There are countless blogs out there, and most of them are well-meaning. None of us have time to read them all, or even a fraction of them. If we try, we’ll never get any writing of our own done. Blogs are not there to distract us from our writing. That’s what Twitter is for.

I don’t read a lot of blogs, but when someone I know and like has a new post, I read it right away. And then there are the ones by people I don’t know well, or by total strangers, that I can’t resist. Some have fascinating/funny/unique titles, others are about writing, publishing, and/or reading. But there is one subject title I wouldn’t click on for money. And believe me, at this supremely broke point in my life there are few things I wouldn’t do for money (you can make up your own pervy shortlist in your head). But the gist of the posts I avoid is:

NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU HOPE AND DREAM AND WORK AT IT, YOU WILL NEVER — I REPEAT, NEVER — MAKE ENOUGH MONEY TO LIVE ON AS AN AUTHOR

Now, some people were just born to be killjoys. Others actually think they’re doing people a favor. Still others think they are the fount of knowledge in the publishing world and every word from them is golden.

Whatever.

The thing is, doing that is like back when Simon Cowell was on American Idol, telling some not-very-professional singer they will never ever ever ever sing anywhere, for anyone, for any amount of money or even free. They stink. They should never open their mouth. They should go find a hole and hide in it, or if one isn’t available, dig one themselves.

Maybe he didn’t realize he was being mean. Unlikely. He’s a smart guy, so it was probably more a ratings thing. Lots of people got a kick out of him, well, kicking people. When they were down. Or if they weren’t down, knocking them down himself, then kicking them. Did we actually watch him do that, and laugh? Or at least not turn it off? Sigh. I watched, too, sad to say. But I didn’t like that aspect of the show. The reason, besides that it was mean and nasty and took his feeling of superiority to a nauseating place, is that I have friends who are in the music business. And I could picture him doing that to them. Maybe they’ll never win any Grammys. Maybe they’ll never even get a recording contract. Who knows? It’s a crazy business. But they’re loving the journey. It’s a blast. And yes, their lives revolve around it, their money is spent on it, with little return on that investment thus far. But, so what? People spend their money on all sorts of things they love, that will not lead to monumental careers or a Donald Trump tax bracket.

Again …

So. What.

If you collect model trains, you won’t get rich off of it, but no one says to stop. If you’re fascinated by space exploration and spend money to go to Space Camp, no one says, you’re wasting your time and money—you’re not going to be an astronaut.


And, getting closer to the subject that started this post … If you’re an artist and you create paintings or sculptures or performance art that you consider unique and awesome, with profound meaning, but some people see it as cockamamie bs, the art world as a whole doesn’t say, NO MATTER WHAT YOU THINK,YOU WILL NOT MAKE A LIVING OFF OF YOUR CREATIONS! They know you probably won’t. But they also know there’s a small possibility that you will. They also know that it doesn’t matter. BEING an artist matters to you. Creating something from your own mind and hands matters. The total rush of creating matters. The inspiration you feel when dreaming and hoping and seeing, in your mind’s eye, a cool future of gallery openings matters. Even if they don’t happen, they matter. Because this moment matters. Because that inspiration matters. Because your confidence in what you’re creating, even though it rises and falls as if with the tides, matters.

And when someone tries to drill it into your head that, no way will you EVER make a living at this, even if your book is fabulous, even if you become famous and successful, so you’d better plan on forever having a regular job along with your writing, or push Grandpa down the stairs for the inheritance money, or SOMETHING … that spark of confidence and dreaming and hoping and the sheer enjoyment of all that fades a little. Or a lot. Or flickers. Or just dies out.

So, no, I don’t read those blog posts about writing and its inevitable lack of financial success. And not just because I grew up blue collar at best, and my idea of financial success is probably light years from that of people who grew up middle class.

I don’t read them because I can’t imagine why I should. Because I see them as counter-productive. Because I don’t need anyone stomping on my confidence before I even get started. Because … well, just because.

