Hmm.  Did I say I wasn’t going to talk process anymore? Really? I think I am going to have to roll that back. I don’t have a standard Facebook account nor Twitter anymore, because I don’t want to talk politics or look at comic pictures of cats or advertise my books in those public spaces like a hooker. But enough of that.

Process.

I got to a point over the last few years, being so critical of my own work, that all of it almost came to a grinding halt. It is not so much that with 2 collections and 3 novels, that I tapped a lot of life-long ideas that were brewing before and during the ten year journey I have enjoyed under the counsel and advice of Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi. (I have also benefited from his Forewords, Afterwords, and recommendations in reference to publishers and editors he introduced me to). It is also that I moved from the small market to mid-range, and no one quite understands that pressure until going through it.

I know. Sounds like a choke job. So I did something about it. I am 55 years old, and decided to try Prevagen. Not that I am promoting this as a miracle supplement or drug or herb or whatever you’d call a pill with ingredients from jellyfish, but I noticed my writing volume increased. I went from an odd 2 pages of finished copy a day to something like 4 or 5 in the ongoing novel The Glorious Secrets of Ghosts. I started a memoir as well. I might begin a third piece that explores more commercial avenues, maybe a more standard thriller as opposed to the literary nature of Ghosts.

And it isn’t just volume and endurance. Being that I am a part time college professor of English and have been blessed with a couple of days off a week, writing has become part of the day job, one I love, one I want to continue at the highest level.

I’m writing some of the best shit structurally and creatively that I have done yet. And speaking of volume…my best hours are 6 am to around 11 am. Or at least they have been. Recently, I have been doing Ghosts until 11 am, taking a short break to eat, doing my walk, and coming back to write the memoir, The Electric 70’s, from around 3 pm to dinner time. If I can condense the walking, shopping, watching CNN, goof off time in the middle of the day, maybe I’ll start writing that third piece. I have never done simultaneous works, but I am starting now!

In terms of The Glorious Secrets of Ghosts, S.T. Joshi already accepted the first chapter to be run as a short story in an upcoming edition of “Nemesis,” a new anthology coming out of Hippocampus. That “story” (chap) is called Breath. He did not accept the third chap from Ghosts for a new antho he is putting together called Apostles of the Weird, (the chapter / story I sent him is called The Session) but that doesn’t worry me. I recall his passing on the first pre-chapter of what would inevitably become Phantom Effect for lack of a good fit in his antho Searchers After Horror, and everyone came out all right there, the novel eventually going through Night Shade (with his recommendation) and my publishing The Girl Between the Slats for Searchers.

Looks like I have to write something else during my now-busy off days. A ghost story for Apostles.

God. I like being busy.