October ’24: A Big Announcement

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Any support, even just giving these posts a read, is always appreciated.

A Very Special Announcement: BEYOND THE RUINED NIGHTS, SUMMER 2025

This entry will be a little different. No big project updates/announcements section because I have a big announcement I want to spend the entirety of my time here on. 

As some of you may have seen, I announced my debut novel BEYOND THE RUINED NIGHTS, currently slated for release in late Summer 2025. 

For those of you who’ve been following my publishing journey here, you’ll understand why this is such a huge decision. I’ve spent the better part of a year querying agents in hopes of going the “traditional” publishing route, but after some previously discussed issues in this process (which you can read about here) I’ve decided to go the self-publishing route. For years, this story was the unnamed “sci-fantasy story” I’ve been working on. In reality, it’s a kind of scifi-tinged Dark Fantasy story in the vein of the Dark Tower. 

Here’s a quick blurb of the story:

Sarah Silvergrove has spent two years trying to outpace the guilt she carries over the death of a friend. Living as a nomadic traveler and attached to no one, she discovers the Belhaven, a haunting library hidden in the ruins of a long abandoned city. It holds the secrets to commanding the world’s magic, and Sarah, now one of the few magic users not under the control of the struggling empire, sets out to build a new community in hopes of redemption. But when a charismatic traveler arrives and integrates himself into the budding community, Sarah begins to worry that she is destined to fail again. Terrified of the task at hand, but knowing she cannot pass it on, Sarah must decide if she will let her failures define her or if she can defend the library and those who have come to trust in her. Greater mechanisms than her are pulling at the chords of destiny, and her fight for redemption will test everything she thought she knew about herself. 

The Song has yet to be Sung. 

If that sounds like you’re kind of thing, please follow along and grab the book when it becomes available. I’ll keep you all updated, trust me. 

As far as what this announcement means for these newsletters and my blog in general, there’s a few things you should all probably know going forward;

  • There will be a lot more promotion here going forward. 

–This will mean a lot of things, but most of all that the purely opinion/announcement focused nature of this thing will change quite a lot. I may push my socials more, I will absolutely bring up the book every change I get. 

  • There will be no more “Project Progress” announcements. 

–Instead, this section will be replaced with “Publication Updates”. This will give me some space to keep you all updated on the publication timelines. 

  • A lot more will be going on strictly on my website (billyloperhistory.com) so if you don’t check there every once in a while, maybe do. 

Other than that, I don’t think there’s much more I can say besides: thanks. Thank you all for taking your time to read these, for being part of this journey. We’ll be back to normal business next month. 

And remember: The Song has yet to be Sung. 

Thanks for reading. 

September ’24: The Long Road Ahead

Thanks for reading! 

Any support, even just giving these posts a read, is always appreciated.

Recent Updates:

No major updates. There are some updates to be had on my publishing journey

Project Progress:

Boy howdy is that a complicated question today. 

So, as I hinted I might do in the previous post, I have put my literary fiction long-form project on hold in order to make some progress on my big Sci-Fantasy project. That will probably stay that way for a while, if not until the end of the year. That’s all I’ll say here, because this whole thing is the topic of today’s post. 

Recent Fascinations: The Great Things Ahead Along the Long Hard Road

In my July/August edition, I mentioned that I had been courting the idea of self-publishing after some pretty insane, though not uncommon, struggles in the query trenches and discovering/being guided to some cost-saving open-source software. Well, I guess this can be considered the official statement that I WILL be self-publishing my long-discussed sci-fantasy project in 2025. 

I started this project back in 2021, and now it is pretty much exactly a year from when people besides my close writer friends will get to read it. I’m excited, but more than just a little terrified of this. The idea of my book, one that I’ve put so much of myself into, being in strangers hands feels terrifying.

Those previously mentioned open source programs have made an enormous difference, with GIMP helping me make real progress on getting cover ideas settled, and currently I’m going through and doing all final formatting of my novel with Scribus, which has honestly been a blast. That is probably what’s been most interesting to me as I’ve started down this path: I’m discovering I really love all the different aspects of self-publishing. I’ve even gone through and written up some loglines/pitches in preparation of the announcement/title reveal (which I’m hoping to do in October), and I’ve found that enjoyable too. All of that is basically saying that I am finding self-publishing, in this early, fledgling hour, genuinely fun and exciting. 

The irony of this whole thing is not lost on me, believe me. I know that if any one of you were to decide to go back through the backlog of my 2024 blog posts, and maybe even a few of those from ‘23, you’d find some very similar posts where I am talking about how fun and exciting querying is. As I sit here typing all of this out, that hesitation of the veneer of excitement is very, very tangible, I promise you. But, I feel like there’s a pretty big core difference between what made querying feel fun and what is making this self-pub process feel fun. 

Control. 

