I’m still struggling with the hypertension medicine side effects. Pepto-Bismol is handling one of the worst ones, but I’m still tired most of the time. I laid down yesterday afternoon for a short nap and wound up sleeping until this morning. I need to get that under control because I can’t afford to lose so many days.

Right before I went for the nap, I opened an email from Water Dragon which had links! Digital advance reader copies (ARCs) are available! I’ve never been at this stage of a book before!

What is an ARC? It’s a near-finished version of the book, meant to go out ahead of the release so that some readers can get a taste of it and post reviews. They’re generally sent to magazines and people of influence in the publishing world to further drum up interest and get some buzz started.

Water Dragon already has a list of magazines and organizations to send ARCs to, so the number of copies I have available are basically extra.

I’ve handed out the link for the ARC to two people today, and I have more available. I’m looking for people that are interested in reading it, writing a review, and if they really liked it, help spread the word about it.

And to be clear, I want fair and honest reviews. Don’t write a glowing review if it wasn’t your cup of tea. If you hate it, put that in your review. It really is okay.

Where to write a review? Amazon is probably the best place.

If you’re interested in an ARC for The Repossessed Ghost, let me know!

It’s hard to put into words just how exciting this is for me.

I live on The Internet, which means when popular movies come out, I need to see them as soon as possible in order to avoid spoilers. That’s just life, now. I was going to see it Thursday night, but we had other plans, and Friday wasn’t great, either. So I went to a Saturday matinee.

Before I get into The Flash, I’ll just say Happy Father’s Day to all who celebrate. For myself, I had steak and eggs this morning. Once I’m done writing my review of The Flash, I’m going to get on the exercise bike for 30 minutes to an hour, then I’m going to get caught up on some work stuff I wasn’t able to finish last week. After that… video games? Going to bed early? Who knows. Tomorrow is going to come too soon.

Okay. Let’s talk about The Flash.

I had a good time. I went in with low expectations to begin with, and I left feeling like I got my money’s worth.

From this point forward, I may talk about spoilers, so if you haven’t seen it yet and you want to go in with fresh eyes, bail out now.

Michael Keaton. Holy smokes, Michael Keaton.

I had no idea how much I would enjoy seeing Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne/Batman again. I did not know that I wanted to hear that Danny Elfman score play while Batman did cool stuff. Apparently that was something I was hungry for, and I left well fed.

Sasha Calle’s Supergirl was good. Her part was a little bit understated, but Sasha worked with the material she had, and I would definitely watch a whole movie with her as Supergirl.

Ezra Miller. Before I get into their performance, I want to acknowledge that their behavior off screen has been troubling, and I don’t want to focus on the controversy of Ezra Miller themself. I think they fucked up and they need to make amends, if possible. I’m not a fanboy of Ezra Miller. I don’t really know them. Whatever is going on around them is probably complicated, so for purposes of this review, I’m only going to focus on their performance in this movie.

Ezra Miller’s performance was excellent. They brought nuance to both versions of Barry Allen, making them both characters distinct and clear. Ezra Miller’s performance throughout the entire movie was consistent, emotive, and compelling. I loved Michael Keaton in this, and I was impressed with Sasha Calle, but this was Ezra Miller’s movie.

Let’s talk about the special effects. There were two times it stuck out to me as a little bit off. The first was when The Flash went to save the babies falling out of the hospital. They looked a little bit off. The dog also looked a bit off. It was cartoony, but that whole sequence was basically a cartoon, and I was on board with it. For me, it was a good time.

The second time the effects looked off to me was whenever The Flash went into The Chronobowl. We got to see lots of characters, and they looked waxy and computer generated. They were not photorealistic.

