The Curse of the Author Spotlight

[NOTE: Strange transformations going on with Blogger, so be patient while we see how it all plays out....]

This week I've been invited to be the guest and chief entertainment for a session of what those who invited me have dubbed "Author Spotlight". Now, as an author, I am also somewhat of an introvert; I prefer to express myself on the page rather than, say, face to face, especially when the other is represented by multiple faces. Worse yet would be no faces. But colleagues have assured me that they are giving their students extra credit to attend my dubious carnival act.

This Author Spotlight came about when a potential English major asked a reasonable question at an English major reception: "So do any of you do anything? Like write?" To which I immediately raised my hand and uttered the fateful words: "The third volume of my vampire trilogy just came out." Of course, I was then pressed upon to tell more. Any Book 3 requires divulging the whole story: Book 1 and 2, the impetus for the entire story, etc. That led to several other questions. 

My colleagues knew about the first book, A DRY PATCH OF SKIN, because it had been reviewed in the local newspaper, The Oklahoman, as part of a short list of Halloween-themed books. As it was set in Oklahoma City where I live and work made it all the more topical. It garnered enough curiosity, in fact, that the STEM-obsessed Dean of our Arts & Sciences School, mentioned it at an all-faculty meeting, even holding up a copy for all to see - as I slunk in my seat to keep out of view (the introvert thing). I then wrote two other books, unrelated to the vampire genre, and thought I was finished with vampires.

But the ending nagged me. I had to know what happened next, having ended the story in 2014. By the time I got the idea of what would happen next, it was already 13 years in the future in the story and 3 years in my real life. With a vampire as the main character and narrator, there were only two ways I could go with the continuation: treat him as a vampire, ugly and miserable, scraping by on the blood of peasants, or have him fit in somehow with polite society. Either could have been an interesting discourse, but I chose the latter and Book 2 was born: SUNRISE.

In the first book, I allowed my protagonist, Stefan Szekely, to get into conversations with God, who he jokes about initially then comes to blame for his worsening affliction. Thinking he has made a deal with God, he discovers to his horror that God has backed out on the deal, leaving him to his fate. In the second book, Stefan still converses with God - or believes he does - but it is a mocking diatribe this time, no longer taking God as a kindly grandfather but a spiteful menace. In SUNSET, the third book, when the situation demands another bargain be struck, Stefan believes it is being made with God. Unfortunately, it is with God's number one interloper, Lucifer, who sees the potential in him. In the third book, that potential is realized, much to the world's chagrin. Chaos and cruelty reign! 

Now, when pressed upon to be the featured guest at this campus function designed around a book series, I was immediately concerned with our well-discussed conundrum of our students disdaining reading long passages and how I might get students interested in reading my books. Of course I will read a short scene from each of the three books, something stand-alone and interesting in itself. There is a great deal of dark humor, irony and sarcasm in the telling of the story, so I worry they would not see it as a dramatic tale of man becoming vampire becoming holy terror personified. No monsters leap out of closets. Since part of the story is set in Oklahoma, I shall read one scene set there which involves our hero, Stefan, and a lowly grave digger - thereby allowing me to use my well-trained voice to affect the Okie accent. I may otherwise use my vampire voice while reading other parts. I've mastered how to speak the classic phrase: "Good Eeeeeving."

Other than reading short passages and telling how I got the idea for the books, I will likely talk a bit about my childhood interest in reading and writing. Then I should segue into how they should be writing something, starting with events in their own lives - perhaps change the names and call it a story. I want to get them to see the potential they have in expressing themselves. Sure, they can make videos, come up with songs and spoken-word poetry, share raps, but those are all short-form expressions. Can they create an extended form with a complex, layered narrative? I will challenge them. Perhaps my inspiring words will translate into better classroom productivity. Who knows?

