SHUT THE LIGHTS AND CALL IT QUITS (Bringing a series to a close)

The end of a series. It's a weird animal. It's slippery. Not easily defined at the beginning of the series (unless you are a super freak plotter with OCD and a completest messiah complex) it is something that you either see coming a mile away or it sneaks up and ambushes you while you're looking the other way.

The best rule of thumb is to quit while you are ahead. Get out while the gettin is good. We've all seen shows that have lived past their expiration date and the last seasons (Scrubs I am looking at you here) totally suck. The characters have done all they were meant to do and so they start acting like someone else entirely. They do dumb shit and behave in stupid ways that just make you hate them.

You never want the reader to hate your character if they are someone they used to love.

(see, we used to love Scrubs.)


I'm 3 novels and 3 novellas into my Deacon Chalk series. I am about to start book 4 soon. I know exactly how Deacon will behave in book 4. It will be natural for me to write it because he is in the midst of his character arc. I know where his arc is going and what I am going to do to get him there.

Now if I write past that arc I will probably be having to force the story and then the books will be like the last season of Scrubs and it will suck major balls.

I'll set the books on fire first I promise you that.

WRITING ZOMBIES THE HARD WAY

The Walking Dead kicks ass.

Now that that is out of the way.

Writing zombies is fun. It really is. But it is hard to come up with anything new in the genre since it exploded in the last few years. But sometimes you don't have to do something new to write a fresh take. Sometimes we WANT what we expect....for the most part. If I'm reading a zombie book I like to read about the zombies, the band of survivors who try to scrabble for life in a dead world, the zombie kills, I want that in the zombie book and most readers do too. You are probably NOT going to get fans of zombies to read your work if you radically change what makes zombies awesome.

So work the edges. Creep the corners. Come at them in the small surprises. Take the expected and turn it upside down.

This may come in the form of something like Zombieland, a terrific movie that embraced the inherent ridiculousness of what a zombie apocalypse would be like.

It may be like Kevin J. Anderson's Dan Chambeaux novel about a zombie detective which is full of the humor of being the walking dead.

Or it may be like the Walking Dead where Robert Kirkman and company use the zombie apocalypse to explore just to what ends a group of humans will go to survive and what humanity means when the world forces you to be inhumane.

In my zombie story "He Stopped Loving Her Today" I took an intimate love story and set it in a world of zombies. A man on the ragged edge of survival and the love of his life. I don't know that I added anything "new" to the genre, except maybe the Sloshers. Those are zombies who swell up as they decay, filling with gasses from decomposition until their skin is stretched tight like a balloon and when they shamble they slosh like a half-filled water balloon.  But I did manage to tell a fresh zombie tale by focusing on one specific incident and the human reaction to a world gone mad and undead. The story is about love and desperation, the zombies are a device.

 ("He Stopped Loving Her Today" is still available in ONE BUCK ZOMBIES for only .99 cents and you get 4 other stories also! Click HERE to go buy. #endshamelessselfpromotion)

Just remember that most good zombie stories start in the form of: "Wouldn't it be cool if..."

And to leave you, here is a youtube clip of horror author Brian Keene reading his short story "Fast Zombies Suck" (which I am so freaking jealous of that title I could eat a brain.)

SOUP-RISE, SOUP-RISE, SOUP-RISE! (What I didn't anticipate when I became a writer.)

What a good topic.
When you strike out to become a writer you have a lot of lofty goals and dreams and ideals. You've watched TV, you've seen movies. If there is a writer on screen they are always struggling with their next idea, their next manuscript, the next thing they must create......BUT THEY ARE STRUGGLING WHILE IN THEIR MILLION DOLLAR LOFT IN DOWNTOWN NEW YORK. Or their beach getaway, or their cabin in the Rockies, or in Paris....the point is they are portrayed as needing to write another book because they have been such a success with the first one.

I'm not saying this level of success doesn't happen for writers, but it doesn't happen for writers.

It's a BS Hollywood dream.

I mean look at Melvin's apartment in AS GOOD AS IT GETS.

GREAT movie, but did you see that place? Huge, 19(ish) rooms, a grand piano, a balcony, loaded with priceless antiques, and all in a city where the average cost per square FOOT is near $2000 dollars.
Read that again.
TWO THOUSAND FREAKING DOLLARS.

I mean really.