While parts of querying were certainly fun, what finally drove me away was the near total lack of control I had over the process. You query, but you get to know nothing about the status, decisions, or general mechanisms that happen behind the scenes. With self-publishing, I have total control over every aspect of this process right up until the point that I finally release the damn thing. Of course, I’m not so delusional to think that I can brute-force myself into a Travis Baldree-style super success with incredible sales that launch an international career. I don’t know how my sales will go once I launch, I don’t know if I’ll ever make a single dollar off of it. 

I can tell you, though, that I will know EVERYTHING that is happening, because I’ll be in charge of it, and for someone as neurotic as me, that sounds just fine. So I’m going to tackle this self-published with everything I have, and I’ll be sure to keep y’all updated. 

Thanks for Reading. 

July/August ’24: On Querying, Hating it, and General Discontent

July/August ‘24: On Querying, Hating It, and General Discontent

Thanks for reading! 

Any support, even just giving these posts a read, is always appreciated.

Recent Updates:

No major updates. There are some updates to be had on my querying journey, but, as the title suggests, we’ll save that for the main event. 

Project Progress:

Still carving away at that first literary fiction long form project I mentioned back in May. I’m making good progress, and the project is enjoyable, which is about all that matters, I guess. I’m also taking a look at some last needed edits on my sci-fantasy story from feedback that I got from my full request rejection. I’ll likely soon put the lit-fic on hold to turn my attention to those edits. 

Recent Fascinations: The Query Process, or Why Writers Drink

If my querying journey has done anything for me as a writer, it has shown me how naive I was when I first started this process. Coming into this with a couple solid years experience in the cycle of submitting to Lit-Mags, I thought I had ironclad defenses against the querying trenches, against the exhaustion and constant uncertainty the process is notorious for. 

I was, in fact, very wrong. 

Querying is a beast unlike any other I have ever seen. If I had to, under duress and poor consideration, compare it to any one experience I’ve had in my life, it would be job hunting, though even that feels incomplete in its description. Querying is opaque, individualistic, and rapidly changing in ways I never expected when I first got started. Nothing about it is explained or readily available, and there is no way to ever, regardless of research, know what lies ahead. None of this, though, is about query REJECTIONS. The rejections haven’t really done anything to bring me down, and while getting a rejection from the single full request I’ve sent out thus far was upsetting, it didn’t really hurt my morale in any tangible way. What did, though, is everything that came after. 

The feedback I got from that full was great. It was real, actionable feedback, and I quickly made a plan for moving forward. My intention was to let the queries I had out at the time play out, edit according to the feedback, and then do a new wave of submissions. My primary reason for going about it this way was simple: my number one choice of agent had yet to review my initial query. I did not want to be halfway through with some substantial edits when this agent, who I thought was a great fit, decided on my query on the off chance they requested a full manuscript. I knew there was a chance that she could reject it, but that was fine. I’m fine with rejection. Turns out, rejection isn’t necessarily the worst thing that can happen. 

While the agent who requested my full was a big name, and I submitted to them as a kind of “shoot your shot” sort of thing, there was always another agent that was my main choice. I queried this agent early in the process, when I first found out about them. My sci-fantasy story fit their wishlist, they had a transparent process, a strong online presence, and they seemed like a generally nice person. You’ll notice that I’m using a lot of past-tense here, and I want to be clear that this agent still has a strong online presence and still seems, by all measures, to be a thoughtful and kind person. The issue, really, is with me using the term “agent” to describe them. 

The issue is that my “dream” agent is no longer an agent at all. 

After over 190 days, well over six months, of waiting and hoping for a full request, the agent I had high hopes for left agenting all together. While I don’t mean to say this was a horrible thing or that I’m owed something for my time, I think it’s pretty clear how this could feel devastating in the moment. However, it wasn’t really the act of them leaving that devastated me, nor even losing progress on a query I’d invested so much time in. What haunts me, even now as I write this, is a simple thought: What if all this had happened after this agent had made me an offer?

In other words, what if I had made it past the initial query, beyond the full, and had finally become an agented author, only to have the rug pulled out from under me? I honestly am not sure how I could survive something like that. How I could, having been sent tumbling back down the mountain to restart this great Sisyphian task. I’m not sure I would even be able to find the energy to write, at least not for a long while. 

As of now, I am not sure what the road forward is, what I will do, but I know that querying looks, feels, and behaves less attractive every day. I do not blame this agent, I blame the system. The boulder bearing down on the shoulders of so many writers, and the mountain that never ends.

The August Addendum: The Obvious Labors Ahead

Well, I didn’t get this thing finished before the end of July. I don’t really have any excuse for why besides procrastination and general burnout. Not necessarily burnout on this newsletter, but burnout on existence, though I don’t really intend to elaborate any further than that. 

There is something, though, that lends itself to a little addendum to the end of this newsletter, making me feel at least a little better about running behind. After the proverbial fallout of the agenting issue, and my just total inability to force myself to go back to that whipping post, I have started thinking about self-publishing again. I think having control, regardless of the enormous amounts of work and personal stress it might create, will be more valuable to me than this purgatory of an unknowing end. I haven’t come to a major conclusion on this, though I think I will have by the middle of August, but I have come across, or rather, been led to, an answer to my major concern about self-publishing. 