Lastly, I shall take questions from the audience. I have no idea what they may wish to know. I will have explained much already, so . . . I must be ready for anything. I must deflect any questions about the Penny Park (pseudonym!) affair recounted in Book 1. Hopefully, I shall be done with the session before my glucose drops and my head goes foggy and my voice cracks. It is the author's equivalent of a marathon. And I have not been training much. The only thing that might save me, give me an edge, is that I will know some of the audience already. The other saving grace is that I sure do love to talk about myself!



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(C) Copyright 2010-2019 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

When SUNSET arrives...

They laughed when I told them I was writing a "vampire" novel. After all, many had done the same previously. And I had already written some science fiction and literary novels. What was my interest in vampires?

I have to admit I was never much interested in the genre. I saw a couple movies made from vampire novels and was not impressed. I tried to see the story behind the vampire curtain. I worked sorta hard to find the interesting drama with the vampire trappings stripped away - because all stories are ultimately about the people in them. In the case of vampire tales, those people have something additional to deal with.

But I happened to know more, mostly from an old news magazine program I once saw on TV, a report on a man who had to cover his skin when he went into the sunlight, whose face had degraded to such an extent he dared not be seen in public, whose affliction was a bad mix of blood and skin diseases. He looked like a vampire. In the program they jokingly referred to his illness as the "vampire disease". Interesting, I thought, but I was not writing about vampires so I put the information away in a drawer of a cabinet in the lower level of my brain - until I needed it.

If you've followed my blog for a while, you know how this started: the Twilight series of movies and books had held my teen daughter hostage! So I swore to explain to her the medical affliction which was real - more real than the glittery skin of a brooding Byronic hero! I recalled that TV program and went to work researching such diseases. I also researched ancient legends from anthropological texts in which such creatures were reported and described. I came to conclusions.

And then I wrote A DRY PATCH OF SKIN, the "first" medically accurate vampire story, set in my own time and place: Oklahoma City, 2013-2014. In fact the story ended in the book in the same week I finished writing the story. That was it: finished. I had addressed the issue. I moved on from my contemporary literary horror opus. But a tragedy has a way of sticking with you. 

I had left my poor hero in such a dire yet lonely situation. I wrote two other novels while being haunted by him. He hated me for how I left him in that situation. I thought I could let it go, forget him; he was merely a fictitious character and he was in a place which suited the story. But not him. Indeed, he vexed me!

So I returned to the tale and gave him a reprieve, let him out of his unbearable situation, let him move on, and wrote SUNRISE, a sequel to the first novel. The setting had to be in the near future, since the first book was set in my own time. That necessitated a bit of science fictioneering, planning how things would be 13 years from the end of the first novel. Letting him out of his casket, however, proved dangerous. Once I started a Book 2, I knew I would need to write a Book 3, as well.

And so, as the sunrise is followed by flesh-burning day, so does SUNSET follow SUNRISE. It is indeed a conclusion, as well as an apotheosis of the form: the vampire imperium, a horrific expansion of the world in Book 2, and, you will be happy to note, I have let our hero out of the casket for good - and evil. Here is a brief description:

It is the night of the Millennial Ball in 2099 and the Black Storm covers all. Stefan Szekely has taken power in Europe, ruling a continent from Budapest, the seat of His empire, with wars in the west and the east to hold the borders. Different blocks of nations compete for limited resources.

The Emperor has little to amuse Him but serving His own lord and master, The Most High, whom he affectionately calls Luce. His mistress urges Him to mingle among the celebratory audience and in that effort comes the assassination attempt!

Repercussions shake the empire. The terror of His reign stokes the citizenry's fury and the palace is mobbed. The Emperor and his staff lock themselves in the imperial suite as palace guards fight the mob. When the attackers finally break into the suite, the Emperor must flee. A secret corridor leads not only to underground salons but to the instigation of a plan long readied, a plan that will save everyone from the fate the Most High has in store for the world - or, if it should fail, the demise of humanity once and for all!