So it may have come as a shock that I cannot buy a second home in the mountains on my royalty checks or advances. It may surprise me everytime I walk out into my driveway to get into my 98 Honda Civic instead of my Lamborghini.

It's not that my books don't sell. It's just that real life ain't Hollywood. :)

SUMMER LOVIN' HAD ME A BLAST

Ahhhh summer in GA when you are a big fella is kinda miserable. It's hot, it's humid, the days are long, and the bugs are mutant. But I do love the South and wouldn't really want to live permanently anywhere else. I just happen to like the Fall and Winter. But there is one thing that happens in the summer that the Tuck family looks forward to all year long....well, 3/4 of the Tuck family. That thing is DRAGONCON. Dragoncon is the Southeast's largest genre convention. It takes over whole city blocks in downtown Atlanta and turns Labor Day weekend into an endurance trial. There are 50,000 people who all show up and get their freak on and me and my family are right there with them. It's a chance to see costumes, wear costumes, buy your wardrobe for the year, meet people and hang out with awesome friends. Dragoncon is where me and Linda, my fellow word whore get to hang. I freaking love it and if you can, you should come down and join in the fun. It is the highlight of the year. Now I work it because of the writing and that impacts the amount of fanboy-ness I get to indulge in, but I love that too. Here are pics to show the awesome. Late night Werewolf panel where me, Linda Robertson, J F Lewis, and Stephen Swinarski acted like the rock stars we are. My son as a zombiefied hunter who was sad to be eating pizza instead of brains. Dragoncon is one of the few times a year that my loverly wife will wear jewelry in her septum piercing. Damn it is HOT! Conor as a ninja in a Warehouse 13 shirt....at Dragoncon he was perfectly normal. This past year I got to moderate some panels including this one with Sara Canning from The Vampire Diaries (which I am a fan of) And you can round a corner and find things like this going on!

SING A LITTLE BIT OF THESE WORKIN MAN BLUES

I love being a writer. I truly do. Everything about it, even the tedious things (a million emails I'm looking at you.). I also love my day job which is owning and operating the best damn tattoo shop in the world. But I have worked a ton of jobs that weren't so great. I've been a bouncer, a collection agent for Citibank, a youth pastor, a cook, a sunroom builder, a comic book shop jockey, and many, many more. I've been working since 2 weeks before my 15th birthday. I'm not complainin', just sayin'. I have worked all my life. Today you get the story of the first job I ever walked out on. I was 16, driving, and in need of a job so that I could put gas in said car so that I could keep on driving. So like most teens I hit the mall looking for a job. Low and behold I snagged a job at the Manchu Wok in the food court. They needed a dishwasher and I needed a paycheck so the two of us met in the middle and I was hired. It was a terrible job. I was the dishwasher, which is fine. I have gone on to wash many a dish in my life at all kinds of restaurants. It's hard work, but it's simple and because washing dishes kinda sucks it usually pays alright. Well, this job was really weird. First of all, I was the only non-Asian person working there and other than being shown where the sink was by the lady who was in charge NO ONE WOULD TALK TO ME. None. Not a person. Not the lady in charge, not the food runner, not the cook, oh hell no not the cook. Ever meet someone and know immediately that they do not like you? That was the case with me and the cook. He was smiling when he was talking to the food runner, then the lady in charge tells him I will be the new dishwasher (I am assuming. It was not in english.)and it looked like he had an attack of stomach flu. His face twisted into the deepest scowl I have ever seen. In a split second he switched completely. I wasn't concerned. I wasn't there to make friends with the cook. I was there to make money. I figured I would work hard and he would come around. Oh no. I took my station, washing the stack of pans already there. It was a deep three bay sink. One sink with hot soapy water. One sink with a disinfectant rinse, one sink with hot rinse water. The Manchu Wok was a food court chinese resturant where they keep the dishes of the day in hotpans out front. as the pans get low, the cook would make a fresh batch of whatever the item was then I would wash the wok and put it in the stack of clean woks for his use. The food runner would bring over the empty pans and stack them up on the counter beside the sink as he filled the new items. The first refill of something, egg rolls, sesame chicken, whatever, goes out. The cook is done with the wok. He screams something at me that sounds like a pterodactyl attacking a baby pig and hurls the hot wok at me and the sink. CLANG! He doesn't hit me, it hits the sink full of hot soapy water, splashing it and oil residue up on the rubber apron I am wearing. It's not enough to flip out on this old Asian man (seriously, he looked to be about 70), it's just enough to annoy the hell out of me. This happens over and over all night for all three hours I was working. Finally the shift was over. The lady came back and pointed at two bags of trash. "Take those out." I picked them up and took them out the back hallway to the dumpster. I kept on walking to my car. I didn't go back for my check. I went and found another job the next day. Worst job ever. And to commemorate it, here's some Merle Haggard for you.

