The last twelve months have been huge. Amazing, difficult, hectic. And productive. Extremely productive.

Here’s a rundown.

Family

Liam Michael Walsh-Smith was born, much as planned. He’s a beautiful, happy, bouncing baby boy who has a deep love of life… and an even deeper love of mischief. The gorgeous and brilliant Annie is now past her third birthday, and has started preschool. She loves telling stories and asking questions (I hope she never loses either habit). Katie is busy at home with the two of them, and is about to start studying part-time next semester. I’m still working full-time.

We have big dreams, little money. We’ve toyed with moving to the country, renovating our current house, selling our current house and buying elsewhere in Canberra, many times in the last twelve months. At this stage, though, nothing has happened. And each time things calm down, we realise that we’re happy where we are.

Writing

Marketing

I hit up Oz Comic Con again this year. See here for my wall of text write-up. Marketing The Lesser Evil is a job that never ends, and one that I can never devote enough time to. Thankfully, in the last year, several people have been kind enough to take some of the burden upon themselves by writing reviews. This one is my favourite, and I approached the author of the review to proof my then-WIP Peaceful Tomorrows.

Peaceful Tomorrows

At this time last year, I’d completed about 300 pages of what was then known as Death’s Feast, the sequel to The Lesser Evil. That book – all 568 pages of it – is now called Peaceful Tomorrows, and is complete and awaiting publication. To have bowled over the remaining 270 pages in about 5 months is something I’ll always be quite proud of, especially given that those months included such all-consuming events as the birth of my son, and given that neither my work nor my family suffered without me for any of that time.

Triumviratus

I mentioned a year ago that I was planning a full-length follow-on from Parlour Tricks. The name changed (thankfully), and I wrote Triumviratus entirely longhand on the commute to and from work each day. I’ve never written a full novel longhand before – it was a profoundly exhiliarating experience, and I found it a very rewarding use of what is usually sort-of-dead-time. Whenever I read back over it, I am thrilled by it, and can’t wait to get to polishing. Even though it is a full-length novel (about 100,000 words at this stage, by my guess), I still can’t help but think it would make a really interesting comic series. Something to think about for sure.

I think if it happens, I’d really like to collaborate on it. Have someone else handle the artwork. I’ve really enjoyed previous collaborations (however brief) that I’ve been involved in, and would love to see someone else’s spin on my words. I am, at this stage, relucant to produce it in my preferred style; I’m not convinced that’s the best option.

James Flamestar

In the second half of 2012, I was approached by Tim Irving, whom I know socially. He had just successfully crowdfunded an album and was looking for a short comic to accompany the CD in the booklet. It took all of about ten minutes for that project to balloon out of control, and before I knew it, I’d spent three months producing a three-issue miniseries for him entitled James Flamestar and the Stargazers. Stay tuned for news of this miniseries – it is currently undergoing the approval process at Comixology, and will hopefully be available to purchase shortly!

Killeroo: Gangwar

I was commissioned to produce a short script for the opening story in Killeroo: Gangwar, the upcoming anthology edited by Darren Close. Can’t wait to see how this one turned out. It was a brief project, but a fun one to be involved with!

The Game

My current creative focus is an interquel (oh man, how I hate that word) that takes place between The Lesser Evil and Peaceful Tomorrows. The Game is a complete from-scratch redrafting of the first full-length graphic novel I ever put together, and I am very happy with how it is coming together this time around. I am producing a minimum of one page per day, and hope to have the project completed by year’s end.

The Tube

This one hurts. I abandoned this half-complete story more than a year ago. I’d love to get back to it, but there’s just no time at the moment. It’s always on my mind, though.

Conclusion

Whenever someone asks me how much writing I get done, my answer is an automatic, near-rote “Not enough.” But when I look back over the past year and realise that I’ve scripted and produced over 400 pages of comic art (in three separate universes), and drafted an entire novel, I realise I might need to rethink that answer. To have put together that much writing, all while working full-time and juggling the needs of a growing family… I think it might be enough. For now.

I don’t know what the coming year holds, but on my Twitter feed, I’ve dubbed 2013 the #YearOfWriting. Stay tuned to see how it turns out!

So why do I feel such a compulsion to keep writing, to keep getting published, to press forward? And why is that feeling so much stronger now than ever before, after I’ve been published?

I’ve attempted to collect my thoughts below, scattered and fragmented though they might be. The thoughts from which the following is derived felt true to me; the unreasonably flowery words that follow, not as much. It’s been almost four years since I last tried to piece together my reasons. (Check out earlier efforts here and here.)

Ask any writer why they write; very few will say they got into it for a quick buck. Without having asked them, I think it’s fair to say that Stephen King and JK Rowling, both still writing, have already made their fortunes, have been thoroughly validated as creative artists… and yet they continue to create.

I have a theory: that although writers accept the validation, the fame, the money, they are but consolation prizes. Sidequests, in a sense. That writers are reaching into a realm that defies understanding, and that their life’s work is to decode that realm, to bring some sort of order to it. To understand it.

I suspect in some ways that creativity itself is a parsing exercise, an understandable filter of symbols and conventions that allow a writer to channel this volatile, impossible, unknowable abyss.

If what I’ve read in the past is served correctly by memory, Freud held up writers and psychotherapists as two vocations with unparalleled insight into the human condition. Freudians tend to believe that writers and psychotherapists arrive at the same ends, despite taking very different routes to get there. That writers are able to naturally intuit what would normally take extensive medical study to understand. (Of course, the profundity of a writer’s work varies between works and might not, in fact, even in the best of cases, be entirely a deliberate construct. But that’s another story.)

There is some sort of Great Hunt going on. Crudely put, it’s a search for understanding, for meaning, but it is more than that. Infinitely more. In some ways it feels that the entirety of the human condition is but a miniscule facet of it, and yet lies at its very core and permeates everything. The search is entirely internal, and yet explores a universe of possibilities that could not possibly be contained within an individual soul. The concept itself is so impossible to grasp, so desperately intangible, that it cannot even be tied down by words; in fact, the effort alone could well shatter its fragile state. This nameless, formless, impossible goal is, I think, at the heart of any creative work that the artist claims is its own reward. The process, the chase, the Hunt…

There’s something bigger than us, and although it’s not the source of our inspiration, it is the cause of it.