Three interlinked novellas bring the Stefan Szekely Trilogy to an unsettling conclusion.

And so there you have it, the means to an end, a conclusion which concludes everything about the Stefan Szekely saga, a lesson in how the world works under vampire domination - or, perhaps, merely a clever tome of self-indulgent mayhem, a stretching of the finest membranes of imagination to the far reaches of an aging novelist's craft. Indeed, he digresses....



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(C) Copyright 2010-2019 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

Re-Writing the Vampire Genre

In the world of vampire stories, there are two kinds: the purists who insist that vampires must be this and that, have this and that, and be able to do this and that. Or those who believe vampires can be something different than the so-called traditional creature the purists put on stage. For most of my reading life the genre of the supernatural has not very much interested me. I've read some I've seen movies, and they always seemed hokey. Yes, I went there.

As a science fiction aficionado, anything that did not seem based on science or scientific plausibility was phony and fake. I could not enjoy something that did not resonate as possible. Even fantasy novels (The Amber Chronicles, etc.) I could enjoy only if the explanations of "fantastic" phenomena made sense within the context of the setting. In my career of encountering vampire literature, mostly tangentially, I did like the story possibilities but they seemed more like "magical realism" than anything else: a realistic story that relied on one significant "magical" feature. Now, if the magical element could be explained in medical terms.... Then add cyberpunk, dystopian tales, and the push of YA literature, and the urban horror genre was born. (In my opinion.) Certain tropes became required - which is a challenge to me; I must go differently!

So in 2014 I had little interest in writing a "vampire novel". My academic colleagues had a good laugh when I stood up to announce my publication - anathema to their scholarly work, of course. The reason for A Dry Patch of Skin to even be written was my outrage (yes, outrage!) at the latest incarnation of the stock character in the Twilight novels and subsequent movies. My young daughter was hooked and I tried to explain to her the true nature of the affliction. A real disorder I had seen a report on years ago. I tried so hard to explain that I began writing a story to illustrate the transformation, basing everything on research into legends and into the medical side of it.

Most readers (including 4 doctors) have been satisfied with my realistic depiction of a normal guy being cursed with poor family genes which cause him to transform into the hideous creature visually identified as a vampire. And he was all set to start enjoying his life, with the love of his life, when the first symptoms of the transformation appeared. What a tragedy! One other feature of the book was that I was writing it in the same time and place as the story, as the story was unfolding: Oklahoma City in 2013-2014. The story literally ended a week after I finished typing the draft. (More about the research in this blog post.)

So, one and done, I thought. I had shown everyone how vampirism actually works. It had none of the supernatural powers many stories employed. But it was horrific nevertheless if the reader could empathize with the hero's tragic transformation. Satisfied, I went to work on other books in other genre. However, the ending nagged me. Tragic, yes, but what would happen to this fellow (a surrogate for myself, too obviously)? Eventually I began dabbling in the future. How would he be, say, ten years in the future from when Book I was published? More interestingly, how would the world be in ten years? Thirteen years on the calendar from when Book I ended; that is, 2027-2028.

Thus, the one-and-done became a trilogy. Once I started Book II, Sunrise, I knew it would have to be three. As any good author does, I put myself in the place of my protagonist, thinking as he would think, then allowed him to carry me through his adventures as I took dictation. I was never quite sure where he was taking me but I found the adventure interesting. As I kept to the dictum of "medically accurate", the story became more difficult to realize. I tried to keep it within the borders of biological plausibility (and I believe I succeeded), but the plausibility of world events was more unsettling in the future. (More about Book II in this blog post.)