I'M GONNA MAKE SOMEBODY CALL ME A BAD NAME

Why would I make one of my fellow Word Whores call me a sumbitch? Cause I post on Mondays which means I get second pick of what we are talking about and I am about to steal someone's choice for B-movie. See, watch this. THE EVIL DEAD. Somebody just cussed me. If you don't know why Evil dead is the greatest B-movie ever made I am not sure I can explain it to you. First of all you have Bruce Campbell. He's the freaking man. And this movie is him when he is all young and raw and full of hunger. He really puts it out there in this movie. You should go buy THE EVIL DEAD COMPANION and read about all these people went through to make this damn movie. It's CRAZY. Then you have a new swing at the monster/zombie/possession gig that turns up in movies. The Deadites are off the hook. Especially for 1970 something and on a $5 budget. It is a crazy, nutso, no holds barred, grab your sack kinda film. If you haven't seen this, EVIL DEAD 2, or ARMY OF DARKNESS then get the hence to the video store and just buy the damn things.

BRING THE HAPPY ONE TINY TENDER MOMENT AT A TIME

I am a very happy person. Truly I am. I own a tattoo shop and tattooing is a really cool day gig. I have a well-recieved series from Kensington that I am truly happy with. the Deacon Chalk series is EXACTLY the kind of book I want to read and I am damn proud to have written them. I have a wonderful woman that I am married to. I have a great family that I love and am really proud of. I have some good friends. I live in a house that is exactly the kind of house I wanted with exactly the kind of yard I was looking for. But none of these are the secret to my happiness. They are sources of happiness for me, but the reason for my happiness lies inside me and today, today only, I am going to share that secret with you. You have to stop worrying about shit. Seriously. It's very simple to say. Very hard to do. Simple very rarely equates to easy in life. But in near 42 years on this planet we call home I have found that 1) things happen for a reason and 2) it all works out if you give it long enough. Now I am not telling you some pie in the sky BS. You have to get involved in life. You have to get up, get out, and get some and there are things that happen in this world that are terrible. Cancer sucks and all that. But in the everyday, man just chill. Let it come. Relax. Say the serenity prayer (not: “Now I did a job; and got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character. So let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job and then I get paid. Go run your little world.“) Drink some green tea. Whatever you have to do to stay loose and relaxed. When you get all uptight you miss the small things and the small things are what make life worth living. It's a kiss from your wife, your kids telling you they love you, or any of them doing something that makes you so damn proud of them you want to bust open. It's a banana and mayo sammich at midnight, it's an Elvis song, it's a prayer in the morning, it's a twenty spot you find in your wallet, it's the perfect drive into work when the temperature outside is crisp and just right for driving with the windows down and that song, THAT SONG, comes on the radio. It's good books, a good episode of How I Met Your Mother, a good orgasm, a good cup of coffee, a good insert your random weirdness that brings a smile to your face. (ummmmmm bacon.) Don't waste your life and your opportunity for happiness waiting for the big stuff to come along and knock you off your feet. Trust me, the big stuff that whallops you usually won't be good. It's the small stuff you have in your life every moment. Fill it from now til the end with THAT and I guarantee you will be happier. That's the secret man. And now, for the rest of my fellow word whores happiness and to drive traffic to the blog a hunk of half dressed man. (You're welcome Allison!)

THESE THINGS ARE FOR CHILDREN???

Ahhh fairy tales. They seem so innocent, so friendly, so sweet. No, they are just so sanitized. lol. The original fairy tales were born in a really horrible time. Plagues, crushing poverty, oppressive caste system, brutality abounding... you name it and it sucked big time in the dark ages....this wasn't no damn Ren Fest. My favorite original fairy tale is Rumpelstiltskin. You are familiar I am sure, but here is the recap, James style. A miller decides to let his mouth write checks his ass can't cash so he makes some dumbass claim that his daughter can spin straw into gold. The king says: "Well, that sounds pretty damn good to me." Orders her locked in a tower and demands she spin straw into gold for three nights. If she can then he will marry her, if not then off with her head. Of course the girl is a bit distraught by what her (probably drunk) dad has gotten her into. She cries and cries until the emanating grief from her calls forth an imp. Now, word to the wise, if an imp appears in your room like Nightcrawler from the X-men, you should probably NOT play Let's Make A Deal.