I don’t know it, but I’m sure of it. I can feel it somehow. Inside me, or out there, I’m not sure. But it’s real.

I can’t explain in any rational terms why I should feel compelled to write more than ever. My life goals are starting to topple like skittles; I’m on the path. I could walk it leisurely, but each step impels me to run, to push that little bit harder. Maybe I’m closer to something; maybe I feel like I am. Maybe, as part of the collective of writers, continually putting words and pictures out into the public domain, we are getting closer.

I hope whatever answer we find isn’t lost in the chaff.

Friday: From Canberra to Adelaide

It’s the day before Oz Comic-Con, and I’m worried. I’m worried that the boxes of books I couriered to Adelaide wouldn’t arrive. I’m worried that my bags will be too heavy to be allowed on the plane without paying some exorbitant excess baggage fee. I’m worried that the weekend itself will be an unmitigated disaster. I’m worried that my family will have a nightmare weekend without me there to control the damage. I’m worried that I’m wasting all our limited money on this selfish venture for no good reason. I’m regretting shaving my head – yes, it’s for cancer research and all that, a great cause; and yes, it’s giving me some bizarre kind of confidence I don’t normally feel, like I have a backlog of good karma to draw upon – but I feel a bit self-conscious, like I look a little silly… right when I need to be at my professional best.

All that, and more. So pretty much the usual.

But everything seems to go smoothly. I’m at the airport in plenty of time, and my bag only ends up weighing about 10kg. I get on the plane, and even the food they serve is decent (a zucchini quiche/slice thing with bacon in it). Things are going well.

I’m seated right next to the propeller of this tiny plane, though. Seriously, if I look out the window, it’s all I can see. Can’t quite shake the feeling that if one of those blades snaps off, I’m getting it right across the lap. The unconcerned, bored expression of the bloke I saw doing a wander around the outside of the plane before take-off stays in my mind.

Because I am to be seated next to Sean Williams at the con tomorrow, I have brought along a copy of Metal Fatigue, and I start reading it on the plane. Very cool book; the plot twists are foreshadowed/telegraphed enough that they don’t really surprise me, but his writing style is very engaging and I enjoy the reading.

At Adelaide airport, I know exactly what to do. I head over to the Skylink desk and purchase tickets for the shuttle into the city. The lady directs me out to the same place I waited for the shuttle last year and, feeling all sorts of confident, I head there to wait the thirty-two minutes until the next shuttle is due to arrive.

Fifty-five minutes pass, and no shuttle. I call the number on my ticket, and the nice lady on the line politely informs me that I’ve been waiting in the wrong spot. No refunds, no considerations for the wrong information I was told at the desk, I’ll just have to wait another three-quarters of an hour for the next shuttle.

Confidence shaken, I wait, watching the minutes of the afternoon ticking past unproductively. Aware that it’ll be three o clock before I even check into my hotel, and that from there, I need to drop my bags, organise my stock, and get the whole lot over to the Showgrounds (via bus) to set up my stall, and make it back to my hotel in time to shower, purchase some groceries for the weekend, and be at Dumpling King by 7 to meet some internet friends… the whole afternoon had just morphed from a leisurely one to a high-stress rush.

This was more like it.

At least it gives me a chance to finish Metal Fatigue. As I turn the last page, the shuttle pulls up.

Friday: Adelaide by day

Adelaide has changed a bit. That’s the first thing I notice as I rock up to my hotel. The Queen Victoria Square, which I wandered around last year, and which was the cause of all my Adelaide admiration, is now all fenced off and inaccessible. The internet cafe that was next to my hotel last year appears to have fallen victim to the proliferation of tablets and smartphones with internet access in perpetuity, and has been replaced by a dank room full of poker machines, with blinds permanently drawn to prevent occupants from knowing what time of day it is.

(Perhaps it’s a reminder that I can’t expect this to be the same trip of wide-eyed wonder that I had last year. Whatever the message, I don’t quite pick up on it yet.)

But the Hotel Metropolitan is the same as ever. The staff are friendly and accommodating and give me the very pleasant feeling of having a home away from home, like the place can be a stable base for me to operate out of. Not all hotels have this feeling, not even those with considerably more stars. The room I’m in isn’t as nice as last time (last year, I had a balcony room with plenty of space, a double bed, a TV and a fridge… and this time, I’m in a room smaller than a bedroom at home, with just a single bed and chair), but the only thing I’m really going to miss is the fridge, which means that I’m going to have to plan my grocery purchases more carefully.

I head to the shoe repair place down the road to buy a Metro ticket, but have no idea what I’m doing and flounder at pretty much every question the girl at the counter asks me. In the end, I even manage to flub the “where are you from?” question, but somehow end up with a Metro ticket and receipts I can claim on tax later this year.

My boxes of books have indeed arrived at the hotel (thank you Toll couriers), and I quickly chuck my clothes out of my suitcase and load up with books, posters and brochures. I can’t take it all in one trip, but I get most of it into my suitcase and carry-on bag, and begin the burdened lurch to the nearby bus stop to head into the Showground.

When I reach my table, there’s no one around yet, so I start setting up. My spot isn’t quite as ideal as last year, when I had a table facing out into a T-intersection, but I’ll deal with it. It’s now about 3:45, and I begin to set my stuff up as quickly as possible, attaching promotional material to the velcro backing, and planning prices and multiple-purchase deals.

I’m in between Sean Williams’ table, and Emerson Ward’s table. Sean Williams is the New York Times best-selling author of many sci-fi and fantasy novels, and he’s won the Aurealis Award (and several others) multiple times. Needless to say, I’m equal parts excited and nervous about meeting him and spending the weekend adjacent to him. Emerson Ward is an artist with no small amount of talent, who has recently successfully crowd-funded an incredible looking art book with a dragon theme. I met him at the last con, but this time I’ll have more of a chance to get to know him. He rocks up not long after me, and we talk a little.

Watching the clock, I think I can probably make all my deadlines. Then, almost as soon as I think this, along comes some news: Sean Williams will no longer be coming to Oz Comic-Con: one of his kids has come down with chicken pox, and Sean has never had it before. Rather than risk being a contagious liability for the convention, he has opted to stay home for the weekend.

By this stage, having read Metal Fatigue from start to finish earlier that day, I am actually kind of geared up to meet him, so it comes as disappointing news.

