The #nerdpire comedy-horror vampire Series 1, a collaboration with my writer relative (aka wrelative), is in the hopper. It’s actually been that way for many, many months, but somebody didn’t follow through with the publishing process.

Our first effort was a web serial and it was going rather well. Then Amazon created the Kindle Vella platform and it was new and shiny and I wanted to be on it. I published our page, put up the first dozen episodes – including 3 freebies – and then decided I didn’t like the name #nerdpire anymore.

Fast forward… hmmm, let’s see, maybe 18 months… and I’ve finally come back to it.

#nerdpire has been officially rebranded. The overarching title is The Unholy Comedy and the first series is called Exit Interview with the Vampire. It’s still some of my favorite writing and my wrelative Asta Harridan and I are 13 episodes into Series 2. If only some people would read it so we’d have the incentive to finish it off.

Incidentally, I haven’t abandoned my New Novel about the Society. In fact, I’ve completed the first draft but am not in love with the ending. One of these days I’ll have a burst of creativity that leads to something better. Expect that novel in 2023.

Yes, I’m still alive, though the drama has been real.

The last few months, life got in the way. I had to set down the New Novel manuscript, take a break from writing Series 2 of #nerdpire, and focus on other stuff. The cloud cover thickened. Hard work took place, but very little of it involved putting words on paper. Then, last week, the first glimpse of sunlight through the overcast appeared. I didn’t believe it was real, but hope germinated. Then, yesterday, I had just the thought of a conversation (not even the actual interaction!) and the desire to re-engage in the writing process was resuscitated.

While I’m not convinced I have escaped the clutches of life and its sticky tentacles, I dusted off New Novel and started an edit in preparation to finish it. The fun new episodes of #nerdpire have also beckoned again. I began the publishing process for Series One on Kindle Vella, removing the freebies from the web. Perhaps I’ll draft a monthly newsletter in this fallow ground.

Life is still lurking around every corner, but there’s just enough space to contemplate the fun parts again.

Those parts involve writing. Thanks for patiently waiting. More creativity coming soon!

I’m thrilled to turn the page on 2020 with hope for a better 2021. The last 10 months have been rough for many. While we’ve been some of the more fortunate, it is distressing to see how hard life can be during a pandemic. I wish you all the best for the new year.

But I’m not thinking much about 2021 these days, in truth. Instead, I’m thinking about the year 2033 in a place that was once the United States of America, but is no longer. Life is hard there, too, though much of the pain self-inflicted, evolving out of the best of intentions and a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature. But hope remains, mostly (and literally) underground, that the Society that sprung from the intellectual rot of a once-great nation will be itself overthrown.

I’m talking about my New Novel, of course.

Right now, I’m at 76,000 words and doing a full edit to ensure the plot is tight enough to hold up the last third of the book. My goal is to write the rest of the novel in January, then edit it twice in February before submitting it for a professional edit at the end of that month. If the timing works as expected, I should be publishing in May, at the latest.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, the book is dystopian urban fantasy that’s a mashup of George Orwell’s 1984 and the movie V for Vendetta, with its own unique twist on what happens after a nation degrades and falls apart. Though I started writing with the style of #nerdpire in mind, there are no longer any similarities between it and New Novel. If anything, New Novel is darker than anything I’ve written, without wallowing in the darkness. There’s the occasional bit of humor, but the topic is too serious to permit consistent giggles.

Well, that’s enough of a tease for now. Enjoy the turn of the year, read some #nerdpire to spice up your free time, or start the Psycons & Grace series to enjoy some psychology-based science fantasy. New Novel will have an official name and be on Amazon soon.

In the spirit of the season, next week I’m running a Kindle Countdown Deal on the Synchronicity ebook. It’s on sale for $0.99, reduced from the normal price of $3.99. The deal is active from December 7 through December 11, so if you’ve wanted to get into Psycons & Grace series when it’s cheap, that’s a great opportunity.

The #nerdpire online serial, which launched a few weeks ago, has enjoyed a great start – thank you, readers! We released Episode 5 this past Friday and are nearing 1,000 views and 400 visitors so far. If you’re Stephenie Meyer, those stats are chump change, but then you’d also have those horrible sparkly vampires sprinkled throughout the plot. We don’t have sparkly vampires in #nerdpire, which is why the site is located at nosparklyvampires.com. Both Asta Harridan and I hope you’ll take a quick read. It’s rollicking fun despite (because of?) the blue language.