He tells her that he can spin straw into gold if she gives him a gift. She pulls off her necklace, gives it to him, and he spins the straw into a pile of gold. The next night, same deal. Crying, imp, deal, gold. (Some say the miller's daughter gave up the goods on night 2 since she had already lost her necklace and the 3rd night offered the same, but old Rumpy said no to used goods.) The third night the imp shows up, and the daughter has nothing to give him. He asks for her first born. She agrees and the deal is struck. The king marries her and sure enough, one thing leads to another and one year later, she pops out a kid. Guess who shows up to claim his prize? Yep. She of course is a welsher and doesn't want to pony up so he tells her he will let her keep the kid if she tells him his name.

She doesn't know it, some random woodsman (what is it with the woodsmen in these stories?) passing by hears him bragging that she'll never guess his name is Rumpelstiltskin. He rats him out to the now Queen. The imp shows up to collect, she drops his name, and he flips his lid. Stomps his foot so hard it sinks into the floor then freaks out trying to get free that he RIPS HIMSELF IN HALF. So what is the moral of the story? Beats the hell out of me.

OH WAIT, THERE WAS A FREAKING CHOICE IN THIS?

Most of you know by now that I grew up reading. I read from a wee child. Not namby pamby SEE SPOT RUN crap either. Real deal books. I was always a huge fan of comic books, voraciously reading everyone of them I could get my hands on. Stuff like this:

I mean look at that. That's freaking Conan. He would stick with me for YEARS. I never stopped loving the character. "Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet..." Robert E. Howard The Phoenix On The Sword I would follow him into the books like this one.

And even to the movies. I also read comic books like this:

That is a red-ass T-rex my friend! This is what my young mind was consuming. Sword and sorcery mayhem along with lobster-skinned T-rex's with friends!

Then we get Edgar Rice Burroughs Hollow Earth stuff. Whoa! Mind blown! There is a civilization that lives on the inside of the crust of our earth? Crazy! And Wonderful! AND THEN MY OLD FRIENDS COMIC BOOKS CAME ALONG WITH MORE SWORD AND SORCERY KICK-ASSERY INSIDE HOLLOW EARTH! OMG!

I know my youth had a harder sci-fi/fantasy edge to it than what I write today, but this is where the seeds were planted. I grew up on a steady diet of this stuff and it was awesome.

THE DIVISION OF LABOUR AIN'T CALCULUS

Chores. You know, they aren't called chores because they are fun. I live in a house with 3 teenagers. Two of them are the fruit of my loins, the third is a new addition, a nephew of my wife. They are all "the kids" and all part of the household. No true differentiation between them especially when it comes to chores. Now we don't ask much of the kids. Do your own laundry, don't leave food in your room, pick up your crap, you know, simple stuff. Big chores we are willing to pay for. You mow the grass, it's worth $20 bucks. You move big trash up to the curb for Big Trash Day and it's worth a tenner. Not a bad deal. The only glitch in the system is the damn dishes. The Missus recently came to the conclusion that there was no reason the two adults in the house should cook and do the dishes. So now dishes are divided amongst the three. One unloads, one loads, one has a break in a weird rotating schedule that is flexibly adjusted depending on a multitude of factors. Here's the thing. Somehow, I have a 14 year old, and 2, count 'em TWO, 17 year olds who are incapable of loading the damn dishwasher right. It doesn't matter how many times you explain that the hole in the center of the dishwasher cannot be covered by a pot because THAT IS WHERE ALL THE WATER COMES FROM, they still throw something over it. That one pan will be clean as hell, but everything else is dry as a bone. And they will either cram everything in the dishwasher, stacking things on top of each other, cups inside of glasses, bowls inside of pans... Or more commonly they throw two bowls and a cup in the top rack and proclaim the damn thing full. This is with a sink overflowing with dinner dishes left. (This especially happens when dinner runs late and there is Buffy on Netflix to be watched.) Sometimes I swear they suck at doing this so that we will take it back just to have a clean plate to eat on. They don't know us very well. lol.