Then Emerson and I are asked to shift over, to fill up the empty table. So I move all my stuff over really quickly (with Emerson’s generous help), and split out of there. Get back to my hotel at five past six, have a lightning quick lap of Coles to grab some supplies for the weekend, take an even quicker shower, and make it to the Dumpling King by 6:57.

Saturday: Oz Comic-Con: Day The First

Early start. Heavy bag. Late bus.

I think all the buses in Adelaide are programmed to come just late enough that people have gotten past the annoyed-that-the-bus-is-late stage and into the panicked-that-the-bus-will-never-come stage, so that the response of the passenger is one of relief rather than anger. They must have done a lot of R&D to hit that sweet spot so consistently.

I dump the rest of my stock, sort out my float, and realise that I’m an hour early with nothing to do except panic. So I do that for a while, but it’s not really that much fun, so I stop and go all zen for a bit. That works quite well, but it makes time go by kind of slowly.

The venue is HUGE, twice as big as last year, no question. Big enough that my little Artist Alley booth feels a little lost on the side wall.

The day begins and people begin charging in. There are events and celebs to see, so not many people want to stop for the first hour or two. But I employ the tactics I used last time: if someone looks at my table or makes eye contact, I smile and ask them how their day is going, and if they respond, I offer them the book to take a look at. Tried and true tactic. Most people who stop to answer come over to the table of their own volition this time, without me even having to offer a book. I must be getting better at this.

Man, there are so many cosplayers here. Some of them are really impressive! Very rare to see a female cosplayer who isn’t dressed pretty exploitatively though. I guess they’re happy doing it, but honestly, I can’t help but feel that it kind of speaks volumes about the gender one-sidedness of the mainstream comics industry.

I am also approached by a proud father and a young teenage girl with a portfolio, and they ask me to take a look at it. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that I’m a digital artist who couldn’t draw a person to reasonable proportion if my life depended on it, so I looked through the portfolio (which looked really quite impressive to me), and say that it’s great. I really genuinely hope she got more valuable feedback from other folks.

The day goes on and a few familiar faces, exhibitors from last year, pop around to say hi. A few customers from last year also pop around to complete their collection of The Lesser Evil – one really nice guy even bounds up to my table and says “I’ve been waiting nine months for Book Three!” I gave him a special deal because enthusiasm.

People also seem keen to hear about the sequel coming next month, and I was keen to tell them. Hopefully, there’s a little hype out there that will stick around.

I’m by myself at the table, so regulate food and fluid intake strictly. One mouthful of water every fifteen minutes, or after a long conversation. Never enough to overload my kidneys or bladder – they have a long wait ahead of them. The only food I eat all day, despite having bought and packed way more, is a pear and a chocolate muffin.

A lot of folks early on pay for books using $50 notes, which begins to eat into my limited float pretty heavily. I’m usually able to use guilt to upsell the entire trilogy of books to them, though, so it isn’t all bad.

Friends of a friend, and fellow Artist Alleyers pop around to say hello: Matthew Hoddy and Caitlin Major, the talented lunatics behind the comic Space Pyrates, who have also recently had a successful Pozible campaign to bring their work into print. They are very nice people, and through them, I learn of plans for some of the comics folks to meet up at a bar down the road at day’s end. Last year, I headed back to my hotel after each day. But this year, I had no TV in my room, so I say okay.

By day’s end, I’ve sold exactly fifty books. Not a bad day by any means, but I still have 97 books left to sell. Breaking even on this endeavour is going to be a tough ask. But it is possible. Everyone else is reporting slightly disappointing sales, so I figure that I’ve done as well as I could have. A lot of con-goers are saying that Sunday is the day they plan to shop, so I anticipate more customers tomorrow.

Wander down to the Goody (pub down the road) and meet a bunch of awesome folks. Paul Briske, creator of Buzz Mandible, is a total dopppleganger of a guy I went to high school with – even the voice – but is much better company (it is kind of a Truman-Show-esque moment meeting him for the first time, I gotta say). Pete Yong is a very talented artist with more experience in 3D than I’ve got, and I am able to discuss my comic techniques in more depth than usual with him. Amy Maynard is a PhD candidate at University of Adelaide, studying the sustainability of the Australian comics industry; I’m keen to participate in whatever interviews she wants to conduct, and am eager to read what she comes up with in the end. She seems very interested to learn that I’ve had academic comics published in the past. The Space Pyrates folks also were there, along with a bunch of other folks who I didn’t get a chance to talk with.

I call it a night after about two hours, and wait in the freezing cold for about twenty minutes for a bus that never comes. In the end, a different bus arrives (reaction: relief – well done, Adelaide), and I make it back to my hotel.

Sunday: Oz Comic-Con: Day The Second

First time on an Adelaide tram. It runs on time and gets me to the Showground by 8. I am running out of credit on my Metro card. Contrary to what I was told would happen, it’s charging me $3.26 per trip, and I have to recharge the card at the automatic booth at the tram station.

Totally random encounter with an old high-school acquaintance who is now living in Wollongong and is volunteering for this convention. Didn’t get much of a chance to catch up, but got intro’d to her very friendly husband. After the con that night, I’ll go looking for them to give them a leftover copy of my books, but it’s like looking for two needles in a labyrinthine haystack, and I am unsuccessful.

Day Two is a very slow day. I have zero sales until after 11am (two hours into the day. Starting to realise that I’m not even going to come close to breaking even.

A few people who bought Book One yesterday come back and buy the remainder of the trilogy. Those people are awesome people, the very best. Actually, I stand corrected: the folks who were the first people ever to buy Book Three (having pre-ordered it at the last Oz Comic-Con) stop by to say hi – they are the best people.

People are responding to my cheery nature though. I smile at everyone who looks in my direction and ask them how their weekend’s going. A lot of people stop just to have a chat, and I’m behaving not at all like myself: I talk to them, engage with them, even if they’ve got no interest in my books.

I realise about halfway through the day that even though my sales aren’t great and I’m staring inevitable financial deficit square in the face, that even though my shoulders and feet are killing me, that I’m kind of malnourished and really tired, that I’m actually happy. Happier than I was last year, when my book was selling better. Just talking to people, making a genuine connection instead of just using my friendliness as a tool to sell books.