The big thing standing between me and self-publishing, besides some misplaced notions around legitimacy that even now are hard for me to shake off, has been the overhead cost involved in it. Cover design, book layout, and other various things have always felt very overwhelming. While I have some experience with graphic design training and can, theoretically, manage to fulfill these things myself, the software to do so is often prohibitively expensive. Well, a couple writer friends have recently pointed me towards a handful of open-source software which, by all measures, would make most of the process largely free. I don’t mean to say I’m a secret world-class cover designer, but I do have some long-ago training in graphic design and I am confident that I can manage a quality, minimalist-style cover, and if that is what stands between publishing and not-publishing, then I don’t see why that shouldn’t be something that I at least consider. 

These pieces of software, which at the time of writing I’m actively looking at and messing around with, are certainly pushing me towards self-publishing. The idea of being an eccentric local author, even an unsuccessful one, feels more and more attractive in comparison with being Sisyphus, perpetually rolling his boulder up the mountain. 

Thanks for Reading.

June’ 24: “Graveside”

Thanks for reading! 

Any support, even just giving these posts a read, is always appreciated.

This Month Will be a Little Different:

June is a busy month in my life for a lot of reasons, and this June has already been one of particular intensity both physically and mentally. So, you’ll excuse me if I cheat. Instead of my typical newsletter, I’m sharing a (very) short piece of creative nonfiction that I wrote for an author event I did a while back in Brandon, Mississippi.

Among the many things that makes June a consistently stressful month for me and my family, Father’s Day rests neatly in the middle. The task of scheduling family get-togethers in an already busy month on top of trying to take some time for ourselves as a family is only been compounded by the loss of my grandfather last May. So, in an effort to remove some of the general tensions right now, and provide a little memorialization for my grandfather, this month’s newsletter is just a piece of short CNF, dedicated to him.  

It’s short, but I like it. I hope you will too. 

“GRAVESIDE”-BY: Billy Don Loper

The light filtered down through Granny’s pine trees the way it always had. Little glimmers of radiance caught in a breathless moment before being cast to the ground in their moving shimmer. The trees had been little once, toddling things dug up from somewhere near the fence row on the other side of the graveyard. She had always intended to move there, that little patch of hilly old farm field on her father’s land, closer to her children and grandchildren. But, the grandchildren moved away, and before long, it was too late, and she was too old and eaten up with cancer to move anywhere. 

Still, she did make it there, in the end. Her own stone placed just beyond the fence of the family graveyard, there in the place where the pines cast their light. She had always liked the shade of her trees, so it seemed right and proper that she should spend her time in the ground beneath them. That had been The Eldest’s decision, as most of them had been. When the long wait passed and the heavy stone finally placed, a double one waiting on its other occupant, a little bench was put there too. Green or black, the color never really stood out against the rusting wrought iron and flaking paint, but it was sturdy and high enough that The Husband didn’t need any help getting up. 

That’s where I’d found him, me being the Eldest of the Eldest and sent to hunt him down an hour late for the family Easter. He was sitting on the bench, a metal cane leaning on one knee, and as soon as I shut my truck door I could hear him talking to her. He sat on the side of the bench aligned with his own stone, leaving space enough for her. I think I could see that when I walked the short way from the end of the drive to her trees, and that’s why I never did sit down. I hated making him look up to me, but it didn’t feel right to sit there in a spot he had saved for someone else. 

“Hey, there you are. Dad sent me looking for you.” 

“Mm? Why’s that?”

“Easter. You’re done supposed to be over at the house.”

That thin, gaunt face that I never did reconcile as his pulled tight when he nodded, his focus back to her and her trees. He did, though, spare a moment to glance at his watch. “Didn’t realize it’d gotten so late.”

“That’s all right. We just didn’t want you to have gotten off or hurt.”

“No, I’m all right. Just sitting here. I like to come sit every once in a while.”

“Okay, well. You sure you’re okay?”

“Oh yeah, just want to sit here a bit longer. I’ll come on in a little while.”

There was a silence there, however brief, that lingered between me and him. His frame, thinned and worn down by his heart disease and her cancer, didn’t look like the man I had grown up knowing. It never did, no matter how long I lived with it or how long it was the truth. I thought about all the trouble we’d had with him in those weeks leading up. His mind slipping, the doctor’s screaming Alzheimer’s despite its sudden appearance, though that never quite settled with me. It always felt like the long weariness of a house once shared, now filled with ghosts and memories.

“All right, well. I’m gonna head back and let Pop know you’re here and okay. You going to come on that way in a little bit, right?”

“Yeah, just a little bit.”

“Okay, see you when you get there.”

My boot heels scraping on that half-damp grass hid most of it, but even before I stopped to open the door of my pickup I could hear him. With her again. 