Someone WILL be the next Amanda Hocking. There are so many self-pubbed writers out there that, even if I scrape together enough money for cover art, figure out how to format even though the instructions appear to have been written in hieroglyphics, and self-publish my thriller, the odds are against it being me. Or you. Or a zillion others. But it will be someone. And you never know. It. Just. Might. Be. Us. But whether it is or it isn’t, we should enjoy the hell out of the journey. We should believe. We should have a frakkin’ blast.

And maybe we shouldn’t go out of our way to find someone who wants to wipe that smile off our face. Because it belongs there, as long as we’re creating.

Characters.

Over our future lifetime of writing, we'll need lots and lots of them. They need to be unique—or at least uniquely different from each other—and detailed enough to not seem like cardboard cut-outs. As we write our story and they develop multi-faceted personalities, they’ll be more real to us, and more appealing to our future readers. When one of our more beloved characters bites the dust, it should not only break the hearts of the strangers who buy our book, but our own, as well.

So how about if there are already "characters" we feel strongly about from the get-go?

Almost all of us had childhood friends who will always live in our hearts, our minds, and the scars from those inevitable friendly dares (Oh yeah? Bet you can't jump from this step to that one way over there without falling!). Some of them, we love dearly, others we barely remember, and a few make us wonder, What on earth was I thinking?! But they all contributed to helping us discover who we were and who we were going to become, and how to deal with our kid-world—a place separate and distinctly different from the grown-up world, with its own set of rules and hierarchies.

So why waste all those experiences?

Surely there’s a place in one of your short stories—or one of the many brilliant novels you will eventually write—for little 8-year-old Eugene, who liked to eat the erasers off the ends of his pencils, and had glasses so big they made his eyes look like bugs under a magnifying glass, when they weren’t sliding down his nose. You remember Eugene. How, the only way you knew if he was lying was if he opened his mouth. The cute-as-a-button story-maker-upper who could have blueberry pie smeared all over his face, yet would still insist the dog ate it. And who grew to be … 14-year-old Eugene (who at that point desperately longed for a cool nickname like Geno or Flash or Elf Lord)—small for his age, a magnet for pimples, and still covered with blueberry while insisting the dog ate it. Yeah, that Eugene. Or Leon. Or Richard, or whatever his name was. If you need a child or teen character, there he is. Or was.

Or maybe you need a backstory to explain the personality of a new character who is, say, a Congressman. Who better than Eugene, with his penchant for foisting blame off on others, while telling utterly transparent lies? There ya go.

If you stop to think, there are so many people you grew up around but haven’t thought about in years or decades. Most of them, familiar to all of us who write.

The bratty little sister of … well, whoever … who followed along after you and your gang of pals like a stalker and sprang out to declare, “I’m telling!” when you all did whatever it was that you weren’t supposed to be doing. She was just begging to someday become “The Character Who Saw Something She Wasn’t Supposed To See.” And, as we all know, good things do not happen to that character.

Other possibilities:

Your best friend from third grade, who shared sleepovers and dribbly Sloppy Joes and deep dark secrets with you, then moved away over the summer … the neighborhood bully who could take your coolest stuff away just by sticking out his hand and saying, “Gimme” … your first crush, Eric, who sat in front of you in 7th grade English without ever noticing you existed, until he freaked out when he saw that you wrote “Eric + Me” in a heart on your book bag … the 12-year-old red-headed twin girls who were always together and for some strange reason never liked you (surely it wasn’t because you found them creepy and thus gave them the nickname of The Twins From The Shining, which stuck right through high school) …

Oh, wait. Those are my memories.

Well, you get the idea.

And don’t forget the grown-ups from your past. The little old lady all the kids were sure was a witch (According to The U.S. Census, there’s one of those in every single neighborhood in America. Okay, I’m making that up. But to imaginative kids, any unfriendly, grey-haired lady might be making kid-stew in her crock pot). The cranky ice cream truck guy who obviously did not plan on being the ice cream truck guy back when he went to college and studied Liberal Arts, and really, really HATES KIDS. The writer-lady who used to come into the local library every single day one summer and then suddenly stopped. Kid theories abounded. (She was kidnapped! No, murdered! Um … Abducted by aliens?)