A couple of times, bored people (usually disinterested girlfriends or wives) approach me because my table is devoid of visitors and we’d have a chat for a while. We’d talk about what it meant to follow dreams, to have jobs that you didn’t really feel connected to, all sorts of ‘big’ life stuff. I feel really happy for most of the afternoon, and realise that I have redefined what it means to succeed at an event like this.

It’s not the kind of success I can afford to cultivate at every event I attend, but it feels really good this time. At day’s end, I’ve only sold about 40 more books, but that’s okay.

People are telling me how much it costs to get a photo with William Shatner. $80 for a photo, $50 for an autograph. Same for Richard Dean Anderson. Not saying they aren’t worth it (though I personally would hesitate to pay that much), but that’s a lot of money to drop and sadly acts as a deterrent for a lot of fans. When I hear this, I start giving away free prints and joking with people that I’ll take any excuse to sign my name, because I love doing it! I believe that everyone who comes should be able to take something home with them, not just those with wads of cash to blow. It feels like the right move, and a lot of people are grateful, even if they have no actual interest in my books.

At the end of the day, I pack up my stall, and decide to make a gift of books to the folks I’ve gotten to know this weekend: Emerson, Paul, Matt, Caitlin, Pete. Although I wasn’t angling for it, they are happy to offload some of their excess stock on me in trade, which is awesome of them, gotta say.

We head out to the Goody again, with a couple of new folks I haven’t yet met, but quickly change plans and head to Chinatown for dinner. We get a range of dishes, including a mega-chili Sezchuan dish that the waitress teases us about (“I don’t think you’ll be able to handle this. We don’t give refunds, even if you need an ambulance!”) and have a blast of an evening. We talk bad movies, weird job experiences, and have a simultaneous three-two-one-EAT suicide-pact-esque taste of the hyper-spicy Sezchuan dish (which is awesome, but had too many small bones to be actually edible, sadly). Most of the evening, I just sit back and listen, contribuing little but laughter, having a great time.

(Incidentally, I learn that a cash fare on the tram is costing the others $2.90, and wonder why I’m paying $3.26 with my Metro card [which I also had to fork out $5 just to get])

The night ends at 11pm. At this stage, everyone is planning to be at Oz Comic-Con in Melbourne, which will be awesome. I look forward to it.

I get back to my hotel room and start to read some of the comics I’ve traded for. And then – only then – do I begin to appreciate the true level of insanity of these people. I feel a bit like a straight-laced nerd, but have a vague relief that they seemed happy for me to be tagging along anyway.

Had a lot of fun, met a lot of awesome people, and – if I haven’t grossly misread the entire situation – have made a bunch of new friends.

Bring on Melbourne Oz Comic-Con already!

Monday

My flight home leaves after about 90 minutes of delays. Snack is another winning zucchini slice with bacon. Awesome. On the plane, I have what you might call a ‘Twilight Zone’ moment. The guy sitting in the seat I was in on the way over to Adelaide is wearing headphones and has a shaved head. From behind, he looks pretty much exactly like how I think the back of my own head would look. And then the pilot starts talking about what the weather will be like in Adelaide when we land, and I’m convinced that I’ve been caught in some sort of bizarre time loop, and I’m about to repeat the entire weekend.

I make it home.

But there’s a lot to like about it too. Being an indie creator at the start of your career is a baptism of fire, an unbelievable pressure cooker of tribulation and inspiration in which time behaves extremely unpredictably, the notion of rest is a theoretical concept at best, and all your nerves are blazing rapturously at the entire process. It’s sink or swim time, and by all the gods you ever believed in, are you going to swim.

This post is going to chronicle my early experiences as a creative professional. My hope is that it will guide the expectations of prospective hopefuls, resonate with those who have gone through this stage of their careers (or who are going through it now), and strike a chord with me in many years to come when I look back at the ‘early years.’

The Creative Process

The book you write tomorrow is not the book you could have written today.

When you have a job that takes you away from your creative work, you feel this keenly. You try to make every moment count. You give up sleep to work on your masterpiece. You work through sickness, through typhoons and disasters, you fight through depression and disappointment, through adversity and compromise, and when you finish your work, you appreciate it all the more for all that you’ve had to endure. Your angst fuels the passion that filters into the finished product, and when you look back over it, it all comes rushing back.

But by then, you’re already hip deep in another project and barely even notice.

The downside: The odds are against you even finishing a project are steep. Getting it to a publishable standard, even steeper. Countless obstacles of life lie in your path. Creative work now means sacrificing other aspects of your life, including family and leisure time.

The upside: It’s no secret that creativity thrives on adversity. These could be your most prolific times, and your best work could be the one you’re working on now. Never in your career will improving your skills be such a high priority for you. While your creative identity is your own, you have the freedom to experiment with your voice, freedom that you might never have again. Long story short: if your commitment is unquestionable, there’s no problem here.

Marketing and Engagement

You’ve been published by a small label. Or you did it yourself. Either way, you probably won’t be seeing your name on bus benches or billboards any time soon. You’ll be doing grass roots marketing, with a heavy reliance on social media and the incestuous tendency of other independent creative artists to support each other.

Every now and again, you’ll get an opportunity. Maybe an interview or an article, a table at a convention or conference, some chance to get your name out there a little. You’d better not fuck it up, that’s for sure, because you might never get another chance. Sometimes it feels like you can’t afford to upset even a single person, professionally or personally, because you need all the potential customers you can get.

And if you’re lucky – really lucky – you’ll have a strong network of friends and family who will carry some of that marketing burden for you, who will spread your work widely and enthusiastically.

You don’t have a big budget to sucker in the gullible, so you’re going to be relying on the genuine excitement of word-of-mouth. God help you.

But there’s something genuinely special about this whole thing. The challenge is intoxicating (though the returns often negligible and always intangible), and there is nothing quite like your first fan reaction from someone you don’t know.

The downside: No matter what you do, your audience will probably always be small.

The upshot: Being in charge of your marketing is a new creative challenge you should relish, and is a once-in-a-lifetime learning experience. Engaging directly with your audience (for example, at conventions or via email) is a thrill and feels like a privilege. A small audience is no less passionate for being small.

Making Money

While I still value artistic integrity over ‘selling out,’ anyone who knows me knows that I want to make money from my writing. Serious money, if I can. Enough to quit my job at least, and preferably a bit more besides.