Part of him, anyway. 

For Donald Ray Loper-Father, Grandfather, and Great Grandfather.

May ’24: Finding Peace in the Outline

Thanks for reading! 

Any support, even just giving these posts a read, is always appreciated.

Recent Updates: 

It’s with a degree of severe melancholy that I let y’all know that the full request I had out has been rejected. However, searching for that every hazy silver lining, the agent did provide me with some great, actionable feedback. 

The trenches remain. 

Project Progress: 

Finished a round of edits on the horror novella, so I’m taking a break to draft a new project. It’s my first attempt at literary fiction in long form, and will likely be a long process. 

Recent Fascinations: Outlining, Writing from the Gut, and the Eternal Battle Within

If you sit down and talk with any group of writers, they’ll be a couple of topics that always come up. Adverbs, passive voice, and editing are some of the more common ones, but by far the most repeated topic of conversation for writers is the eternal debate between Outliners and Non-Outliners. 

The conversation comes in a dozen different forms. Perhaps the two best known are George R. R. Martin’s distinction between “Gardeners and Architects” and the National Novel Writing Community’s “Pantsers and Planners.” While at one time GRRM’s essay on the topic might’ve been the better known of the two, NaNoWriMo’s pervasive presence online has caused Pantser/Planner to become the default framework. I won’t be using either set of these labels. 

To categorize these two processes in terms like this applies some sort of value judgment towards one or the other. You’re either a gardener, who lets their novel flow from his fingertips with the speed at which it requires and in the way the whims of the words see fit, or you’re an architect, who meticulously shapes the words and then constructs his novel according to the plans devised. You’re either a pantser, flying by the seat of your pants, or a planner, organized and disciplined. I do not mean that I think GRRM or the NaNoWriMo folks are meaning to say that one or the other is better, but I do think that categorizing yourself or your writing style says something about the processes inherent in both. 

I have the (not so unique) position of having been both an outliner and a non-outliner. Early on in my fledgling days, I read Stephen King’s ON WRITING for the first time, where he talks at great lengths about why doesn’t outline, and about how he sees writing as a near-spiritual experience. At the time, I latched onto this idea and steadfastly refused to ever use an outline in my writing. This process created a lot of false starts, half finished projects, and a handful of pretty good short stories, but it never quite felt like how I was supposed to be writing. To be sure I am clear: I am not saying that I had some grand revelation that King was wrong. Obviously it works for him. Instead, what I’m getting at is that I tried to lump myself in with the writers that so adamantly denies outlining that it becomes personality. The gardeners. The pantsers. I tried to align myself with that style of writing, when it just never worked for me. 

As I started (attempting) to take writing more seriously, dedicating myself to finishing projects and focusing on getting published, I started to reevaluate my writing process. As I finished up the first draft of my Sci-Fantasy WIP (the one that’s currently being queried), I realized that so much of the text was aimless, and that because of that my prose had lost its focus and been blunted. So, as I moved forward with new projects and planning the sequel to my Sci-Fantasy project, I started to lean more and more on outlining. I’ve found that in the initial rough draft I am more able to focus on language, crafting clear metaphors, and precise characterization, because I am not so focused on where the story is going

More profound than the direct affect on my writing process, though, has been the way outlining didn’t affect how I feel when I write. I have said here before that I have a near-compulsive need to write. Writing is always on my mind, and much in the way King describes it in ON WRITING, it sometimes feels like a near-spiritual experience for me. But, unlike what King posits, turning towards a more structured, outlined approach to writing has not lessened that at all. I still feel like I’m writing from my gut, from the center of my being, regardless of how much thought I’ve put into it beforehand. 

Outlining and not-outlining aren’t some diametrically opposed mechanisms that decide the way writing works or is conceptualized for a given writer. They’re just tools and methods for all of us, things to help us get our stories out there. A chisel in the hand of the carpenter. 

As long as we get our stories out, it doesn’t really matter how we hold the chisel.

Thanks for reading. 

April ’24: Po Campo is God

Thanks for reading! 

Any support, even just giving these posts a read, is always appreciated.

Recent Updates:

Still waiting to hear back from the single full request I have out at the moment. 

Other than that, I’ve had a few other rejections, sent a few others out. The trenches remain. 

I was a featured author at the Brandon Public Library for Central Mississippi Regional Library System’s Author Brunch. I put together a sort-of unofficial and thrown together mini-collection for it and have a few copies left. If you’re interested in buying one, for 10 bucks, email me at loperwrites@gmail.com.

Project Progress:

Still in the process of editing the horror novella, and I expect progress there to be pretty slow going. It’s an old story that needs a lot of reexamination. 

Recent Fascinations: An Essay on Character Incited by Larry McMurtry

The idea for this essay has been on my mind since I finished my first read through of Larry McMurtry’s titanic classic LONESOME DOVE, but this or that got in my way every time I went to write it. Either a deep bout of melancholia or a full request or something of that ilk, and this is a thought that, to the best of my ability, I want to give room to breathe. 