I think the producers said that was an intentional artistic choice, and I believe them. When you look at the effects everywhere else in the movie (except the cartoony “save the babies” sequence), the effects are fantastic and photorealistic. Compare the Chronobowl effects to Batman sliding on the freeway while chasing the bank robbers. Ben Affleck’s Batman was a fully rendered special effect, and it looks excellent. When we see Ben Affleck in the Chronobowl, he looks plastic, like an impression of the events that happened in previous movies. I believe it was an artistic choice, and I’m fine with it. It didn’t pull me out.

I liked the explanation of time travel. I’m not sure it’s realistic, but it worked for me as far as explaining the details of the movie, and I was able to groove with it.

I liked getting to see the alternate worlds. I loved getting to see Nic Cage as Superman, fighting a giant spider. I think it’s the only time in the movie I made a sound, and it was unintentional.

The ending bit with George Clooney as Batman made me smile. Of course there would be ramifications to Barry saving his father. It ended the movie on a joke, and I appreciated it, because the movie wasn’t taking itself too seriously, and neither was I.

What else can I say about this movie? I had a good time! I felt some feelings, I had some laughs, and I enjoyed the spectacle. Why wouldn’t I like this movie?

Is it my favorite? Heck no. Am I going to be thinking about it for a long time? Probably not. There are really good movies that I have seen that I don’t think about much, like The Godfather or Citizen Kane. Then there are relatively bad movies that I do find myself thinking about from time to time, like Ashton Kutcher’s Butterfly Effect. So, I might think about The Flash in the future, especially with regards to what it had to say about how time travel works, but I’m not sure that means anything.

Would I recommend friends go out and spend their money to see The Flash?

It depends on the friend. I would not recommend Michael Gallowglas go and see this movie, for example. He doesn’t enjoy movies the same way I do. I would absolutely recommend the movie to Melissa and Chris. It’s a coin flip as to whether Bryanna would enjoy it or not.

I think The Internet is going to continue to be hard on The Flash, mostly because The Internet does not like Eza Miller. I think The Internet is going to criticize The Flash’s special effects and say it is trash because it is not as realistic as they demand, which is Dumb with a capital D.

In summary, and tying this back to my own stuff, The Flash was a light, fun story that didn’t take itself too seriously. It probably won’t leave a lasting impression on the world, and I doubt it’s going to win many awards. These are the same ways I describe The Repossessed Ghost. I think it’s okay for The Flash to exist and just be a fun thing. I feel the same way about The Repossessed Ghost, and I hope other people find light, fun value in it, too.

Behold!

In just a couple of weeks, at Baycon 2023, people will be able to buy my book and hold it in their hand.

Look at that cover! Isn’t it beautiful?

Water Dragon Publishing hired the artist that did such an amazing job. I’m so happy with how it came out.

The official release of the book is the middle of July. It will be on Amazon. Formats include digital, hardcover, paperback, and trade paperback.

From this point forward, it’s just a celebration.

Along with this cover reveal, let me provide this shiny link, with which you can order your very own copy direct from the publisher: The Repossessed Ghost.

Everyone that orders from that link before July 4th will get a signed copy. I’m numbering the first 100 copies I sign.

July 4th is when the convention ends and all the pre-orders get shipped. To be clear, if you see me at the convention and buy a book, I’ll sign those, too.

Here is the first time I talked about this novel as The Repossessed Ghost. July 17th, 2014. Almost exactly 9 years later, it will be available everywhere. It’s still hard to believe.

I have talked about this book a lot, and I have to get ready to talk about it some more. If you have any questions, send them my way! I’m hoping to post a vlog before July 1st, which will be a brief reading.

Thank you to everyone that has believed in me and encouraged me on this journey. You mean the world to me.

I feel like I’m behind. There’s topics I should be writing about. Melissa’s birthday was yesterday! My book is coming out next month! Why am I not doing anything?!?

Let’s begin with my health, which hasn’t been completely awesome. As I said in my last post, I have hypertension. I’m taking blood pressure medicine, and while it is effective, I haven’t felt right for weeks. I don’t feel like I have any energy, like I’ve been hollowed out, and it’s even harder for me to focus. Through that lens, everything is distant and difficult. That includes celebrating Melissa’s birthday and promoting The Repossessed Ghost.