Financial independence is not something that comes easily to the indie artist, if at all. Indeed, commercial success is hard enough for most folks who have broken into the mainstream, let alone those stuck on the periphery of notice.

The downside: Have to work extra jobs to support life, limiting creative time. For all the time you put in, you’re not making much money at all. Resources to create more work are extremely limited.

The upshot: Still have that determined single-minded drive, and the work still feels romantic and unsullied by the taint of money and commercial success.

Conclusion

The life of an indie creator is not a sustainable one. The thrill and exhaustion, surviving on adrenaline instead of food, tight deadlines and countless adversities, financial hardship and frustrating obscurity… none of it can last forever. At some point, the indie creator will be pulled into the life of the full-time professional creator, or they will jump off the edge into the oblivion of part-time hobbyist.

Not knowing which way you will go is terrifying. Both options seem equally impossible. But the terror is inspiring, and the true indie artist will harness the power of uncertainty to fuel their work and – if all goes well – propel them to greater and greater things.

And if you never miss an opportunity (by the way, you should check out my published work), there is no limit to the personal and professional rewards that could be awaiting you. Certainly, you’ll never be prouder of your achievements than right now.

I am an indie artist. And, for now, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Most writers expect to be proud when they finish work on a piece. But for me, pride is only a small part of it. What I feel most is empty, directionless, and off-balance, like one of the pillars that was holding me up has started to crumble.

I become irritable and bored easily, and feel a little lost in everyday life. My family know to avoid me until I pick up a new project.

I guess I don’t like having ‘spare’ time. Time should be productive or GTFO.

1) Getting out of the house
Chances are if you’ve been hammer and tong at your latest magnum opus, you haven’t ventured outside too often to see what season it is. Maybe you could take the chance to find out. I went outside today… I didn’t really care for it because it was cold.

2) Spending time with the family
Unless you do all your writing while the world is sleeping or on the commute to/from work, you might be choosing to write in favour of spending time with the old family. Not having a writing project dominating your conscious mind might give you a chance to reconnect with the people who make everything else worthwhile.

3) Playing video games
If all else fails, video games are the ultimate time sink. In fact, they can completely take over your writing time. But while you’re not writing, having a decent time sink can be a godsend. For my part, I am rediscovering the joys and trials of Dark Souls. I will finish that game one of these days!

4) Catch up on sleep
I write at night, having volunteered to give up sleep in order to keep my writing going. Although I know this routine will be hard to get back into, I have relaxed it a bit to catch up on sleep again, and God does it feel good!

5) Productive self-distraction
There are plenty of things you can do to distract yourself without actually wasting your time. For instance, I am going to spend a little while concentrating on re-promoting some of my previously published work and getting back on top of my various social media networks, which I have been neglecting the last couple of months.

But, assuming for the moment that you don’t want to participate in my marketing campaign, there are things you can do, like writing blogs, volunteering for charity, chores around the house…

Ah, hell with it, I’ll just go straight to number

6) Start another writing project
I am in the (fortunate?) position of having multiple writing projects on the go at all times. When I finish one, the rest all begin to clamour for my attention. It usually takes me a few days before I feel motivated to listen to them, but it won’t be long before I once again take up my pen in the endless and unwinnable fight against creative atrophy.

If you don’t have another story idea ready to go, think about some of the ideas you’ve ignored along the way. Or maybe take a look at some of the stuff you’ve cut out of early drafts of the work you just finished. There might be a germ of an idea or a theme you want to explore.

Today’s post is an interview with author Jason Derr, who wrote a magic realism novel entitled The Boston 395. Jason will also tell us about the niche in the fantasy genre that he has carved out for himself. Take it away, Jason!

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The Boston 395 is a book of magical realism.

I think. I don’t really have any other words to describe it. James Scottesdale, unemployed and living on his mothers couch, wakes up to find a train in her mothers living room. This is a train that breaks the rules of space and time and where each exit of the train leads him back to his life and the choices he has made.

There.

That’s the book. Magical realism, cause its not a fantasy – no Orcs, no witches, no warlocks.

No, lets scratch that.

It IS a fantasy. Too long the fantastical novel has been dominated by the breakthroughs of Lewis and Tolkein – writing the European/Norse fairy tale large. Moving it from a campfire literature to one of high literature, building on the work of George MacDonald.

But I have no desire to write more Norse mythology in story form. No kings, kingdoms, wizards and orcs for me. I live in North America in the year 2012. I live in a world of trains and computers and that will be the basis for anything fantastical I write.

So I will, here and now, declare The Boston 395 a novel of the fantastic. But if it is then it is a NORTH AMERICAN fantastic. And I have plans for this genre – a fantasy book based on a post-civil war south, waring plantations and manor houses instead of kingdoms.

But for the time being I am telling a small story. A story about a broken heart and a train that bends the rules of space and time and takes our hero on a journey deep into himself.

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1. Tell us about the book you’re promoting. If possible, please lead in with a ten word sentence that perfectly encapsulates the plot or theme of the book.

James Scottesdale has awoken to find a train in his mothers living room. That is the broad premise of The Boston 395. Though it is much more about that. Its about healing and brokenness and the dreams we have while we have other dreams. Its about love that works and about love that doesn’t work.

James, a college graduate despite his learning disability, has been caught up in the economic crisis. He is living on his mothers couch after all his prospects dry up. And, then, one day, he awakes to find a train – The Boston 395 – in his mothers living room. It is a train whose every stop exits into his own life, his choices and the impossible future he grieves for.

2. What inspired your choice to write a book? How long have you been writing, and what does it mean to you?

I’ve been writing since high school. There was a day when I put pen to paper and when I lifted that pen I said ‘oh my, i’m good at this’. It was years before I realized I was not good, but by then I had been swept up in the joy of Making Things Up and had started to get good at it. And this inspired all sorts of choices: going to get my BA in Creative Writing for instance.

What does writing mean to me? It means being able to play with language and story and narrative and dance around in all of its possibilities. It means tapping into my deepest joy – when I write, I feel my most at peace – and allowing myself to get swept up into the possibles of a story.

As for this book and the inspiration to write it – well, once upon a time, I worked at a Circuit City. And one day we got a delivery truck and in the back of the truck was a piece of plywood that had been stenciled with the words ‘Boston 395′. That image stayed with me for years, and in that time it took on Vonnegut and Kerouack-ish proportions. One day I woke up and was going about my daily business and The Story Was Ready. It was knocking on my insides. And I sat down and wrote the whole thing in 3 days. I’ve spent years since then editing and perfecting, but the bones of it came out in three days.