For a great part of my time (so far) as a writer, I considered myself a character writer. I’ve talked about this before here, about the way that my own perception of my writing has shifted from character centric to setting centric. I still believe that, but that doesn’t mean I don’t crave good characters in the stories I read. 

All of my favorite books, and I mean all of them, are character driven, regardless of whether or not that type of storytelling is the center of the stories I write. I’ve been trying for years to find a way to put into words exactly why I feel this way. Why reading THE STAND makes me feel the way it does. Why AMERICAN GODS brought me to bitter, sobbing tears. And finally, a little over halfway through LONESOME DOVE, I found them, and, in the words of Kerouac, they were simple. 

Po Campo is God. 

Okay, maybe I should elaborate. I don’t actually think McMurtry ever meant for the Hat Creek Company’s second camp cook to represent God. The character isn’t a vessel for magic realism or anything like that, and he doesn’t represent some perfect, Christ-like figure. But he is important. 

LONESOME DOVE is full of characters, but for the short walk through its archetypes that I need to go on in order to set up the bulk of this essay, I’m going to focus on three. 

The Stoic: Woodrow Call

The Epicurean: Augustus McCrae

The Satisfied Man: Po Campo. 

While Woodrow and Gus are, from the very beginning, meant to represent opposite sides of the same coin, Po Campo’s arrival signals something else. He is a man, despite the hardships both ahead and behind, who is satisfied. He is happy with his life as it is and expects very little from himself and those around him, while also taking an enormous amount of pride in his craft. Woodrow seeks meaning and direction from labor, Gus seeks the same from joy and vice, but Po Campo seeks nothing and makes due with what is passed to him from beyond. 

Now, that in mind, I’m going to abruptly pivot away from LONESOME DOVE the story and towards character in general. The ideas behind these three core concepts are not particular deep or revolutionary, even at the time of publication. 

Call works hard and is seldom satisfied. 

Gus doesn’t work and is seldom satisfied. 

Po Campo is satisfied. 

Where the importance of these characters comes from, what gives them their layers, is the experiences they have on the page. 

While there is a sea of experiences behind the pages for all of the characters of LONESOME DOVE, and most other epic-length modern novels, it isn’t those experiences that carry the reader along. It is the things the characters do from the time the reader picks up with them. This carries true even for series that start the reader and the characters both at the “true” beginning. In Robert Jordan’s epic masterpiece THE WHEEL OF TIME, the reader starts the story with the main characters from their first call to action and then Jordan carries us along on the entire (and I mean ENTIRE) journey. It is through those shared experiences that WOT or LONESOME DOVE or any other character driven story earns its keep. 

So, that brings me back to Po Campo, and why he’s our ineffable savior. 

Despite the comedy and beauty and introspection, much of LONESOME DOVE is a harrowing experience. There is great violence and brutality on the pages of that novel, and at times, especially once Blue Duck makes his appearance, that brutality can feel oppressive. So oppressive that at one point, a literal, biblical-scale plague of grasshoppers descends on the Hat Creek Outfit. However, through it all, Po Campo does not falter. He is steadfast in his every action, past and present, and never doubts himself or his dedication to the road ahead. Perhaps most memorable is when he states that his wife is “in hell where I sent her,” without so much as a smidge of regret or introspection.

LONESOME DOVE is a book about characters, and almost the entirety of its purpose is the development of those characters, but, as I’ve said, Po Campo remains. There is no growth for him provided in the story, no examples of the ways the road north changed him. He is known, certain, stalwart. Po Campo, in other words, is God. 

Writing characters that live and breathe through the page is hard, exhausting labor for me. It’s something I have to work at, something that never comes natural in the flow of my prose. I think that difficulty is what drew me to Po Campo as I read McMurtry’s masterpiece. I struggle to imagine the ideas that must have passed through McMurtry’s mind as he drafted the earliest versions of LONESOME DOVE. I wonder about the changes that Po Campo had to go through in order to live on the page as totally and believably as he does from his very first appearance. 

I don’t think I’ll ever achieve that, that I’ll ever write my own Po Campo. 

But, then again, what’s the point in riding for Montana if you’re already there. 

Thanks for reading. 

March’ 23: The Perpetuity of Querying Anxiety, or Maybe My Skin Ain’t as Thick as I Thought

Thanks for reading! 

Any support, even just giving these posts a read, is always appreciated.

Recent Updates:

For once, I have some pretty significant a pretty exciting update!

In late February I got my first full request from an agent, and more specifically from an agent I thought I had no chance in even getting any interest from, much less enough interest that they decided to read the entire thing. 

This is really exciting for a number of reasons, all of which I will go into in the fascinations section of this newsletter. 

Be sure that I will keep a running update here of how that goes!