LIES, DAMNED LIES, AND WRITING ADVICE

Walk into a room with 10 people and you will find a writer. Everyone is a writer, or knows a writer. I'm not knocking that. Hell, I LOVE writing. You want to write, by all means, you should. Go for it, rock it out, make it happen. So now we come to the truth of the situation though. If you have a writer in every room, you also have writing advice in every room, because the only thing we love to talk about more than writing is......well...nothing. Lots of advice on writing gets bandied about. The worst, absolute worst, piece of writing advice is anything that tells you to follow what's selling. "You should write a crappy romance with light BDSM elements because it sells." "You should write vampires because they sell." "Oh you should steer clear of vampires because nobody reads that." "You should write like Jodi Picoult" You should write like John Grisham" "you should write like YA books." SHADDUP ALREADY WILLYA! Listen to me dear readers because I am only going to say this once. IT TAKES A LONG TIME TO WRITE A BOOK. BY THE TIME YOU WRITE WHATEVER TREND YOU THINK YOU SHOULD FOLLOW IT WILL BE OVER. Plus, why would you ever want to shortchange yourself by ripping off someone else's gig? Let Jodi Picoult write her books. Let Stephanie Meyers write her books. You? You should write your own damned book. Trust yourself. Write what you want to. Go crazy. Make shit up. It's fun. Create your own world and then go in and screw with it like the maniacal, power-hungry god that you are but do it honestly. Now the best piece of advice is this: HEAD DOWN. MAKE WORDS. That's mine. I coined it. You wanna be a writer? Well listen up cupcake, writers write. It's simple. Not easy. Simple. Get to writing. And no, messing around with your author fan page or checking your twitter does NOT count. Make words appear on your screen that make a story. Get busy writin' or get busy dyin'. Seriously. Why are you still reading this? Oh, you want a NSFW inspirational Kevin Smith video? Okay, but after that you open up your damn story and you don't look away from it until you have a decent chunk of wordage. I mean it....don't make me come over there.

Pets back in the day.

I'm with my fellow Word Whore Jeffe in that while I remember pets I have owned in the past, I don't really have pictures.

There was Zeus, the rottweiler/lab mix. He was a good dog. Big and scary looking but sweet as hell. Minded pretty well unless he got free and then all you could do was send up a prayer for his safety cause he was gone. No looking back, just running wide open. He'd come back in a few hours and lay on the carport until he was let back in. lol.
I would probably still have him today. I moved into an apartment that did not allow pets so I had a friend take him for a bit until I could move to a different unit that did allow pets. It took a month and by that time he was living like a king in a neighborhood full of kids who would get off the bus and go get him and take him through the woods on adventures. Plus my friend had truly fallen in love with him so I left him with her and her husband.

Back in the day, when I was a wee child we had a dog named Tiger. She was a German Shepard mix. Wonderful dog. Sweet, protective. She was always there when we were outside, watching over us. My mother still tells the story of going inside to get something and leaving me in the yard. A moment later she heard me start screaming so she came a running. I was on the edge of the yard, standing there trying to get in the road and Tiger had me by the cloth diaper, holding me back. I was apparantly mad as hell about it, hence the screaming.
Tiger was a good dog, lived a long life and finally died of old age.

I've had cats here and there, but most of them were crappy. I am not a cat fan. Even the coolest cat winds up peeing in my laundry basket....the clean one.

I did have a 10 ft Burmese python named Abigail that I traded a tattoo for. She was beautiful, but very scary. A 10 foot snake is twice the size of my bicep all the way around. She's a 10 ft tube of pure muscle designed to kill things. I lived alone when I had her and I always thought to myself "If this snake decides to take you out while you hold her, what could you do?" Nothing....hope I could stagger outside with 100 pounds of snake wrapped around my face and convince my neighbors to call the cops instead of pointing and laughing.

Abigail went to live at the animal preserve outside of Cleveland Ga.

Now I have a house full of pets. 6 dogs, 1 cat, 1 bird, 1 hamster.

But this one is mine. His name is Cash and you have my permission to "awwwwwww".

PUT DOWN THE MILK LEST IT SHOOT OUT THY NOSE.

Sorry to all of you for completely dropping the ball last week.

This week though I am here and ready to go.