See … in everyone’s childhood, future characters were everywhere.

So when you’re in dire need of a best friend for your hero, a creepy serial killer, a partner for your police detective (and we all know the cop partner might as well be wearing a red Star Trek shirt, since he's doomed), an adorable little kidnap victim who must be rescued, a chatty-but-odd suspect who may or may not have done it …

Spend some time in your past.

There’s a vast supply of people back in your early years just waiting to be plucked from your memories and slightly re-arranged—a name change, maybe trade a habit from this old friend to that one, or your former high school hottie no longer has dark hair but is now platinum blonde, etc. Wouldn’t want to get sued if someone recognizes him/herself.

Oh, and don’t forget that hateful high school gym teacher who made you feel like a wimpy loser just because you couldn’t climb the stupid rope. You know you had many dark, vengeful fantasies about him. Don’t lie. He’ll be a perfect character, when you someday write the screenplay for Saw XII.

It occurred to me this morning that we writers are not quite like other people. I'm not sure why it did. It just popped into my thoughts, out of the blue. I was sitting at my computer, trying to come up with a totally unique way of making a much-detested neighbor's body disappear, leaving no forensic evidence behind. And it occurred to me that most people probably don't spend minutes, hours—hell, DAYS—creating such scenarios in their heads. And I felt a little sad for them.

Yes, we're different.

For one thing, standing in line at the supermarket is not as boring for us as it is for "regular"  people. Those are not fellow customers in front of us, those are potential characters: villains, victims, little-buddy-sidekick-comic-relief, princesses to be rescued, dead bodies to be autopsied. It's probably best if they don't know this. It might creep them out.

And there are, of course, the cats.

There's no law or rule or How To Become An Author In Ten Easy Lessons book suggestion that writers should have cats. But more often than not, that's the way it works out. I'm not sure why. Maybe we admire their independence. Maybe we enjoy the air of mystery that frequently surrounds them. Maybe it's because we know that when we're deep into one of our everything is going right/brilliant words are pouring out/real world? what real world? bubbles of authorliness, and they get hungry, they won't be subtle about it. They'll crawl onto the keyboard, or start chewing on the pencil as we write, or reach up and get nose-to-nose with us with that "Feed me or die, you $!#& idiot human!" look. Yes, we are aware that if we (at least those of us who live sans other humans) had a puppy or a hamster or an iguana, it would starve to death.

We have slightly different priorities, we writers do. The main one being: Oh my god, I'm out of coffee!!!!! Does that no-coffee-in-the-house moment drive architects, short-order cooks, toll booth workers, kindergarten teachers, or nuclear physicists as totally batsh*t as it does a writer? I suspect not.

We can work around out-of-ink pens, file-eating computers, incessantly noisy jackhammers digging up our street, lack of sleep (see: jackhammers), cats wailing to be fed, kids doing the same thing, or Jehovah's Witnesses ringing the doorbell at the very second we finally grab on to the word that's been on the tip of our tongue all morning (and, whoosh!, it's gone again!), but do not mess with our coffee. And let's not even get into the chocolate thing.

Yes, we're different. And we wouldn't have it any other way. And neither would you. Where do you think your favorite novels come from, anyway? Normal people? Puh-leeze!

Who Do You Write For?

Sometimes people ask that, about your books, your blog posts, your web articles. But the question today was put forth regarding blogs.

So who do I write for?

People who feel we have something in common? Those who can relate to what I'm saying, see themselves in it?

And who would those just-like-me people be?

Coffee-addicted ... pizza-obsessed ... gargoyle-lovin' ... cat-worshiping (they demand it) ... science fiction fans who, if a Close-Encounters-like mothership came down and offered them a ride, wouldn't go, but if someone offered them the opportunity to BE Starbuck, they'd hop in her Viper and blast off ... those who believe that if you nuke microwave popcorn, once you open the bag it's your duty to finish off every last kernel ... who believe that to eat only one piece of chocolate is going against the Laws Of Nature ... whose computer is so rarely turned off, they forget where the button is ... who read the latest diatribes from Congress and get the urge to smack most of its members on the back of the head, à la NCIS' Leroy Jethro Gibbs ... who believe the world would be a much better place if every one of its 7 billion inhabitants had the opportunity to start their day at the LOL CATS Icanhascheezburger.com website ...

