Reminder: Launching the Caliban Cycle

Tonight at midnight, the first installment of The Caliban Cycle goes live on Amazon Kindle. Just 99 cents for more than 30,000 words of mystery, Lovecraftian horror, occult detectives, Southern Gothic generational drama, ghosts, shapeshifters, Creek Indian and Christian belief systems, all intermingled into a page-turning and vivid adventure.

The Caliban Cycle is what I'm calling an ongoing series of novels about Tom Caliban, who doesn't get properly introduced until the beginning of Part 2, which will go live on Kindle Aug. 1. The first book is titled "Giants in the Earth," and will be serialized (in three segments released a month apart) through Sept. 1. Part One is "The Changeling."

>>Here's a collection of blogs about the series<<

>>Here's the Facebook page dedicated to the series<<

>>And here is the Kindle link in case you missed it above<<

It is Finished. (... And So It Begins ...)

My Plan for the Foreseeable Future

Wednesday, I took a vacation day from my job. It was my 49th birthday. It was also a personal deadline.

Several months ago, inspired by a prompt Mark Boss gave at a writers' conference, I was finally able to get back to my lifelong writing project, collectively referred to as "Caliban."

>>(I wrote about the origins of the project here.)

With the help of a group of local writers (Mark, Ruth Corley, Rich Kevan, Carole Lapensohn, Marty Sirmons and Milinda Stephenson, otherwise known as "The Cheshires") I have taken my 1994-era version of the tale and brought it into 2013.

Wednesday, I wrote somewhere around 3,500 words, finishing the last segment of the story that remained.

I've been in a daze ever since. (Mark told me at lunch on Thursday that I had that "1,000-yard stare.")

I'm now working my way through the book using the Cheshire's notes on early chapters to weave together dangling threads, enhance descriptions and motivations, explain the inexplicable, and otherwise polish this thing to a glowing sheen.

I'm calling it "Giants in the Earth: Book One of the Caliban Chronicles."

When I complete this part of the final edit, I will be sending it to a friend who is considering representing me as a literary agent. And I will write a novella (or maybe just a long short-story) about one of the supporting characters in this story (Working title: "The Case of the Invisible Vampires")

And post a collection of my zombie short stories to Amazon just in time for Halloween and the return of The Walking Dead on TV.

And begin work on the direct sequel to this story. (Working title: "The Moon Made Blood")

With more to follow.

I was floating in the neighborhood pool yesterday as the sun set, and I had the most pleasant positive mental state wash over me.  I felt like I had crossed a threshold of some kind.  Reached a personal plateau that revealed a clear path to even higher elevations.

It was a trick of the mind, of course, but I'll take it.

Hope is a good thing to have, especially when you doubt yourself as much as I do.  And finally having a sense that you've accomplished something worthwhile -- and that more good things are ahead -- is such a wonderful new experience that I can't even quite grasp the enormity of it.

I'm just gonna go with it while it lasts.

Two Writers: A Video

Thanks to Lou Columbus for shooting and editing this chat between me and Michael Lister. It's a bit long, but if you have the time, we both read from our work in the second half; Michael reads from his newly released novel, The Big Beyond, and I read from a work-in-progress, Giants in the Earth.




Thanks again, Lou!

Teasers

I've been teasing Facebook folks with sentences from my current project. I'm trying (somewhat desperately, if the truth be told) to rid myself of a character who has followed me around (in my brainspace) since I was a teenager. >>I wrote more at length about him here.<<

So, on Facebook, I have released the following teasers:

Opening line of Chapter 1:
"My mother’s black hair was long then, before the accident that changed everything, and it shimmered like silk in the light of day."

Closing line of chapter 1: "There you are. I am such a meddlesome bastard."

Second line of Chapter 2: "Junction lay nestled in a wide hollow between rolling hills covered in tall stands of pine and oak, cuddled by the soft curves of the earth, and embraced by the fast-moving, tannin waters of Big Escambia Creek."

Second to last line of Chapt. 2: "And by the time his enemies had linked him to this place, he would have killed again."

Third line of Chapter 3: "The steering wheel bucked in his grip like a tiller in hard earth, but God heard his prayers and kept him firmly on course."

Third from last line of Chapt. 3: " 'I would hesitate to throw that word out where the press might get hold of it,' Street said."

Fourth line of Chapter 4: "She felt as if she was suffocating in the humidity, and her nightgown stuck unevenly to her body like a skin in the process of being shed."

Fourth from last line of Chapt. 4: "She looked up at him, expecting a kiss or something, so he kissed her once, gently, on the lips."

What's fun about this is that none of these lines refer to the same character. Tthe "meddlesome bastard" is not the guy talking about his mother's hair, for instance. The "she" suffocating in the humidity at the beginning of Chapter 4 is not the same "she" getting kissed at the end of the chapter.

Also, if you're familiar with my previous novel, "The Book of Gabriel," the last name "Street" in Chapter 3 may be familiar. It is there for a reason, though it is not the same main character you met in the previous book. Some version of "Street" existed in infinite parallel worlds. This is one of them.

Anyway, I'm glad to be (re)writing this. Maybe I'll take it all the way to print this time. (Of that, you can rest assured.)