Now I don't usually troll the interwebs for funny. I don't check Failbook or any of the others. I go straight to the youtube and find things to laugh at.

such as this:




HA! I will watch that video over and over....Cats getting theirs is funny to me...Maybe it's because I have never owned a cat that didn't begin using my laundry basket for a litter box. I am not a cat fan.

Then there is the ever lovely ASK A NINJA. I will get wrapped up in these for hours..it's funny, charming, smart, and can sneak up behind you in a an alley and slit your throat.

Hi larious.



They can throw a shuriken, then jump on top of it. It hits you in the neck and they punch you in the face.


And finally, I love Louise CK. He's raunchy and wrong, and listening to him will make you feel really bad for laughing, but he is so frakkin funny.

Here is a clean bit he did on late night tv that is funny and poignant.




Okay...one more. Stephen Lynch. Funniest man with a guitar....this is about the only clip safe for work so enjoy it. Click on any of his others at your own risk.

IS THIS A KISSING BOOK?

Hands down, best movie ever, the pinnacle of movie making, most quotable movie ever, the best thing that Rob Reiner, Cary Ewles, Mandy Patinkin, Robin Wright, Chris Sarandon, and Andre the Giant ever did, AND the movie that got me The Missus' digits:

THE PRINCESS BRIDE



I mean seriously, this is the greatest movie ever made. You have pirates, revenge, love, death, giants, swordplay, humor, shrieking eels, and some of the wittiest dialog ever misquoted in dozens of languages around the world.



If you haven't seen The Princess Bride then get up, get up right now, get your ass in the car, and go buy it. RIGHT NOW.

No I'm not playing. Move it.




Okay, now that you are back and you have watched the movie God won't have to kill any kittens tonight.

PUTTING THE OOH IN THE OOH-LA-LA

I know this isn't a writing blog, it's a blog by writers and I think more than a few of y'all are writers yourselves.

So while this may be a bit short it will be an actual writing technique post.

Writing sex scenes.

Now, I'm not going to go into the specific tips and tricks such as pay attention to all the senses in the act of instead of focusing on just the sights and the sounds. Or using clever fresh words to describe things. (Slick being one of my faves) Or how using a lot of soft sounding words such as slick will make the scene flow. S sounds, C sounds, Z sounds roll off the tongue like....well, that's about enough of that. lol

I'm not even going to talk to you about varying the tempo of your sentence structure so that longer sentences build the tension, making it climb, building pressure as the sensations are spilled out onto the page for the eye to watch until you switch. Using shorter and shorter sentences. Quickening the pace. Moving faster. Doing. The. Deed.

Nope. Today I am going to speak, really quickly, on making the sex scene matter.

You should never write a gratuitous sex scene. Not even in erotica. If you do then you have failed. I know that sounds harsh but it's the truth. Sex is important and it means a lot of things. It can be a sign that your character is moving into a new phase of emotional growth. It can be a sign of healing. It can signify how damaged your character is. (Which is what George Pellacanos is doing in DRAMA CITY which I am reading now) But it should matter. It matters in real life and it should matter to your character and to your reader. It's not enough to write a hot scene, you have to make it serve a purpose in your character's emotional story.

There is a great book that I recommend if you need help writing that pesky lovemaking scene. It's by Stacia Kane and it's called: BE A SEX-WRITING STRUMPET.

See, here it is. Click HERE to go read more about it and where to get it. It's cheap.



She will put it all in perspective for you. LOL.

And that's all for me. Sum up, buy Stacia's book and make your sex scenes matter.

I had a great time at Con Nooga this year. Thank you to all the fans who came out to see me.

Til next monday Loyals and True Believers.

I AM A VERY SECURE MAN. (or in which James discusses his man-crushes which are not few in number)

Celebrity crushes. Well, pull up a chair kiddos and let's talk about my celebrity crushes. Being the only man 'round these here parts I bet you thought you were gonna pull up a bunch of pictures of pretty ladies. Well, you would be wrong. lol. Keeping in the spirit of my fellow word whores I am gonna share with you my man-crushes. Yep. I have man-crushes on some celebrities. Now let's preface this all with a brief aside and a bit of an explanation. I am not a pretty man. I know this. I have a lot of look going on with my size, the tattoos, the shaved head, the goatee. I look like a thug. I am just fine with this. The Missus likes it and I have no problem with my appearance. No low self-esteem at all. So while I am not actually attracted to other men I do have a measuring stick for if a man is attractive. I look and I say:" would I trade places with him in the looks department?" If the answer is yes, then he is attractive. If the answer is no, then he isn't. Some of this is based on the actor's appearance, some on their personality, and some, truthfully on the roles they play. So here is the list of the man-crushes currently going on, along with an explanation for each. 