We did celebrate, though. On Saturday, we went to Lodi and picked blueberries, then returned home and had some easy food and played Skipbo. We had a cake, though I didn’t have any candles for her to blow out. Yesterday, her actual birthday, an Edible Arrangement arrived.

Her birthday was okay, but there’s only so much I can do. She’s lonely. She needs more friends. I can completely relate.

On the book front, I’m going to post the cover NEXT WEEK. Around that time, I’ll start spreading around the pre-order link. I’m also planning on recording a new VLOG. I haven’t posted one since the beginning of the pandemic, and this one is going to be a reading of The Repossessed Ghost.

There’s more I still need to do. There are some swag ideas I need to follow up on. Soon, I need to contact the local Barnes and Noble again and see if I can make some magic happen.

I need to get moving. Hypertension be damned, I need to find the energy and push through, because this is my first and maybe only chance to promote a book with my name on the cover.

Baycon is in less than a month. That’s where I will get to be on the other side of a table and sell people my book. It’s where I’ll get to be on the other side of some panels for the first time, and share directly some of the stuff I’ve acquired over these years.

Here is a link to my convention schedule. When I look at it, I feel like a rock star. It feels like a celebration of all the work I’ve been doing for the last decade and a half.

If you would like to order a signed copy of The Repossessed Ghost early, straight from the publisher and to be delivered after July 4th, let me know and I will get you a link. I’ll be publicly posting the link next week, but I can still hook up friends and family right now.

A couple of days from now would be my Mom’s 90th birthday. It’s been long enough that I don’t get particularly upset at her loss. She died in 2002, so I’ve had a couple of decades to process. Still, I’ve had some recent reminders of her, so I’ll definitely be thinking of her for the next few days.

She died of complications related to her heart. It was shortly after her doctor took her off of blood pressure medicine, which I believe she’d been on most of my life. Bold move by her doctor, I would say. Did it contribute to her death? Who can say?

She didn’t live a particularly healthy lifestyle. She smoked, ate lots of greasy food, didn’t exercise, and her hobbies included reading and watching television. Towards the end, she was in and out of hospitals quite a bit.

Last week, I was prescribed medicine for dealing with hypertension. Several weeks ago, I wasn’t able to give blood because my blood pressure too high. The diastolic was over 100. I went several weeks with symptoms similar to a heart attack, and finally saw my doctor about it and started to address it.

I don’t smoke, but I don’t live a particularly healthy lifestyle. I’ve been known to eat some greasy food, I rarely exercise, and my hobbies include spending long hours in front of a computer screen. There’s nothing seriously wrong with me right now, so I can still course correct and try to live a healthier lifestyle, but it’s going to take some effort.

Last week, while we were picking up the hypertension medicine, we bought a blood pressure machine. I’ve been checking once or twice a day, and my blood pressure is actually looking great now. When I first started recording it, the diastolic was still over 100, once close to 110, which is when the danger of a stroke becomes really high. Today, my blood pressure was 127 over 87. The medicine is working, as is the diet.

I’ve switched to low sodium, which has been interesting. I’m an absolute fiend for potato chips, and those are completely off limits. I can’t really have bread like I want. Lots and lots of convenient food is loaded with salt, and I can’t have any of it.

Fortunately, I’ve discovered that a bit of vinegar on a plain salad satisfies my itch for potato chips. I’ve also found a recipe for potatoes in the air fryer that is 0mg of sodium, and while it’s not amazing, it is pretty good. The start of last week on the low sodium diet, I was suffering. The last couple of days, I’ve been eating well.