Now Book III, Sunset (coming in February 2019), concludes the trilogy by taking readers further into the future to 2099, and with that timeline, more change in the world and less "medically accurate" elements. But I've not gone full-blown purist! In 2099 vampires are a distinct version of humanity, genetic superiors, worthy rulers of a subjugated "bloodling" underclass. Thanks to the Lord of Evil Himself, who has made the world over to benefit His vampire brethren, with help from His mistress. But that is not good enough (bad enough?) for others among the nobility of the Empire of Europa (encompassing the whole of Europe from the English Channel in the west to the Dnieper River in Ukraine, from southern Sweden south to Portugal and eastern Turkey), its skies blackened to prevent sunlight from ruining a perfectly good day. Most shocking is the abandonment of technology, the tool of surveillance and oppression of the prior generation, ugly symbols of the non-vampirian past.

However, all is not as it seems, scheme upon scheme in play, and I trust the reader will not be onto the true nature of the plot too easily. In the end, order must be restored, of course, or else there would be a fourth book. And yet, as I like to do, I left a twist upon which I might someday take up the keyboard once more....


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(C) Copyright 2010-2019 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

Another Twisted Romance!

Last weekend, the so-called Valentine's Day weekend, I participated in an online event on Facebook which among other activities served to promote my latest novel, A DRY PATCH OF SKIN.

The event was called EAT YOUR HEART OUT and had the theme of Twisted Romance. I was invited to join, based on me having written a "twisted romance." 

Of course, I wondered what exactly that meant. Romance as a genre has certain conventions, one of which is that everything works out fine in the end. I took "twisted" to mean things do not work out fine in the end. That describes my non-science-fiction novels perfectly. It's not that I like tragedy or that I just cannot allow two fictional people to remain together. Rather, it's that in fiction which approaches verisimilitude (the appearance of reality), life takes twists and turns that render endings just as often unhappy as happy. 

For this event, I answered a few interview questions. 

What makes your novel a “twisted romance”; how does it stand out from the crowd?

It's a vampire story...sorta. The central character is in a serious relationship but when he begins to transform into a vampire--and he doesn't want to--he fears it will destroy his relationship with the woman he loves. She must accept a lot of ugliness during his transformation, too. But eventually, he decides to save her by letting go of her...and running off to seek a cure.

What got you into writing romance or books with strong romantic themes?

After focusing on sci-fi in my youth, I eventually realized that relationships are the core of any good story (or a story I'd want to read). I'm a romantic by nature so it came easy to me. No matter what genre I'm writing in (sci-fi or literary or, in this case, literary horror), the central couple is the reason my hero/heroine do what they do: because of the importance of beginning, maintaining, or recovering the relationship...even if it doesn't work out in the end. Although "not working out in the end" is supposedly a romance genre faux pas, I prefer to call it an anti-romance--which is more realistic.

Who’s your favorite character from your book and why?


Writing "A Dry Patch of Skin" began with me dabbling with some episodes from my real life, and grew into the story as you find it now: Oklahoma City in 2013-14, where I actually live. As such, Stefan, the poor protagonist, is as close to the real me as any hero I've written...for better and worse. It may be no coincidence that he has a name similar to mine. And yet, I do not have his unsightly affliction. Nor do I have the love interest he has--or had. 

Then I had fun posting items related to my novel during my 15 minutes of fame. As more than 99% of the reading population did not attend this event, I have reprinted my contribution here and hope you enjoy it.

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Welcome to this online bookish affair, where the twisted and the folded are equally bent! This is my first time doing something like this so please bear with me--but not exactly like a bear would. You know what I mean.

My offering here is A DRY PATCH OF SKIN - a kinda vampire novel but not like any of those others. This novel has been medically researched to bring you the purest, most accurate depiction of vampirism according to history, legend, and modern science.

And it is all wrapped around the sad tale of a new, passionate romance about to be ruined by the transformation of the man into a vampire. It is not a pleasant experience. Physical pain, hideous appearance, psychological torment, and loss of his identity and bodily integrity--

Heavy, heavy stuff! Good thing Stefan Szekely possesses a wry sense of humor and delicious vision of the irony around him!

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A truly Twisted Romance!