Those people. All 3 of them.

OR ...

People with a sense of humor, who love animals, books (reading them, maybe writing them, lining them up on their bookshelves JUST SO, or adding to that growing collection in their Kindle or Nook), and various cool TV series. And who are kind enough to put up with an occasional rant by a coffee-and-pizza-addicted gargoyle fan who hopes some of them will read her novel someday.

Yeah, THOSE people.

_ALCATRAZ, the series, airs Monday nights at 9:00 on Fox-TV.

Ok, so I have a new favorite TV series. I don't like it. I LOVE it. And since that tends to doom any show, I figured I'd be proactive and try and plug it. The ratings are good. But great is better. The networks cancel so many unique & cool shows.

Like many TV series, to come into it late means confusion, and it's hard to enjoy it as much if you spend the hour wondering who is who, and why the heck are they saying/doing THAT??? So here's a very basic recap of the pilot episode. There are no spoilers here. Ok, except I revealed the location of the room from which the main characters -- the good guys -- do their sleuthing. But you knew they had to have an office somewhere, right?

ALCATRAZ

Also known as The Rock. Empty of prisoners since 1963. You wouldn't have wanted to be housed there before then. A stone fortress on a big rock in San Francisco Bay, it had brutal inmates, strict rules; in the later years, it was a decrepit facility. And so it was closed in 1963, the prisoners moved to other prisons elsewhere.

Or so they say.

In Alcatraz the series, the plot is that the prisoners were never moved. They disappeared. Or WERE DISAPPEARED by someone with an agenda, a use for these violent individuals. And those inmates are showing up in the here and now, having not aged a day, into a modern world where they don't officially exist. No fingerprints or DNA on file. No police records in precinct computers. And they're continuing their murderous behavior.

Sam Neil (Jurassic Park) plays Emerson Hauser, who was once a young guard at Alcatraz, and whose job now is to find each inmate & capture them, as well as to find out who made them disappear in the first place and for what purpose. Parminder Nagra plays Lucy Banerjee, Hauser's assistant. They work out of a secret facility on The Rock, below the cellblock level, dubbed "The Batcave" by Jorge Garcia's character.

Sarah Jones plays police detective Rebecca Madsen, who is drawn into this strange situation and joins up with Hauser. Jorge Garcia is Alcatraz expert Diego "Doc" Soto,who knows everything there is to know about The Rock and the criminals who inhabited it, and becomes Madsen's partner. When murders occur, it's Doc who can tell by the m.o. which Alcatraz inmate has now shown up, and what they might do next.

This is producer/screenwriter JJ Abrams' (Lost, Fringe, Alias, Star Trek 2009 movie, etc.) series, and it's a high-quality production -- the writing, acting, and directing are exceptional. And how often can we say that about network TV these days? So if you want some excitement, a show where you can spend the season getting more and more wrapped up in the characters (if you're a LOST fan,  you'll love the occasional one-liner by Jorge Garcia,  reminiscent of his character Hurley, back on that other island), give it a shot. JJ Abrams promises that it won't be as complicated as LOST, and that each episode will be a separate story.

I love a thriller, I love uniqueness, I love a cool locale, and I especially love it when there's some humor thrown in with the drama (X-Files, anyone?). And a show with big, teddybearish Jorge Garcia? It was inevitable that I would watch the pilot episode, hoping it would be good. But it's not.

It's AWESOME.

_

Why do I write serial killer novels, bleak sci-fi,  and horror short stories?

Perhaps it was inevitable.

Some people see the glass as half full.

Some people see the glass as half empty.

I'm quite sure the glass is entirely empty, it's cracked, and there's Ebola virus around the rim.

Was I destined to write stories about cuddly little bunnies who have a happy day? Probably not ;-}

_1) Climb Mount Kilimanjaro. Or take elevator ride to top of really tall building.

