Preorder for my novel, Shades and Shapes in the Dark will begin soon! The book is headed off to the editor next week. The nove is a dark fantasy/horror story set beginning in the 90s and span 40 years. The story is about a dark force, that follows the main character Clarissa through her life, and how she must learn to fight back, ultimately drawing on ancient magic and wisdom. The first book begins when she is only 9 years old, and encounters the shadowlike creature for the first time.
Each chapter in the novel has a poem that opens the piece. Sometimes this poem is something to do with the character, sometimes narrative information for the reader, sometimes foreshadowing, and sometimes it includes a bit of the lore of the world.
Chapter 10 is titled: The Shadow of Samhain. It takes place on Halloween and, of course, since it’s the season, I thought I would share that opening poem.
The Shadow of Samhain
Come all ye, gathering shades, The time of Samhain is at hand, We will rise to rot and scatter, Our blight across the land.
For the first of us comes at witching hour, To seek his contractual prize, Lust for power brings him strength, With every victim’s demise
But a bargain struck will not go unpaid, A boon of power is owed, It matters not who is struck down, Nor the depth and breadth of your woe
More news of the novel, including the release date and more is just around the corner!
Wednesday Night October 9th I had the good fortune to share some of my ideas at the live event, Ignite Denver #41. My topic? Stories Will Save the World.
You may have heard the phrase uttered by Neil Degrasse Tyson and others, “We Are Made of Star Stuff”. It’s true, we’re made of the things born at the beginning of the universe. But my talk was about something else. We’re Also Made of Story Stuff. But we’re not just our story. We’re characters in countless stories, those of your parents, your friends, your family, passing acquaintances, that jerk who cut you off on the highway, and yes, you are the villain in someone else’s story.
We Are Made of Story Stuff and that’s why, It will be stories that save the world.
Hey all, I know it’s been a while since I have had updates so I have several things to post about today. Sorry for the long message, but I’ve broken things down so you can easily skim to the information you want.
The first is the reason that things are so delayed. This summer I joined Teach for America and last month I officially became a High School English and Language Arts teacher for 11th and 12th grade. Let me tell you, that’s an extremely busy job.
Despite the very long hours I am working right now, I’ve managed to make a lot of steady progress on my forthcoming novels. I am currently on a streak of 574 days or writing without skipping. 500 or so of those days had a minimum of 1000 words a day. So I make progress on something every single day (though I must admit at least 50 of those days I deleted the words right after I finished them but hey, you gotta get those bad words out of the way for the good ones to shine).
Here is the current status of my books that I am actively working on:
Shades and Shapes in the Dark is currently in it’s final pass before it heads off to the editor. ETA for book 1 is either October 17th or November 17th depending on the amount of edits required (How much red pen my editor uses).
The series is now 4 books with the following titles and progress level:
Book 1 “Shades and Shapes in the Dark” is in final edits with an ETA in October or November.
Book 2 “Though An Endless Darkness Gleaming” is 75% of Draft 1
Book 3: “An Illumination of Extraordinary Madness” is 50% of Draft 1
Book 4: “The Nature of Twilight At Dawn” is 30% of Draft 1
I currently expect to finish draft 1 of Book 2 by November 1st and to use NaNoWriMo to finish (or get close to finishing) the first draft of book 3
The Children of AEIS and The Chronicles of the Great Migration final two books, A War For the Heavens and A Hand to the Stars are still on their way. The Children of AEIS is sitting at around 75% first draft completion. The largest reason for the delay was a major concussion only two months after the release of Serah of the Runners. This derailed me pretty solidly and right now, when I have free time on top of writing, I am working through creating notes of the 4 books because my memory of them appears to be a little lacking from first the injury and then the passage of time. But, they are in progress and they absolutely will get finished sometime in the near future.
Welcoming the Muse
My poetic essay, Writing is Living was selected for publication by Twenty Bellows Press this summer. The piece is about life as an author in the 21st century. There will be a release party sometime this fall and I will provide more information as the date approaches. Needless to say, I’m thrilled to have another short of mine published this year. That makes 2 short pieces of writing picked up by publishers.
