Coming Attractions

Hello faithful blog readers. Just posting to let you know I haven't forgotten this thing, just been busy. I wanted to let you know that I have a few posts in the works, including one about my recent adventure to the Georgia Ren Faire. I'll even have pics of that excursion! I know, I know, you can't wait. But you'll have to.

Lest you think that is all for this post, fear not! I'm going to share with you all an excerpt from a short story I'm currently working on. Let me know what you guys think.

There are things that exist in this world, things that we don’t want to exist, things whose existence we fear. You see them, at the edge of vision. A shape appears in the corner of your eye as you shower, only to disappear when you look straight at it. A hulking shadow hovers ominously in the corner of your room, and when you reach frantically for the light at your bedside it flees, as if it were never there. And you convince yourself that these instances were nothing: a figment of your imagination wherein you saw the steam from the shower fogging the glass of the shower door. The monstrous shadow in your room was simply the moonlight casting off of the tree outside, mingling with your coat which you carelessly left hanging on the closet door rather than putting it away. Obviously, this is all you have seen, and your imagination has done the rest.

But your psyche tells you this is impossible, for how can the steam dance in such a way on the glass door as to make the shape of a ghostly young woman, pale and intoxicating in her beauty, beckoning for you to come dance with her? How could the moon cause your coat’s shadow to entwine itself with the tree outside and make a creature of such hideousness that words fail to describe it? But you cast these thoughts aside, for there’s no such thing as ghosts. Science has proven over and over that the supernatural does not exist. Science has explained everything or, if it hasn’t, it is well on its way to a solution. You tell yourself this, for you fear the truth. Science, that great god of humanism, has worked its magic and alleviated your fears in a way that no other religion has. It has saved you from the awful truth: that monsters exist in this world, waiting in the shadows to devour your very soul. But you do not fear them, for science has told you that even your soul does not exist.

That's all for now. Thanks everyone for your support!

Why Writers Need Psychiatrists

As a writer, it can sometimes seem impossible to find time to write. When time is found, motivation is often lacking. When motivation and time are found, the phone tends to ring and there are people on the other line who chose that particular moment to tell you something you already knew or really didn't want to know in the first place. And if you tell them you're writing, they tend to say, "Oh, that's wonderful! What are you writing about?" or ignore you completely and continue on with their (obviously) more important story.

So how does a writer accomplish anything, ever, and not pull out his or her hair in frustration? Well, Stephen King is famous for saying that writer's write. Writer's don't necessarily get paid. They don't always get to go on TV or on book tours or sell movie rights or even get published. But they write. And any writer who writes can tell you that there is nothing like it in the world. Everything melts away when a writer is writing, and this is why we seem so incredibly cranky when we are interrupted from our writing. It's why we're so frustrated when writer's block strikes. Writing is not just our hobby, it's not even a drug. Writing is the reason we exist, and it is the closest one can become to understanding what it must feel like to be God.

We write because we must, for if we do not we end up unfulfilled and bitter, all the creations inside our brains warring and trampling and doing God knows what else in an effort to break free of our minds and share them with the world. Yet we fear that even when we get them onto paper that they will never be shared, or if shared they will be ridiculed and despised. We do not believe the praises of friends and family because they are our friends and family and are supposed to tell us that our writing is "wonderful". Being a writer is, I imagine, akin to being a paranoid schizophrenic with delusions of grandeur and an inferiority complex.

But please, whatever you do, don't stop giving us praises. We need them, for besides writing your praises are our life's blood. And please, whatever else you do, give us honest criticism as well. We need it as well, even if we kick and scream and hate you and make voodoo dolls of you to stick railroad spikes through or, as the shirt says, "you'll end up in my novel".

And please, for the love of God, support us.

I love you all, my family, friends, and fans.

Sam