Because it happens to be set in Oklahoma City 2014, the local newspaper reviewed it:
http://newsok.com/book-review-a-dry-patch.../article/5359958

And my colleague here at Eat Thy Heart Asunder also reviewed it:

https://racheltsoumbakos.wordpress.com/.../book-review-a.../

What's the title about? It is a reference to the first symptom. The phrase appears throughout the book. Here are some examples:

What will be the first sign? Will it simply be a dry patch of skin? An odd blemish? A discoloration?


“I do care about you,” she whispered.
“Thanks,” I said, trying to sound positive. “We can’t let a dry patch of skin get between us, now can we?”


“So...what brings you here this morning?” asked the perky physician’s assistant.
“A dry patch of skin,” I said glumly.


We stared at the two of us in the big mirror. It was the measure of our existence: here are two humans, one male and one female, of average attributes, two examples that have copulated previously and might copulate again if not for a dry patch of skin or two. Or thirteen.

I used a fair amount of music as a kind of soundtrack while writing A DRY PATCH OF SKIN, much of it lush and romantic, the kind of film noir score you might hear from the 50s. I also used rock music.

IF THIS WERE A MOVIE....

I would use this track by In Fear and Faith "Bones" while the opening credit show. As the music begins we zoom slowly through a night sky toward the ruins of an old castle. As we approach an open window--and suddenly the music bursts into loudness--a swarm of bats explodes out of the window!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dRw2joBxfg

I like the songs on this album because they do an excellent job of giving us the primal anguish of our hero's transformation into a monster!

In the middle of the book, Stefan flees from his lover to seek a cure. To avoid airport scrutiny, he takes a cargo ship. I imagine an aerial shot of that cargo ship crossing the Atlantic as this track plays: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrCIxlBKH8A

The cover is intended to depict a passionate "last chance" embrace, Stefan and his lover, Penny Park the TV reporter.

A dark and stormy night....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zieoCij53YE

At the end of the book, Stefan has reached his final destination...almost. I imagine the scene where he awakens in a completely dark room. The camera shows an extreme close-up of his eyes just as they snap open--matching the bass notes of the piano.

As the music on this track picks up, becomes more hopeful, we would see Stefan driving through the countryside of Croatia to his final destination.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vp7IZ5p5GX8

Of course the images in these videos have nothing to do with the novel. I merely used the music as inspiration in the writing of various scenes in the novel.

Last but not least... If I had my choice, I'd use Evanescence's "My Immortal" as the closing credits music because both the music and the lyrics fit the final scene and the atmosphere:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1mPY9z4kvQ

TRIVIA:

The first generally accepted work in the Vampire genre was "The VAMPYRE" by John Polidori, published in 1819. Polidori was the personal physician of poet George Gordon Lord Byron and accompanied Byron while visiting and vacationing at the estate Diodoti in Switzerland with the poet Percy Shelley and his wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. 

The nights spent there have since become famous as the origin of both Mary Shelley's Frankenstein novel and for Polidori's vampire novella. Critics have said, and I concur, that Polidori described his undead character based on the brooding Byron's tall, dark, and handsome appearance--a stereotype employed by later authors, e.g., Heathcliff in "Wuthering Heights" and still later, perhaps, Edward Cullen in "Twilight."

Want to know more about the book, vampirism (disease), and other tidbits, give my blog post a look: 

http://stephenswartz.blogspot.com/2014/10/a-dry-patch-of-skin-launches.html

MORE TRIVIA:
Stefan Szekely is not me, but is the closest any fictional character has been written to the real me. Penny Park is based on Patti Moon, a real TV reporter--and she has yet to forgive me for that artistic license. I do not, nor have I ever had, porphyria or any other skin, blood, or autoimmune disease like Stefan has. Many of the scenes in the book, especially those in the B&N were based on real episodes I experienced in 2013-14. Patti will vouch for me on that.

STILL MORE TRIVIA:

Another interesting trivia thing that I noticed but did not really contrive to put in is the variety of modes of transportation Stefan uses throughout the novel.