I’m changing my diet and my blood pressure is looking better after a short while, and yet I’m feeling excessively tired and unfocused. I basically lost Saturday, just feeling yucky all day. Sunday was pretty good, but today wasn’t great. Maybe it’s a reaction to the hypertension medicine, or maybe my body is reacting to the change in diet. I’m not sure. I hope I start feeling better soon. I need to somehow work exercise into my routine, and that’s not going to happen if I continue to have such low energy.

All of this is distracting me from another matter of my heart, which is The Repossessed Ghost coming out in a little over a month. Now is the time that I need to breathe it in and enjoy the ride. It’s hard, though, because with everything going on, figuratively and literally, I’m having a hard time catching my breath at all.

By the way, I have a pre-order link for The Repossessed Ghost which I can share. It goes straight to the publisher, and everyone that uses that link will get a signed copy of the book shipped to them just after the 4th of July. I’m not posting the link yet. I’ll post in later in June, once I do the cover reveal and start ramping up promotion of the book. But if you’re interested in purchasing the book early, let me know and I will hook you up.

At the moment, I’m sitting at a table in a very large B&B in Utah. I’m participating in the Writing Excuses Bear Lake retreat, also called Riding Excuses because there are horses. In fact, I rode a horse today for the first time in my memory.

Before I could come out here, I had to prepare the way. I needed to get my work stuff finished enough that my teams would be fine while I was off for a week. They were going to be fine with or without me, but there was a bunch of work that really needed finishing in order for them to be comfortable and for me to be able to let go work and relax for a bit.

I wound up working a ton of hours, right on through the end of Saturday before getting on the plane Sunday.

While my Day Job was ramping up, I received the digital proofs of The Repossessed Ghost. I received a PDF which includes the fact sheet, copies of what the hard cover sleeve will look like, and an image for the cover of the trade paperback. They’re absolutely beautiful! They’re so beautiful, in fact, that I’m going to make a whole separate post with cover reveals later on, when we get a little bit closer to the publication date.

One of my tasks, though, was to go through the PDF for my book, and make sure everything is good. One last pass to catch any errors that might have slipped through the editing process.

I worked on it some last week, but the reality was that I just didn’t have enough hours in the day. The Day Job takes priority, as does my family and my sanity. I proofed about a third of it before the week was over. Then I proofed a bunch more while we were enroute to the retreat.

Since getting to the retreat, I’ve spent all of my free writing time finishing the proofing, and it is good. I caught some things, so the book will be that much better once it is out, in just a little over a month.

This is a milestone. This is another step in the process that I’ve never done before. My excitement is growing as the reality of this book being out in the world gets closer.

To process of proofing basically involved me reading the book again, which has me appreciating it again.

This book will be new to people, but I started it over 10 years ago, so you might be able to imagine that some of my excitement has dwindled over the years. Until this recent reread, I thought it was okay, with good characterization and humor, but I didn’t think it was all that special.

Now I appreciate it again. It is actually good. The plot unfolds in the best way that it can, and it makes sense. It holds together. The character growth is there. The stakes are there. I feel like I can be proud to have my name on this one.

I should probably stop gushing about my own story, lest I run the risk of sounding immodest. I’ll just say that, knowing that I have grown as a writer since I originally started writing The Repossessed Ghost, I’m happy to see that the product of my imagination and effort is something valuable, and worth putting out in the world.

In September of 2022, I discovered I could no longer dodge the Covid bullet. I was not Neo.

I might be Neo now, but I doubt it. I tested negative today, but that’s not the whole story.

A couple of days ago, Chris started coughing. I’ve been coughing a little bit, and so has Melissa. We thought this was just seasonal allergies. Things are blooming all around us. We all get a bit congested in the Spring.

I haven’t really seen much of Chris the last couple of days. He’s been cooped up in his room, not feeling too well. He’s been congested and he’s had a bit of a cough, but his voice has been clear. Melissa and Chris talked about it earlier today, and she told him to take some allergy medicine. I didn’t know they’d had that conversation so when I asked him how he was feeling, he got a little bit exasperated and said he had a cough.