 4) Timothy Olyphant This one is directly tied to his role as US Marshall Raylan Givens. If you aren't watching Justified then shame on you. This is a badass show and Olyphant is acting his ass off in it. Damn his character is cool. This is the level of quiet badassery that little boys strive for when they are trying to be cool. Like Gregory Peck in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, Marshal Raylan Givens just shows up and does the work. 

 3) John Barrowman Not only is John Barrowman the "straight version of Tom Cruise" (Thank you Joan Rivers) he is one charming sonnuvabitch. He is funny, clever, and witty. Watch him host shows on the BBC, sing on stage in musicals, or kick alien ass as Captain Jack Harkness on Torchwood and he does it all with style. He still holds resentment for being turned down for the role of Will on Will and Grace for being too straight (John is openly gay and has been in a long term relationship with his partner Scott for EVER) and then having the role given to an actual straight actor. He has the movie star good looks and winning personality to make the list. Whenever I am famous and doing a UK book tour I want to meet him and Scott and then me and The Missus can go to their house for dinner. 

 2) Nathan Fillion The Missus and I had our picture taken with Nathan at Dragoncon. That is one charming bastard. Seriously. It's not so much the looks, but all that charm he oozes in Castle, that's the real deal. At the photo thing he was tired, bone tired, you could see the dark circles under his eyes and he had the world's biggest coffee, but he was still full of energy and cracking jokes. 

 And finally 1) Dwayne Johnson Okay, admit it. Dwayne Johnson is the pinnacle of male perfection. Seriously. He's not even a sexual object as much as what an artist would draw if told to design the ultimate male physique. The sonnuvabitch is carved from marble. Plus he is a pretty good actor and has more than his share of charm. He can swing from ass-kicking action to charming and tender-hearted, to downright damn funny. He's the person I had in mind to play Deacon Chalk if a movie is ever made. Ya hear that Dwayne? Do you smell what the Tuck is cookin'? An BTW, thank you all for all the books you have bought and all the reviews, posts, and comments you have made for my new book BLOOD AND BULLETS. I am truly grateful for just how supportive you have all been.

OMG! TOMORROW! TOMORROW!

Holy crap.
Tomorrow I will be a published author.
Holy.
Crap.
Actually, I am already a published author. I have a short story in One Buck Horror's special issue (One Buck Zombies) called "He Stopped Loving Her Today." That came out in October. I also have THAT THING AT THE ZOO the e-novella prequel to the Deacon Chalk series. It's available everywhere ebooks are sold for less than a dollar and you should buy it.

But TOMORROW I will have a real, physical book on the shelves of your local bookstore!
BLOOD AND BULLETS A Deacon Chalk: Occult Bounty Hunter novel is released into the wild on 2/7.

It feels good. Real good. I have been blessed with a lot of support from my fellow writers, including my bordello-mates here at the Word Whores. Most reviewers have liked it, more than a few loved it, a couple were blind to my genius. (That last one was sarcasm)

It feels good. I love being a writer.

Here is what some kind folks had to say about my book!

BLOGCRITIC

MY BOOKISH WAYS

LOV-LIV-LIFE REVIEWS

LOVE VAMPIRES

ACTION!

