Tag Archives: creative-writing

If you write, you’re a writer … and maybe you could use a boost

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It’s been observed by smarter people than me that writing can be a daunting profession and avocation because of the isolation inherent in sitting at a desk all day, typing on your laptop or making notes in your journal.

It can be a challenge, and I’m not talking about writer’s block, although there is that, too.

The bigger challenge can be the feeling of working in a vacuum, the feeling that you’re writing and writing and rewriting and aren’t sure if you’re getting where you want to be with your story, your article or your book.

I’m known to say, “If you write, you’re a writer.” It doesn’t matter if you’ve been published or not, if you’ve had short stories or books published, to great acclaim or total *cricket noise.*

Cause I believe if you’re writing, or making notes, or thinking about writing and sending yourself ideas in texts and emails … well, you’re writing.

Sometimes you need a boost. I know I do. I’m lucky to have writer friends who read my stuff, from flash fiction to novels, and tell me what they think. I’m lucky to provide the same kind of support for my writer friends.

So a small group of us are now offering a boost to writers, no matter what stage they’re in.

I joined up with Constellate Creatives a while back and just the other day announced my affiliation with CC, which is owned and overseen by longtime friends of mine who are writers but also know other aspects of the writing life, from editing (developmental and copy editing) to publishing to marketing and everything in between.

Our goal is to help writers.

There’s a contact button on the Constellate Creatives site that I’m linking to below.

And I’ll tell you more in the weeks and months ahead.

The image above isn’t the Constellate Creatives logo. It’s an image from the 1960s spy TV series “The Girl from UNCLE.” But it’s a pretty nifty bit of art and sort of communicates the international foundation of Constellate.

More info:

https://constellatecreatives.com/

I love the ’80s, especially for exploring fiction

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Anybody who knows me knows that I really enjoy writing stories set in the 1980s.

My new book THAT OCTOBER is set – for the most part – in October 1984, although there’s some exposition in the book that leads readers back 20-plus years before that.

There’s a “Stranger Things” vibe that a couple of writer friends who kindly blurbed the book noted, although there are no monsters – except for the human kind – in “That October.”

Sara McKinley, my friend who created the wonderful cover for THAT OCTOBER, said she was thinking about “Paper Girls” and other “kids on bikes” stories as she was working on the art. (My kids in the novel are slightly older, although not by much, and more mobile.)

But besides THAT OCTOBER, I wrote another story, “Steel Victory,” which was published in the 2024 Slaughterhouse Press anthology “Maximum Firepower: An ’80s Action Anthology.” The premise behind the Brian G. Berry-created “Maximum Firepower” is that the tales we wrote were inspired by 1980s action movie tropes.

In my story “Steel Victory,” a Captain America-style super soldier escapes from a top-secret lab in 1986 Washington, D.C. This super soldier is no Steve Rogers, however, and when he goes missing he goes on a murder spree.

For the look of the missing super soldier, I pictured Martin Kove, the actor who played the bad guy in “The Karate Kid” and other 80s action pictures and recently returned in the “Cobra Kai” series.

It’s up to three women – the doctor who conceived the project, the “lab rat” who knows more about the project than anyone and the project’s head of security – to track him down in the darkness of D.C.

“Steel Victory” and THAT OCTOBER appealed to me because the time period was very defined and familiar to many of us, even those who were too young to experience it. Everybody knows the trappings of the decade, from “Terminator” movies to “Star Wars” on home video to the music of MTV.

As much as I find my cell phone and the Internet indispensable now, there’s something very freeing about writing about a time when the protagonist couldn’t just pull a phone out of their pocket and call or text some crucial information to someone.

I love research, and one of the things I discovered as I wrote “Steel Victory” was that I couldn’t round up a bunch of those government-issue black SUVs for the search party. SUVs, other than Jeep Cherokees, were not in wide use at the time. So my protagonists had to improvise.

It’s an intoxicating thing, to write about a period that’s so close yet so far away. I hope I get to do it again.

Here’s where you can get “Maximum Firepower” and my story “Steel Victory.”

Just like starting over – with a new novel

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When I was looking for an image for this post, I was tickled to find the one above, illustrating an instructional video posted by InterDidacta.

I thought it was perfect because this is the first time I’ve worked on a new novel since spring 2023, when I finished THAT OCTOBER.

It’s not just because THAT OCTOBER is close to being self-published that I’m starting a new one.

I’m starting a new novel – after flirting with the idea of writing another non-fiction book, my fifth following four true crime books – because, as I’ve noted here, I’ve changed my daily writing habits. I’m still writing most days, non-fiction articles for sites like CrimeReads and others, but I’m not writing as much short fiction as I did in 2024, for example, when I sold or placed more than a dozen short stories to several sites and anthologies. I’ve got more stories out there in the ether, stories I’ve subbed and haven’t heard back about, and another couple that have publish dates later in 2025.

And while I’ve got something to keep me busy, the urge to write fiction, especially some particular stories and characters, is still there.

So it’s a good time to write a new novel. I’m going to incorporate characters from some of my recent fiction, including SEVEN ANGELS, which won the 2021 Hugh Holton Award for Best Unpublished Novel from Mystery Writers of America Midwest, as well as some characters who have shown up in some other stories AND a bunch from a series of novels I wrote 20 years ago.

I’m posting here to help keep myself accountable. After I reach a promising point in these notes, I’ll turn them into a chapter-by-chapter outline. (I’m a committed plotter but I make changes and add and subtract chapters as I plot and write.)

So hopefully I’ll be motivated to keep going and update here occasionally.

The “how to type on a keyboard” video is more basic instruction than I’ll need, I think, but I’ll for sure remember that I’m starting new on this one, so baby steps will come first.