Project Progress:

I finished the post-apocalypse rough draft! It turns out that February was a very productive month for me overall, and I was able to wrap up a story that, in one form or another, had been haunting me for more than five years. 

Now, I’ve moved on to editing the horror novella that I finished the rough draft of back in the Fall of 2022. 

Recent Fascinations: Realizing the Limits of My Querying Resistance

All right, so, to get the celebration out of the way, glory glory I’ve gotten my first full request! The excitement I feel from this is impossible for me to explain. It is a high that I haven’t felt since my first short story acceptance, and it has really, really, made me more confident as a writer. 

The query that developed into my first (and as of writing only) full request was one of the original batch of six I sent out way back in December of ‘23. This particular query was to an agent that I would have described as my dream agent if I even thought there was a cold chance in hell. It was the long shot, straight from JV to the major leagues, unthinkable agent. The agent I sent a query to expecting a rejection but knowing I would hate myself if I had never taken the chance. 

For EIGHTY-NINE DAYS I watched the counter on that query tick up. Agents sent rejections, I sent out new queries, and the longshot ticked up. When I mentioned this particular query to my writer friends, I called it the “never gonna happen” query. I disregarded it, its status on my Query Manager page just a reminder that sometimes this whole writer thing requires us to take a chance or two.

I don’t think I’ll ever have the words to describe the feeling that came over me when the full request came in, but it is a high I’m still riding as I write this. My writing hadn’t just been noticed and recognized as something worth a second look, but noticed and recognized by an actual titan of the industry. With all of this joy, though, came a realization that maybe, just maybe, my skin isn’t quite as thick as I think it is. 

Throughout my querying journey so far, I have remained resilient to the wearing forces of the process. Rejection is part of the job, and I’ve taken each one with a smile. A rejection comes in, I send out a new query. I’ve solidified that process into something that I feel is sustainable. I’ve settled into a pace that works for me and my writing goals. Through all of this work I’ve managed to keep my expectations realistic, not anticipating anything beyond a rejection from any of the queries I’ve sent out. 

However, the moment that the realization around this first full request settled in, I knew that those emotional defenses have a limit. Even though I have no real expectations of anything coming from this full request, I also know that once that rejection comes in, I will be totally, absolutely crushed. 

I hope no reader of this misunderstands me, though. This full request has done a great deal to show me that my writing, and especially this dark fantasy manuscript, is worth something. It’s an irrefutable statement from the industry that this is all worth the effort. I also hope that any reader doesn’t think I’m dejected or self-depreciating when I say I expect nothing to come from this full request. I really, really, hope that this full turns into an offer. I think the work is worth it, I think I have a chance. 

But at the end of the day, I have to try to keep some semblance of realistic resistance against the coming barrage of rejections. Still, I know that whenever the response to this full does come, no matter what it is, I will feel it with my entire being. 

Thanks for reading.

February ‘24: The Month of 10,000 Days

Thanks for reading! 

Any support, even just giving these posts a read, is always appreciated.

Recent Updates:

I’m still querying my Dark Fantasy project. Received a couple more rejections and sent a few more out. 

The third entry in my Stephen King readthrough with The Scoop came out earlier this month. Read it here. This one is about THE TALISMAN.

Project Progress:

I am ALMOST finished with the rough draft of this post-apocalypse story that has been haunting me for what feels like a lifetime. I look forward to eventually saying that I finished the son of a bitch. 

Recent Fascinations: Learning to Appreciate Winter

I think I can speak for a lot of folks when I say that January felt like it was about eight years long. It feels impossible that 2024 just started a little over a month ago, that Christmas wasn’t even a full two months ago. At the same time, I don’t think I can identify a single truly productive thing I accomplished during that time. I didn’t finish any projects or make any significant moves in my writing life. It was, if I’m being honest, a month that felt like it was about 10,000 days long in which I accomplished almost nothing. 

I try not to quantify my writing career with progress or achievements, that’s what LAST month’s whole blog post was about, but I think there’s another aspect that applies to how I felt throughout most of January: I hate the winter. 

I don’t mean that as a moment of over exaggeration. I genuinely hate just about everything about Winter, especially the unbearable part of the season between Christmas and blessed Spring. The cold, the dead look of the world around me, the persistent freezing rain, and, perhaps most of all, the short days. 

In a moment of uncharacteristic vulnerability, I will lay out for all my readers that I have seasonal depression (or whatever label you want to give it), which mixes pretty poorly with my grab bag of anxiety disorders. Basically all of my hobbies besides music require me to go outside, which is decidedly difficult when it’s cold, pouring rain, or both. Winter is just very difficult for me, despite the momentary release from the Mississippi heat it offers.

That being said, as January kept trudging along, I started trying to find some joy in the Winter time. Warm cups of coffee on my front porch, evenings on the back patio spent watching the birds tear my dry and dying grass apart. I’ve tried to spend time finding the little moments of beauty in these cold, desolate Winter days. 