And while I don’t celebrate NaNoWriMo, I did reach the magic 50,000 word mark on the New Novel in November. My progress stalled this week because of the day job, but I’m hoping to get back to 2-3,000 words per day on it soon. If all goes well, I should have a rough draft manuscript done in January. Then I’ll polish it several times before delivering it to my editor by (*cough* … I really shouldn’t commit to this) the end of February. New Novel has a title, but I’m not going to give that away yet. The current incarnation of the title has stuck for 3 weeks already, which means it has some staying power. If I were to use a soup analogy to describe this book – the world needs more soup analogies, of course – I’d say it’s urban fantasy with a base of George Orwell’s 1984, two cups of the movie V for Vendetta, and several tablespoons of subterranean guerrilla warfare. I think you’ll like it.

Have a happy holiday season! If you’ve taken the time to join the Band of Misfits by downloading Demergence, you’ll be hearing from me in a couple weeks in the monthly newsletter.

Since the last update, the aforementioned wrelative picked a pen name: Asta Harridan. It suits her, but you’ll have to take my word for it.

So what’s it all about? #nerdpire is vampire fiction, a comedy-horror mix, and most definitely does not feature a main character choosing between a sparkly freak and a wet dog in the rural Northwest. It is Mature Audiences Only fare, with a lot of swearing, innuendo and happily disgusting humor. In other words: you’ll love it.

Originally, we planned to put a bunch of content behind a paywall, but out of the goodness of our hearts we changed our minds. Instead, the first two episodes are free and available to all. The next 22 episodes of Series 1 are easily accessed if you join the #nerdpire Coven, which costs you nothing and cost us only two million hours configuring the website. Episodes are released weekly on Fridays. That’s right, 24 free weekly episodes of vampire comedy-horror goodness for your enjoyment!

What’s the catch?

Well, I guess there isn’t one. This weekend I might start on Series 2, which will take off in another completely unknown direction. Thankfully, we have 21 weeks of time built in to produce it. Onward!

Speaking of wicked…

Ms. Wrelative and I are nearly done editing the first 24 episodes of our collaboration. What’s it about? It’s a vampire comedy-horror series, definitely not for readers sensitive to 20-somethings with potty mouths, involves rats, and is a rollicking good time (if I don’t say so myself). I’ll leave more details for the true introductory post, but let’s just say that vampires aren’t quite what the world thought they were, and our main character is a bundle of sarcasm and bad attitude. She’s great! October is the perfect month for us to release it, given the prevalence of vampires disinclined to touch people in our midst. I’m hoping to have the website ready and marketing started prior to Halloween.

This is a both a new genre and a new delivery for me, and I’ve quite enjoyed everything about it so far. Our approach to serial fiction is weekly releases of episodes (48-50 per year) tied to a Patreon subscription. We’ll give away the first few episodes for free, of course, but then we want readers to join us on the journey in real time. So, instead of buying books on occasion, you pony up a small amount – a couple bucks – per month and read as we write. Incidentally, Ms. Wrelative has chosen her pen name, but until I get the thumbs up that it’s fit to publish, I’ll stick with the nickname.

Couldn’t You Come Up With Something Better Than New Novel?

Sure, but why bother?

I’ve taken a short pause from writing Book 3 of the Psycons & Grace series to play around with some of the knowledge I acquired writing #nerdpire. That includes:

• A female main character, in this case a young woman with a difficult past
• A dystopian future, a la The Handmaid’s Tale (only not so in-your-face infuriating)
• A lot taking place underground; for some reason, I love underground settings like in The Blue Blazes by Chuck Wendig or the Silo Trilogy by Hugh Howey
• Social intrigue and the potential for violent revolution

Once you’ve read the first 3 episodes of #nerdpire, you’ll find yourself wondering just how any of that list could have been gleaned from a comedy-horror vampire project. Good point. However, it was the change in pace away from Psycons & Grace that prompted it. That, and there are some underground tunnels in #nerdpire, too.

At this point, I’m only 12k words into it and still finding my legs and my voice, but I really like the plot and the characters I’m building. Plus, though I have no current ideas for the book title, I have definite ideas for the cover. That’s a little weird.

All that to say: there’s more to come!

Update: start reading #nerdpire today.

After leaving Travis in a world changed seemingly for the better, Alchemy quickly demonstrates that his life isn’t going to be so simple. This is a story of mental illness, existentialism and survival viewed through the lens of Jungian psychology. I think the book description on Amazon does it justice:

Before I clicked the “publish” button to make Synchronicity available in paperback format, I ordered a proof copy. It cost $4.88 plus shipping. Then, on the delivery day, I paced around the house anxiously, waiting for Amazon Claus to bring me my gift. After tearing open the package, I held it in my hands until asking my wife to take this quick video.