1. by foot
2. by bicycle
3. by personal car
4. by SUV
5. by rental car (twice)
6. by airplane (a few times)
7. by cargo ship
8. by express train
9. by local line train
10. by street car/tram

As a bonus, Stefan flirts with riding a horse, however (pay attention, trivia gamblers; you could win a bet someday) the horse is spooked by his evil presence and so he cannot actually ride the horse!

AND AN EXCERPT (from fairly early in the book):

Mother Park [Penny's mother] inquired about my ancestry, amused that my name was, for her, unpronounceable. She alluded to the Twilight books, suggesting I looked like that Edward Cullen character but with different hair—better hair. She went on and on about that series, practically telling me the whole story, as we consumed our dinner. Penny tried to intervene.

“He doesn’t want to hear about that vampire stuff,” she said, flashing me an expression of sympathy.

“I’m only saying there’s a resemblance,” said Mother Park.

“There is no resemblance,” Penny countered.

“If not that Edward then his father, the doctor, Mister Cullen. Since your boyfriend is older, he could pass for Mister Cullen. He’s a very handsome man—I mean, vampire. They’re all popular now.”

“No, it’s zombies that are popular now. Not vampires. That trend has passed.”

When they paused to take a breath, I spoke up: “I think both of them merely play to humanity’s fear of the unknown, especially that age-old concept of the abnormal couched within the normal. That is, a real, biologically viable man who is yet again not a man but something undead. It’s the same with zombies: they’re normal for the most part yet they’re infected with some fatal flaw that renders what once was a perfectly normal, lovable family member into an unexpected, unthinking evil. That’s what scares people. That something normal can so easily be transformed into something abnormal. It’s got nothing to do with some disease or a weird appearance that someone might have. It’s the visceral fear of transformation into something hideous—and with no cure—that forces us to irrevocably face our mortality.”

They stared at me and we could hear the crickets all the way over in Korea warming up for the night’s chorus.

“He reads a lot,” said Penny.

By golly, that oughta do it for tonight! Don't want to cause any nightmares.

Except for maybe a picture of Alma. Who is she? Ummm, read and find out!

A DRY PATCH of SKIN - Kindle

A DRY PATCH of SKIN - Paper

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(C) Copyright 2010-2015 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

Does this cover make you itch?

Life is full of choices, some people say. One of them may be whether to read this forthcoming medical thriller/contemporary vampire tale. The tropes are the same, as required in the genre, but each volume, no matter the author, must play with them in different ways. 

In A DRY PATCH OF SKIN, the main character does not believe in vampires. Then he does not believe he will become one. Then he fights against becoming one. The conflict is generated by our hero's desperation to stay normal, both for his own comfort and to be able to stay with his new lover. It's a complicated process. Each of the usual characteristics (tropes) of a vampire, and becoming a vampire, are examined in various scenes and accepted as plausible or disproven as medically impossible by the characters in the scenes. And yet, there is always "magical realism" to fly in, rather like a bat out of hell, to save the day!

Today I reveal the latest cover for this so-called vampire novel. Because the title refers to a diagnostic situation, I thought to use some medical-related image. I received many suggestions for syringes dripping blood. Squeamish myself, I dismissed those ideas. I found several truly hideous faces, people with advanced disease disfigurement, but I did not want to scare away readers from even opening the cover. I also did not want something too obviously related to vampire tales. I was not rewriting Twilight or Dracula, after all.

The twists in the plot lent to the cover art design the idea of Gothic horror and the sub-culture Goth. I looked at a lot of Goth girls--I was doing research!--and searched for a duplicate of the character in the novel. No such luck--because my imagination is much more vivid than my mundane reality. I returned to the "love story" aspect and continued searching for something that would speak volumes about some major theme of the novel, until I found what you now see: a couple embracing, maybe for the last time, as their situation becomes dire.