2) Go to premiere of movie version of my latest novel. Complain about casting of old, fat, balding George Clooney as protagonist (Hey, this is  2035. Shit happens.)

3) Get cameo role in Star Trek 37. Listen to 104-year-old William Shatner bitch about not being in it.

4) Write novel where character completes her/his bucket list. Then dies. Then comes back as a ZOMBIE.

5) Get caught stealing expensive necklace. Spend  a few weeks in my mansion wearing ankle bracelet. Trade tweets with Lindsay Lohan about her new ankle bracelet.

6) Become huge fan of really cool TV series that premieres in September & DOESN'T get canceled by end of first season.

7) Buy very first genetically-engineered cat that talks. Listen to it bitch about not having opposable thumbs.

8) Read new Stephen King novel where bad things happen to good people in Maine and monsters are icky.

9) Vote for level-headed, non-partisan, intelligent candidate for President. Wake up from dream. Go to polls and vote for least objectionable a$$hole.

10) Write new blog post. Have paramedics treat me for shock when someone actually leaves a comment on it.

_Those of us who write crime thrillers, horror, or science fiction have a slightly different way of looking at Christmas and other holidays or situations that could provide material for a future gut-wrenching novel. But look at it this way: Someday you, dear reader, may turn up as a character in one of our books. Or at least as a dead body. Merry Christmas!  ;-}

THE TWELVE DAYS OF THRILLER WRITING

On the first day of writing, my novel gave to me...
A blood-splattered murder scene.

On the second day of writing, my novel gave to me...
Two creepy suspects
And a blood-splattered murder scene.

On the third day of writing, my novel gave to me...
Three long car chases
Two creepy suspects
And a blood-splattered murder scene.

On the fourth day of writing, my novel gave to me...
Four burnt-out detectives
Three long car chases
Two creepy suspects
And a blood-splattered murder scene.

On the fifth day of writing, my novel gave to me...
Five more rotting corpses!
Four burnt-out detectives
Three long car chases
Two creepy suspects
And a blood-splattered murder scene.

On the sixth day of writing, my novel gave to me...
Six hairs with follicles
Five more rotting corpses!
Four burnt-out detectives
Three long car chases
Two creepy suspects
And a blood-splattered murder scene.

On the seventh day of writing, my novel gave to me...
Seven hits on CODIS
Six hairs with follicles
Five more rotting corpses!
Four burnt-out detectives
Three long car chases
Two creepy suspects
And a blood-splattered murder scene.

On the eighth day of writing, my novel gave to me...
Eight gruesome weapons
Seven hits on CODIS
Six hairs with follicles
Five more rotting corpses!
Four burnt-out detectives
Three long car chases
Two creepy suspects
And a blood-splattered murder scene.

On the ninth day of writing, my novel gave to me...
Nine pushy reporters
Eight gruesome weapons
Seven hits on CODIS
Six hairs with follicles
Five more rotting corpses!
Four burnt-out detectives
Three long car chases
Two creepy suspects
And a blood-splattered murder scene.


On the tenth day of writing, my novel gave to me...
Ten bogus alibis
Nine pushy reporters
Eight gruesome weapons
Seven hits on CODIS
Six hairs with follicles
Five more rotting corpses!
Four burnt-out detectives
Three long car chases
Two creepy suspects
And a blood-splattered murder scene.

On the eleventh day of writing, my novel gave to me...
Eleven possible motives
Ten bogus alibis
Nine pushy reporters
Eight gruesome weapons
Seven hits on CODIS
Six hairs with follicles
Five more rotting corpses!
Four burnt-out detectives
Three long car chases
Two creepy suspects
And a blood-splattered murder scene.

On the twelfth day of writing, my novel gave to me...
Twelve new books in the series
Eleven possible motives
Ten bogus alibis
Nine pushy reporters
Eight gruesome weapons
Seven hits on CODIS
Six hairs with follicles
Five more rotting corpses!
Four burnt-out detectives
Three long car chases
Two creepy suspects
And a blood-splattered murder scene.