Busy Like A Bee

BEE-attitudes – Bee kind to one another.

This is me, busy like a bee… I’ve been going pretty much non-stop for the last few weeks that it’s nice enough to sit down and write a simple blogpost.

So what am I up to?

• Storytime Blog Hop resumes in October, and you’ll find a link to the latest 1000-word flash fiction installments when they’re ready. The date is slated to be 26 OCT 2023, but I’ll let you know for sure closer to go time.
• COVERS! If you joined my free newsletter then you know that voting is going on for the covers of Waking Dread (Book One of Eater of Dreams). After I’ve announced the winning cover there, it will show up here, along with a link to preorder. The date of the announcement here will be 17 OCT 2023. The book releases on 31 OCT 2023
• Books in progress: I’ve written quite a few novels, though I have published relatively few. Well, that’s changing as I put my rear in gear and revise. I’m in the middle of revision now of a “cyberpunk noir” and will provide more updates on progress in my newsletter. The story takes place in the same “universe” (worldbuilding-wise and literally, seeing that it’s science fiction) as Clones Are People Two. It’s on Kindle Unlimited, so you can read it for “free” if you take advantage of the program. The novel won’t be on KU, at least not right away.
• Speaking of which, there’s also a cover for that story too, which will be released closer to when it publishes.
• I also opened a survey to my newsletter readers on which of the stories they would like to see after I publish the cyberpunk noir, and the answer was overwhelmingly the sequel to Umbra: Shadows Over Hinge (originally published as Umbra: A Post-Apocalyptic Mystery). That revision commencing depends on the progress of the cyberpunk noir, which, barring any kind of emergency, should be done by the end of November, and a date of publication will be chosen before then.
• Totally unrelated to the books, I have to shore up my chickens’ coop before the weather gets too cold. It’s great that it’s more math/geometry/non-word hands-on, something to do when my brain gets rut-bound on parts of the revision. An hour or two with a saw and measuring tape and paintbrush can loosen up the old muse.

So that’s it for now (as if that is not enough).

The Art of Influence

Two weeks ago I brought up several stories which I call my favorites, and that naturally brought me to the idea of influence. You hear the phrases bandied about often by any creative types–“I consider such-and-such my greatest influence”, as in “As a composer, I find Mozart and John Williams to be my greatest influences” for an example, or directors cite earlier movies that formed their interest in the silver screen.

Certainly, as a writer, I count many, many authors and stories among my influences. All writers generally do–after all, that initial exposure to tales that transport us to other worlds or realities far from our own personal experiences engender the desire in some readers to craft our own. Fredrik Pohl, Harlan Ellison, Harry Harrison, John Haldeman, Doyle, Tolkien, Lewis, Shakespeare etc. all count high on my list of literary inspirations.

But… what about other influences, such as music? Take my first example, with music above. I frequently listen to music while writing, matching the mood/tone with whatever I am trying to write. Umbra (and all of its previous iterations) came flying from my fingertips with an ample dose of Alice in Chains, early Nine Inch Nails and Soundgarden pounding in my ears. For my darker fantasy stories like “The Falconer and the Wolf“, one of my favorite bands to get me in the right atmosphere is Dead Can Dance. When sketching notes for The Light of Liberty, I turned to Barry Phillips and his version of “The World Turned Upside Down” along with other American Colonial period tunes.

Are there any more? Of course there are. Many people have incorporated their likes and hobbies into their writing. Some cozy mysteries, for example, are based around knitting. My character Ennid the Havoc and his escapades are influenced by my love of MMA (that’s Mixed Martial Arts for those not yet initiated into its primal awesomeness). My interest in genetics features heavily in Clones are People Two. Even if the things we like aren’t at the forfront, we sometimes insert it in small ways. I love goats (Casey, from Umbra), I think rhinos are awesome and I smith silver (both of which will appear in The Opal Necklace, release date TBD) and I’ve an interest in raptors and falconry.

It’s all very simple–EVERYTHING can be an influence on our creativity, and EVERYTHING should be. It’s from these somewhat disparate ideas and influences that some of our richest “juices” flow.