The black keys sit beneath outstretched fingers, white letters mocking in their tiny square borders. Micro muscles pull the phalanges in tiny jerks and spasms of anticipation. Pull, relax, pull, relax, a dance of contraction.
The fingertips gently stroke across the keys in a wave of language. The response is immediate. One tentative word splashed across the white screen. The fingers pull back, waiting for the eyes to catch up.
The mind clicks. Unspoken orders fly through nerves, setting them on fire. The fingers react with flash and fury. Dive forward. Strike. Pull back. Strike again. Pressing harder each time, driving down, trying to push the mocking letters through the other side.
The fingers dance around each other, circling with purpose. Darting in and out, barely missing each other. Words spill out across the screen like blood on ice. Stark and quick, laid out in an ever growing puddle of hot, sticky language. The keys cry out, clacking for mercy, but no mercy will be given. Not this time. Not now. Not until the final word is torn from them and left lying among its fallen brothers.
.
.
.
Okay, that may have been a bit of a gimmick and I'm not going to obsess over that. LOL.
I LOVE action scenes. I love writing them and I love reading them. Hell, I love watching them on tv too. When I am writing the Deacon Chalk series I find that if I go too long in writing without an action scene I start to get antsy. I begin to go back and count to make sure that not too much time has passed without one.
But action can be hard to write. You have to find the rhythm of it, the ebb and the flow that makes it exciting and not a hot mess a reader has to wade through.
But I find that I can tell a lot about the character in how they react to a fight. You never really know how you are going to react to a violent situation until you are put in it. Reading about a character the first time they have to make the choice to fight for something they want is a great way to know them. Action scenes lay the character out to their most basic desires, giving us insight into the things that matter most to them. Do they fight to save others? Are they trying to save their own skin? Are they just being cruel to someone weaker than them? What is the one thing they are willing to not only risk themselves for, but also to hurt someone else for?

It can get deep quickly in an action scene. See, my fingers are willing to hurt the keys in order to get words done. They are merciless in this pursuit, uncaring of how much the keys protest. Their clicking and clacking falls on the deaf ears of my fingers as they continue to pound away.

So what does this say about my fingers?

(Okay, this post officially got weird.)

So, dear reader, do you love action scenes and if so why? Are they just mind candy with all the pretty explosions, or do you look for the depths of the character in them?

I HAVE SOME PRETTY WILD DREAMS

Well, being a published writer is a wild dream in and of itself. I am grateful that I can do this and, so far, it seems to be going rather well.

I have a lot of dreams that have to do with being a writer. Win a Stoker award. Win an Edgar. Be published in multiple countries and languages.

But my wildest?

I want a movie.

I would take a TV show, but I want a movie from my Deacon Chalk books.

Now, it's not outside the realm of possibility. Thousands of books are optioned by Hollywood every year. My book is an action-packed, blockbuster style book. It is loaded with cool stuff that Hollywood likes in it's summer movies. So let me clarify.

I want a GOOD movie made of my books. I want a big budget, star-laden, well directed, true-to-the novels, runaway smash of a movie.

And I want this man to play Deacon Chalk.






Yes that is Dwayne Johnson. He is Deacon Chalk. It will be his biggest movie ever. And I want a cameo. I want Deacon to walk through a door. We meet face to face, do the slow look up and down to each other and then pass on by.

That would be awesome.

I don't want to be an actor. I just want that one small thing.

I have other dreams. Dinner with John Barrowman and his partner. Andrew Vachss saying: "I read your book. It was good." Sharing a panel with Laurell K. Hamilton. Sharing a pizza with Neil Gaiman. Hosting my own convention for authors and readers to meet each other.

But I think the movie is the wildest.

Well, except for maybe the gold swimming pools full of cash.

THAT THING THAT I DO

I have a terrific day job. Really, it's one of the most awesome day jobs in the world.
I get to work here:


This is my tattoo shop. Family Tradition Tattoo in Marietta, Ga. I've been tattooing now for over 15 years. I love it. I opened my own shop about 3 years ago and it is exactly what I wanted. A quiet place where grown ups come to get nice tattoos. No crowds of 'hanger out-ers' to wade through, usually we have blues or country or pop playing on the stereo, and we stay drama free. I have great artists who work there with me and I like them both as people, so work is a pleasure.


And I get to do stuff like this to people....and they PAY me for it!





Now in my day job I do run into a LOT of people. You will see some of these people show up in my books. No I never tattooed a Were-spider, but I did tattoo a lady that reminds me of Charlotte. In my day job I also get to meet people who are experts in weird stuff that I wind up using in my books. I have tattooed on police officers, undercover officers, military folks, firemen, and "contract security specialists" (read that last one as mercenaries). Yes some folks are full of BS, but not all.

And I learned the patience it takes to write a book. Sitting there slogging through the fifth hour of someone's seven hour tribal sleeve where I am just packing black, endlessly making little tiny circles with my machine and staying on task was where I learned to sit down for 4 hours to get out a few thousand words on an 80,000 word manuscript.

I am thoroughly enjoying both of my jobs now. See?