The Work, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb

It occurred to me this morning that I have not done my due diligence and written something in my little blog. All I can say is that life has its ebbs and flows. Some days I'm drawn to work, some days I'm just being dragged along behind a truck getting shredded by gravel one inch at a time.

I've been struggling for a good long while with the follow up to my first novel, Boxing Gorillas. As the second act of a three act piece, Rhinestone Gorillas has the same sets of problems which plague all second acts; you have introduced your characters and now you have to drop them into hot oil and see which ones manage to crawl out alive. The problems with characters, situations, plot movement, etc. mounted so much last year that I put that project aside in favor of writing my most current release, Saligia.

However, plot solutions have now presented themselves, as they often do when I just sit down and do The Work. When you have a day gig, a family, a mortgage and responsibilities beyond the plot line, it can be difficult to give all of those imaginary people your full attention. I'm not trying to make any excuses for I am also capable of incredible laziness. My life is about trying to find some balance between frantic work and just sitting on my duff watching Star Trek re-runs.

But, for the moment, the writing of Rhinestone Gorillas is back on track. I have promised my editor a draft by mid-summer. He is somewhere in Arkansas, at this very moment, driving his mid-life crisis machine very fast and salivating over the thought of having another shot at crushing my ego. Every cut he suggests is to strengthen the work, but its a daunting task to hand a large piece of your soul over knowing that this little child you've birthed is about to be thrashed under the whip of a cruel master. He's like Pai Mei from the Kill Bill movies. He will beat the living shit out of the work until it can punch its way out of a coffin and still have enough leftover for a killing spree. He hasn't taught me the Five-Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique, but I'm wearing the evil son of a bitch down.

So, now that I've given you my worthless explanation as to why I have not released another book this year, I'm going to get back to The Work. I hear a quote from Ron Weasley echoing in my head, "You're going to suffer, but you're going to be happy about it."