I asked, “Have you taken a Covid test?”

“I haven’t been around anyone,” Chris said. “There’s no way that I have Covid.”

“We have tests. You should still take one and make sure.”

He argued some more, but eventually acquiesced. He slunk into his room, and within 10 minutes, he was even more upset with me because his test came back positive. Apparently, he had been making plans to go out with his friends this weekend, and now his plans were ruined. He was very snippy with me about “being right.”

I didn’t want to be right. I just wanted to make sure he was safe, and that he wasn’t spreading a deadly virus.

I contacted my work. I tested negative, but I was still in the office on Wednesday, right around the time Chris started showing symptoms. Melissa contacted her coworkers that she visited with yesterday. We’ll all be isolating. Again.

It’ll be fine. I think between natural immunity from actually having it, plus the relatively recent vaccination, we’ll be fine. Maybe the virus has been swimming around in my system for a few days, but there’s not enough of it for me to show symptoms or test positive. Maybe the worst is yet to come. We’ll know more soon enough.

We should be completely over this before it’s time to travel to Utah for the Writing Excuses retreat in Bear Lake, Utah. Which means I have a short story to finish this weekend.

Today, a SpaceX rocket blew up shortly after launch.

I found out about it today on Twitter, which from a certain point of view, is another super heavy platform that exploded unexpectedly.

If I google it, I’ll probably find some news about a Tesla blowing up or something. Maybe something like this.

I’m going to be honest. None of this makes me happy.

I’m not a fan of Elon Musk, but I like electric cars, space exploration, and yes, even social media. I still think social media was a mistake but I have friends there, and I don’t like losing touch with them. I have also said that my next car will be electric, and I believe that for humanity to survive, we must become a multi-planet race. We should fix our home, absolutely, but that is not mutually exclusive from going to Mars and beyond. In fact, we may have to learn some valuable lessons fixing Earth before we can a Mars colony viable.

The SpaceX vehicle exploded, and if you look at Twitter, you can see so many people celebrating this as another Musk failure. It isn’t, for a number of reasons, but it’s easy to get caught up in the Musk drama and use this event as a bad example of how Musk is bad for businesses and progress.

The reality is that there are a lot of engineers involved at SpaceX. Their stated goal was to lift off the platform, and the explosion is going to give them a lot of data so that the next launch attempt, they can set their goals higher.

It feels weird to me to celebrate today as a Musk failure. It also doesn’t seem right to laud it as a Musk triumph. It’s just rocket science, and I don’t believe Musk himself personally had much to do with it.

I hope SpaceX learns a ton from what happened today, and I hope their next attempt goes better.

Sometimes when I tell people I’m a writer, they react by telling me what I should write. I had one person go so far as to say they would give me their idea, and after I wrote it, we could split the profit 50/50. He wasn’t joking. I did not take him up on this “generous” offer.

Some people seem to think that the idea is gold, but it isn’t. Ideas are easy. They can come from anywhere, at any time. For me, they bubble to the surface of my brain when I least expect them, usually when I’m at rest.

Like dreams, ideas are nothing until you start to work on them. Work towards a dream and it becomes a goal. Develop on idea and it becomes a story.

I have spoken with some writers that seem to think the idea has greater value than it does. They hoard their ideas like currency, waiting to spend them at right time. Usually these are people that haven’t actually finished a story yet.

I won’t go so far as to say that ideas have no value whatsoever. I collect them just like everyone else. One idea: a repo man from New Orleans that finds a ghost in the back of a car. That idea had enough value to it that I turned it into an actual novel (with a release that’s super close). Another idea: a possession story written in 2nd person. I developed that into a really creep novelette and, though it hasn’t found a home yet, it’s one I’m really proud of. Another idea: a necromancer that specializes in bringing plants back from the dead, living as a beloved and weird old woman at the edge of a village. It’s an interesting idea, and while I’ve done some outlining, I haven’t finished developing it into an actual story.