And usually I’m not a fan of waiting on the muse. Writers – artists in general – need to learn to tap into the muse, to wrestle it. One needs proper boundries with the muse or the whole thing gets sticky and you find yourself 3 bottles of Whisky into a dry spell. But in this case I am glad I waited.

3. Do you have any long-term goals for your writing? Any future projects on the horizon?

My long term goals is to eventually write full time, to make a living lining up the alphabet in amusing and delightful ways. Failing that I want to write and publish and put out a body of work so that, years after my death, someone finds me on their ebook reader and falls in love. One thing leads to another and I have a cult following. No, an Occult following. Complete with rituals. Hey, we all have dreams.

As for Future Projects: My short story ‘Her Red Wings’ is out. My wife is editing a YA novel for me at the moment. I’ve finished a novella and am 30 pages into another novella. I have a project I hope to finish by Christmas, a post-apocolyptic tale of Christmas, with Santa as a revolutionary leader in a world where Facebook is a part of our DNA. I have a folder on my computer with ideas, scraps and fragments that will, one day, see light. Some of these projects will require allot of research, a task I am incredibly excited about.

4. What’s the best thing about having your very own book out there in the world? What’s the worst?

The best thing is that I know I wrote it and that its good and that its a little bit me and little bit no me. The worst thing is not knowing if anyone else will like it. Doing the indie thing you don’t have a proper editor – is it too dark? Did I properly sew up that plot hole? Is the end too rushed or two precious? But writing puts you out into a global workshop of sorts, each book improves from the feedback of the previous. And, hell, even Stephen King is talking about editing and re-releasing the Dark Tower series. Push comes to shove I learn, I grow and I ‘do a king’ and put out a new edition.

5. What’s the one question or piece of feedback you wish someone would say to you? How would you respond?

Everyone wants to hear applause as they go across the stage. We all want to know we are good at something, preferably something we love to do. This is what I love. I love story and language and narrative.

Mostly, i want to hear applause as I cross the stage. I want to hear that the book touched someone and moved them and brought them something they would not otherwise have in their lives.

6. Why do the ‘indie thing’?

Several reasons. First I grew up in the 90′s when indie rock and films were coming on the scene in a big way, in a way that was not truly indie but it took me a few years to realize that. So i’ve always wanted to be indie.

Secondly: New technology brings new possibilities. At this time its just too exciting to NOT do the indie ebook thing.

Third: At the time I was ready to get the book into the world I was too poor to afford stamps to mail the damn thing to publishers. So I took a chance. As an indie the books success or failure comes down to me and my sweat equity. A challenge I find daunting and both exciting.

7. Are You a Good Kisser?

That question is totally out of bounds! What, I added this one myself.
Hrm. Well, my wife seems to think so, so I will stand by her.

8. What else do we need to know?

My wife is a fiber artist of incredible talent. I recommend everyone go and check out her website at www.erinderr.weebly.com and marvel at her works. And then order something.

9. Really, about the kissing thing…?

Knock it off. Really. Ok, on a scale of 1 to 10, my kisses rate an R.
Uppercase R at that.

Today’s post is an interview with author Shannon Meyer, who wrote the urban fantasy Dark Waters. Welcome, Shannon!

Two sisters, one of them kidnapped + Two gorgeous men.

+ A legendary prophecy =

Monsters, magic, deception and sensuality.

Be prepared to dive into Dark Waters!

What the readers have said

“Right from the beginning this story explodes.”
Author of the Vicarage Bench Series, Mimi Barbour

” . . don’t expect to be lulled to sleep, this story doesn’t stop moving. As fast as it is happening for our protagonist, Quinn, is as fast as Mayer takes us along for the ride.”
Kriss Morton, Reader

“The premise is an interesting mix of original and classic . . . the familial bonds and an emerging love triangle are really what drive the story and give it more dimension. Highly recommend!”
Author of The Slave Girl Chronicles, JC Andrijeski

“Whoop, Whoop I loved it! Strong characters, Strong plot, great action. I think I may have found Ms. Mayer’s M.O. . . this book is a real page turner.”
Amber Spedding (Reader)

Buy Now @ Amazon

Genre – Urban Fantasy

Rating – PG

More details about the author

Connect with Shannon Mayer on Twitter & Facebook

Blog http://shannonmayer.blogspot.com/

Check out where this author will be talking about her latest release!

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What inspired you to want to become a writer? I think it runs in my blood, my mother fed that by encouraging me to read books way beyond my age which only pushed me further into the world of the imagination. So, I guess it’s my mom’s fault.

When you were little, what did you want to be when you “grew up”? A veterinarian for a long time. I was always told that there wasn’t a real job in being a writer, it was what you did for fun or a hobby. Then I grew up and realized that my stories were not only cool ideas, but that with some effort and learning, my writing wasn’t half bad either ;p

Tell us your most rewarding experience since being published. Anytime I get a 4 or 5 star review, I just feel the flush of knowing that what I’m doing/writing, is making people happy. That is an incredible feeling.

Any other books in the works? Goals for future projects? The sequel to “Dark Waters”, “Dark Isle” will be out in June if all continues to go well, then I have the third book in that trilogy set to be released in July. After that I have two standalone full length novels, (both urban fantasy) set to be released. In September is “Priceless” the story of a Tracker who hunts down children kidnapped by supernaturals, and in December “The Chronicles of Sin” follows Toni, a woman who carries Gluttony within her and how she sets out to free herself from her vice.

Please tell us, in one sentence only, why we should read your book. Does a run-on sentence count? Crap, was that it? Okay, okay, I’ve got it. “Dark Waters” should be read by you . . . because . . .you love fantasy blended with Irish mythology, blended with monsters and sexy men. Okay, does that work? ;p

What is your dream cast for your book? Oooh. That is a hard one! Let me see if I can do them justice.
Quinn Elisha Cuthbert
Ashling Blake Lively
Luke Gabriel Sotto
Bres Ian Somerhalder

Is there a song you could list as the theme song for your book or any of your characters? Not really, though I was listening to the Transformers Score while I wrote. Love the orchestra, the power of the music really inspired me.