So I went with a basic black and white design, adding a catch-phrase line in blood red just for the amusement of those vampiriacs who cannot drink the words. Yes, I'm sick that way.

And now...without further adieu...the cover!

The actual line from the novel which has been repeated on the cover goes a little like this:

It was easy to drive to the hotel where a room should still be waiting for me, although I had yet to spend a night in it. The hotel staff would be happy to keep charging my MasterCard for whatever days my name was associated with the room. At least I could get a cold shower and change into fresh clothes. Then I would decide what to do next. After all, life has choices, I often told myself. But so does death.

It comes late in the book, as our hero (or shall we dub him anti-hero at this point?) is reflecting on his life. Perhaps he had been thinking a similar thought earlier, in several instances, but it was not recorded in the first-person narrative because it did not mean so much until this later scene. I hope that is not any kind of a spoiler. It is, of course, not so much what happens as how it happens in these kind of stories. I trust the journey will be full of pathos, romance, horror, and gut-wrenching insight into the nature of humanity. 

Either way, I'll be starting on the next book soon enough. I think I'll try Epic Fantasy. Thanks for your support!

www.myrddinpublishing.com

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(C) Copyright 2010-2014 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

The Importance of Space

To start off this new year, I welcome my first ever guest blogger, fellow author Kate Bitters. I've been reading her debut novel Elmer Left. and thoroughly enjoying it. Being something of an old man myself, I could relate....

Here is some advice from Kate about a problem many writers face: space. 

The beginning of last month was chaos.  Boxes everywhere, an overly big (and accident prone) moving truck, piles of clothes and shoes on the floor, a huge gap in my room where a bed should have been...

Moving is tough.  Any kind of environmental change is tough.  When we are surrounded by disorder and newness, it is easy to lose ourselves in the offending space.  It is easy to become discouraged.  Earlier this month, I remember sitting next to a mound of clothing, sorting through it sock-by-sock, and thinking, "Good grief, when did I accumulate so many tank tops?"

But these steps are necessary--the sorting, the putting away, the ordering of toiletries, the creation of a system.  Without these steps, things get shoved aside for later and continue to linger in the backs of our minds.

The very root of Feng Shui (and if you don't buy into any other part of the concept, buy into this...) is the creation of order and the removal of clutter.  The idea is that human beings function best in a clean, ordered, and uncomplicated environment.  Our bodies relax; our minds are put at ease; we are free to concentrate on things outside of our space--higher purposes.  Like writing.

Unfortunately, my writing took a blow this past November (ironic, since it is national novel-writing month).  I had trouble focusing in my new space.  I struggled to carve out an area in which I could write and work and concentrate.  But eventually, it did happen.  I built a desk; I bought a chair; I found homes for all my dishes, sweaters, hair products.  The beast with walls and floors and ceiling began to feel less like a container and more like a home.

My Office

I found my mind relaxing, and then it went beyond relaxation: it started to think creatively again.  I started to see the world in colors and textures, instead of in a Sin City-type black and white (slightly evil, extremely jarring).  My mind was back; my motivation was back.  Words began to flow.  And I learned a valuable lesson about the importance of space.  It might seem like an insignificant factor in our daily productivity and creativity, but our surroundings can have an eerie kind of power over us.  Don't let it take the reins.  It is up to you to tame your space, make it your own, and make it work for you.

Happy organizing ;)

Kate Bitters is a novelist, editor, and ghost writer.  She is putting the finishing touches on her second novel, Ten Thousand Lines, and working on a third.  She resides in the magical and frosty city of Minneapolis, MN.

Website: www.katebitters.com

Blog: http://fightforthewrite.blogspot.com/ 

Twitter: @katebitters

Meanwhile, in a blog far, far away, Kate will be hosting my piece about the names we give story characters: fightforthewrite.blogspot.com. I shall return here forthwith.


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(C) Copyright 2010-2014 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.