But I do hate it. When I have to talk about my writing and my life, I just get annoyed with myself. I’m boring! I don’t have a great inspirational biography. I haven’t always wanted to be an author, or met with awe-inspiring success worth bragging about.

Still, I’ve done a couple of interviews. That means that someone thinks I’m worth talking to. Even if I don’t like answering the questions, I love that they care enough to ask.

I hedged a little. I told him that we could probably fix up the manuscript he gave me into something acceptable or that he could rewrite something better. Aron agreed to do the whole thing over.

He barely even hesitated. The first time I was told – by Aron – that I need to scrap months of writing and start all over again. I cried and pitched a fit, swearing that I would never write again. I’ve gotten better about it in the years since… but not by much. I still get so frustrated with wasting words. It was so hard to write them in the first place. How could I ever replace them?

Aron’s taking it a lot better than I ever did. I think he should be spearheading more of our books. I wonder what I’d do all day, though…

I’m talking about the written voice, that particular tone and cadence unique to each of us. I never realized how important it was until I began editing someone else’s work.

With the first draft of The Dead Beat 2 behind me, I’ll be spending the next couple of weeks editing and polishing Aron’s nonfiction storytelling guide. It’s a first draft and has all the requisite rough spots of one. I’m happy to smooth those out, but that lack of Aron’s own voice in the manuscript is alarming me.

In person, Aron’s funny and witty and a little crass. When some game concept or system needs explaining, we all turn to Aron and let him loose. Understanding and laughter ensues. It works great! That’s why our friends suggested that he write this book; not just because of his track record of excellent games, but because he speaks so well about it.

But his book is… dry. It lacks all of that verve and nerve. It doesn’t sound like Aron at all! I can’t hear him actually saying any of this. I’ll smooth out the books flow, but Aron knows that I plan to put it back on his desk for major rewrites to give it a better voice. We don’t want to put his name on the cover of something and have it sound nothing like him.

I did it! I finally finished the first draft of The Dead Beat, volume 2. It was a difficult manuscript, though still not as headache-inducing as Sword of Dreams was. Nothing in The Dead Beat worked! Events didn’t fit together properly. Reveals didn’t fall into line. It all worked about as well as a bicycle made of jam.

It still sucks. But that’s the great thing about first drafts. They’re not done. I’m high on the victory buzz of finishing another book (and at 50,000 words, volume 2 of The Dead Beat is indeed a full book), but now I get to step away from the project for a few weeks. A few months, preferably. When I come back, the pain of writing the first draft will have faded and I can look at my work with fresh eyes. Issues that seem so scream worthy right now will be easy fixes in a few months.

Other writers used to recommend shelving work after the first draft, and I never listened. No, I was too full of mad ambition for that. Leave my glorious loaf of literature to rot, untouched, for weeks? Madness! …Until circumstances forced me to put away a first draft so I could work on something more pressing. When I finally got around to it again, I was astonished how much easier it was to pick out and fix the flaws! Goodness, I guess all those seasoned professionals just might know what they’re talking about.

Oh, I’m lecturing again. Sorry about that!

The important part is that I’m done with The Dead Beat for now. Stories 10 through 21 are written. I’ll come back to them in about three months, when eFiction will be needing some new installments. Until then, I’ll be editing Aron’s first solo effort, a guide to storytelling table-top RPGs. After that, I get to begin on Hammer of Time! It’s been fun to write the trilogies, but I’m looking forward to more standalone novels.

So I didn’t work on The Dead Beat at all. Too damned tired. But what I did do was work on compressing the paperbacks of Anvil of Tears and In the House of Five Dragons.

They’re still a little chunky, but not as much as they used to be. And that means that Createspace prints them for less and sells them for less.

Honestly, I’m not sure why I bothered. It took hours and my hands hurt… but no one really buys the print versions. Only about 2% of my sales are physical books.

But maybe that number will go up a little now that the books are a little cheaper. Here’s hoping.

I don’t remember why I started writing this post, actually. It wasn’t to tell you about the mucus. But since we’re on the subject… No, I’m still not going to tell you about it. Suffice it to say, it’s not pretty.

I’d hoped to finish off The Dead Beat, volume 2 today, but my brain has been replaced by Kleenex and I expect to spend most of the day on Skyrim. There’s a douchy elf guy who wants to meet my giant sword. Just need to get through his ward, first.

As you may have noticed LLS spent most of today blacked out in protest of SOPA and PIPA. So what’s our take on piracy?