Can you see yourself in any of your characters? A few, but I ain’t saying more than that, too incriminating!

What’s the craziest writing idea you’ve had? ROFL! Well, I did have this vague idea to blend vampires and pirates, but it faded once the laughter from my writing group subsided.

How do you react to a bad review? It’s just a part of the process. If there is constructive words, take them, try to apply them to my writing. That’s all you can do, everyone is entitled to their opinion, you just have to as an author, suck it up and take the good with the bad. If you can’t, you’re probably in the wrong business.

What’s the best advice anyone has ever given you? Dreams are meant to be chased. So chase them and know that you are following the path that God laid out for you.

What’s one piece of advice you would give aspiring authors? Just keep at it, the only way you will fail is if you give up. Don’t worry about hard critiques and one star ratings, all authors get them, in fact, I would warrant that until you get a one star rating, you are still a baby in this business :-)

If you could choose only one time period and place to live, when and where would you live and why? I like where I am right now. It’s a great and fascinating world that I for one can’t get enough of. Much as I truly love history and all it has to offer, I like it right where I am. Again, boring, I know, but it’s the truth.

THE TUBE

Concept by Michael Winters and Shane W Smith
Written by Shane W Smith

Using one of The Tube’s many surveillance cameras to monitor the emergency, it took Graham about five seconds to realise the depth of his plight. The emergency itself was a fake; a test to see if Shane’s intuitive grasp on the technology had survived the weeks he had spent in the Motivator.

Almost immediately after the alarms began to clamour, Graham felt his chest tighten with fear. The confusion on Shane’s face was obvious, and the man stood there, rooted to the spot, transfixed with fear. He watched with interest – but no recognition – as Mike called up the schematics on the main console and ordered a vent of one of the cooling towers.

The alarms stopped and Graham watched Shane heave a sigh of relief. There was no such relief in Graham’s lungs, though; in fact, despite having quit many years ago, he found he was itching for a cigarette, desperate to be doing something active, even if it wasn’t so productive.

He knew what he had done. By exhibiting a rare flash of initiative, by continuing the Motivator project long beyond its original scope, he had damaged the subject’s brain irreversibly. If his bosses found out the truth, Graham’s career was over… and maybe more than that, too.

His thoughts were staccato as he paced the room urgently. He bounced back and forward between different courses of action, half-baked plans, and desperate self-serving excuses, but nothing seemed adequate for this situation. If the meeting he’d been called to a few days ago was any indication, this would not stay secret for long, and the ramifications would be of the utmost severity.

Bordering on a full-blown panic, Graham sat back down in the chair, his brain rocketing around madly, scrambling blindly for a solution to the problem. His eyes drifted to the surveillance screen, and he watched as Mike put his arm around Shane’s shoulder and began to whisper to him. That woman from PR stood off to the side, looking a little miffed to be excluded from the conversation. Graham turned the audio up as high as it would go, but soon felt equally miffed: the machinery drowned out their conspiracy entirely.

But as he was watching, a germ of an idea appeared in his mind. He leaned back slowly, and carefully turned it over this way and that, mulling over the possibilities and potentials, the ways in which it could go wrong, and the consequences of success.

In the end, no better ideas had occurred to him, so he decided to go ahead with his plan.

It was clear to Graham that approaching Shane directly was a path fraught with peril. Not only was the man openly hostile to him, unstable and unpredictable, but he was also the subject of considerable scrutiny from a wide range of people. Direct contact could scupper this whole thing before it even started.

But Graham had an alternative. He had seen a lot in the last few minutes; and had learned plenty. The path to Shane led through this Mike fellow. Graham had noticed the signs of a long-term friendship in their greeting… but more importantly, he had seen the flicker of resentment that crossed Mike’s face when he had first seen Shane. He guessed (correctly) that although the two men had a personal connection, there was a little professional animosity, and Mike would probably not be averse to seeing Shane removed from his workplace.

There was no shortage of risk in Graham’s scheme, but he thought he probably had some little time; he could take a few steps to mitigate some of the jeopardy. And he knew just where to begin. For he had noticed something else through the surveillance feed: the furtive and somewhat embarrassed way in which that woman Clarissa kept glancing at Mike…

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Thanks for reading The Tube. You can subscribe to it, so you never miss a chapter!

And while you’re here, why not check out the rest of my site? Have a look at some of my published work!

Pavarti K Tyler, author of Shadow on the Wall, is the third author to be featured on this blog, and I am very happy to present this excellent guest post prepared by Pavarti, about the nature and appeal of heroes. Thanks Pavarti!

I’m Holding Out for a Hero

He rides in like a phoenix from the fire, black coat fanned out behind him. He’s a good man with a dark past, perhaps a penchant for violence, but it stems from passion not cruelty. He’s a lover standing in the rain, bleeding and victorious, come to find the one who makes him whole.

A hero.

The archetypical lover of women and role-model of men. We all know who he is, the outline of his shape branded on our psyche. From Achilles to Clark Kent, from James Bond to John McClane, he is a flawed and deeply driven man.

What is it about the larger-than-life icon of “Hero” that draws readers in? Is it the psychological need to believe in someone who can do exceptional things? I think maybe it has something to do with the idea that one person can make a real and concrete change in the world. Heroes are often imbued with supernatural abilities or extraordinary qualities, but it’s not necessary for the hero to be from Krypton to pull us in to their plight. In fact, it’s not the supernatural of Superman that makes him a hero, but the goodness of Clark Kent.

The idea of the “everyman” rising above the rest of us and accomplishing the impossible is seductive. The mild mannered alter-ego reflects our lives back to us. Work, bills, family and all the things that sometimes feel so average. Our internal conflicts of who we are, what do we believe, what do we stand for, are all pushed to the side in the interest of paying the mortgage and getting to work on time.

It’s so easy amidst the sea of chaos in which we find ourselves to feel that nothing we do has any real impact. Apathy reigns supreme and in our busy lives the important things like life, liberty and justice have to wait until after our taxes are done. But a hero, someone with a single-minded focus, acting for good, can make a real difference.

The hero character inspires us, makes us want to take up Jujitsu and hunt down our nemesis, thereby freeing the city. Real life isn’t so easy, not so black and white, and it makes these iconic stories so enticing.