Funnily enough, as I’ve started being mindful of what there is to enjoy in the Winter, I’ve found myself making steadily increasing progress on this post-apocalypse project. My mind is preoccupied with finding beauty in a time of year that normally fills me with nothing but disdain, and that has turned out to be pretty useful in writing about the beauty that might come when the world is forced to slow down, even if only a little. 

I also found that it was easier to focus on my essay writing for The Scoop, my hobbies (the indoor ones), and a whole host of other things that there’s no point in going into here. The point is: this whole concept of focusing on the porch-sitting and not the freezing rain is pretty important to the writing process. You gotta focus on the positives of the process, not just the negatives.

A while back I did a blog post about seeing the beauty in the process, and I think this revelation about Winter time is just an expansion on that. Sometimes the weather sucks, sometimes writing sucks, sometimes querying sucks, but sometimes you get to sit on the front porch with a warm cup of coffee and things aren’t too damn bad. 

Thanks for reading.

January ’24: Heading Forward

Thanks for reading! 

Any support, even just giving these posts a read, is always appreciated. 

Recent Updates:

Obviously, the biggest update is that I’ve shifted away from Substack to my own platform, which gives me control over how it works and what I host. If you were subscribed on Substack, you’re already subscribed here. Not subscribed? Do so Here:  

Project Progress:

No major updates. I am still pending queries, I’ve had a few rejections and sent out a few more submissions. 

As always, read my essay work at: The Sinister Scoop

Recent Fascinations: A New Year and Heading Forward

I’m not really one for New Years resolutions, either in my personal life or as a writer. I do keep up with some writing career goals every year, things like getting some stories published or finding an agent, but nothing grand like yearly word goals or lofty ideas. Despite the fact that I’m a pretty perpetual optimist, I’m also a pretty pragmatic realist. 

When 2023 kicked off, I didn’t expect to be moving 10 months later, much less buying my first house and settling into a decidedly different life than I have ever lived before. Building personal resolutions or professional ones is typically just an invitation for life to firmly remind you that you’re not the one that calls the shots, so instead I just try and make sure I am always headed forward. 

Forward progress is something I have focused all of my attention on since I started (trying) to take this whole thing seriously in 2021. I am always trying to improve my writing with each new project. Always sure to submit at least a handful of short stories a year. Always trying to move to the next step in my goal to find traditional publication for one of my full-length manuscripts. No matter what, I always try to keep heading forward. 

Even when something stands in the way, like a surprise life change, if you’re heading forward, standing still for a little isn’t really a big deal. It becomes less a setback, and more like a momentary pause. A redlight. Sure, you’re stuck for now, but eventually the sumbitch will turn green and you can get moving again. 

So if I have any advice for my fellow writers who’re trying to decide what resolutions and professional goals they need to be focused on, it’s that. Just keep heading forward, and when you have to stop, just be patient. 

The light’ll always turn green, eventually. 

Thanks for reading. 

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December’ 23

THIS POST WAS ORIGINALLY HOSTED ON SUBSTACK

Welcome to the Newsletter!

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you enjoy it and will share it with your friends and family.

Recent Announcements:

The second entry in my Stephen King essay Series “The Long Read” just came out, this one all about Dolores Claiborne! Read it here.

Project Progress:

The sci-fantasy story is DONE. I passed it along to two final readers, but at this point I’m finished making changes to it. The story is as good as I can make it. I’ve queried five agents, and plan on keeping five queries out at a time. As I get rejections for those (or possible full requests, etc.) I’ll make updates here. 

Finishing that story means that it’s time to get started back on my other projects! I’ve already picked back up on the post-apocalypse story’s first draft, and will keep updates for all of that going here too. 

Recent Fascinations, a Very Special Edition:

MY 5 FAVORITE READS OF 2023

It’s the first December of my first year writing this newsletter, and in classic writer newsletter style, I want to do a rundown of my favorite reads of the past year. I’ve read a lot this year, 86 books if you count all the manga and comics, 45 or so if you don’t. I count them, and that’ll be relevant later, so we’re going to go with 86. 

First things first, though, I need to lay out some foundational information before I dive into the reads themselves, because I don’t read like a lot of people in the book-space do. I don’t focus my reading efforts on new releases. In fact, while there are some recent releases in the honorable mentions, the newest novel in my top 5 is from 2016. That’s just how it shook out this year. So, to be clear before I get started, this isn’t a “top five releases of 2023.” It’s just my five favorite reads from the past year. 

So, without further delay.

THE HONORABLE MENTIONS:

Here are the books/comics/series I read and LOVED this year even though they didn’t break into my top five. I can’t go in-depth on each of them the way I will the top 5, and they aren’t in any particular order. If a book is here, I recommend it with my whole heart. Seriously, if you walk away from this newsletter with anything it should be adding everything I talk about from this point forward to your TBR. 