Short and simple. It’s going to happen. Theft happens. I’m not saying that I like it or that we need to be resigned to loosing everything we own, but neither should we become so panicked that no one gets to own anything.

Specifically, piracy isn’t the end of the world for self-published authors. Our books have been ripped off a few times and I can tell you that it doesn’t really hurt. It didn’t hurt my sales numbers. In fact, for some authors, it’s been helpful. It’s advertising!

When you write and release publicly available product like a book, there are a few things that you’re going to need to steel yourself for: reviews and piracy. They sting, but trying to eliminate either of them risks majorly censoring media… and that’s going to hurt a hell of a lot more.

Shit!

So I’ll finish the first draft of the last story. It’s going to suck balls, but at least I’ll know my end point. Then I’m going to have to go back over all eleven stories, gut them and rewrite most of them. It going to take a lot of time, which is more than a little frustrating. I had hoped to be done with all three volumes of The Dead Beat by the end of March and begin work on Hammer of Time. But it looks like The Dead Beat is going to take a hell of a lot longer than expected. I’m not sure if that will mean pushing back Hammer of Time or a long break between volume 2 and 3 of The Dead Beat. Neither one is good news.

I’m never going to try to juggle more than one project again! This is terrible. I’m really sorry, guys.

It’s not about the money, of course. Money is a perk and sometimes an enabler of writing. It’s easier to author books when you’ve got something to eat. In the end, it’s about creating and sharing stories I love. But I don’t love them all the time… or even most of the time. I never re-read my own writing except to edit it. Even then, this drivel is tough to pallet. There are so many other authors that do it far better than I. Am I just filling the market with more bad prose, as some anti-self-publishing advocates claim? It’s been argued that circumventing the publishing gatekeepers is ruining literature. When I read my own books, I wonder if they’re right. Maybe my silly stories are better of remaining in my head.

But even this depression doesn’t chase me around with the shit stick every day. (Wow, writers are often moody creatures, aren’t they?) Some days, it feels great. Especially when I get great feedback from beta readers, when they love the new book. It can be hard to remember the good stuff. But it’s still there, waiting for me to pull my head out of my ass and pay attention.

Not me. I’m not the one that this has happened to. I write pretty standard genre fiction and enjoy doing so. I love writing about heroes and villains, epic wars and huge political struggles. Sure, there are readers and reviewers who don’t care either for my stories, characters or prose. They might call the book out on Amazon or Goodreads, but never attack me personally.

So I’m not talking about me. I’m talking about fellow author Zoe Whitten, who has recently said that she’s quitting the trade. As soon as I realized that she was serious, I started crying. Why? I don’t read Zoe’s stuff, really. A lot of her work is dark. I don’t mean Song of Ice and Fire sort of dark. I mean bleak. No punches pulled, no holds barred. (Well, I say and feel that, though in her blog, Zoe states that she has made an awful lot of concessions trying to sell her stuff.)

Zoe says of herself that she doesn’t write heroes. She strives to write true to the world and to the deepest, darkest parts of our society. I can respect that – and do – but I don’t take much pleasure from reading it.

Yet I can’t shake this funk. I’m angry and depressed that Zoe’s walking away. Not with her! If I’d taken the kind of fire it sounds like she has (I have not been privy first-hand to most of it), I would probably retire, too. It sounds like it’s been a nightmare. Zoe’s fierce and fiery and full of passion. I don’t agree with her on everything, but all the more reason why I hate the idea that she’s been pushed into leaving writing.

I like to think that there’s a place and a reason for all kinds of stories, all kinds of books. I don’t want to see anyone stop writing because they feel that there’s no audience for their work. Far too much time and love goes into writing a book to feel like no one wants to read it, much less be shouted down as some sort of deviant for taking a risk and writing about some difficult fringe stuff. Maybe I’m jut being starry-eyed, but I would wish for every author to write about what they want.

Of course, finding your audience is hard. I’ve read plenty of articles on “leveraging social media” and the like. I have no idea what that means. If I knew how to build an audience, I’d be selling a heck of a lot more books. So maybe I really am being stupid…

I don’t know. It’s hard to pin down my feelings. I don’t write for the same reasons or in the same ways that Zoe does. She exposes and confronts the pain of abuse victims. I prefer to read and write about hope. I don’t think she’s read my books. Even if she did, I doubt she would care much for them. We write on two completely opposite ends of the spectrum. But writing has been such a source of joy and freedom for me. I wish it could have been for her, too.

I wish well for you, Zoe, and hope that whatever you pursue next brings you more happiness.