Thankfully, there were no issues with the formatting or the cut of the cover and pages. Synchronicity is now available on Amazon for purchase. If paper is your preferred medium, enjoy!

Then I gave the manuscript to my editor.

In return, I received a heavily commented redline and a 17-page “summary” editorial comment. Admittedly, I was shocked. It was my best work yet! To some extent, he agreed. The bones were there. It was a good follow-up to Synchronicity and the plot-lines were well-developed and interesting. However, in the process I’d sacrificed two important characteristics of what made him love Synchronicity: a strong sense of place, and room to breathe for the characters.

When writing a character like the Skinwalker in Synchronicity, the temptation was to embrace the stereotypical. He’s a supernatural legend steeped in evil and violence. Frankly, it may have been easier to write him as a monster, but that seemed like tread ground. Instead, I grounded him in the psychological need for redemption and a strong sense of place. The Skinwalker scenes allowed you to feel what it would be like to live in the Wasatch mountains and to struggle with finding peace after a life of anything but (and far removed in time from your origin). In my 93,000 word Alchemy manuscript, I’d given the place descriptions short shrift, despite there being ample and obvious opportunities to do better. My editor noted this.

Additionally, he commented that the book felt like I’d become overly focused on the plot. I was too far removed from the characters at times, particularly the main characters, as they struggled with major transformations in their lives. They accepted the strange things happening to them too easily, without fear, uncertainty and doubt. I’d also taken half of the underlying tension between Travis and Meg and moved it behind the scenes, which didn’t allow it to play out effectively for the reader.

Sadly, he was entirely right on both counts.

So I went to work, first making the edits using his redlined copy, then writing three new chapters to bring the tension more into the open, and finally doing a comprehensive read-through (twice) with a focus on all the spots where I’d hurried over character reactions, particularly for Travis.

The end result is a stronger manuscript with ties to the best parts of Synchronicity, both in plot and substance. It also bulked up the word count (shockingly, to me) from 93,000 to 106,000! And these aren’t filler words. I didn’t add a bunch of Scrabble-winning adjectives and call it a day. Instead, you get to feel what Travis goes through and how Meg struggles with it instead of just reading it. More than anything else, that is the value in working with an editor.

Alchemy is book 2 of Psycons & Grace. It is available for pre-order and will be released on Amazon September 21, 2020.

In Synchronicity, I think the primary cast is pretty interesting, so I figured I’d tell you about them:

• TRAVIS EDISON. Age 24, scarred by the death of his father at age 12, living in his mother’s basement. He is aware of coincidences and has a semi-firm belief that they are signs to be interpreted, learned from. Meets Meg Hunter the same night he finally gets a sense of a career direction.
• MEG HUNTER. Age 26, a young nerd who blossomed late, driven and focused on her job. She is bright, successful, more than a little sarcastic and values her tight-knit, ex-Mormon family. But she’s failed to find a good match and feels some pressure to make progress on that front.
• CARL JUNG. Long-deceased icon of psychiatry. Defined the collective unconscious, psychic archetypes, studied (to his professional detriment) synchronicity and alchemy. Pulled by God into purgatory to, ostensibly, evaluate the life of Travis Edison for evidence of synchronicity.
• THE SKINWALKER. Age 150, Navajo legend, currently in elk form as penance for a life of evil. Seeks redemption, to have the human life he abandoned when he became aware of his powers. Still struggling with the means to reclaim his humanity, he targets Travis in the mountains above Salt Lake City.
• GOD. Age: infinite. On the surface, the Judeo-Christian archetype of the deity because that’s how Carl Jung thinks of him. Actual nature somewhat undefined.

The secondary characters have important roles in the novel, though not all of them make appearances in Alchemy (the sequel). They are:

• Mom. Travis’s mother, lovingly impatient with her son’s progress, the model of self-sacrifice for the benefit of others. She wants him to have what she lost, and more.
• Matt Poston. Travis’s high school sorta-friend, currently working at the Bureau of Land Management in Salt Lake City.
• Rick Rhoads. A caricature of the cranky old bigoted retiree. Obsessed with The Weather Channel. Bitter. Hates his son. Ignores his wife. Omaha, Nebraska resident.
• Drew Rhoads. Rick Rhoads’ son. Completely unlike his father. Actor, generous man, still-closeted to his family though his father suspects he is gay. Absorbs the abuse with maturity. Omaha, Nebraska resident.

Of course, in Alchemy we abandon some of these characters and introduce a new batch. That’s part of the fun of drafting a novel: seeing characters come to life and explore the world you’ve given them.