  • DOLORES CLAIBORNE, Stephen King
  • POST CAPTAIN, Patrick O’Brian (Aubrey and Matrim 2)
  • THE ROOTS GROW INTO THE EARTH, Bert S. Lechner
  • THE MAGICIAN’S NEPHEW, C.S. Lewis (Chronicles of Narnia 6)
  • SECONDS, Brian Lee O’Malley
  • ESSEX COUNTY, Jeff Lemire
  • MALEVOLENT, Harlan Guthrie
  • THE ROOTS IN YOUR BONES, Samantha Eaton
  • FOREVER WORDS, Johnny Cash

If any of these are something you haven’t read/listened to before, look into them and read them. I promise  you will at least find something interesting in each of them. 

THE TOP FIVE:

Here they are, the five best things I read this year in ascending order. 

5. HEARTS IN ATLANTIS, Stephen King

If you’ve been keeping up with the things I talk about here or on social media, or the types of things I typically write essays about, you’ll know I’m a massive King fan. HEARTS IN ATLANTIS knocked me off my feet. It’s a powerful collection of short stories and novellas where each story builds on the last, intertwining the entire thing into an impressive tapestry, all coated with a healthy dose of magical realism. The titular story is the one that clinched the fifth spot for me, with the story of cards-addicted college freshman finding themselves constantly scrambling to hold themselves afloat feeling particularly powerful for me. The entire collection is intimately connected with The Tower, and overall it was by far my favorite King read of the year.

A lot, if not most, of King’s short story collections are great, but this one is really something special. 

4. THE ROAD, Cormac McCarthy

I’m not sure I can describe what this book did to me, and anyone who has ever read it knows exactly what I mean. The story of a desperate man and his young son on the road during what I can only describe as the most hopeless, hellish post-apocalypse I’ve ever seen is so powerful, so emotional, that you really have to read it to understand what this book really is. 

I read a lot of heavy stuff, a lot of literary fiction centered around trauma and the exploration of pain, but nothing I have touched in recent memory has made me feel as deeply as THE ROAD. More than the quiet desperation of a father at the end of his rope, there is also a beautiful, absolute hope beneath everything. Go read it. And remember, you have to carry the fire. 

3. THE DRAGON REBORN (Wheel of Time book 3), Robert Jordan

As I write, I’m about 60% through the fifth book in the WHEEL OF TIME series, and before I was finished with book three, THE DRAGON REBORN, I knew that this series was going to weave its way deep into my being. It’s quickly become one of my favorite fantasy series of all time, and out of the entries in the series I’ve read so far THE DRAGON REBORN shines the brightest. 

The book’s focus on side characters and exploring the broader moments of the narrative while delegating the main protagonist to a background plot element really struck a chord with me. While I’m positive that this plot conceit isn’t unique to this book, and probably not an original idea to Jordan, it felt fresh and exciting when the last two books had been so centered on Rand. I came out of DRAGON REBORN with more than just a new favorite fantasy read, but knowing that the rest of this journey was going to be something truly special. 

2. ONE PIECE, Eiichiro Oda

When I set out earlier this year to catch up on ONE PIECE, I expected to relive some childhood nostalgia and maybe end up falling in love with the series all over again. What I didn’t expect was for the series to turn into one of my all time favorite pieces of fantasy fiction ever. ONE PIECE isn’t just an excellent example of its medium, but instead one of the finest pieces of world building and storytelling to come out of the entire fantasy genre. 

It’s criminal that the only thing that typically comes up about ONE PIECE in discussion is its length. Currently sitting at over 1100 chapters, it is a very, very, long manga, but when compared to landmark prose fantasy series, taking decades to finish a long series isn’t anything unusual. As Shonen Jump has increased its digital presence and made almost all of its material available via a subscription to the digital magazine, ONE PIECE is more accessible than ever. As that accessibility increases, hopefully the degree that people discuss the series’ place in the fantasy canon increases too. It belongs there as much as A Song of Ice and Fire and Wheel of Time, and Eiichiro Oda should be remembered as one of the titans of the fantasy genre.

1. FANTASTICLAND, Mike Bockoven

It is rare that a book sticks with me in the weeks and months after I’ve read it the way Bockoven’s brilliant, harrowing FANTASTICLAND did. I think a lot of my love for this book comes from the time that it was written. In 2016 I would’ve been the same age as several of the main characters, and the way that Bockoven interpreted the challenges and pressures facing young folks in 2016 really resonated with me. 

FANTASTICLAND is one of the most effective thrillers I’ve ever read. From the very beginning I was hooked, waiting on the edge of my seat for the next chapter, the next piece to the story, and that sort of immersion is something I rarely find. It reminded me of how I felt reading as a teenager, discovering many of the stories that would become my enduring favorites. The brilliant plot matches perfectly with the epistolary storytelling to create a book I literally could not put down. I loved all five of the books that made the top five this year, but the gap between FANTASTICLAND and ONE PIECE is pretty significant. It was the best book I read in 2023 by every single metric.

You should read it too.

Thanks for reading!

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