How to Write for the Future Podcast
I also recently appeared on a second episode of Write for the Future. This podcasts covers some basics of worldbuilding. The host also spent time across several episodes highlighting some of the key features of Kyra Wellstrom and I’s book, Build Better Worlds. I have linked the second episode where I guest starred as well as the episodes that surround our book below.
My last piece of news is that back in July I was asked to teach a session at the Creative Colorado Writers Retreat hosted by Twenty Bellows Publishing Company. I feel so honored to be a part of this retreat as it includes some of the most talented and knowledgeable writers in Denver.
That’s it for updates (I know there were a lot). I’m confident my next update will be release news! I hope everyone is having a great holiday weekend (if you’re American and reading this).
A few months back I went on the How to Write the Future Podcast, to talk about my co-written book, Build Better World: An Introduction to Anthropology for Game Designers and the process of creating fictional worlds. This will be the first of a two part podcast.
For the last ten years I’ve been teaching college courses in Anthropology and Geography. But last month I signed on to join Teach for America where I will transition into teaching middle school or high school. Sometimes at the end of the semester I would recite this poem for students, to try and capture everything we’ve learned in the entire term. Also, I wrote this about two years ago, and I realized recently that I never actually posted it even though it’s one of my favorite pieces that I’ve written.
This spoken word poem is inspired by the core message of Anthropology so artfully put by Horace Minor many years ago. he said that anthropology is, “Making the strange familiar and the familiar strange.” This poem also appears in my book, A Luminous Liminality: A Collection of Poetry and Art
It’s All Relative
It’s all about relations,
No I don’t mean sexual intercourse,
I mean how people build their foundations
How they relate to causation, or build a nation
And what they consider freedom and liberation
The tracks of humanity don’t just stop at one station
The imagination is filled with endless destinations
Everyone has hopes and dreams, sorrows and frustrations
Everyone wants to experience the sensation of cessation of suffering and damnation
Options
We are a range of cultural options
Our choices are the result of a kind of cultural adoption
Humans are a wonder to be sure
We explore, go on tour, only to identify what we consider pure and impure
We fight wars because we are insecure, but wait there’s so much more.
For every detour we endure, we can also find the cure
For our madness
For every act of hate, there one of love pushing back against the sadness
The thoughts people carry are the result of causes and conditions
A steady diet of enculturation a kind of cultural brain nutrition
Of what’s clean and dirty, right and wrong
How best to gather food or sing a song
How to unify a community and get along
Culture is about adapting and understanding where you belong
So much of it is arbitrary but we claim tradition is important because it has. Gone. On. So. Long.
But tradition is selection of past perceptions
Rooted in imagined past and cultural objections
There’s nothing inevitable about the paths we choose
The things we keep, the things we loose,
Or how we use and abuse one another
When we forget that all beings have once been our mothers
And we yell and scream and blame one other.
For our problems
And so it’s relative, the way we know
Our goals, dreams, aspirations, the places that we go
Flow below the assumptions and you will find a place to grow
But take it slow.
Because if you think you know,
You’re wrong.
Relativism is a practice,
lifelong
And that beginners mind, keeps you from getting too headstrong
Don’t assume right or wrong
Just be curious, instead of furious.
Cultural relativism is poison, a disease?
Oh please, I’ve got no interest to appease
The keyboard warriors whose agenda is to throw feces
Like our primate cousins…
Relativism doesn’t mean you allow ignorance to thrive,
It means you contrive to understand what it means to be human and alive
The things we do to survive and strive for
Opens the doors to more
Possibilities
Because every culture is a library of wonder
They all have lessons and wisdom bright with lightning and thunder
So shut up,
listen,
and put down your hands
You don’t have to like, but you should try to understand
This short story is another example of comedic sci-fi that I’ve been working on for some time and will ultimately appear with stories like Simulacra and The Great Magnetic Sock Migration of 2077. So if comedic sci-fi is your thing, Lizard Boobs will be up your alley.