Standing atop a high building or speeding off to the next emergency, the superhero has a clarity of purpose which I find desperately appealing. In Shadow on the Wall Recai Osman is a man adrift. He is removed from his culture, his religion, and his legacy. But when faced with the existence of real evil he is compelled to act.

In Shadow Recai must grapple with his own insecurities and complicated past. He is burdened by the same questions of substance as the rest of us. This is the story of him coming to terms with who he is and what he believes so he can heed Allah’s call to become The SandStorm.

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Book Trailer

Recai walked for what seemed like miles, resisting the instinct to second-guess his direction. The sand moved between his toes but soon he found his footing, and his body responded to the landscape as if from some genetic memory. He remembered his father’s words from a trip he took to the Oman desert as a child: Never take your shoes off; the sand will eat away at your feet. Recai had done it anyway, then and now, feeling more in control with that connection to the ground, its movements speaking to his flesh directly.

His father had always been full of surprises: one moment the strict disciplinarian, the next, he would wake Recai in the middle of the night to see a falling star. Recai had never had the chance to get to know him as an adult. Instead, he lived with the enigmatic memory of a great man lost.
Recai stood in the middle of the desert—every direction would eventually lead to Elih or one of the smaller villages scattered around the city. But who would take in a stranger? A stranger with a Hugo Boss turban and a bruised and bloodied face? In’shallah, he would be delivered to safety.

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Author Bio:
Pavarti K Tyler is an artist, wife, mother and number cruncher. She graduated Smith College in 1999 with a degree in Theatre. After graduation, she moved to New York, where she worked as a Dramaturge, Assistant Director and Production Manager on productions both on and off Broadway.

Later, Pavarti went to work in the finance industry as a freelance accountant for several international law firms. She now operates her own accounting firm in the Washington DC area, where she lives with her husband, two daughters and two terrible dogs. When not preparing taxes, she is busy working at Novel Publicity and penning her next novel.

My blog is all ages: http://www.fightingmonkeypress.com
My tumblr is 18+ only: http://pavartidevi.tumblr.com/
My Fan Page needs your likes: https://www.facebook.com/#!/FMPress
My Twitter likes friends: http://twitter.com/#!/PavartiKTyler
My Google+ is random: https://plus.google.com/?gpinv=JFSVnKSj7Uk:FdjR-3NCJW8#me/posts

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THE TUBE

Concept by Michael Winters and Shane W Smith
Written by Shane W Smith

Many years ago, Shane and Mike had attempted to recall the circumstances in which they had met. Although they had agreed that while in high school one of them had saved the other from a group of angry adolescent thugs, they argued reasonably good-naturedly over which role had belonged to whom.

In years to come, they would revisit the argument several times, but each time, there was something new under the surface bubbling away, some stored resentment for a minor slight or another. Nothing in and of itself, but when combined, it began to add up.

And when Shane had taken out the Nobel Prize a few years back for work that Mike maintained they both did, the whole thing had boiled right over. The argument had been bitter: Shane insisted that the credit he had given Mike in the acceptance speech was sufficient, and Mike argued that he deserved an equal share in the prize and the prize money.

In the end, it got so ugly that Mike’s marriage dissolved, and he only kept his job thanks to Shane’s intervention. He attracted some bad debts, which Shane had paid off without being asked, but the gesture served only to weaken their friendship further. Shane, utterly intransigent, refused to budge on the Nobel issue. After a great many heated discussions, and a drunken fistfight that landed them both in lockup for the night, they reached an uneasy equilibrium in which they agreed not to discuss the Nobel issue at all. As time went by, they began to patch up their friendship, but both sensed that there was still a time bomb ticking beneath the surface…

But they had made it work. Mike had gone to great lengths to get himself back on track, and had devoted himself to his career.

He had actually been working on some new research when OmniTech had bought out his contract that Shane knew nothing about… and never would. Here in The Tube, he didn’t have a lot of time to work on it, but OmniTech knew it was there, and had indicated that he might have time to devote to the project in the near future.

In the meantime, though, Mike had been tasked with fitting out a generator that could power the whole city in an entirely sustainable way. He knew that OmniTech would have preferred Shane to do the job, and it rankled a little to be their second choice… but at the same time, the opportunity was one that he had no intention of turning down.

The job had taken months, but he had loved every intimidating minute of it.

Every now and again, he would look up at the huge array of cooling towers and energy converters, and think back on the early days, when he and Shane had been kicking around design ideas. Some of those ideas had been scrapped for the smaller devices they had made to date (including the Nobel-winning design), but Mike had needed to avail himself of a few to make the generator’s capacity sufficient to power the entire Tube.

Every now and again, he would wonder where Shane was, or how he had apparently gotten out of his OmniTech contract, and he would be touched by ambivalence. Sometimes, wistful nostalgia won out, and he missed their near-lifelong friendship; other times, he felt profound relief that there was no-one here who could steal his ideas and accomplishments. This huge generator was his own personal triumph, and it would win him the acclaim he so sorely desired, and deserved.

Today, he’d had a moment over breakfast when he had felt the latter.

And now, seeing Shane just standing there, looking around at the room like he owned the place, Mike felt a stab of resentment, convinced that he was about to lose control of the good thing he was on here.

“Shane?” he’d asked, the word coming out with the appropriate level of surprise, masking his anger admirably. His hands gripped to fists in his pockets, though.

Then Shane had turned, and for a moment, Mike thought that Shane didn’t recognise him. In fact, after just that moment’s pause, Mike realised that he could see very little of the friend he remembered in Shane’s face. None of the light, the energy, the focus, almost nothing remained of the man he knew so well… it was almost like someone had scooped him out with a giant spoon before dropping him in here.

“Mike?” The word was tentative, and confirmed Mike’s suspicions in his mind. In an instant, all of the pent-up anger fizzled away to nothing, and he extended a hand for his friend to shake.

Before their palms met, however, alarms began to blare all over the generator room. Another instability. Mike felt a stab of fear, but recalled Shane’s encyclopedic knowledge of the systems, and relaxed a little.

At that moment, he realised just how relieved he was to have his safety net – his friend – back. But at that moment, he looked across at Shane and saw naked panic and total confusion on his face… and Mike’s fear returned tenfold.

–Continue to part 27–

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Thanks for reading The Tube. You can subscribe to it, so you never miss a chapter!

And while you’re here, why not check out the rest of my site? Have a look at some of my published work!