I’m not afraid of sharing my ideas with other people because I know that’s not where the magic happens. A truly good story comes from the writer. It’s in their implementation and the way they develop the idea.

If you lock ten writers in separate rooms, giving them the same writing prompt and not letting them out until they’ve finished their story, you’ll wind up with ten completely different stories. That’s assuming you actually provide care and sustenance to the writers. Otherwise, you’ll end up with some partial stories and ten corpses. Please don’t lock us up and starve us.

The true value of a story is not the idea, but the voice, experience, and work of the writer. Give a good idea to a bad writer and you’ll still wind up with a weak, uninteresting story. Give a half-baked, second-hand idea to a good writer and you’ll get something fresh, exciting, and unexpected.

All that being said, if I were to give advice it is this: enjoy your ideas and write them down. Keep track of them. Though ideas are cheap, the value they bring to the writer is the measure of how much they excite you. Just don’t let the ideas sit there. Pick them up and do something with them.

It’s Thursday night, and I’m taking a pause from tearing up my bedroom floor. I took tomorrow off so I can finish, and tonight is the prep work stage, where the carpet and wood tacking literally goes out the window. It’s hot, sweaty work, and I’m out of shape and need to take breaks.

Something else that takes a lot of work is taking a book from a finished draft to a complete, physical thing that people can buy.

I’ve performed the labor of finishing the draft. I’ve done it many times now, and it’s exhilarating. Aside from holding my children in my arms for the first time, I’m not sure there is a greater feeling than finishing the first draft of a novel. If they could take that feeling and put it in a pill, it would be the hottest drug on the street.

But… now what?

So far, I’ve had an edit pass. I’ve written a few different summaries, some author bio stuff, and I’ve given feedback on potential covers. Tasks were assigned to me by my publisher and I’ve ticked through them as best I could. There’s a couple I couldn’t do. I don’t have a presence on Goodreads, and I’m unable to create an author’s page in Amazon since this is my first published book. Everything else, though, I’ve been able to work through.

Steven Radecki of Water Dragon Publishing has been exceptionally helpful and patient with me, too. Summaries are painful for all of us, and he was able to act as a sounding board as I worked through different ways of condensing The Repossessed Ghost into a few sentences.

Now, we have a final cover, and a batch of images related to the promotion of the book. This is some good stuff! Not quite the same level of euphoria as finishing a draft, but this would earn a pretty high street value, too.

My main problem is I don’t know what to do now. This is completely unfamiliar ground to me. I have some images and some summary material. I need to start sharing all of this and drum up interest, right?

Obviously I do, but it feels early. The official release date is July 12 of this year. Preorders will start on July 1st. People attending Baycon will be able to get signed copies earlier than the release date, and I’ll have a batch of books in June at some point that I’ll be able to “sell” to friends and family. I’m throwing that in quotes because some of you know that I’m going to buy the book myself and give it to you in person. I’m not buying it for all of you, though.

We’re in the middle of March. If I start posting cover reveals and spamming the world with promotion now, will there still be interest in a few months?

Not to get off topic, but we live in a world people are trying to sell us something every second of every minute. They fill our inboxes. They call our phones. The interrupt our programming with these special announcements. If you’re like me, your bullshit detector is sensitive, and you reach for the skip button as soon as there is even a hint of an advertisement. I do not want to set off people’s bullshit detector.

I want people to have a good time. That’s what The Repossessed Ghost is. It’s not a book that’s trying to change the world, or clear your acne, or make you sit up straight. It’s pure escapism with some fun characters in a familiar setting. How do I get that message out there?

My break is almost over. Soon, I will finish rebuilding my bedroom, making it a more comfortable place for me and Melissa to rest. Some time after that, I’m going to start redecorating this blog and the various social media platforms, so that people can see the cool artwork associated with my book, coming out soon.

If you have any suggestions on how I can promote this book, please let me know.