Synopsis: Jerry may have injected Melissa’s laboratory lizards with a gene editing serum that gives them boobs. Will Melissa murder him this time or find some other use for two lizards with very large breasts?
Jerry shrugged in the flickering fluorescent laboratory light. “I guess I just thought that the world would be better with more boobs?”
“So you put them there? On a lizard? What good are boobs that aren’t on a mammal.”
There they were, two oversized iguanas, with large green mammaries protruding down between their forelegs. Both creatures were struggling to move since their breasts dragged as they walked. One of the creatures had taken to rolling around at the bottom of the tank, exposing two round and erect nipples with strange green coloration stabbing at the sky.
Melissa leaned forward on the stainless steel table she stood behind. Jerry was purposely keeping that table and the specimen’s tank between them. He knew they were her prized lizards but even the lizards in the tank looked nervous.
A few weeks ago I went on the UK based Open Minded Podcast to talk about Anthropology. On Episode 36 titled “What It Means to Be an Individual” We covered a variety of concepts and it was fun and very organic conversation. You can find it below.
I just turned 40 this month. And I saw someone the other day ask on Facebook, what’s one piece of advice you would give your younger self? And I thought, my younger self was a stubborn ass and had to learn everything the hard way. But then after a conversation with one of my children, I got to thinking, would there be anything I could tell that might help younger me?
So this is it. This short essay is the answer, but really it all comes down to one line:
It is dangerous to believe everything you think.
No matter what you think of yourself, every person you meet thinks you are a different person than you do. Even the casual or passive encounter, has a model of you in their head, a projection of what they think about you and what your reality means to them. They may love you or curse you, or simply want to get around you in the grocery aisle. But no matter what you think of yourself, every person you meet thinks you are a different person than you do.
This is why it is dangerous to believe everything you think.
We are wrong all the time. Our brains see patterns in things that aren’t there. We see the closet monster or the coat hanging on the chair in the dead of night and feel dread and fear. We see a text message and assume it means one thing when it means another. We will take insult when none was offered. We are wrong all the time.
This is why it is dangerous to believe everything you think.
We are myth-making machines. We make myths of the day ins and days out of our lives. We talk about how wonderful or terrible it was that something happened to us. Is happening to us. Will happen to us. We will be epic heroes cheered by crowds and perhaps an attractive mate, or victims of grave injustice, but always the starring role of any scene. Because in myth it’s often a lone hero saving the day. We are myth-making machines.
This is why it is dangerous to believe everything you think.
Stories are symbols of the real. No story you tell is ever real, it is only your model, your projection of the real from your perspective. But your perspective has been shaped from the moment you drew breath. Every experience, every bit of culture taught to you, has shaped the way you approach a topic, a moment, or even an emotion. Stories are symbols of the real.
This is why it is dangerous to believe everything you think.
Our emotions possess us sometimes. They take away our sense of proportion. They make you eat more, or eat less. Sometimes we welcome that possession in some dark corner of our mind, addicted to our outrage, or fear, or sadness. Or emotions can be like a stranger, climbing inside of you and taking the reins until they are burned out, and then we are left standing with the mess they have made. In one moment, we can undo years of work, trust, or effort or even destroy lives. Our emotions possess us sometimes.
This is why it is dangerous to believe everything you think.
We are all traumatized, at least a little. Some of us carry around gaping holes in our stomachs from the emotional damage that life thrust upon us. Others carry a hundred smaller wounds, that while not deep, still leave scar tissue. And so, we see through the lens of our pain and misfortune. Our brain prefers a negative bias, because, after all, it kept us alive in ancient times, to assume the worst of everything. So we are stuck with a brain wired to fixate on our suffering and sometimes seek our own dissatisfaction. We are all traumatized, at least a little.
This is why it is dangerous to believe everything you think.
Loridian's Laboratory 