writers who go on to huge bestsellerdom sometimes (Dan Brown’s first novel came from SMP). At any rate, they didn’t publish it; it was only a finalist, not the winner. But it was still a huge breath of fresh air to a writer who felt like he’d been underwater a long time.

From October 2002 through May 2003, I wrote my third novel. It was originally titled The Miracle, and it felt like a miracle that I wrote the damn thing. It was a fast-paced, crime fiction, comic-book-style, YA, action-thriller (you can say that again!) that utterly failed to find a publisher, but that actually isn’t that bad of a read.

I self-published it as Amber Page and the Legend of the Coral Stone and have managed to sell nearly fifty copies via bookstore signings, friends, family, and a handful of fans (I think there are two) who bought it online.

Here’s where the story gets interesting, though. Finally all that hard work was beginning to pay off.

I knew I could write a novel. I knew what it took, and so I started a book titled The Colorado Sequence in May 2003. I had more fun writing that novel than any other novel to that point. I knew it was an action-thriller in the Michael Crichton, James Rollins tradition, and I just had fun with it. I never let it get me down.

I finished The Colorado Sequence in January 2004, and I was sure I had something big. It was 143,000 words, and it ran on high adrenaline from start to finish. For sheer entertainment value, it may be one of the best novels I’ll ever write because I never stopped and questioned what I was doing while I was writing it. And it’s all energy and clear thinking.

All the stars were aligned to break through with it.

Once done, I started querying literary agents. I sent out twenty-two letters in one sending in May 2004. I got one positive response, from the Donald Maass Agency. Donald asked to see the first thirty pages, and he actually responded and said he liked some aspects of it. He declined to represent it, but I took the personal response as a sign that I was on the right path.

From January 2004 through May 2004, I wrote my first suspense-thriller novel Claws. In March of 2004, I’d gone to HorrorCon and served on my first panel. With Claws, I think I finally found the genre that worked best for me.

When done, it was a lean, mean 70,000-word suspense novel that my wife was certain would be the novel to break through with. I revised, workshopped, edited, and waited a half year to query agents. In January 2005, I sent out 22 letters.

No takers.

In March, I sent out 52 more and finally got an agent who a) wanted to work with me, b) had sold books to major publishers before, and c) was convinced this novel would find a home at one of the 4-5 largest publishers in the world. After working on it for a couple of months with the agent, we submitted it to the biggest publishers in New York and the biggest editors in the business.

They nearly all responded positively to the initial query. They nearly all read the book. At one major publisher, it earned a champion who took the novel to an editorial review board meeting where it got struck down by senior editors.

And then reality set in. Though they all read it and responded positively to it, no one was convinced enough to publish it.

It’s a tough business, boy.

From summer 2004 through March 2005, I muddled through a monster of a novel titled Dr. Plant. Worn out, I took a break from it in March 2005 and hammered out a short novel titled Maggie Redcrest, Alias Inferno.

Boosted by the agent’s confidence, I started Claws 2 in summer 2005.

Things were beginning to turn to mess, though. Novels were overlapping. One week, I’d think I was going to find a publisher, the next week not. Starting a novel and stopping it midway was a lesson I had to learn.

By December, it was clear that Claws had failed to find a publisher, and the sequel became something of a living nightmare to write to completion. I took a break this past January and February and tried to finish Dr. Plant (a massive 800+ page tome), and finally said the hell with it, and forced myself to write the ending of Claws 2, which I just finished less than a month ago.

Since then, I’ve started a new suspense novel (currently titled “Death Cabin”) and I think I’m pretty much convinced that suspense is the genre for me.

There are deviations of the suspense genre (mystery, crime, and some science-fiction go hand in hand with suspense), but I think, at least for the time being, I know what I feel a suspense novel should do, and I’m just going to try to deliver some of the best ones that I can.

So, that’s where I am. I’m working on novel nine. There’ve been ups and downs and highs and lows, and I’ve learned a hell of a lot about this business since submitting that poem to Bantam Books in 1990.

What’s around the corner from here?

Hopefully, more writing... and who knows, maybe a book contract.

Stacey


Sunday May 28, 2006
Outstanding day today.

I wrote another 2,213 words on the new suspense novel, bringing the total to 26,110 at 131 pages for exactly two weeks of writing.

Tomorrow, I fly out of Raleigh/Durham for Arizona, and I'll be on the road the next couple of weeks.

I got done writing around 5:00 pm. Afterwards, I rode my bike along the Reedy Creek Greenway from my house to NC State. It's about five miles away, and once over at State, I rode all around the campus. School is out and there was hardly anyone on campus, and so I checked out all the buildings and just rode around everywhere.

Made it back home around 9:00 PM, and then drove to Char-Grill for dinner. I feel very lucky to live the life that I live.

Stacey